Questions & Answers about Maksan sohvan osamaksulla.
Why is osamaksulla in the adessive case (-lla) here?
This relates directly to using the adessive case for prices and transactions. Here, osamaksulla (literally 'part-payment') describes the financial terms of the deal. Finnish uses the adessive to show the method or the specific transaction terms used to acquire something, similar to saying you bought an item 'for a certain price' or 'on credit'.
If the payment is happening in parts, shouldn't sohvan be in the partitive case (sohvaa)?
This is a great catch, but the genitive case sohvan is correct. Even though the transaction is split into instalments, the intention and the result of the action is to pay off the entire sofa. Because it is a completed action aimed at the whole item, it takes the total object form. You would only use the partitive sohvaa if you were emphasizing the ongoing, unfinished process of paying it off right at this very moment.
English says to pay 'for' the sofa. Why is there no word meaning 'for' in the Finnish sentence?
The verb maksaa (to pay) directly takes the item being bought as its grammatical object. You do not need a separate preposition or postposition like 'for' in Finnish. Applying the correct object case to sohva is completely sufficient to show what you are paying for.
Doesn't maksaa also mean 'to cost'? How do we know which meaning applies here?
Yes, maksaa means both 'to pay' and 'to cost'. You can distinguish them by looking at the sentence structure. Here, the verb has a personal subject ending (-n for 'I') and a direct object (sohvan), meaning somebody is paying for something. If it meant 'to cost', the item itself would be the subject in the nominative case, as in Sohva maksaa paljon (The sofa costs a lot).
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