Questions & Answers about Hyvä taktiikka on väistää ja pysäyttää iskut.
How do we apply this lesson's negative participle suffix -maton / -mätön to the verbs väistää and pysäyttää?
You attach the suffix to the strong inflectional stem of the verb. Väistää becomes väistämätön (unavoidable or inevitable). Pysäyttää becomes pysäyttämätön (unstoppable). You could say pysäyttämätön isku for an unstoppable attack!
Why is the object iskut in the nominative plural form (ending in -t) instead of the partitive?
Plural complete objects are almost always in the nominative plural. Because the sentence implies stopping and dodging the attacks entirely as a general rule, it takes a total object. For plural words, the total object looks exactly like the basic plural form (iskut).
I often mix up pysäyttää and pysähtyä. How do I know which one to use?
Pysäyttää is transitive, meaning someone or something stops a separate object (like a tactic stopping the attacks). Pysähtyä is intransitive, meaning the subject stops itself (like a bus stopping at a station).
Why do we use the basic dictionary forms (first infinitives) for väistää and pysäyttää here?
They are functioning as the complement of the verb on. Just like in English where we say A good tactic is TO dodge, Finnish uses the first infinitive when an action is the definition or equivalent of the subject noun.