Breakdown of Potilas on alipainoinen ja ehkä myös aliravittu.
olla
to be
ja
and
myös
also
ehkä
maybe, perhaps
potilas
the patient
alipainoinen
underweight
aliravittu
undernourished
Questions & Answers about Potilas on alipainoinen ja ehkä myös aliravittu.
How is the word alipainoinen constructed?
It uses the prefix ali- (under or sub-), attached to the noun paino (weight) to make alipaino. Then, the highly productive suffix -inen is added to turn the noun into an adjective meaning "having the characteristic of underweight".
Is aliravittu formed the same way as alipainoinen?
Not quite. While it uses the same ali- prefix, it attaches to ravittu, which is the passive past participle of the verb ravita (to nourish). Attaching prefixes like ali- and yli- to participles is a very common way to create new adjectives in Finnish, mirroring English constructions like "undernourished" or "overcooked".
Could I use ali by itself to mean "under", for example "under the bed"?
No, ali- is a prefixoid that cannot stand alone as an independent word. It is used for abstract "under" or "sub-" concepts. For physical location, you must use the postpositions alla (static "under") or alle (movement to "under"), such as sängyn alla.
Why are the adjectives alipainoinen and aliravittu in the nominative case instead of the partitive?
When a predicative adjective describes a singular, countable noun (like potilas, a patient), it takes the nominative case. You would only use the partitive here if the subject was a plural or an uncountable mass noun.
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