Breakdown of Luulin uuden käänteen lunastavan kaikki odotukseni.
uusi
new
luulla
to think, to suppose
kaikki
all, everything, everyone
odotus
expectation
käänne
twist
lunastaa
to fulfill (a promise or expectation)
Questions & Answers about Luulin uuden käänteen lunastavan kaikki odotukseni.
Why does this sentence use uuden käänteen lunastavan instead of an että (that) clause?
This uses the participial construction (referatiivinen lauseenvastike), which is a more compact way to say Luulin, että uusi käänne lunastaa kaikki odotukseni. The subject of the embedded clause (uusi käänne) is put into the genitive case (uuden käänteen), and the verb becomes the present active participle (lunastavan).
Doesn't lunastaa usually mean "to redeem"?
Yes, its literal meaning is to redeem a coupon, cash a check, or claim a package. However, the set phrase lunastaa odotukset is the idiomatic and standard way to say "to fulfill expectations" or "to live up to expectations" in Finnish.
What case is odotukseni in? I don't see a plural marker for "expectations".
It is in the nominative plural, functioning as a total object. The basic plural word is odotukset, but when you attach a possessive suffix like -ni (my) to a nominative plural, the plural -t marker disappears. We can still tell it is plural because of the preceding plural modifier kaikki.
If I wanted to say "I didn't think the new twist would fulfill my expectations after all", how would I add kuitenkaan?
You would say En kuitenkaan luullut uuden käänteen lunastavan kaikkia odotuksiani. Because the main verb is negative, you must use the negative polarity adverb kuitenkaan instead of kuitenkin. Crucially, the object also changes to the partitive plural (kaikkia odotuksiani) because the negation of the main verb extends its scope to the embedded action.
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