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Questions & Answers about Joku piilotti vihjeen.
Why is vihjeen ending in -n?
Because vihjeen is the object of the sentence, and here it is a singular total object.
In Joku piilotti vihjeen, the action is understood as completed: someone hid the whole clue / one clue completely. In Finnish, that often makes the object take a form that looks like the genitive singular, which is why vihje becomes vihjeen.
Compare:
- Joku piilotti vihjeen = someone hid the clue / a clue completely
- Joku piilotti vihjettä = someone was hiding a clue, or hid some clue in a more ongoing/incomplete sense
So the -n here signals a completed, whole object.
What is the basic dictionary form of each word?
The dictionary forms are:
- joku = someone
- piilottaa = to hide
- vihje = clue, hint
In the sentence:
- joku stays as it is
- piilotti is the past tense form of piilottaa
- vihjeen is the object form of vihje
What tense is piilotti?