Breakdown of Äiti pidentää lahjetta huomenna.
huomenna
tomorrow
äiti
mother
lahje
the trouser leg
pidentää
to lengthen
Questions & Answers about Äiti pidentää lahjetta huomenna.
How is the verb pidentää formed, and what dimension adjective does it come from?
pidentää means to lengthen. It is a transitive verb derived from the adjective pitkä (long). In Finnish, you will often see dimension adjectives turn into verbs by modifying the stem and adding a causative ending like -tää or -taa.
Since this happens tomorrow, shouldn't the object be in the total object case to show a completed action? Why use the partitive lahjetta?
Using the partitive lahjetta implies that the action is viewed as an ongoing process tomorrow (she will be lengthening it), or that the result is not emphasized as finished yet. If the sentence wanted to stress that she will finish the job completely tomorrow, it would use the total object form lahkeen.
What is the basic dictionary form of lahjetta?
The nominative (dictionary form) is lahje (trouser leg). For Finnish words ending in -e, the partitive ending is always -tta or -ttä, which attaches directly to the base word to give us lahjetta.
Does pidentää just mean lengthens in the present tense? How does it mean will lengthen?
Yes, literally it is in the present tense. Because Finnish does not have a separate future tense, you simply use the present tense combined with a future time word like huomenna (tomorrow) to express that something will happen.
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