Breakdown of Jos rakennamme päästöttömän voimalan, hiilijalanjälki pienenee.
jos
if
rakentaa
to build
pienetä
to get smaller
hiilijalanjälki
carbon footprint
voimala
power plant
päästötön
emission-free
Questions & Answers about Jos rakennamme päästöttömän voimalan, hiilijalanjälki pienenee.
What is the base form of päästöttömän and how does its stem change?
The base word is päästötön (emission-free), formed by adding the suffix -tön (without / -less) to päästö (emission). When words ending in -tön take a case ending, the stem changes to -ttömä-. Here it takes the genitive/accusative -n ending to match the object voimalan.
Why do we use the genitive-looking -n ending on voimalan instead of the partitive?
The noun voimala (power plant) is the total object of the verb rakennamme. Because the sentence expresses the intention of completing a single, whole power plant, the object takes the singular accusative case, which looks identically to the genitive ending -n.
Why is the verb pienenee used here instead of pienentää?
Finnish strictly distinguishes between verbs where something happens by itself (intransitive) and verbs where a subject does an action to an object (transitive). Pienenee means 'gets smaller' or 'decreases'. Pienentää means 'to make something smaller'. Because the carbon footprint is shrinking as a consequence rather than being directly reduced by a subject in this clause, we use the intransitive pienenee.
How exactly is the compound word hiilijalanjälki built?
It consists of three parts: hiili (carbon) + jalan (foot's) + jälki (print or mark). Notice that the middle word jalka (foot) is in the genitive case (jalan), making the literal translation 'carbon foot's print'.
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