Breakdown of Mies laajensi terassiaan viisitoista senttiä.
mies
man
viisitoista
fifteen
sentti
cent
terassi
terrace
laajentaa
to expand (transitive)
Questions & Answers about Mies laajensi terassiaan viisitoista senttiä.
Why is there no hänen before terassiaan?
Because the man is expanding his own terrace. In Finnish, when the 3rd-person subject of the sentence owns the object, you must drop the genitive pronoun (hänen) and use only the possessive suffix (here, -an). If you included hänen, it would specifically mean he expanded some other person's terrace.
What case is the word terassiaan?
It is in the partitive case. The base word is terassi, the partitive ending is -a, and the 3rd-person possessive suffix is -an. Together they form terassiaan.
Why does laajentaa take a partitive object here instead of the total object terassinsa?
Verbs that describe altering a dimension, such as laajentaa (to expand), lyhentää (to shorten), or pidentää (to lengthen), typically take a partitive object when the sentence includes a specific measurement of the change, like viisitoista senttiä.
How does viisitoista senttiä translate to "by fifteen centimeters" without any extra case endings?
Finnish expresses a specific measurement of change or difference simply by using the number in the nominative case followed by the measured unit in the partitive. You do not need a spatial case ending to translate the English preposition "by" in this context.
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