Breakdown of Väittelikö professori yliopistossa?
yliopisto
the university
professori
the professor
väitellä
to defend a doctoral thesis
Questions & Answers about Väittelikö professori yliopistossa?
How is the past tense formed for the verb väitellä in this sentence?
Väitellä is a Type 3 verb. To form the past tense, you take the strong consonant stem väittel- (notice the double tt, compared to the single t in the infinitive) and add the past tense marker -i-. Because the subject is a third-person singular (professori), there is no extra personal ending, leaving us with väitteli.
Why does the verb end in -kö instead of -ko?
This is due to vowel harmony. The verb väitellä contains the front vowel ä and the neutral vowels e and i. Because there are no back vowels (a, o, u), the question suffix must be the front vowel version, -kö.
Does väitellä always mean defending a doctoral thesis?
No, its most common everyday meaning is simply "to debate" or "to argue". However, in a university context, it is the specific verb used for publicly defending a doctoral thesis.
Why do we use yliopistossa instead of yliopistolla to mean "at the university"?
English says "at", which might make you think of the adessive case (-lla/-llä). However, in Finnish, certain institutions like universities (yliopisto) and schools (koulu) take the inessive case (-ssa/-ssä), which literally translates to "in".
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