Breakdown of Eikö hänestä tule psykologi?
hän
he / she
ei
no / not (negative verb)
tulla
to become
psykologi
the psychologist
Questions & Answers about Eikö hänestä tule psykologi?
Why is hänestä in the elative case (ending in -stä) instead of just being hän?
This is the core of the 'tulla' transformation construction you are learning. When you want to say that someone becomes something, Finnish phrases it as 'out of someone comes something'. The person transforming takes the elative case (hänestä) and the verb is always in the third-person singular.
Why is the verb tule instead of tulee?
The verb is in its negative stem form because of the negative question word eikö. Whenever you use the negative verb ei, the main verb drops its personal ending. So, the positive tulee becomes the negative ei tule.
How does eikö translate to 'won't' here?
Eikö is made of the third-person negative verb ei and the question particle -kö. Since Finnish does not have a separate future tense, the present tense negative question eikö tule can mean either 'doesn't she become' or 'won't she become' depending on what makes sense in context.
Why is the profession psykologi in the nominative (basic) form rather than the partitive?
In this specific transformation structure, the result of the change (the profession) acts grammatically as the subject of the sentence, so it takes the nominative case. Literally, the sentence is structured like 'Won't a psychologist come out of her?'.
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