Questions & Answers about He eivät tarjoa teetä.
How do we get the negative verb tarjoa from its dictionary form?
The dictionary form is tarjota (to serve or to offer). This is a Type 4 verb, which means it ends in -ta or -tä. To make a negative sentence, you simply drop that -ta ending to get the stem tarjoa. The negative word eivät does the rest of the work!
Why doesn't tarjoa have a plural ending like -vat here?
In Finnish, the negative word takes the personal ending, not the main verb. The word eivät already tells us 'they do not'. The main verb always stays in its basic stem form in a negative present tense sentence, so we use eivät tarjoa instead of eivät tarjoavat.
Why is the word for tea written as teetä instead of its basic form tee?
The word teetä is in the partitive case. In Finnish, if a sentence is negative, the object (the thing being served, in this case) must always be in the partitive case. Because tee ends in a long vowel, we add the ending -tä.
What kind of serving does tarjota mean?
Tarjota means to serve food or drinks, to offer something, or to treat someone to something. If you pay for your friend's coffee at a cafe, you are doing the action of tarjota!