Questions & Answers about Mies oli niin uupunut, että hän pyörtyi.
How does the niin ... että structure work in this sentence?
It matches the English so ... that structure perfectly. The word niin (so) comes before the adjective uupunut (exhausted) to show the degree of the feeling, and että (that) introduces the result or consequence of that feeling.
Can I leave out the comma or the word että, like we sometimes do in English?
No, both are absolutely required in Finnish. Unlike English, where you can say 'The man was so exhausted he fainted', Finnish grammar rules dictate that you must use the conjunction että to introduce the consequence clause, and subordinate clauses starting with että must always be preceded by a comma.
What kind of word is uupunut?
It functions as the adjective 'exhausted' here, but it is actually the past active participle (often called the NUT-participle) of the verb uupua (to become exhausted). In Finnish, it is very common to use these verb participles as normal adjectives.
What is the dictionary form of the verb pyörtyi?
The infinitive is pyörtyä (to faint), which is a type 1 verb. To form the past tense for the third person singular, the final stem vowel -ä drops out before the past tense marker -i, resulting in pyörtyi.