Pers. pronoun + [tulla](1st inf.) + conjugated verb?

[linforcer]

So I bumped into "Ne tulla tassuttaisivat".

As often, the issue isn't the direct translation of the words, but rather this form, and possibly finding some documentation on it.

I would have expected "tulla" to be conjugated and then one of the infinitive forms of tassuttaa to be used instead, but this form I've never seen before. Does it happen only with tulla and mennä or other verbs as well, and how would I usually translate it?

[AldenG]

It appears mostly in idioms, I think. Unfortunately I don't know the name of this construct and haven't yet found a discussion of it. I'm fairly sure Karlsson doesn't get into it because I've looked on several occasions. I'm confident that Iso Suomen Kielioppi must discuss it somewhere among infinitives but I'm still looking.

Maybe you can understand it a little better if you realize that even this form has an infinitive of its own. In your example it is tulla tassuttaa, which is quite similar to tulla tassuttaen (2nd infinitive instructive).

It's a way of combining two verbs in which the second one describes the manner of the first one. The first one is always in vanilla infinitive (A-infinitive) and the second one generally has a finite form which elaborates on the first one. But it could hypothetically be used in infinitive in a sentence such as Niillä on taipumus tulla tassuttaa.

Other examples are kävellä tepsuttaa, juoda tissuttaa, syödä mussuttaa, and on the tip of my tongue are some more common ones including one that has to do with jumping, but I can't recall them at the moment.

[Pursuivant]

Well, yes... you can say "tulivat tassuttaen" but this is a sort of a descriptive prose form you most often see in poems and childrens books... you can try it with say lentää,lepattaa or uida,pulikoida...
needs to have two verbs that one is the common neurtal form and the other a descriptive hiiret juosta vipelsivät

[Pursuivant]

AldenG ehtiä etuili.

[jahasjahas]

Itkeä pillittää.
Tuulla tuivertaa.
Sataa ripottaa.

Tried to find this on VISK too and failed. Strange.

[AldenG]

x

[Jukka Aho]

Itkeä pillittää.
Tuulla tuivertaa.
Sataa ripottaa.

Laulaa loilottaa (trolololo!)
Juosta jolkottaa
Itkeä tillittää

Tried to find this on VISK too and failed. Strange.

VISK calls it koloratiivirakenne. It is also sometimes referred to as koloratiivikonstruktio. Try a Google search with those keywords.

Here’s a bit more about the thing. The first example given in the text — which quotes an article that originally appeared in the Kielikello magazine — is a bit strange and contrived: anteeksi antaa jarauttaa... (a combination of the expression antaa anteeksi and a descriptive [dialectal?] verb jarauttaa, which I have never heard before) and there appears to be a typo in that as well: an extraneous ‘j’ at the end of the verb antaa.

[linforcer]

As always, you guys are an awesome lifeline in my quest to understand Finnish,
this is just what I needed and all my questions have been answered.

Jukka, how did you end up finding it in VISK, what did you search for? Or were you familiar with it's name already?

[AldenG]

As so often with these initially odd-looking Finnish constructs, it turns out on further reflection that there is something close to it in English.

He dance-walked up to the stage.

He racewalked to the finish.

Of course one could argue, thanks to the higher ambiguity of English words, that dance and race are appearing here as nouns, but particularly race feels verblike to me. I could also imagine seeing some ad lib examples like

He run-hobbled across the road.

...where there is little doubt that both run and hobble appear as verbs.

In these examples as in Finnish, the first verb never changes, which means it is infinitive even if it lacks the "to" we usually include in infinitives, and the second verb takes the ending that puts it into a finite form.

[jahasjahas]

Well, it kinda looks the same, but I think there's a world of difference. Your English construct combines two separate actions into something that's not quite the one and not quite the other. Meanwhile, the Finnish koloratiivi takes a simple action and spices it up with a "descriptive" verb that doesn't really change the meaning at all.

Reading the Kielikello article was worthwhile. How could we miss mentioning "istua kököttää"?! And could the mysterious j in "anteeksi antaaj jaurauttaa" represent rajageminaatio if it's a direct quote from a dialect corpus? (I was also surprised by the koloratiivi variant that conjugates both verbs; seems like the infinitive+conjugated one has become the accepted yleiskieli version.)

[AldenG]

True enough, I see how the way it works is different.

Still there are times when seeing a superficially similar construct in one's native language can make the Finnish seem less out-of-the-blue.

[Pursuivant]

And could the mysterious j in "anteeksi antaaj jaurauttaa" represent rajageminaatio if it's a direct quote from a dialect corpus?

Äh, that makes sense antaa ja urahtaa, urahtaa < urauttaa ?

[jahasjahas]

Googling for "jaurauttaa" gives us a few papers related to koloratiivi that quote the example as "Jeesus synnit anteeksi antaa jaurauttaa." (also: "Silmiinpistävin ero on suomen koloratiiviverbien murteellisuus: koloratiivikonstruktioissa viihtyvät esimerkiksi verbit nytyttää, humpuuttaa, hurauttaa, jaurauttaa.") and two instances where "jaurauttaa" is used in a real sentence. So it's a very rare local word. Maybe an alternative form of something else?

[Jukka Aho]

Jukka, how did you end up finding it in VISK, what did you search for? Or were you familiar with it's name already?

I first tried to look for a matching description in VISK but couldn’t find anything relevant. As you can see, they describe the term in their glossary but they don’t have a full article on it; only one where they mention it in passing among other things. So I might even had read a bit from the beginning of that article but probably didn’t stay at it long enough.

Then I decided to google for various common examples of such expressions. What I found was lots of usage but not discussion about grammar. I thought maybe including a grammatical term would do the trick. So I tried

• "laulaa loilottaa" verbi

and landed on this article, and Robert was my dad’s brother!

Then I just searched for the term koloratiivi on VISK.

I have previously seen the word in some grammatical context or another but couldn’t have actively made the connection...

[linforcer]

I see, I guess I could not have found it on my own then, as I couldn't have thought up other examples.