Question 1

This lesson is about 3rd-person possession. How would we change this sentence to say the neighbor started his own lawnmower?

Accepted Answer

You would change the object to ruohonleikkurinsa, which drops the genitive -n and adds the possessive suffix -nsa. Because the owner is also the subject of the sentence (the neighbor), you must completely omit the pronoun hänen. If you said Naapuri käynnisti hänen ruohonleikkurinsa, it would specifically mean the neighbor started some other person's lawnmower!

Question 2

Why is the object ruohonleikkurin written with an -n at the end instead of in the partitive case?

Accepted Answer

The -n ending shows it is a total object in the genitive-accusative case. This indicates that the action of starting the mower was fully completed. If the action was an ongoing, unfinished process like trying to start it, you would use the partitive case and say Naapuri käynnisti ruohonleikkuria.

Question 3

Why is aamulla in the adessive (-lla) case here?

Accepted Answer

In Finnish, the adessive case is regularly used with general times of the day to express when an event happens. Just as aamulla means in the morning, you will see the same ending used in illalla (in the evening) and päivällä (during the day).

Question 4

I know ruoho means grass. How does the rest of the word ruohonleikkuri break down?

Accepted Answer

It is a compound word made of ruohon (the genitive form of ruoho) and leikkuri (cutter). The noun leikkuri itself is derived from the verb leikata, which means to cut. So the word literally translates to grass's cutter.

Naapuri käynnisti ruohonleikkurin aikaisin aamulla.

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