Breakdown of Presidentti vapauttaa miehen vankilasta.
mies
man
vankila
prison
presidentti
president
vapauttaa
to free, to release
Questions & Answers about Presidentti vapauttaa miehen vankilasta.
If the lesson is about the '-uttaa' suffix meaning 'having someone else do something', why does vapauttaa just mean 'to free'?
Great catch! The -uttaa / -yttää suffix behaves differently depending on its root word. When attached to an action verb (like korjata -> korjauttaa), it means 'to have someone else do the action'. However, when attached to an adjective like vapaa (free), it forms a factitive verb meaning 'to make something [adjective]'. Therefore, vapauttaa simply means 'to make free' or 'to release', rather than 'to have someone released'.
How would I say 'The president has the man freed' if I wanted to use a true curative verb here?
You would actually stack the suffixes! Because vapauttaa (to free) acts as the base verb, you can add another curative suffix to its stem (vapauta-). This creates the verb vapaututtaa (to have someone free [someone/something]). The sentence would become: Presidentti vapaututtaa miehen vankilasta.
Why is the object miehen in the genitive-looking accusative case instead of the partitive?
Freeing someone from prison is a completed, bound action with a clear, final result: the man goes from being imprisoned to being fully free. Because the action is completed and targets the whole person, it requires the total object miehen rather than the partitive case.
Could I use the ablative case -lta (vankilalta) instead of the elative -sta (vankilasta)?
Not if you mean he was actually locked inside. Buildings and enclosed spaces heavily favor the internal local cases. Since a prison (vankila) is a highly enclosed space, being released from it requires the elative -sta ('out of'). Using vankilalta would imply he was merely standing around outside the prison premises and was allowed to walk away.
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