Breakdown of Karkotetuilla ei ole sielua, eikä vainotuillakaan.
olla
to be
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
sielu
soul
vainota
to persecute
karkottaa
to banish
Questions & Answers about Karkotetuilla ei ole sielua, eikä vainotuillakaan.
How do karkotetuilla and vainotuillakaan work as nouns in this sentence?
They are passive past participles functioning directly as nouns (substantivized). The participle karkotettu (banished) becomes a noun meaning a banished person, and vainottu (persecuted) means a persecuted person. In this sentence, they are put into the plural adessive case (-illa) to express possession, literally translating to on the banished and on the persecuted.
Why is there a single t before the plural -i- in karkotetuilla and vainotuillakaan, when the base participles end in double -ttu?
This happens because of consonant gradation. The passive past participle ending -ttu weakens to -tu- when you add case endings that close the syllable. Because the plural marker -i- and the adessive ending -lla create a closed syllable, the strong tt drops to a weak single t.
Why is the word for soul, sielu, in the partitive case (sielua) here?
This is a standard rule for negative possession. If the sentence were affirmative, it would be karkotetuilla on sielu using the nominative case. However, whenever you say that someone does not have something, the thing they lack must take the partitive case.
How do the parts of eikä vainotuillakaan work together to mean and neither do the persecuted?
The word eikä combines the negative verb ei with the suffix -kä, meaning and not. To match this negative structure, the clitic -kaan is attached to vainotuilla. The suffix -kaan acts like the word either in negative English sentences. Together, the phrase literally translates to and on the persecuted either.
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