Questions & Answers about Pienessä kulhossa on sokeria.
Why is the word for sugar in the partitive case (sokeria) rather than the basic nominative (sokeri)?
This is an existential sentence, which introduces what exists in a certain place (translated as "There is..."). In these sentences, uncountable mass nouns like sugar must be in the partitive case (sokeria) because we are talking about an undefined amount of it.
Why does the sentence start with the location Pienessä kulhossa?
Both the adjective and the noun have the "in" ending, but why are the endings slightly different (-ssä vs -ssa)?
Adjectives must match the case of the noun they modify, so both take the inessive ("in") ending. However, because of Finnish vowel harmony, the front-vowel word pieni takes the front-vowel ending -ssä (pienessä), while kulho contains back vowels (u, o) and therefore takes -ssa (kulhossa).
If the subject were plural instead of the mass noun sokeria, would the verb on change to the plural ovat?
No, it would not. A strict rule for existential sentences (Location + Verb + Subject) is that the verb is always in the third-person singular (on). Even if there were plural items in the bowl (for example, "There are candies in the small bowl"), the verb would still remain on.
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