Breakdown of Karkkia voi syödä, mutta vain kohtuudella.
mutta
but
vain
only
karkki
candy
syödä
to eat
voida
can, to be able to
kohtuus
moderation
Questions & Answers about Karkkia voi syödä, mutta vain kohtuudella.
Why is there no word for "one" or "you" before voi?
This sentence uses the zero-person construction. By using the 3rd person singular verb voi without a subject pronoun, it states a general rule that applies to anyone. In English, we usually translate this using a generic "one" or "you".
Why is the object karkkia placed at the very beginning of the sentence?
Because zero-person sentences do not have a subject, Finnish often moves another word to the front to act as the topic and give the sentence a natural flow. Here, the object karkkia is moved to the front to fill that empty starting slot.
If this is a zero-person sentence, why is the object in the partitive case (karkkia) instead of the nominative?
It is true that whole objects often look like the nominative in zero-person sentences. However, candy is being treated as an uncountable mass noun here (an undefined amount of candy). Mass nouns acting as objects must always take the partitive case, regardless of the sentence structure.
How do we get the word kohtuudella from the base dictionary word?
The base noun is kohtuus (moderation). For nouns ending in -uus, the stem changes to -uude- before endings are added. Adding the adessive case ending -lla (which can mean "by means of") creates kohtuudella, which translates to "with moderation" or "in moderation".
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