Questions & Answers about Hänestä tuli työtön.
Why is "hän" in the elative case (hänestä) here?
This sentence uses the tulla transformation construction. In Finnish, when expressing that someone or something becomes something, the person or thing undergoing the change takes the elative case (-sta / -stä). You can think of it literally as "Out of him came..."
Why is työtön in the nominative case? Doesn't a change of state usually require the translative case?
You are right that changes of state often use the translative case (ending in -ksi). However, this specific tulla construction is an exception. When you use the Elative + tulla pattern, the resulting state or profession must be in the basic nominative case.
If hänestä isn't the grammatical subject, how do we conjugate the verb tulla?
In this construction, the verb tulla is always locked into the third-person singular form, which is tuli in the past tense. It doesn't matter who is changing. For example, if you wanted to say "I became unemployed," it would be Minusta tuli työtön.
How does the word työtön break down?
It is made of the noun työ (work) and the suffix -tön (which means "without"). Just like the English suffix "-less", adding -tön creates an adjective meaning "without work" or "unemployed".
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