Breakdown of Miehistöä ei olisi pelastettu ilman uutta happea.
olla
to be
uusi
new
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
ilman
without
pelastaa
to save, to rescue
happi
oxygen
miehistö
crew
Questions & Answers about Miehistöä ei olisi pelastettu ilman uutta happea.
How do we form the conditional perfect passive negative in ei olisi pelastettu?
It is built with three parts: the negative word ei, the auxiliary verb olisi (would be), and the passive past participle pelastettu (rescued). Notice that the auxiliary olisi is in the active 3rd-person singular form, not the passive oltaisiin. In negative perfect passive structures, only the main verb takes the passive participle form.
Why is the crew (miehistö) in the partitive form Miehistöä?
Because this is a negative sentence. The object of any negative sentence in Finnish must be in the partitive case. Even though Miehistöä is placed at the beginning of the sentence and translates to English as the subject, grammatically it is the object being acted upon by the passive verb.
Why are the words uutta happea in the partitive case too?
They are governed by the word ilman (without). Ilman is a preposition that requires the phrase following it to be in the partitive case. Because of this, both the adjective uusi (new) and the noun happi (oxygen) take partitive endings, becoming uutta happea.
Why does happi (oxygen) change to happea instead of just adding an -a to the end?
Happi belongs to a common group of native Finnish words ending in -i that change their final vowel to -e- before adding most case endings. This creates the stem happe-, to which we add the partitive ending -a to get happea. This is the exact same pattern you see when kivi (rock) changes to kiveä.
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