Breakdown of Ystäväni saattaa ottaa palan lakritsia.
ystävä
friend
ottaa
to take
saattaa
may, might
lakritsi
licorice
pala
piece (fragment, chunk)
Questions & Answers about Ystäväni saattaa ottaa palan lakritsia.
Why is the object palan in the genitive case instead of the partitive palaa?
Even though licorice is a mass noun, the actual grammatical object receiving the action here is pala (a piece). Because the friend might take one whole, countable unit, the action is considered complete and requires the genitive object case (palan).
Why does lakritsia take the partitive case here?
It acts as a substance modifier for palan. In Finnish, when you have a quantity, measure, or container (like a piece, a cup, or a kilo) followed by a mass noun, that mass noun must be in the partitive case. So, palan lakritsia literally means a piece of licorice.
Is ystäväni in the nominative or genitive case here?
In this specific sentence, it is in the nominative case acting as the regular subject for the verb saattaa. However, because the genitive marker -n drops out when a possessive suffix like -ni is added, the nominative and genitive forms of ystäväni look exactly the same.
How would this sentence look if we used the tekee mieli (feels like) structure from this lesson?
It would become Ystäväni tekee mieli ottaa pala lakritsia. Because tehdä mieli is an impersonal structure, the object of the infinitive verb changes from the genitive (palan) to the nominative (pala). Notice that ystäväni would now technically be the genitive experiencer, even though the word's spelling doesn't change!
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