Breakdown of Lääkäri on aina ollut avulias ja myötätuntoinen potilaille.
olla
to be
ja
and
lääkäri
doctor
aina
always
potilas
the patient
avulias
helpful
myötätuntoinen
compassionate
Questions & Answers about Lääkäri on aina ollut avulias ja myötätuntoinen potilaille.
Why is potilaille in the allative case (-lle) instead of another case?
This sentence demonstrates adjective rection. Adjectives describing a behavior or attitude directed at someone—like avulias (helpful) and myötätuntoinen (compassionate)—require the target of that attitude to be in the allative case. It acts similarly to the English preposition "to".
Could we use the illative case (potilaisiin) to mean "compassionate towards the patients"?
No, that would sound unnatural here. While the illative case (-iin/-hVn) is used for adjectives expressing a deep feeling directed into someone (like rakastunut, in love, or pettynyt, disappointed), adjectives showing outward interpersonal behavior (helpful, kind, mean, angry) strictly take the allative (-lle).
How is the plural allative potilaille formed from the base word potilas?
The base word potilas (patient) has the inflectional stem potilaa-. To make it plural, we add the plural marker -i-, which changes the stem to potilai- (the double vowel is shortened to accommodate the 'i'). Finally, we add the allative ending -lle, resulting in potilaille.
Why is the adverb aina placed between the verbs on and ollut?
In compound tenses like the perfect (on ollut), it is standard Finnish word order to place time and frequency adverbs (like aina, usein, or joskus) right between the auxiliary verb (on) and the past participle (ollut).
How are the adjectives avulias and myötätuntoinen built?
Avulias comes from apu (help) plus the suffix -lias, which means having a strong tendency to do something. Myötätuntoinen is a compound word built from myötä (with/along) + tunto (feeling) + the adjective suffix -inen. It literally translates to "having fellow-feeling".
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