Breakdown of Onko maakunnan väestö vähentynyt neljänneksellä?
olla
to be
väestö
population
maakunta
region
vähentyä
to decrease
neljännes
quarter (fraction)
Questions & Answers about Onko maakunnan väestö vähentynyt neljänneksellä?
How is the fraction neljännes formed?
You take the genitive stem of the number, which for neljä is neljän-, and add the suffix -nes. So neljän- + -nes becomes neljännes (a fourth or a quarter). This formal fraction suffix works for other numbers too, like viides becoming viidennes (a fifth).
How does the stem of neljännes change to make neljänneksellä?
Words ending in the suffix -nes change their stem to -nekse- before any case endings are added. Therefore, neljännes becomes neljännekse-, and when we add the adessive ending -llä, we get neljänneksellä.
Why is neljänneksellä in the adessive case (-llä) to mean "by a quarter"?
In Finnish, when you express the exact margin or amount by which something changes, increases, or decreases, you use the adessive case. Because the population decreased "by a quarter", we use the adessive form neljänneksellä.
The verb here is vähentynyt. Why use this instead of vähentänyt?
Vähentynyt comes from the intransitive verb vähentyä, which means to decrease or diminish on its own. The population is decreasing on its own here. If you used vähentänyt (from the transitive verb vähentää), it would mean someone actively reduced the population, which would require an object.
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