Breakdown of Tuomari antoi rangaistuksen tämän vuoksi.
tämä
this
antaa
to give
tuomari
judge
rangaistus
punishment
Questions & Answers about Tuomari antoi rangaistuksen tämän vuoksi.
Why does this sentence use vuoksi instead of the lesson's word, sillä, to mean "because"?
Sillä (and koska) are conjunctions used to connect two complete clauses containing verbs, such as "He did it, because he was angry." In this sentence, "because of this" isn't a full clause; it points to a single pronoun. To say "because of" a noun or pronoun, Finnish uses postpositions like vuoksi or takia.
Why is the word tämä (this) in the genitive form tämän?
The word vuoksi is a postposition. Like the vast majority of Finnish postpositions, it requires the word that comes immediately before it to be in the genitive case.
Could I use takia instead of vuoksi here?
Yes, absolutely. You could say tämän takia instead of tämän vuoksi. They both mean "because of this" and are highly interchangeable, though vuoksi can sometimes sound just a tiny bit more formal or literary.
Why does the object rangaistus (punishment) end in -n here?
Because the judge gave a single, complete punishment, it is a total object. In a standard affirmative sentence that has a subject (tuomari), the total object takes the genitive-accusative -n ending to show the action was completed. If the sentence was negative, it would take the partitive case instead.