Minä peitän pöydän liinalla.

I

Breakdown of Minä peitän pöydän liinalla.

• pöytä: the table
• -lla: with
• liina: the cloth

Questions & Answers about Minä peitän pöydän liinalla.

What are the key forms in this sentence, and what do they do?

• Minä = I (subject, nominative; often omitted in Finnish)
• peitän = I cover (verb, present indicative, 1st person singular of peittää)
• pöydän = the table (object in the total/accusative sense; form looks like genitive singular)
• liinalla = with a cloth (adessive case, expressing instrument/means)

Why is it pöydän and not pöytää?

• pöydän is the total object (accusative meaning) and suggests a bounded/complete event: the table gets covered (as a whole, or the action is viewed as complete).
• pöytää is the partitive object and would suggest an unbounded/ongoing or partial action.
  • Example: Juuri nyt peitän pöytää liinalla. = I’m (in the middle of) covering the table with a cloth.

So what case is pöydän exactly?

It functions as the accusative (total object), but for nouns the accusative singular is typically identical in form to the genitive singular (-n). That’s why you see -n on pöydän even though it’s an object, not a possessor here.

Why is it liinalla and not something like liinaa?