Questions & Answers about Etsin kynää näistä pinoista.
Why does the sentence use näistä instead of the basic plural nämä for "these"?
näistä is the plural elative ("out of" / "from") form of tämä (this). In Finnish, demonstrative pronouns like "these" must match the case of the noun they describe. Because the stacks are in the elative case (pinoista), "these" must also take the elative plural form, becoming näistä.
Why do we use the "from" case (näistä pinoista) when searching a location?
The verb etsiä (to look for) has a special rule in Finnish: it requires the location you are searching to be in the elative case (-sta/-stä). Even though in English you might say you are looking in a pile, in Finnish you are always searching out of or from it.
Why is the word for pen, kynää, in the partitive case here?
The verb etsiä is a partitive verb. When you are looking for something, you haven't found it yet, so the action is considered ongoing or incomplete. Therefore, the object being looked for takes the partitive ending (in this case, kynä + -ä).
How is the plural formed in the word pinoista?
It starts with the basic noun pino (stack or pile). To make it plural while adding a case ending, we use the plural marker -i-. We then attach the elative ending -sta ("from") to get pinoista (from the stacks).
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