Breakdown of Tämä palatsi olisi viimeistelty ja koristeltu timanteilla.
tämä
this
olla
to be
ja
and
palatsi
the palace
Questions & Answers about Tämä palatsi olisi viimeistelty ja koristeltu timanteilla.
How is the conditional perfect passive formed in this sentence?
It is formed using the auxiliary verb olisi alongside the passive past participles of the main verbs (viimeistelty and koristeltu). Notice that standard written Finnish uses the regular third-person auxiliary olisi here. While you might hear forms like oltaisiin in everyday spoken Finnish, olisi is the correct standard form for the passive conditional perfect.
How do we get the forms viimeistelty and koristeltu from their dictionary forms?
Their dictionary forms are viimeistellä (to finish) and koristella (to decorate), which are both Type 3 verbs. To create the passive past participle for Type 3 verbs ending in -lla or -llä, you simply drop the final -a or -ä and add the passive marker -tu or -ty.
If the palace is the thing being finished and decorated, why is Tämä palatsi in the basic nominative case instead of an object case?
Because this is a passive sentence. In Finnish passive structures, a total object (the thing fully affected by the action) is placed in the nominative case rather than the genitive-accusative case. Since the entire palace is being acted upon, it remains Tämä palatsi.
Why is timanteilla in the adessive (-lla/-llä) case? Doesn't that usually mean location?