Breakdown of Miekkailijat kunnioittavat toinen toistaan.
kunnioittaa
to respect
toinen
other, another; second
miekkailija
the fencer
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Questions & Answers about Miekkailijat kunnioittavat toinen toistaan.
How does toinen toistaan differ from just using toisiaan?
Toisiaan is the common, everyday way to say "each other". Toinen toistaan is a more formal and literary distributive construction, which literally translates to "the one [respects] the other". Both mean "each other," but this double-pronoun structure emphasizes the individual action passing between the fencers.
Why is the second part exactly toistaan (partitive) instead of another case?
The verb kunnioittaa (to respect) always requires its object to be in the partitive case. In the toinen toista... structure, only the second word changes to match the case demanded by the verb. Here, it becomes the partitive toista plus the 3rd person possessive suffix -an.
Why is the first toinen in the singular nominative form when the subject (miekkailijat) is plural?
This is a fixed rule for this specific distributive construction. The first toinen always remains in the nominative singular, regardless of the subject's number or person. You can think of it acting like the word "one" in the English phrase "one another".
If the subject were "we" (me) instead of "the fencers", how would the toinen toistaan structure change?