Breakdown of Hän jatkoi matkaa vaikeuksista huolimatta.
hän
he / she
matka
trip
jatkaa
to continue (something)
huolimatta
despite
Questions & Answers about Hän jatkoi matkaa vaikeuksista huolimatta.
Why is vaikeuksista in the elative case instead of the partitive or nominative?
The word huolimatta (despite) is an adposition that strictly dictates the case of the word attached to it. It always requires the elative case (-sta or -stä). Therefore, the plural word for difficulties must be formatted as vaikeuksista.
Why is the object matkaa in the partitive case here?
The verb jatkaa (to continue) expresses an ongoing, incomplete process. Because the action of continuing inherently doesn't have a finalized endpoint in this context, its object takes the partitive case.
How is the word vaikeuksista formed from its base adjective?
The base adjective is vaikea (difficult). Adding the suffix -us creates the abstract noun vaikeus (difficulty). For this type of noun ending in -us, the plural stem becomes -uksi-. Finally, attaching the elative case ending -sta gives us vaikeuksista.
Could huolimatta be placed before vaikeuksista in this sentence?
Yes, huolimatta is one of the flexible adpositions in Finnish that can act as either a postposition or a preposition without altering the meaning. You could completely legally say huolimatta vaikeuksista, but placing it after the noun as a postposition is generally more common and sounds highly natural.