How adverbial modifiers work

[onkko]

The closest idiomatic equivalent I can think of is merkitsevä tauko. Or maybe vihjaileva tauko.

Scene: bar, after midnight
Lady in distress: Se tietokone ei vaan toimi!
Me: Mennäänkö panemaan... se tietokone kuntoon?

Pannaan menemään... vai mennäänkö panemaan? (worked once )

[AldenG]

laihana oleva kissa
laihina olevat kissat....I think these are grammatically correct....and that these would be considered two adjectives followed by a noun...and in this instance I think they would be described exactly the same way in English.

But I'm not really sure when and how you would use them..... and why you would just say ...laiha kissa/laihat kissat....Maybe a native speaker could give a few sample setences ...

Not a native here, but some observations:

As Jukka points out, there's something odd about doing this with laiha (though not with paksu ). The -na form is about a state, I think, and most often a mutable state.

And more than that, as with so much about cases, it is about context. You happened to use an ambiguous verb here, Rob. Olla can often go either way, nominative or essive. Two adjectives frequently used in essive are sairas and terve. Olla sairas and olla sairaana are both possible, as with olla terve and olla terveenä. It's tempting to say that -na is used for more temporary illness or health (and nominative for more pervasive or character-related states), but there is only a germ of truth in that. It's not sufficiently true to be useful in choosing a form for a sentence. What is more useful for that is just knowing idiomatic usages.

Here are two different contexts in which I would almost exclusively use one form or the other, but Jukka or someone will have to say if there's foundation for that:

Hän on vakavasti sairas.
Hän on ollut nyt kolme viikkoa sairaana.

To me it would feel very awkward to say either one of those with the other form (more awkward with the 2nd than the 1st). If this is a valid distinction, and it feels to me like at least a > 50% valid one, I still can't say why that is so, can't describe what it is about the respective contexts that so much attracts one form or the other.

But as I said, olla is a squishy verb. Consider instead pysyä or säilyä/säilyttää. I know there must be others like these, but at the moment these are the only two that come to mind. They both demand -na for a state of being. Contrast these to a verb like pitää which is often used with essive (Minä pidin häntä hulluna; minä pidin sitä selvänä, että...) but has many other uses as well.

I mean there are some exceptions like Pysyä poissa or pysyä aikataulussa because the words are not adjectives. (And in a way, the function of -na is to make an adjective more like -ssa, which I suppose is reflected in the respective terms essive and inessive.) But with terve or koskematon or any other adjectives, you have no choice but pysyi terveenä or säilyi koskemattomana. And somehow that makes perfect sense, though again it's difficult to say exactly why. Much as in English we might say "It's a pristine lake" or "Aggressive conservation efforts have kept Lake X in a state of pristine clarity and beauty," there is a distinction between the essential quality and a mutable or transient state of possessing the quality. Of course we could almost as well say "kept Lake X pristine" or "kept Lake X clear and beautiful," but you can see that there is an impulse in our language as well, though a weaker impulse, to somehow make this distinction. And it's a distinction one makes for pristine but not for beautiful/beauty, because beauty is usually treated as more inherent than pristineness or koskemattomuus. It's an interesting exercise to play around with endings for the latter sentence and see which ones feel OK with "in a state of" and which ones don't. It's a little awkward because it has to go "in a state of adjective" and then you have to choose one or more objects for the adjective. But you end up seeing that not all adjectives are created equal.

[AldenG]

I think what I said about pysyä and säilyä/säilyttää above comes back to another point I make from time to time: the key to learning these things seems to be more the study of verbs and the phrases in which they occur than the study of cases. Cases are just too versatile. Or squishy. Or opalescent -- their appearance depends too much on the light in which you examine them.

Studying cases in isolation to learn Finnish is a bit like learning to ride a bike by balancing on it without the wheels turning. I wouldn't say it's not possible -- I just doubt whether it's productive.

If you spend X minutes reading about a verb and 5 constructs in which it appears, you have something you can use forever with very few mistakes. But spend an hour reading about 5 cases, and you're likely to speak worse Finnish at the end of the hour than you did at the beginning.

As illustrated in the post above, there is no correct choice of case until you see the words around it. The most important one is the verb, but the addition of an adverbial modifier can also make all the difference between one case and another.

Of course I mean these things as universal observations about optimal strategies for learning Finnish, Rob, not as any kind of implied criticism of you or anyone else.

[Rob A.]

I think what I said about pysyä and säilyä/säilyttää above comes back to another point I make from time to time: the key to learning these things seems to be more the study of verbs and the phrases in which they occur than the study of cases. Cases are just too versatile. Or squishy. Or opalescent -- their appearance depends too much on the light in which you examine them.

Studying cases in isolation to learn Finnish is a bit like learning to ride a bike by balancing on it without the wheels turning. I wouldn't say it's not possible -- I just doubt whether it's productive.

If you spend X minutes reading about a verb and 5 constructs in which it appears, you have something you can use forever with very few mistakes. But spend an hour reading about 5 cases, and you're likely to speak worse Finnish at the end of the hour than you did at the beginning.

As illustrated in the post above, there is no correct choice of case until you see the words around it. The most important one is the verb, but the addition of an adverbial modifier can also make all the difference between one case and another.

Of course I mean these things as universal observations about optimal strategies for learning Finnish, Rob, not as any kind of implied criticism of you or anyone else.

Oh, that's fine, if i'm not being "criticized" how will I learn....

And, yes, I agree with the above, with a bit of a caveat.... Finnish cases required a context...the verb...generally speaking...is the main driver in a sentence.... But I would say that the partitive and genitive cases do require "special attention"....the other cases for the most part are fairly straightforward....and enough practice is the key.

However I think it helps to take a somewhat more "intellectual" to the partitive and genitive cases.....they seem to be much more "complex" and "multifaceted" than the other cases.....

[Jukka Aho]

Olla sairas and olla sairaana are both possible, as with olla terve and olla terveenä. It's tempting to say that -na is used for more temporary illness or health (and nominative for more pervasive or character-related states), but there is only a germ of truth in that. It's not sufficiently true to be useful in choosing a form for a sentence. What is more useful for that is just knowing idiomatic usages.

Here are two different contexts in which I would almost exclusively use one form or the other, but Jukka or someone will have to say if there's foundation for that:

Hän on vakavasti sairas.
Hän on ollut nyt kolme viikkoa sairaana.

To me it would feel very awkward to say either one of those with the other form (more awkward with the 2nd than the 1st). If this is a valid distinction, and it feels to me like at least a > 50% valid one, I still can't say why that is so, can't describe what it is about the respective contexts that so much attracts one form or the other.

I can only validate these gut feelings, not offer any explanation.

I think you could use Hän on vakavasti sairaana if you want to hint recovery from the condition might still be a possibility. (He’s seriously ill now, but who knows about the future?) It’s perhaps not the first option I’d go for but not totally impossible, either. (Hän oli vakavasti sairaana is, of course, always possible if you’re describing a condition from which someone already recovered.)

Hän on vakavasti sairas sounds more final; maybe a permanent, chronic, serious illness with troubling implications or a fatal condition that will eventually lead to death. It doesn’t have to be that way but at least we don’t know yet; we’ll just have to wait and see.

Hän on ollut kolme viikkoa vakavasti sairas sounds a bit jarring... as if it was by choice, or something.

[AldenG]

Here's another example that just popped into mind. Whether it sheds additional light on this murky subject I cannot say.

Hän saapui terveenä ja/mutta lähti sairaana.

Contrast to:

Hän on terve mies.

Olla really introduces a lot of exceptions to normal practice.

By study of isolated words alone, one might be tempted to try:

[X] Hän on terveellinen mies

-- either by analogy to English "healthy" or by analogy to onnellinen.

The logic makes sense but the conclusion is incorrect, because terveellinen happens to mean mostly "conducive to good health, good for the health, salubrious."

Thus you would normally speak of terveelliset elämäntavat -- but of terve epäluuloisuus if you were calquing the English "healthy suspicion." The latter skepticism reflects a sound mind more than it contributes to biological well-being, although it might do both. It would not be impossible to say terveellinen epäluuloisuus, but it would not be the idiom and it suggests something good for physical health. The usual interpretation would be that it was a mistaken choice of word rather than a subtlety of meaning.