Questions & Answers about Kissa lienee tyynyillä.
Why does this sentence use lienee instead of a word like ehkä with on?
Lienee is the 3rd-person singular potential mood of olla (to be). The potential mood itself carries the meaning of 'probably is' or 'might be', making extra adverbs like ehkä unnecessary. While everyday spoken Finnish heavily relies on words like varmaan alongside the standard verb, the potential mood is a concise, elegant alternative you will often see in written Finnish and news broadcasts.
Where does the stem for lienee come from?
The verb olla has an irregular potential mood. Instead of attaching the potential marker -ne- to its standard stem, it borrows an archaic verb stem: lie-. The 3rd-person singular ending is then added to form lienee. This irregular lie- stem is completely unique to olla and just needs to be memorized.
Could I say tyynyissä instead of tyynyillä here?
You could, but it would change the meaning dramatically. The adessive case ending -llä used here means the cat is resting on top of the surface of the pillows. If you used the inessive case ending -ssä to make tyynyissä, it would mean the cat is physically inside the pillows (perhaps unstuffing them!).
What is the exact breakdown of the suffixes in tyynyillä?
It starts with the nominative word tyyny (pillow). To make it plural for a local case, we add the plural marker -i-. Because the word ends in -y, the vowel remains unchanged, giving the stem tyynyi-. Finally, the adessive ending -llä is attached to indicate 'on top of', resulting in the full form tyynyillä.
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