Breakdown of Silmätipat auttoivat molempia silmiä eilen.
auttaa
to help
silmä
eye
eilen
yesterday
molemmat
both (of them)
silmätippa
eye drop
Questions & Answers about Silmätipat auttoivat molempia silmiä eilen.
Why is it molempia silmiä instead of molemmat silmät?
The verb auttaa (to help) is a partitive verb, which means the person or thing being helped must be in the partitive case. Because there is more than one eye involved, both the pronoun molemmat and the noun silmä must be put into the partitive plural, becoming molempia silmiä.
How do we get the form molempia from the base word molemmat?
The word molemmat (both) behaves uniquely. When you add case endings, the stem changes to either molempa- or molempi-. To build the partitive plural, we use the -mpi- stem and attach the partitive ending -a, resulting in molempia.
How is the partitive plural silmiä formed from silmä?
For short nouns ending in -ä, the final vowel drops out to make room for the plural marker -i-. After removing the -ä and adding the -i-, we attach the partitive ending -ä to the end. So, silmä turns into the stem silm-, plus -i-, plus -ä, creating silmiä.
Let us review the past tense verb auttoivat. Why did the -a- turn into an -o-?
The dictionary form is auttaa. When forming the past tense of verbs ending in -aa or -ää, the first vowel changes to -o- or -ö- before the past tense marker -i-. We then add the plural ending -vat to match the subject silmätipat, giving us auttoivat (they helped).
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