Breakdown of Tämän kappaleen säveltää nuori mies.
tämä
this
mies
man
nuori
young
kappale
track / song / piece (item, music track)
Questions & Answers about Tämän kappaleen säveltää nuori mies.
Why is the object tämän kappaleen at the beginning of the sentence?
This is an Object-Verb-Subject (OVS) sentence. Finnish often moves the object to the front to make it the main topic of the conversation. When translated to English, this often sounds best as a passive sentence ("This piece is composed by..."), even though the Finnish verb säveltää is active ("composes").
Since tämän kappaleen is at the front, how do we know the piece isn't the one doing the composing?
The word endings give it away! Tämän kappaleen has the -n ending, which marks it as the object. Meanwhile, nuori mies is in its basic dictionary form (the nominative case), telling us that the young man is the subject performing the action.
Does the verb säveltää agree with the object or the subject?
It always agrees with the subject. Because the subject is nuori mies (he), the verb takes the 3rd person singular form säveltää. The subject's position at the end of the sentence doesn't change how the verb is conjugated.
Why not use the actual Finnish passive voice here?
The true Finnish passive is used when the person doing the action is unknown or unimportant. You generally cannot add "by someone" to a Finnish passive sentence. Because we want to specify that a young man is doing the composing, we must use an active verb (säveltää) and rely on OVS word order to keep the conversational focus on the musical piece.