Breakdown of Kerää bensarahat kaikilta, jotta matkakulut pienenevät.
kaikki
all, everything, everyone
kerätä
to collect
jotta
so that / in order to
pienetä
to get smaller
bensaraha
gas money
matkakulu
travel expense
Questions & Answers about Kerää bensarahat kaikilta, jotta matkakulut pienenevät.
Why does bensarahat end in -t if this is an imperative sentence? Shouldn't the object drop its ending?
The rule about dropping the object ending in imperative, passive, or necessity sentences only applies to singular nouns. Because bensarahat (gas money) is a plural total object, it must always look like the nominative plural and take the -t ending, regardless of the sentence type.
How does this sentence's imperative structure relate to the lesson's rule about personal pronouns like 'minut' or 'hänet'?
This sentence shows a regular plural noun (bensarahat). If you instead used a regular singular noun, it would drop its ending in this command (e.g., Kerää raha - Collect the money). However, as you are learning in this lesson, personal pronouns are exceptions. If you said 'Pick him up' (literally 'Collect him'), it would be Kerää hänet. The pronoun holds onto its -t accusative ending even in commands.
Why is 'kaikilta' (from everyone) in the plural ablative rather than the singular ablative 'kaikelta'?
In Finnish, when the pronoun kaikki refers to people (meaning 'everyone' or 'all the people'), it is treated as a plural word and takes plural case endings. If you used the singular form kaikelta, it would mean 'from absolutely everything' rather than 'from everyone'.
What kind of verb is pienenevät, and how is it formed from its root word?
It is the third-person plural present tense of pienetä, which is a change-of-state verb derived from the adjective pieni (small). These types of verbs describe 'becoming' something (in this case, becoming smaller or decreasing). In the present tense, the stem expands to pienene-, to which the plural ending -vät is added.
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