Breakdown of Toi on tosi hieno senkki, jollaista mä etsin.
olla
to be
tuo
that
minä
I
etsiä
to look for
hieno
great
todella
really (very, intensifier)
jollainen
the kind of which
senkki
sideboard
Questions & Answers about Toi on tosi hieno senkki, jollaista mä etsin.
Why is jollaista in the partitive case in this sentence?
It acts as the object of the verb etsiä (to look for). The verb etsiä is a partitive verb, meaning its object must always be in the partitive case. Because jollaista represents the thing being looked for in the relative clause, it takes the partitive ending -ta.
Senkki is in the nominative case here. Shouldn't jollaista agree with it and be in the nominative too?
No, and this is a common trap! Relative pronouns and adjectives get their case from the role they play inside their own relative clause, not from the noun they refer back to in the main sentence. Senkki is in the nominative because of its role in the main clause, but jollaista must be partitive because it is the object of etsin in the relative clause.
How does the meaning change if I just use the basic relative pronoun jota instead of jollaista?
If you said jota mä etsin, it would mean you are looking for that exact sideboard. Using jollaista (the partitive of the relative adjective jollainen) means you are looking for that kind of sideboard. It expresses similarity rather than identity.
This sentence uses spoken words like toi and mä. Would a speaker actually say jollaista or is it too formal?
Jollaista is perfectly normal in everyday speech. However, in modern spoken Finnish, people often replace relative adjectives with question words. It is very common to hear millaista used here instead, as in senkki, millaista mä etsin, even though jollaista is the grammatically standard choice.
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