Questions & Answers about Kissa söi mustan makkaran lattialta.
How do we get söi from the verb syödä?
Syödä (to eat) is a Type 2 verb. To form the past tense, we take the stem syö- and add the past tense marker -i-. Following the rule for this verb type, we drop the first vowel of the diphthong (y), which leaves us with söi (he/she/it ate).
Why do mustan and makkaran both end in -n?
They form the direct object of the sentence. Because the cat ate the whole sausage (a completed action with a singular object), we use the accusative case that looks like the genitive, which takes the -n ending. The adjective musta gets the exact same ending because adjectives must always match the case of the noun they describe.
What if the cat only ate a little bit of the sausage?
If the action was incomplete or the cat only ate a portion of the food, the object would be in the partitive case instead. The sentence would change to Kissa söi mustaa makkaraa.
Why use lattialta to mean off the floor instead of lattiasta?
Lattialta uses the ablative case ending -lta, which means from or off an open surface. In Finnish, a floor (lattia) is treated as an open surface. If the sausage was being taken out from inside something enclosed, like a box or a cupboard, you would use the elative case ending -sta instead.