Breakdown of Utelias mies etsi jonkun allekirjoitusta.
mies
man
etsiä
to look for
joku
somebody, someone
utelias
curious
allekirjoitus
signature
Questions & Answers about Utelias mies etsi jonkun allekirjoitusta.
Why is the word for 'someone's' jonkun instead of just adding an -n to the end of joku?
Joku is a special pronoun where both halves of the word take the case ending. To make it genitive (meaning 'someone's'), we add the genitive -n to both the jo- part and the -ku part. This gives us jon- + -kun, which combines into jonkun.
Why is allekirjoitusta (signature) in the partitive case here?
It is because of the verb etsiä (to look for). In Finnish, etsiä is a partitive verb, meaning the thing you are searching for must always be in the partitive case.
Does etsi mean 'looks for' (present) or 'looked for' (past)?
Here it means 'looked for' (past tense). The basic form of the verb is etsiä. In the present tense, 'he looks' is etsii (with a double i). For the past tense, the past tense marker -i replaces the final vowel, resulting in etsi (with a single i).
How is the partitive form allekirjoitusta built from the base word?
The basic word for signature is allekirjoitus. For words ending in -us, you usually form the partitive case by simply adding -ta to the end, which gives us allekirjoitusta.
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