Breakdown of Isot eläimet, kuten valas ja kilpikonna, tarvitsevat happea.
ja
and
iso
big
tarvita
to need
eläin
animal
kuten
like, as
happi
oxygen
valas
whale
kilpikonna
turtle
Questions & Answers about Isot eläimet, kuten valas ja kilpikonna, tarvitsevat happea.
Why are valas and kilpikonna in the singular here, since they are examples of the plural isot eläimet?
When using kuten (such as) to list examples of a broad plural category, Finnish often puts the examples in the singular. This happens because you are referring to the whale and the turtle as species or general types, rather than counting specific individual animals.
Do the nouns following kuten always take the nominative case, like they do here?
No, the examples following kuten generally need to match the grammatical case of the category they are describing. Here, the category isot eläimet is in the basic nominative case because it is the subject of the sentence, so valas and kilpikonna are also in the nominative.
What dictates the comma placement around the kuten phrase?
The phrase kuten valas ja kilpikonna acts as a parenthetical aside, meaning it provides extra clarifying examples but could be removed without breaking the main sentence (Isot eläimet tarvitsevat happea). Finnish punctuation rules require commas on both sides of such an inserted phrase.
As a refresher, why does happi (oxygen) become happea here?
The verb tarvita (to need) requires its object to be in the partitive case. Because oxygen is a continuous, uncountable mass noun, it takes the partitive form happea.
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