Breakdown of Jos hana vuotaa, sitä ei korjata yöllä.
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
ei
no / not (negative verb)
yö
night
jos
if
korjata
to fix
hana
the faucet
vuotaa
to leak
Questions & Answers about Jos hana vuotaa, sitä ei korjata yöllä.
How would the meaning change if we used the lesson's target grammar and said sitä ei saada korjattua yöllä?
Sitä ei korjata is a simple negative passive meaning "it is not fixed" (for example, as a general rule or policy). If you change it to the achievement construction sitä ei saada korjattua, it changes the meaning to "it cannot be managed to be fixed" or "they won't succeed in getting it fixed" at night.
Why is the pronoun se in the partitive case (sitä)?
In Finnish, the object of a negative verb is always in the partitive case. Because the action in this clause is negative (ei korjata), the object se (referring to the faucet) must become sitä.
Is korjata the infinitive form here?
It looks exactly like the dictionary form (infinitive), but here it is actually the negative present passive. For verb type 4, the negative passive present happens to be identical to the basic infinitive. It is formed by taking the affirmative passive (korjataan) and dropping the final -an.
Why is "at night" expressed with the adessive case (yöllä) rather than the inessive (yössä)?
Times of day usually take the adessive (-lla/-llä) when stating when something happens (e.g., aamulla, päivällä, illalla, yöllä). Using yössä would mean literally "in/inside the night", which sounds poetic or refers to the physical darkness rather than the time of day.
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