Breakdown of Ketä tämä suuri väkijoukko edustaa?
tämä
this
kuka
who
suuri
large, great
väkijoukko
crowd (group of people)
edustaa
to represent
Questions & Answers about Ketä tämä suuri väkijoukko edustaa?
Why does the sentence start with the partitive ketä instead of kuka or kenet?
The verb edustaa (to represent) is a partitive verb, meaning its object must always be in the partitive case. Since we are asking "whom" the crowd represents, the question word kuka (who) must take its partitive form, ketä.
Why is the verb edustaa in the singular form when a crowd is made up of many people?
Just like the word "crowd" in English, collective nouns in Finnish like väkijoukko are treated as grammatically singular. Because it is a single group, the verb takes the third-person singular ("he/she/it") form.
Why does the verb edustaa look exactly like its dictionary form here?
Edustaa is a Type 1 verb. To form the third-person singular, you take the stem (edusta-) and double the final vowel. This makes the conjugated form edustaa, which just happens to look completely identical to the infinitive.
I know väki means "people". What does the -joukko part of väkijoukko mean?
The word joukko means a "group", "band", or "set". While väki broadly refers to people or folks, the compound word väkijoukko specifically refers to a physical crowd or mass gathering of people.
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