Breakdown of Hänen taitonsa on kehittynyt paljon.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
paljon
a lot
taito
skill
kehittyä
to develop
Questions & Answers about Hänen taitonsa on kehittynyt paljon.
How does the -tyä ending in kehittyä (the dictionary form of kehittynyt) affect the meaning?
Kehittyä is an automative verb, meaning the action happens on its own or to the subject itself without a direct object. It comes from the transitive verb kehittää (to develop something). In this sentence, the skill is developing on its own (kehittyä), rather than someone intentionally developing it (kehittää).
We already have Hänen for "his". Why do we also need the -nsa ending on taito?
In standard written Finnish, when you use the third-person pronouns hänen (his/her) or heidän (their), you must also add the matching possessive suffix to the noun. Here, we add the third-person suffix -nsa, making it taitonsa. In casual spoken Finnish, you will often hear just hänen taito, dropping the suffix, but written Finnish requires both.
I know the genitive of taito is taidon (weak grade). Why isn't there a "d" in taitonsa?
Possessive suffixes play by their own rules when it comes to consonant gradation! When adding a possessive suffix to a word in the nominative or genitive case, the word stays in its strong grade (so the "t" doesn't change to a "d"). Any genitive "n" also disappears before the suffix is added, leaving us with the strong stem taito- plus -nsa.
Why does the verb end in -nyt instead of a simple past tense ending?
The sentence is in the perfect tense ("has developed"), which is used because the skill started developing in the past and the result is still relevant now. The perfect tense uses the auxiliary verb olla (here, on) followed by the active past participle of the main verb, which ends in -nut/-nyt (here, kehittynyt). If it were the simple past tense ("developed"), it would just be kehittyi.
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