Questions & Answers about Ruoka on täällä erittäin kallista.
How does the placement of täällä in this sentence relate to the attitude adverbs we are currently learning?
Täällä is an adverb of place, so it sits naturally right after the verb in standard word order. Attitude adverbs (like onneksi or valitettavasti), however, usually prefer to be at the very beginning of the sentence to set the tone for the entire thought. If you added an attitude adverb here, the sentence would look like this: Valitettavasti ruoka on täällä erittäin kallista.
Could we put täällä at the beginning of the sentence instead?
Yes, you can absolutely say Täällä ruoka on erittäin kallista. Moving an adverb of place to the front changes the topic of the sentence. Putting täällä first shifts the emphasis to the location: As for here, the food is extremely expensive. The current word order keeps the focus squarely on the food itself.
Why is kallista in the partitive case when the subject ruoka is in the nominative?
This is a vital rule to remember for subject complements (predicatives). Because ruoka (food) is an uncountable mass noun, any adjective describing it with the verb olla must be in the partitive case (kallista). If the subject were a countable, singular noun, the adjective would match it in the nominative case (for example: Talo on kallis).
Does the adverb erittäin ever change its ending to match the adjective it modifies?