Rections / Rektiot

[pas]

Hi everybody!

I've been struggling with Finnish rections for quite some time and it's so annoying when I want to write something but I don't know in what case to put the object. Does anyone know a good book that explains what cases different verbs take or maybe an online resource?

E.g.

Rakastan sinua. (rakastan takes partitive)
Näen sinut. (nähdä takes accusative)
Ajan autoa. (ajaa takes partitive)
Lopetan kirjoitamisen. (lopettaa takes accusative/genitive)
etc.

I know that the case often changes if you add a result to the actions e.g. ajan auton autotalliin, but I just want to find an easy way to learn the most common cases for the verb.

Thankful for all kinds of answers

[sinikettu]

There is no easy path..Practice with Finns and listen carefully.
There is a book, which although not perfect, does have most rules.
It is not easy reading.
Finnish Grammar by Professor Fred Karlsson.
ISBN 951-0-11627-0
Check your local library.

[AldenG]

When it comes to music and language, the human brain is much better at processing and remembering examples than descriptive rules. Even for those of us who do rules well, a rule is still quite a threshold of indirection compared to an example and keeps you stuck longer at the stage of thinking about the language rather than thinking in the language.

That suggests that most people will do best at learning verbs by creating and regularly reviewing a library of carefully chosen examples. Learning a new verb becomes a matter of finding key examples for it, the smallest set of typical examples that illustrate each different way of using it. Beyond rektio this tactic also tends to be the best way to discriminate shades of meaning among similar verbs so that you will correctly choose, for instance, between osaa/n and pysty/n. It's also the shortest path to learning idiomatic phraseology and some of the grammatical constructs with verbs that are very common yet get treated as "complicated" in the traditional "reductionist" grammatical approach. In truth there are hardly any complicated usages with verbs -- only complicating ways of teaching them.

And in the end, the meaning of anything really IS how it gets combined with other words.

[AldenG]

I agree that Karlsson has excellent examples and I'm sure many of the other books do, too. The challenge, of course, is finding the examples, which tend to be indexed (if at all) by grammatical feature and not by the verbs used in them.

Your best resource may be right here in FF: post your verbs a few each day (or week or whatever) and solicit examples.

[Milka.Aino]

Try with this book

TARKISTÄ TÄSTÄ ( suomen sanojen rektioita ) by Hannele Jönsson-Korhola and Leila White
There is only 1200 words but after reading them all you simply learn to recongnize it and understand when do you have to use partiiivi, akkusatiivi ect.

[enk]

http://www.uta.fi/~km56049/finnish/cases.html has at the bottom of the page a whole slew of them.

-enk