Breakdown of Lapset keräävät tyhjät tölkit isoihin pusseihin.
iso
big
lapsi
child
tyhjä
empty
kerätä
to collect
pussi
bag (small, paper/plastic, pouch)
tölkki
can
Questions & Answers about Lapset keräävät tyhjät tölkit isoihin pusseihin.
Why do isoihin and pusseihin end in -hin instead of just -iin?
This is the illative plural case, meaning "into". When building this case, we first need the plural stem, which uses the plural marker i. iso becomes isoi- and pussi becomes pussei-. Because both stems now end in a short diphthong (two different vowels together), the rule for the illative plural is to add -hin.
Why does pussi become pussei- in the plural here? Where did the e come from?
When a basic word ends in i (like pussi), adding the plural marker i would create ii. Finnish usually avoids this at the end of a word stem. To fix this, the original i changes to an e before the plural i is added. That gives us the plural stem pussei- before we add the -hin ending.
Why are tyhjät tölkit in the basic plural form instead of the partitive plural?
Because this is a complete action and refers to a specific, whole set of cans. When an object is plural and the action is total, Finnish uses the nominative plural form (ending in -t). If they were just collecting an undefined amount of cans (some empty cans), we would use the partitive plural: tyhjiä tölkkejä.
What is the dictionary form of keräävät and why does the stem look different?
The dictionary form is kerätä (to collect). It is a type 4 verb. To find the stem for these verbs, you drop the -tä and double the final vowel, which makes the stem kerää-. Then you just add the third-person plural ending -vät to get keräävät (they collect).
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