Breakdown of Tuo surullinen elokuva itkettää minua aina.
tuo
that
minä
I
aina
always
elokuva
movie
surullinen
sad
itkettää
to make cry
Questions & Answers about Tuo surullinen elokuva itkettää minua aina.
How does the verb itkettää relate to the normal verb for crying?
itkettää is a causative verb built from the base verb itkeä (to cry). By replacing the verb stem ending with the -ttää suffix, the meaning changes from "to cry" to "to cause someone to cry" or "to make someone cry". Here, the movie is the subject doing the causing.
Why is the object "me" translated as minua (partitive case) instead of minut?
Causative verbs that describe causing an emotion or a physical reaction (like itkettää, naurattaa for "to make laugh", or väsyttää for "to make tired") require the person experiencing the feeling to be in the partitive case. Therefore, the movie making "me" cry takes the partitive minua.
The lesson mentions the causative suffix is -ttaa or -ttää. Why does itkettää use the -ttää version?
This is a quick refresher on vowel harmony. The base verb itkeä contains only the vowels i and e. Since these are neutral vowels and there are no back vowels (a, o, u) in the word, any suffix attached to it must use front vowels (ä, y, ö). That's why it becomes itkettää and not itkettaa.
How would the sentence change if we used the regular verb itkeä instead of the causative itkettää?
You would have to completely restructure the sentence to make "I" the subject. You would say something like Minä itken aina tuon surullisen elokuvan takia (I always cry because of that sad movie). Using the causative itkettää is often a much more elegant and natural way to express this in Finnish!
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