Breakdown of Kapteenin lähdettyä myrsky oli noita öitä pahempi.
olla
to be
nuo
those (over there)
lähteä
to leave
yö
night
paha
bad (evil, severe)
myrsky
storm
kapteeni
captain
Questions & Answers about Kapteenin lähdettyä myrsky oli noita öitä pahempi.
How does the grammar in kapteenin lähdettyä show that two different things are doing the actions?
When the "after" action has a different subject than the main clause (the captain vs. the storm), the subject of the "after" action takes the genitive case (kapteenin). The verb is then formed using the passive past participle with a partitive ending (lähdettyä).
Why does this structure use the passive form lähdettyä if the captain actively left?
The past temporal construction always builds on the passive past participle root, even for active actions. To build it, you simply take the regular passive past participle (lähdetty) and add the partitive ending (-ä) to create lähdettyä.
Why is the phrase noita öitä in the partitive case?
This is the partitive of comparison. When you compare two things, you can either use kuin (than) with the nominative (pahempi kuin nuo yöt), or you can drop kuin, put the thing being compared against in the partitive (noita öitä), and place it right before the comparative word (pahempi).
How does the base word yö change to become öitä?
öitä is the partitive plural of yö (night). When adding the plural marker -i- to a short word ending in a diphthong, the first vowel drops out. This changes yö into the plural stem öi-, to which the partitive ending -tä is finally attached.
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