Help with Demonstratives and negative imperative sentences

[JormaOikarinen]

Hello ! i need some resources to improve my grammar , especially with demonstratives and their usage on sentences .

For example if i want to say don't do anything , i would say " älä tee mitään "..But what if i need to say sentences like :

"don't do that " = älä tee ___?
"don't touch this" älä kosketa ____? (not sure if "kosketa" is the right word)
or
"don't touch these..." älä kosketa ___?

i would be grateful if anybody helps me with this

[onkko]

Kosketa may be grammatically right and probably is agreed by kielitoimisto but i would use koske. May be my dialect tho.
Also "Tee" is kind of "too much" when i think about how language is used, doing is implied already.

Älä aja autoa humalassa.
Älä avaa sähköpääkeskusta.
Älä koske pistorasiaan.
Älä ole idiootti.
Älä pysäytä moottorisahaa kädellä.
Älä valvo koko yötä
Älä aja väärää kaistaa.

So "älä" + explanation, no "tee".

[Pursuivant]

Do and touch are quite specific actually...
Don't do that = Älä tee noin! (In that way). Älä tee tuota! (more like :stop it! To a kid)
Älä koske! = don't touch! (Any other forms sound silly... Thou shalt not fondleth the dogge)

As Onkko said its Älä+ verb, sometimes +object (and verb its always imperative)
Älkää koskeko esineisiin! (Like on a sign in a museum written)

Once you master that you can start pussyfooting around the politeness, and it works with "olla"
"Exist without doing something" vs the "do not do something"
Olkaa koskematta esineisiin! (Says the teacher to the class when they enter the museum)
Olisitteko koskematta esineisiin? (Says the museum warden to a sausage fingered youth)

[Rob A.]

The thing about the English verb, "to do", is that often it has no particular meaning, but does have a grammatical function. [One of its functions, as I have just shown in the last part of this sentence, is to emphasize.]

See this link:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=irXAKZS ... 22&f=false

It is called a "dummy operator".

Other languages don't work the same way. [Other languages work not the same way.... ] So don't go for literal translations. If it helps, using the examples above, think along the lines of, "Touch not", rather than, "Do not touch",.. a more literal translation, rather than a grammatically correct translation.....