Question 1

How is the potential negative form ei menne constructed from the verb mennä?

Accepted Answer

In the negative potential mood, you use the negative verb (here, ei) followed by the potential connegative stem. For a type 3 verb like mennä, you take the consonant stem (men-) and add the potential marker -ne. Because it is a negative sentence, no personal endings are added to the main verb, leaving us with ei menne.

Question 2

How do we form the potential stem maksane for a type 1 verb like maksaa?

Accepted Answer

For type 1 verbs, the potential marker -ne is attached to the strong vowel stem. This is an important rule to remember, as learners often default to the weak grade when building verb forms. We take the strong stem maksa- and simply add -ne, resulting in maksane.

Question 3

Why is konkurssiin (bankruptcy) in the illative ("into") case here?

Accepted Answer

In Finnish, the phrase for "going bankrupt" is mennä konkurssiin (literally "to go into bankruptcy"). Finnish often treats abstract states, changes, or conditions as physical locations that a subject moves into, which triggers the illative case.

Question 4

Is osinkoa (dividend) in the partitive case because the sentence is negative?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the strict grammatical trigger here is the negative structure (ei maksane), as objects in negative sentences must be in the partitive case. However, even in a positive sentence, this would likely remain partitive (maksane osinkoa) because a "dividend" is usually treated as an unspecified mass or amount in this context.

Yritys ei menne konkurssiin, mutta se ei maksane osinkoa.

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