Breakdown of Olen tekevinäni töitä, kun pomo kävelee ohi.
olla
to be
kävellä
to walk
tehdä
to do
työ
work
pomo
boss
kun
when (conjunction)
ohi
past, over (by)
Questions & Answers about Olen tekevinäni töitä, kun pomo kävelee ohi.
How is the word tekevinäni built to get the meaning "pretending to do"?
This is the quasi-construction (kvasirakenne). You start with the present active participle of tehdä, which is tekevä. Then you use its plural stem (tekevi-), add the essive case ending (-nä), and finally attach the first-person possessive suffix (-ni). Together with olen, it translates to "I am pretending to do".
How would this sentence change if the boss was the one pretending to work?
Both the main verb and the possessive suffix must agree with the new subject. It would become: Pomo on tekevinään töitä. The verb changes to third-person on, and the participle takes the third-person possessive suffix -ään.
Why is töitä in the partitive case here? Does the quasi-construction demand it?
The quasi-construction itself doesn't change how object cases work. Töitä is in the partitive plural simply because the base verb tehdä requires a partitive object for an ongoing, irresultative action, exactly as it does in the basic sentence teen töitä (I am working).
In kävelee ohi, could you also say kävelee ohitse?
Yes, ohi and ohitse are interchangeable here, both meaning "past" or "by". They act as adverbs because they don't have a specific target in this sentence. If you wanted to specify "walks past me", you would use it as a postposition with a genitive modifier: kävelee minun ohitseni or kävelee minun ohi.
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