Breakdown of Joko minä harhautan vartijaa, tai emme voi tehdä kepposta hänen tietämättään.
minä
I
hän
he / she
tai
or
ei
no / not (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät)
tietää
to know
tehdä
to do
voida
can, to be able to
vartija
guard
joko
either
kepponen
the prank
harhauttaa
to mislead
Questions & Answers about Joko minä harhautan vartijaa, tai emme voi tehdä kepposta hänen tietämättään.
How is hänen tietämättään constructed to mean "without him knowing"?
It starts with the 3rd infinitive abessive form of tietää (to know), which is tietämättä (without knowing). To specify who isn't knowing, we add the possessive suffix -n (or -Vn) to match the genitive pronoun hänen. When adding this third-person suffix to a word ending in a short vowel, the final vowel doubles, creating tietämättään.
Could I say ilman että hän tietää instead of hänen tietämättään?
Yes, absolutely. The -mättä + possessive suffix structure is elegant, space-saving, and common in written Finnish or formal speech. In everyday colloquial Finnish, however, you will very frequently hear the subordinate clause ilman että hän tietää (literally "without that he knows").
Why is the guard, vartijaa, in the partitive case?
The verb harhauttaa (to distract, mislead, or deke) often takes a partitive object when the action is viewed as an ongoing process or an attempt ("I will distract the guard while you..."). If you viewed the distraction as a single, fully completed and successful achievement, you could use the total object form (harhautan vartijan).
Why is the prank, kepposta, in the partitive case? Is that also because it's an ongoing action?
No, here it's due to a hard grammar rule: the second clause is negative (emme voi tehdä, we cannot do). In Finnish, the object of a negative verb must always be in the partitive case, regardless of whether the action is ongoing or complete. The base word kepponen becomes kepposta.
What is the function of Joko ... tai in this sentence?
Joko [X], tai [Y] is the standard correlative conjunction for "Either [X], or [Y]". Unlike in English where "either" is sometimes casually dropped, you need to keep joko at the start of the first option to clearly establish that these are two mutually exclusive scenarios.
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