Word
Urakoitsija teki kaiken paitsi parketin.
Meaning
The contractor did everything except the parquet.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Urakoitsija teki kaiken paitsi parketin.
tehdä
to do
kaikki
all, everything, everyone
urakoitsija
contractor
parketti
parquet
Questions & Answers about Urakoitsija teki kaiken paitsi parketin.
How would I say "The contractor did neither everything nor the parquet" using this lesson's grammar?
You would say: Urakoitsija ei tehnyt kaikkea eikä parkettia. Notice that the negative verbs are ei and eikä (both matching the 3rd person singular subject). Because the sentence is now negative, the objects kaiken and parketin must change to the partitive case: kaikkea and parkettia.
Why is parketin in the genitive/accusative case here? Doesn't paitsi usually take the partitive?
When paitsi (except) links two things, the word after it copies the case of the word it is contrasted with. Because the first object kaiken is in the accusative (which looks like the genitive), parketin must also be in the accusative. If the first word was in a different case, the second would match it (e.g., Pidän kaikesta paitsi parketista).
Why do we use kaiken instead of kaikki or kaikkea for "everything"?
Kaiken is the accusative form of kaikki. We use it here because the contractor completed a whole action, making it a total object. If the action was negative or incomplete, we would use the partitive form kaikkea.
What is the base form of teki and why does the stem look so different?