Breakdown of He taistelevat tatamilla toinen toistaan vastaan.
he
they
toinen
other, another; second
vastaan
against
taistella
to fight (battle, struggle)
tatami
the tatami
Questions & Answers about He taistelevat tatamilla toinen toistaan vastaan.
Why use toinen toistaan instead of just toisiaan for 'each other'?
Both mean 'each other,' but toinen toistaan is a distributive construction that emphasizes the individuals involved—literally 'one against the other.' At the B2 level, you will encounter this structure in formal writing, literature, or to add stylistic emphasis compared to the standard plural toisiaan.
How does the postposition vastaan affect the case of toinen toistaan?
The postposition vastaan (against) requires the word immediately preceding it to be in the partitive case. In the distributive structure, the first toinen is locked in the nominative, but the second takes the required partitive case (toista) plus the possessive suffix (-an), giving us toistaan vastaan.
If I wanted to say 'we fight against each other', how does the reciprocal phrase change?
The possessive suffix on the second half of the phrase must always match the subject of the sentence. While 'they' uses the 3rd-person suffix -an (toinen toistaan), 'we' requires the 1st-person plural suffix -mme, making the phrase toinen toistamme.
Could I put the postposition between the two words, like toinen vastaan toistaan?
No, you must keep the pronoun pair together. The phrase toinen toistaan functions as a single syntactic block, so the postposition always comes after the entire structure.
A quick refresher: why is it tatamilla and not tatamissa?
The adessive case (-lla/-llä) is used for surfaces, translating to 'on top of'. A tatami is a mat you stand on. If you used the inessive case (tatamissa), it would imply fighting trapped inside the material of the mat itself!
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