Questions & Answers about Lapsilla on nälkä matkan jälkeen.
The current lesson teaches the tekee mieli structure. Why don't we use it here to express that the children want food?
Basic physical states like hunger (nälkä), thirst (jano), and feeling cold (kylmä) use the possessive structure: adessive + olla, literally translating to "at the children is hunger". The tekee mieli structure is reserved for specific cravings. If you said lasten tekee mieli ruokaa, it would mean "the children are craving food" rather than simply stating the physical fact that they are hungry.
How is the plural adessive lapsilla formed from the base word lapsi?
The singular inflectional stem of lapsi is lapse-. To form the plural, the plural marker -i- is added. When the plural -i- meets the stem vowel -e-, the -e- is dropped, resulting in the plural stem lapsi-. Finally, the adessive ending -lla is attached, creating lapsilla.
Why is matka in the genitive case (matkan)?
The word jälkeen (after) is a postposition. In Finnish, the vast majority of postpositions require the noun they modify to be in the genitive case. Therefore, matka (trip) takes the genitive -n ending to become matkan.
If nälkä (hunger) is an uncountable concept, why isn't it in the partitive case (nälkää)?
In an affirmative possessive sentence (like minulla on...), abstract states and feelings such as nälkä (hunger), jano (thirst), and kiire (hurry) are treated as complete, indivisible states rather than measurable quantities. Because of this, they remain in the nominative case.
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