Monumentti lienee rakennettu näistä lohkareista.
The monument was probably built from these boulders.
Breakdown of Monumentti lienee rakennettu näistä lohkareista.
tämä
this
olla
to be
rakentaa
to build
monumentti
the monument (large structure)
lohkare
the boulder
Questions & Answers about Monumentti lienee rakennettu näistä lohkareista.
How does lienee rakennettu translate to "was probably built"?
This uses the potential mood passive perfect. lienee is the potential form of olla (is probably), acting as the auxiliary verb. rakennettu is the passive past participle of rakentaa (to build). Together, they elegantly express that something was likely done, without needing to use an adverb like ehkä alongside the standard on rakennettu.
If this is a passive construction, why is monumentti in the nominative case instead of acting as a typical passive object?
You are right that true passive sentences usually do not have a nominative subject. However, the compound structure of olla (here as lienee) plus a passive past participle often functions as a stative passive. In this case, monumentti acts as the grammatical subject of lienee, and rakennettu functions almost like an adjective describing the monument's current state.
Why is the elative case used for näistä lohkareista?
The elative case (ending in -sta or -stä) is the standard way to express the material from which something is made in Finnish. While we say "built from" or "built out of" in English, Finnish simply attaches the elative ending to the material, making rakennettu näistä lohkareista the natural way to say "built from these boulders".
What kind of word is lohkare and how does it decline to lohkareista?
lohkare (boulder) is a noun ending in -e. For words in this group, the stem is formed by adding another -e before most endings. To form the plural elative, the plural -i- and the elative -sta are added to the stem lohkaree-. The double vowel shortens before the plural -i-, resulting in lohkareista.
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