Breakdown of Hän on tuonut laudan ja kaksitoista naulaa.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
ja
and
kaksitoista
twelve
tuoda
to bring
lauta
board
naula
nail
Questions & Answers about Hän on tuonut laudan ja kaksitoista naulaa.
How do you form the past participle tuonut from the verb tuoda?
tuoda (to bring) is a Type 2 verb. To form the past participle for Type 2 verbs, you drop the final -da or -dä to get the stem, which here is tuo-. Then you add -nut or -nyt. Because tuoda contains back vowels, we use -nut, giving us tuonut.
Why is the word for board laudan rather than its basic form lauta?
laudan is the direct object of the sentence (the thing being brought). Because he brought one whole board, it takes the accusative case, which looks exactly like the genitive -n ending. Adding this -n causes consonant gradation, softening the t in lauta to a d.
If both the board and the nails are the object of the sentence, why doesn't kaksitoista have an -n ending?
Numbers other than yksi (one) have a special rule. When a number acts as a total direct object, the number itself stays in its basic nominative form instead of taking the -n ending that regular singular nouns do.
Why is naulaa in the partitive case?
In Finnish, any noun that directly follows a number greater than one must be in the partitive singular case. To make the partitive of naula (nail), you add an -a, resulting in naulaa.
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