Breakdown of He eivät olisi nääntyneet, mutta he valitsivat väärän suunnan.
olla
to be
mutta
but
he
they
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
valita
to choose
väärä
wrong
suunta
the direction
nääntyä
to starve
Questions & Answers about He eivät olisi nääntyneet, mutta he valitsivat väärän suunnan.
Why is the auxiliary verb just olisi and not olisivat, since the subject is he (they)?
In negative conditional sentences, the auxiliary verb olla is always in its basic third-person singular form (olisi), regardless of who is acting. The negative verb (eivät) already shows that it is "they" doing the action. Therefore, we say eivät olisi, not eivät olisivat.
What verb does nääntyneet come from, and why does it end in -neet?
It comes from the verb nääntyä (to starve / to perish from exhaustion). Because this sentence uses the perfect conditional, the main verb must be in its past participle (the NUT-participle) form. Since the subject is plural (he), the participle takes its plural ending -neet, resulting in nääntyneet.
Why does the object väärän suunnan end in -n instead of being in the partitive case?
The second part of the sentence describes a completed action: they definitely chose a specific direction. When an action is complete and the sentence is affirmative, the total object is used. For a regular sentence with a subject, this total object takes the genitive ending -n. So, väärä suunta (wrong direction) becomes väärän suunnan.
Why is the second half of the sentence (he valitsivat...) in the past tense rather than the conditional?
The conditional mood is used for hypothetical situations, which applies to the first part: they would not have starved. The second part uses the regular past tense (imperfect) because it is a stated fact about something that actually happened in the real world: they did choose the wrong direction.
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