Marko Haavisto & Poutahaukat - Paha vaanii

[Jukka Aho]

You could try this first: http://www.verbix.com/languages/finnish.shtml

I think you might have misunderstood OP’s point. He wasn’t asking about verb conjugations but case government (verbien rektiot in Finnish linguistic terms, see here and here as well.)

I suppose you’d get that information, along with usage examples, from a monolingual Finnish dictionary, such as Kielitoimiston sanakirja. Google could also provide some information. But I stumbled upon this:

• Leila White, Hannele Jönsson-Korhola: Rakastan sinua, pidätkö sinä minusta? Suomen verbien rektioita (Jyväskylän yliopisto, 1996)

[Jukka Aho]

Thanks, Jukka. I knew the page, but I prefer searching by verb, not by case,

Well, that’s easily resolved... just save all the subpages locally and merge the lists in alphabetical order. (But if you feel the information provided on those pages is too incomplete, that won’t help, of course.)

[Rob A.]

Thanks Jukka

Onneni on kaiken aikaa vaakalaudalla....kaiken being in the genitive because it is modifies aikaa..."all's time"..."the time of all"...and aikaa is in the partitive because it has an ongoing sense to it.....]

If you’re merely doing a translation it’s enough to “mechanically” map the Finnish expression kaiken aikaa to the English expression “all the time”. They’re both kind of fixed expressions, no real need to analyze them too much...

I agree ....learning what works, and want doesn't, is the "essential" process in learning another language.

However, my thinking here is to try to explain from the perspective of a native English speaker what is going on. English speakers tend to understand the genitive case in comparison with what is essentially the only case declension remaining in English...the possessive case. The Finnish genitive case, of course, goes further than this...but I think my analysis helps with this understanding.... Or not!!!...

The genitive case and the accusative case...and the nominative, as well... have these "connections" which can be hard to unscramble. The partitive case with its sense of "non-entirety" and negative "entirety" works its way into this confusion.....

I can also now see why the accusative case tends to the subject of so much debate among grammarians... it's almost not a "full" case, what with its strong connections to the nominative... with plural accusatives being identical to the nominative, with singular accusative pronouns having the plural marker and looking like plural nominatives...[in fact such pronouns can actually be plural nominatives if they are acting as nouns]. As well, the nominative remains with objects connected with imperative verbs....presumably because the nominative subject is understood from the verb and no confusion would arise.

It seems to me that "shoehorning" Finnish grammatical analysis into conventions essentially developed for Latin and other closely related languages creates these "issues" for Finnish grammarians....

[j.petsku]

But I stumbled upon this:

Leila White, Hannele Jönsson-Korhola: Rakastan sinua, pidätkö sinä minusta? Suomen verbien rektioita (Jyväskylän yliopisto, 1996)

I also have "Tarkista tästä," which I can heartily recommend. It doesn't have the rarer verbs, but for beginning and intermediate learners it's an invaluable resource. Lot's of sample sentences with various case endings for every verb, in alphabetical order, of course. Quite a bit more expensive than Jukka's link, however...

http://hintaseuranta.fi/haku.aspx?Hakus ... 0t%E4st%E4

[BoxerDanc]

Here it goes again.

Tuo varjo aina auringosta osan piilottaa

osan is in accusative (that shade always always hides the part), which seems most natural to me, but auringosta is elative (typically indicates movement from within (or from close contact with) something). Why? Beats me:(

[BoxerDanc]

And again:
Kauneimpiinkin uniin siipinensä liihottaa

siipinensä - what kind of form is that? My guess is it's some archaic stuff. I know it derives from "siipi".
liihottaa - I found it to mean "glide, fly", but supposedly it's quite a rare word (because it's absent in wiktionary and http://www.suomienglantisanakirja.fi , dictionary which I've liked the most so far), more common being liitää, correct?

[j.petsku]

Here it goes again.

Tuo varjo aina auringosta osan piilottaa

osan is in accusative (that shade always always hides the part), which seems most natural to me, but auringosta is elative (typically indicates movement from within (or from close contact with) something). Why? Beats me:(

osa auringosta would mean "part of the sun." So, in your example, osa inflects to indicate its object status: osan auringosta The word order is a little different, actually sounds kind of strange to me, but the Finns would be able to advise on that.

So:
"That shade always hides part of the sun."
With context, I'm sure this could be made to sound more natural.

The -sta endings are often used in this way, to indicate some smaller quantity of a larger entity: osa meistä — "some of us," kolme näistä kirjoista — "three of these books," etc.

[Rob A.]

Here it goes again.

Tuo varjo aina auringosta osan piilottaa

osan is in accusative (that shade always always hides the part), which seems most natural to me, but auringosta is elative (typically indicates movement from within (or from close contact with) something). Why? Beats me:(

osa auringosta would mean "part of the sun." So, in your example, osa inflects to indicate its object status: osan auringosta The word order is a little different, actually sounds kind of strange to me, but the Finns would be able to advise on that.

So:
"That shade always hides part of the sun."
With context, I'm sure this could be made to sound more natural.

The -sta endings are often used in this way, to indicate some smaller quantity of a larger entity: osa meistä — "some of us," kolme näistä kirjoista — "three of these books," etc.

Yes... and if I were having trouble grasping the meaning, I would be inclined to turn it into literal English first... The elative case has the "from inside" sense to it.... Instead of, say, "speaking about, or of, something"....the sense in Finnish seems to be "to speak from" something.....using the elative case....

And it makes perfect sense to me to use the elative in your last two examples : osa meistä and kolme näistä kirjoista... "part from us"/ "three from these books"....the idea of origin...where something comes from.....and nämä has to be in the elative form simply because it is an adjective/determiner modifying the noun, kirjat...in its elative form.....

Now I'm curious what the "normal" word order of this sentence might be:

Tuo varjo aina auringosta osan piilottaa.= Tuo varjo piilottaa aina osan auringosta....???...

This is the easiest word order for me to understand....and osan takes the accusative form because the "part" is a "complete" part, if I can put it that way...

[BoxerDanc]

Thanks guys. I've figured out the "auringosta osan" part with your help: elative is the case required by osa (dictionary gives an example "osa kokonaisuudesta"). In every language I'm familiar with, it's always genitive, and English is no exception, therefore the confusion.

[Rob A.]

Thanks guys. I've figured out the "auringosta osan" part with your help: elative is the case required by osa (dictionary gives an example "osa kokonaisuudesta"). In every language I'm familiar with, it's always genitive, and English is no exception, therefore the confusion.

Evil, isn't it??... And interesting that with a postposition like kanssa [...which was some sort of noun at one time in the inessive case], Finnish uses the genitive.... while, say, Latin...with the word, cum, uses the ablative which is, of course, a variation of the elative case...

[j.petsku]

siipinensä - what kind of form is that? My guess is it's some archaic stuff. I know it derives from "siipi".

I believe this is the comitative case, which indicates "with." So something like: "to soar with wings." The comitative is pretty rare, but you see it sometimes in literary Finnish. I've never seen it with the -nsa possessive ending. Normally it takes an -en in addition to the root siipine-.

Linna monine ikkunoineen ja korkeine torneineen häämötti horisontissa. "A castle with its many windows and lofty towers loomed on the horizon."

PS...I see now why the word order is strange...song lyrics...I didn't look carefully enough at your original link.

[Jukka Aho]

Now I'm curious what the "normal" word order of this sentence might be:

Tuo varjo aina auringosta osan piilottaa.= Tuo varjo piilottaa aina osan auringosta....???...

Yes, the latter is what you would use in normal prose.

I’d translate varjo as “shadow” here. The song is about fears of misfortune or the evils of the world and uses metaphors such as “the devil” so that would fit the context. There’s some vaguely defined “expectation of evil” or “fear of misfortune” seemingly looming about, partially blocking the sun and casting a shadow even in happy times.

[Jukka Aho]

And again:
Kauneimpiinkin uniin siipinensä liihottaa

siipinensä - what kind of form is that? My guess is it's some archaic stuff. I know it derives from "siipi".

It’s the comitative case. See here for more information.

liihottaa - I found it to mean "glide, fly", but supposedly it's quite a rare word (because it's absent in wiktionary and http://www.suomienglantisanakirja.fi , dictionary which I've liked the most so far), more common being liitää, correct?

It’s gliding/flying which involves casually flapping your wings in a bit erratic pattern to keep your momentum/altitude/course. It’s usually applied to butterflies, angels(!) and birds in contexts when you want to use a more descriptive word for flying than just the plain lentää. And often it is actually used in combination with the verb lentää, as in perhonen lentää liihottaa, “flies in that gliding/wing-flapping style”.

Liihottaa is also sometimes used figuratively in some contexts about persons, especially women, who move (or “glide”) swiftly in a crowd from one place to the other and maybe wear loose garments with lots of cloth which trail their movements. Think of a party with fancy dresses.

— Missä Martta-täti on?
— Tuolla se liihottaa tyllihameineen vieraan luota toiselle ja juoruaa sinusta.

[Jukka Aho]

The song apparently hasn’t been linked to this thread yet so here goes:



It originally appeared in the 2002 movie Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past) by Aki Kaurismäki.

[Rob A.]

liihottaa - I found it to mean "glide, fly", but supposedly it's quite a rare word (because it's absent in wiktionary and http://www.suomienglantisanakirja.fi , dictionary which I've liked the most so far), more common being liitää, correct?

It’s gliding/flying which involves casually flapping your wings in a bit erratic pattern to keep your momentum/altitude/course. It’s usually applied to butterflies, angels(!) and birds in contexts when you want to use a more descriptive word for flying than just the plain lentää. And often it is actually used in combination with the verb lentää, as in perhonen lentää liihottaa, “flies in that gliding/wing-flapping style”.

Interesting...so this word is used specifically for the style of flying that in English seems just to be called "flap-glide"....I don't think there is a specific word.....

Among birds I've seen turkey vultures flying like that.... See below:



....in the fall at the very southern tip of Vancouver Island, turkey vultures collect awaiting the right kind of thermals to carry them across the water to the mainland.... It's a rather spectacular sight... hundreds gather....I counted over two hundred before I got confused and lost track of what I was doing.... They were all over...istuivat puilla; liihosiavat [...is this the correct declension...past, 3rd, plural?] ympäriinsä, seisoivat maalla....etc. I guess it wouldn't have been a place you'd want to have a heart attack, or pass out, or anything like that ...