Breakdown of Keski-ikä on yhä pidempi elämänvaihe.
olla
to be
pitkä
long, tall
yhä
still, yet (continuing)
keski-ikä
middle age
elämänvaihe
life stage
Questions & Answers about Keski-ikä on yhä pidempi elämänvaihe.
How exactly does yhä change the meaning of pidempi in this sentence?
On its own, pidempi just means "longer". Adding yhä in front of a comparative adjective creates the meaning of continuous, ongoing change. So yhä pidempi means "an ever longer" or "an increasingly long" life stage.
Are there other adverbs I could use instead of yhä to express this continuous change?
Yes! You will often hear aina vain used with the comparative for the exact same meaning: aina vain pidempi (longer and longer). Another common option is entistä pidempi, which literally means "longer than before".
Why does elämänvaihe use the genitive form elämän-, but keski-ikä just uses the nominative keski-?
In elämänvaihe, the first word is a noun (elämä, life). To show that the phase belongs to life (phase of life), it takes the genitive form elämän. Keski (middle), on the other hand, acts like an adjective describing the age, so it doesn't need a genitive ending when forming the compound word keski-ikä.
Why is yhä pidempi elämänvaihe in the nominative case rather than the partitive?
Even though predicatives (words describing the subject after the verb olla) are often in the partitive, here we are dealing with a singular, countable noun (vaihe, phase). When describing what a singular countable noun is, the entire predicative phrase stays in the nominative case.
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