Questions & Answers about Kanna vanhat oksat metsään!
Why are vanhat oksat in the nominative plural (-t) instead of the partitive plural?
Because you are telling someone to carry all of those specific old branches, not just an undefined amount. When an action is meant to be completed and involves a defined plural group, we use the plural total object. As this lesson covers, the plural total object is simply the nominative plural ending -t.
The dictionary form of the verb is kantaa. Why is it spelled kanna here?
Kanna is the imperative (command) form. To find the stem for this command, take the present tense I-form of the verb (kannan) and remove the final -n. Because the I-form triggers weak consonant gradation, the strong nt from kantaa becomes a weak nn in kanna.
Why does the adjective vanha also get a -t ending?
In Finnish, adjectives must match the case and number of the noun they describe. Because the noun oksat is in the nominative plural, the adjective must also take the plural -t ending to become vanhat.
What case is metsään?
It is in the illative case, which expresses movement into somewhere. For a word ending in a short vowel like metsä (forest), you form the illative by doubling the last vowel and adding -n, giving you metsään (into the forest).
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