Questions & Answers about Avainnippu lienee portailla.
What exactly is lienee in this sentence?
Lienee is the third-person singular form of the verb olla (to be) in the potential mood. It translates to "is probably" or "might be." The potential mood is used to express probability, and in this sentence, it does the job of the regular verb on combined with an adverb like ehkä or varmaan.
The potential mood usually adds -ne- to the verb stem. Why doesn't lienee look anything like olla?
The verb olla is completely irregular in the potential mood. Instead of building on the standard stem, it uses a special, ancient stem lie-. The potential marker -ne- and the third-person singular ending -e are added to this stem, resulting in lienee.
Is lienee commonly used in everyday spoken Finnish?
Not really. The potential mood is mostly found in written Finnish, news broadcasts, or formal speech. In everyday conversation, a Finn would be much more likely to say Avainnippu on varmaan portailla to express the exact same idea.
Why is portailla in the adessive case (ending in -lla) instead of the inessive (ending in -ssa)?
In Finnish, stairs (portaat) are treated as an open surface. When you are on the stairs, you are grammatically "on top of" them, so you must use the adessive case (-lla) rather than the inessive case (-ssa, meaning "inside"). Note that portailla is in the plural form, which is standard when referring to a staircase as a whole.
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