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Näyttelijän virhe harmittaa ohjaajaa.

Näyttelijän virhe harmittaa ohjaajaa.
The actor's mistake vexes the director.
From Lesson 182:Causative verbs (-ttaa/-ttää)·Finnish

Questions & Answers about Näyttelijän virhe harmittaa ohjaajaa.

How does the causative suffix work in harmittaa?
Harmittaa means to annoy or to vex. It is formed by adding the causative suffix -ttaa to the noun harmi (annoyance, pity). With emotion verbs, this suffix shows that the subject (the mistake) is causing the object (the director) to feel a certain way.
Why is ohjaajaa in the partitive case here?
Verbs that express causing an emotion, like harmittaa, strongly prefer a partitive object. This is because feeling an emotion is viewed as an ongoing, continuous state rather than an action with a definite beginning and end.
In English we often say the director is annoyed by the mistake. Why does Finnish use this structure instead?
Finnish very often uses emotion causative verbs to make the source of the feeling (the mistake) the active subject, and the person experiencing it the object. Using a -ttaa verb like this is the most natural and standard way to express these feelings in Finnish.
What is the base word for näyttelijän?
The base word is näyttelijä (actor). Here it has the genitive ending -n to show possession. As a bonus, näyttelijä itself is derived from the verb näytellä (to act) using the doer suffix -jä.

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