News in Finnish: Hameiden alta löytyi 125 muumikulhoa

[Jukka Aho]

From time to time, you encounter amusing local stories in Finnish media that might be interesting to a non-native language learner – both as a story and as a reading exercise; maybe for some further language or grammar-related discussion as well. I have posted some of these here previously. Here’s yet another:

(Edit: I originally thought about collecting such stories to a single thread instead of opening a new thread for each of them. But it seems the discussion about the first story is already lively enough to warrant a thread on its own so I’m changing the title a bit and will post further stories in separate threads.)

Hameiden alta löytyi 125 muumikulhoa
Turun Sanomat 11.2 2011 09:44:32

Väljien hameiden avulla varastetaan Suomessa yllättävän paljon tavaraa. Yksi tuoreimmista tapauksista on viime lauantailta, jolloin kolme naista yritti varastaa Vantaan Tarjoustalosta 125 Arabian muumikulhoa ja 31 muumilautasta kätkemällä ne hameiden alle.

Poliisin mukaan hamekätköjä käyttävät suomalaisten lisäksi ulkomailta varta vasten tulleet varasporukat.

– Käytössä on ollut erilaisia hameen alle laitettua pusseja, telineitä ja koukkuja, jotka kestävät melko suuriakin kuormia. Kiinni on otettu yksittäisiä yrittäjiä, mutta useimmiten kahden tai kolmen naisen ryhmiä, välillä puolen tusinan porukoita. Tämä on jatkuvaa toimintaa, Vantaan omaisuusrikostutkintayksikön vuoroesimies, rikosylikonstaapeli Anne Tuomisto kertoi.

– Useimmiten viedään vaatteita, koska ne eivät kalise ja kolise, mutta kyllä yllätyksiä on ollut, kuten erilaisia öljykanistereita ja monenlaisia työkaluja. Skaala on hyvin laaja ja toiminta suunniteltua.

Usein varasporukat operoivat aikansa ja vaihtavat seutuja, liikkuen eri puolilla Suomea. Porukkaan kuuluu välillä myös miehiä, joiden tehtävänä on kärähtämisen tullessa pidätellä vartijoita tai vetää heidän huomionsa muualle. Varastelutilanteessa rekvisiittana voi olla lehdenlukua ja ympärillä pari kolme peittelijää niin että itse tilanne ei tallennu välttämättä valvontakameraan.

Tukevasti lastattu hamekokonaisuus ei välttämättä liiku kovin nopeasti, joten silloin hämäys voi antaa pakoaikaa, jos kassalla kehkeytyy epäjärjestystä.

Hameita on käräjillä takavarikoitu valtiolle rikoksentekovälineinä.

Porakone mahtui hyvin haarasäkkiin

Rikoskomisario Vesa Aaltonen Varsinais-Suomen poliisista kertoo tutkineensa kerran juttua, jossa romaninaiselta löytyi hameen alta varastettua tavaraa 75 kiloa. Mukana oli erilaista omaisuutta, kuten tapettirullia.

– Naisella oli yllään aivan kuin armeijan taisteluliivit, joten se antoi kantokykyä, mutta kyllä silti olimme ihmeissämme moisesta määrästä. Lisäksi romanien kansallispukukin jo painaa melkoisesti, joten naisella täytyi olla hyvä kunto, jotta pystyi kantamaan sellaista kokonaisuutta.

– Ahneus kostautuikin, sillä nainen jäi kiinni, kun liivin toinen olkahihna meni poikki ja tavarat romahtivat liikkeessä lattialle.

Aaltosen mukaan toisella kerralla kymmenen kerrosta käsittänyt valtava hamekokonaisuus oli aivan jumissa ja nainen sanoi sen menneen umpisolmuun. Poliisin tutkijat poimivat varastettua tavaraa lukuisista poimuista ja silläkin kertaa tavaraa kertyi iso kasa.

SEPPO SUDENNIEMI

[Link to the original story]

[Rob A.]

From time to time, you encounter amusing local stories in Finnish media that might be interesting to a non-native language learner – both as a story and as a reading exercise; maybe for some further language or grammar-related discussion as well. I have posted some of these here previously. But instead of opening a new thread for each of them, I guess such stories could be collected to a single thread. So here’s the first one:

Hameiden alta löytyi 125 muumikulhoa
Turun Sanomat 11.2 2011 09:44:32

Väljien hameiden avulla varastetaan Suomessa yllättävän paljon tavaraa.

OK...I think I'll try this ...one sentence at a time... It's a bit tough...

This would translate, more or less as:

"With the help of loose skirts, a surprising amount of goods are stolen in Finland."

Parsing this sentence, I would get something like:

"On-help of loose skirts, is stolen in Finland surprising much goods."

1. "Väljien hameiden avulla...." "avulla"...the adessive of "apu"...and the two modifiers are in the genitive...väljien...väljä...in the genitive plural because it is an adjective modifying a noun in the genitive. And "hameiden"..."hame" in the genitive plural is a noun modifying another noun and has a possessive sense to it.

2. ..."varastetaan"......a Finnish "passive" or "fourth person" verb meaning, "one steals"... more or less.

3. ..."Suomessa"......simply an indirect object ...in the inessive case.

4. ..."yllättävän paljon tavaraa."....this is the direct object of the sentence...."tavaraa" is in the partitive because the modifier, "paljon", requires this. The only word here I can't quite parse is "yllättävän" ..."surprising".... This is an active present participle...a nominalized, ...or maybe an adjectival.., verb in the genitive case....but I can't figure out why it has to be in the genitive.....???... Oh...and any other "parsing" mistakes??....

[Jukka Aho]

Väljien hameiden avulla varastetaan Suomessa yllättävän paljon tavaraa.

This would translate, more or less as:

"With the help of loose skirts, a surprising amount of goods are stolen in Finland."

Correct.

4. ..."yllättävän paljon tavaraa."....this is the direct object of the sentence...."tavaraa" is in the partitive because the modifier, "paljon", requires this. The only word here I can't quite parse is "yllättävän" ..."surprising".... This is an active present participle...a nominalized, ...or maybe an adjectival.., verb in the genitive case....but I can't figure out why it has to be in the genitive.....???... Oh...and any other "parsing" mistakes??.... :D

It’s so-called genetiivitäydennys (genitive complement?). See VISK § 632, VISK § 613 and VISK § 621.

[Rob A.]

It’s so-called genetiivitäydennys (genitive complement?). See VISK § 632, VISK § 613 and VISK § 621.

Thanks Jukka...I think I get it.....but it's not so much "yllättävän", that is the complement, it's actually "paljon" ... yllättävän is just a long for the ride...it's an adjective modifying, "paljon"...[the genitive form of "paljo"....and so must agree with it....

[Aside; This is one slight drawback with the process of simply learning words without bothering to understand their grammatical role....I learned "paljon" at an early stage and until now have just looked at it as fixed-form word.....and it's nominative form, paljo ,seems to be so little used, it hasn't "earned" its place in wiktionary...so far.... ]

Now, just to make sure I haven't "grabbed the wrong end of the stick"...could you tell me if these statements are grammatically correct?...:

....varastetaan Suomessa yllättävän vähän tavaraa.
...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävää monta tavaraa.
...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävät uudet tavarat.
...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävät vanhat tavarat.
...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävät loistavat tavarat.

...if these are correct, I'm probably on the right track....if not....

[EDIT: Well...apparently I still haven't got it... yllättävän must stay in the genitive in order to carry the meaning of "surprisingly"...so it is the "genitive complement" not "paljon".... so it seems it is some sort of adverbial....

Here are a few examples picked randomly from the 'Net:

1. "Absolutistiksi olen yllättävän humalassa."
"For a teetotaler, I am surprisingly drunk.".... yllättävän " is playing the same grammatical role...an adverbial adjective, I guess...?

2. "Ossi saa yllättävän lähetyksen Amerikasta."
"Ossi gets a surprising delivery from America."....Here, "yllättävän" is playing a different role...it is simply an adjective in the accusative modifying "lähetyksen"...the direct object of the sentence...and, of course, in the accusative. So context obviously becomes important....

3. "Kari Salmelainen sopii yllättävän monille."
"Kari S. fits to suprisingly many people."..."yllättävän" is back in its adverbial adjective role...and so is back to being a genitive complement.

4. "Suomalaiset asiantuntijat: Presidentti Mubarakin asema yllättävän hutera."
"Finnish expert: President Mubarak's situation (is) surprisingly weak.".... the genitive complement role.... ]

[Jukka Aho]

Thanks Jukka...I think I get it.....but it's not so much "yllättävän", that is the complement, it's actually "paljon" ... yllättävän is just a long for the ride...it's an adjective modifying, "paljon"...[the genitive form of "paljo"....and so must agree with it....

Hmm.. I’d classify paljon just as an adverb... not as a supposed genitive inflection of paljo (which does not really even exist as a stand-alone word.)

VISK § 389 simply places paljon under the heading “Adverbs ending in -n” and characterizes it as being a kiteytynyt, läpinäkymätön (crystallized, opaque) form, whatever they exactly mean by that. Note: they never call that -n a genitive marker in the article, except in the latter part of the small-print “Huom.” section which does not seem to apply here.

Now, just to make sure I haven't "grabbed the wrong end of the stick"...could you tell me if these statements are grammatically correct?...:

....varastetaan Suomessa yllättävän vähän tavaraa.

OK. For purposes of simplicity and clarity, let’s ditch the original sentence. We’ll just use this fragment alone:

Suomessa varastetaan yllättävän vähän tavaraa.
“In Finland, a surprisingly small amount (number) of things are (will be) stolen.”

...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävää monta tavaraa.

Suomessa varastetaan yllättävän monta tavaraa.
“In Finland, surprisingly many things are (will be) stolen.”

Suomessa varastetaan monta yllättävää tavaraa.
“In Finland, many surprising things are (will be) stolen.”

...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävät uudet tavarat.

Suomessa varastetaan (kaikki) yllättävät uudet tavarat.
“In Finland, (all) the surprising new things are (will be) stolen.”

...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävät vanhat tavarat.

Suomessa varastetaan (kaikki) yllättävät vanhat tavarat.
“In Finland, (all) the surprising old things are (will be) stolen.”

...varastetaan Suomessa yllättävät loistavat tavarat.

Suomessa varastetaan (kaikki) yllättävät loistavat tavarat.
“In Finland, (all) the surprising brilliant/shiny/glowing things are (will be) stolen.”

[Rob A.]

Thanks Jukka

I added a bit to my previous post before I saw your last response....

[David O.]

I remember struggling with this a few years back... what's the difference between the adjective-in-genitive adverbial forms (like yllättävän) and the adverbs ending in -sti?

I ended up concluding that the adjective-in-genitive structure is used to create an adverb modifying an adjective or adverb (yllättävän joustava, hämmästyttävän nopeasti), whereas the -sti forms either modify verb phrases (jatkoin itsepäisesti matkaa) or whole sentences (valitettavasti oli kauppa jo suljettu). That's probably an oversimplification of the real rule, but it's served me well.

[Rob A.]

Thanks David

I suppose I haven't spent enough time analyzing the role of adverbs in English...being content to just "know" how to use them... Adverbs in English can have a variety of roles, including modifying adjectives...but one thing they definitely cannot do is modify a noun. In some of the stuff I was reading I noticed that adverbs are defined differently in German than in English, so I suppose I'll have to find out just exactly how adverbs are defined in Finnish. Trying to read Finnish language sources for difficult concepts is still a bit too much for my knowledge level in Finnish, though.

I've come up with a few examples:

1. Hän meni aamuvarhain kävelylle....Here an adverb modifying the verb, meni"...I would say this is just a regular adverb...

2. Se oli likipitäen avoin ovi.

3. Se oli aiottu minun edeltäkäsin tehdyksi toiminnaksi.

So how do these look grammatically? In the second and third examples, would likipitäen and edeltäkäsini be considered adverbs by Finnish grammarians and would they each be examples of genitive complements??? And how about avoin....I think this can only be considered an adjective...with auki being the adverb form...

[Rob A.]

OK...the next sentence in the first paragraph...

Yksi tuoreimmista tapauksista on viime lauantailta, jolloin kolme naista yritti varastaa Vantaan Tarjoustalosta 125 Arabian muumikulhoa ja 31 muumilautasta kätkemällä ne hameiden alle.

This one is not too difficult:

"One of the more recent events is from last Saturday, when three women tried to steal from the Vantaa Tarjoustalo 125 Arabia Muumi bowls and 31 Muumi plates by concealing them under dresses."

...A few questions....

1. Why is "...tuoreimmista tapauksista ..." in the plural elative?...Probably simply the normal Finnish language convention... In this instance, "yksi", appears to be acting as a noun and is the subject of the sentence. Is there another way of saying this?

2. Why is the verb, "on", used...in the present tense...this seems to be a past event?

3. Why isn't a possessive construction used with "...hameiden alle..."....? Or is it simply not necessary...that the phrase can be construed only with the subject of the clause..."naista"?...

None of these questions are that critical, I think...I'm just curious.... Also the sentence contains an example of the "third infinitive"... "kätkemällä"...a verbal noun with the sense of "by...." in English...

[David O.]

I've come up with a few examples:

1. Hän meni aamuvarhain kävelylle....Here an adverb modifying the verb, meni"...I would say this is just a regular adverb...

2. Se oli likipitäen avoin ovi.

3. Se oli aiottu minun edeltäkäsin tehdyksi toiminnaksi.

So how do these look grammatically? In the second and third examples, would likipitäen and edeltäkäsin be considered adverbs by Finnish grammarians and would they each be examples of genitive complements???

Adverbials yes, but they're fossilized instructive forms. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that everything ending in -n is a genitive.

Note that I'm using the term "adverbial", not "adverb". The former is a description of function, the latter is a grammatical category that doesn't necessarily map cleanly onto other languages. In fact, the whole concept of parts of speech seems ill-suited for Finnish. Is likipitäen an "adverb"? I dunno. It's a compound of a simple adverb and a verb in the second infinitive instructive. I wouldn't necessarily call that an adverb... honestly, it's not even really a "word" in the normal English sense. So don't ask "what category does this word fall under?", ask "what function does this expression serve?" If it modifies anything other than a noun, it's an adverbial phrase.

1. Why is "...tuoreimmista tapauksista ..." in the plural elative?

You translated it right; this is just the standard Finnish way of saying "one of the X". I'm pretty sure it's also possible to use partitive instead of elative ... Tuoreimpia tapauksia on... but that's a much less common structure.

2. Why is the verb, "on", used...in the present tense...this seems to be a past event?

Same reason why we can say "One of the most recent cases is from last Saturday". It happened in the past, but we're looking at it right now. Imagine you're in a museum... "this manuscript is from the year 1169". But if you use a verb other than olla, of course it has to be in the past... "Yksi tuoreimmista tapauksista tapahtui..." presumably the reason they didn't write it that way is that "tapauksista tapahtui" sounds clunky, like "happenings happened" or something.

3. Why isn't a possessive construction used with "...hameiden alle..."....?

Excellent question, I'll defer to the natives on that one...

[Jukka Aho]

In some of the stuff I was reading I noticed that adverbs are defined differently in German than in English, so I suppose I'll have to find out just exactly how adverbs are defined in Finnish. Trying to read Finnish language sources for difficult concepts is still a bit too much for my knowledge level in Finnish, though.

According to the definition given by VISK, “Adverb is a name for a class of words which cannot be inflected or whose inflection paradigm is incomplete. They are used to contextually frame the situation presented in the sentence and express its relation to time (eilen, myöhemmin, kauan, usein, kahdesti), location (lähellä, kauas, eteenpäin), state (hämillään, puuduksissa), manner or style (nopeasti, hyvin) or amount (vähän, liikaa, täynnä). When used in a sentence, an adverb forms an adverbial phrase.”

Furthermore, VISK tells us that adverbial phrases are characterized by “having an adverb as their head word. Adverbs themselves can take modifiers (hyvin kauan, tukevasti kallellaan) and some of them also complements (kallellaan vasemmalle). An adverbial phrase functions as an adverbial for a clause or a verbal expression (Täällä pärjätään varmasti; käyttäytyä huonosti, juosta nopeasti) but can be used as an adverbial also in phrases composed of words from another word class: herttaisesti punainen, moraalisesti aivan väärin, puoliksi vastoin tahtoaan, aika paljon hyviä tuloksia, se kokous eilen.”

[Jukka Aho]

3. Why isn't a possessive construction used with "...hameiden alle..."....?

Excellent question, I'll defer to the natives on that one...

The original sentence was:

Kolme naista yritti varastaa Vantaan Tarjoustalosta 125 Arabian muumikulhoa ja 31 muumilautasta kätkemällä ne hameiden alle.

We have already been told, both in the headline and in the first sentence of the story, that loose skirts are used to facilitate shoplifting by allowing the shoplifters to conceal stolen goods under them.

Given this context, the natural interpretation for the second sentence is the said women were wearing the skirts themselves at the moment – after all, this is obviously an anecdotal example of the phenomenon that was just introduced to the reader in the preceding sentences. So a possessive construction is not strictly speaking required: mere “under the skirts” will do as there is little room for confusion. They’re almost like previously-mentioned, known skirts (“the skirts”) by now...

The writer could have used hameidensa alle just as well, though.

[CH]

The writer could have used hameidensa alle just as well, though.

Well, one difference is that not all women necessarily were putting the stuff under their own skirts (or wearing skirts, although I would guess they were). It might have been that just one carried the stuff while the others put it under her skirts and arranged everything to look normal. If it was "hameidensa" I would assume that they put the stuff under their own skirts.

[otyikondo]

Whilst I acknowledge that this is in Kielikoulu and is therefore didactic and as dry as a bone, I'm still surprised that no scholars of mathematics or physics have risen to the original assertion that these women swiped approximately 40 bowls each plus getting on for a dozen plates apiece.

Since we are talking chinaware or stoneware here, and even allowing for the bowls being smallish (suitable, perhaps, for an individual side-salad portion), the sheer weight of 40 bowls makes for a magnificent performance from someone who is probably not accustomed to working out in the gym. And as the second piece points out, the clothing itself is not exactly as light as a feather. I was genuinely impressed by the Roma ladies' lifting ability and am disappointed nobody else has recognised their skills as we move towards the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Equally, the ingenious use of soundproofing in their undergarments to avoid giving away the presence of the crockery by clanking noises could be useful in the design of recording studios or the auditorium of the new Music Centre.

And of course as a means of avoiding loud embarrassing farts on a Thursday.

[Rob A.]

Adverbials yes, but they're fossilized instructive forms. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that everything ending in -n is a genitive.

Thanks...I wasn't thinking about that...and, of course, it's obvious once it's pointed out...

I encountered this phrase, in English, last night in a novel I'm reading:

"....a remarkably clever device."

...and wondered if I could translate this correctly into Finnish....

"Tämä on huomattavan nokkela laite.""

I think, if I'm understanding the exchange in this thread, that, "huomattavan", is clearly a genitive complement....an adverbial modifying "nokkela".

If I had stated, "huomattava nokkela laite."...then "huomattava", would be an adjective modifying "laite". I suspect also that as a copula, "laite", should remain in the nominative form...???..