Questions & Answers about Syön päärynän ja omenan.
Why do päärynän and omenan end in -n instead of the partitive case?
Because they are total objects. The -n ending (the accusative case, which looks like the genitive here) shows that you are eating the entire pear and the entire apple. If the action was currently ongoing or you were only eating part of them, you would use the partitive case (päärynää and omenaa).
What happens to the object cases if I make this sentence negative?
In a negative sentence, direct objects must be in the partitive case. If you say En syö... (I don't eat...), the objects change to päärynää ja omenaa.
Is it completely fine to leave out the word minä (I) here?
Yes! In Finnish, first and second-person pronouns (minä, sinä, me, te) are often dropped because the verb ending (like the -n in syön) already makes it completely clear who is doing the action.
Since this lesson is about the agent participle, how would I use it to say 'the apple eaten by me'?
You would use the agent participle form of syödä, which is syömä. The doer of the action (I) is expressed with the genitive pronoun minun and the possessive suffix -ni attached to the head noun. So 'the apple eaten by me' becomes minun syömäni omena.
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