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Äiti pukee lapselle takin ja riisuu siltä märät hanskat.

Äiti pukee lapselle takin ja riisuu siltä märät hanskat.
The mother puts a coat on the child and takes off her/his wet gloves.
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Questions & Answers about Äiti pukee lapselle takin ja riisuu siltä märät hanskat.

Why is lapselle in the -lle form? What is that case doing here?

Lapselle is the allative case (ending -lle), which often corresponds to English “to / onto / for (someone or something)”.

With clothing, a very common pattern is:

  • pukea jollekin jotakin = to put something (a piece of clothing) on someone

So:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin
    literally: Mother dresses to-the-child a coat → Mother puts a coat on the child.

Here lapselle is like an indirect object or “goal”: the coat is being put onto the child. You could also say:

  • Äiti pukee lapsen. = Mother dresses the child. (more general)
  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin. = Mother puts a coat on the child. (specifically that garment)

So -lle here expresses the target of the dressing action.

Could I say Äiti pukee lapsen takin instead of lapselle takin?

You can say Äiti pukee lapsen takin, but it means something slightly different:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin
    Focus: the action of putting a coat onto the child. Whose coat it is is not grammatically marked (though context suggests it’s probably the child’s).

  • Äiti pukee lapsen takin
    Literally: Mother dresses the child’s coat.
    This sounds like you are “dressing the coat of the child” (e.g. putting it on someone or something, but the someone is not mentioned). It’s unusual unless the context makes it clear (for example, she is putting the child’s coat onto a doll or a hanger).

To say clearly “Mother puts the child’s coat on (the child)”, you’d normally use either:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle lapsen takin. (redundant but clear: to the child, the child’s coat)
  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin. (context usually enough)

So lapselle takin is the natural phrasing for “puts a coat on the child”.

Why is takin in the form with -n? Is that genitive or accusative?

Formally, takin can be called genitive singular, but in this sentence it functions as a total object (often labelled “accusative” in learner grammars).

Key idea: for singular objects, -n marks a fully affected / completed object:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin.
    The coat is put on completely — the action is seen as a whole, finished event.

By contrast:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takkia. (partitive)
    This would focus on the ongoing process of dressing, or on an indefinite / partial amount. It might appear in contexts like “She is putting a coat on the child (when someone walks in mid‑action)” or when the completion is not in view.

So here takin is the total object form, showing a complete, bounded action.

Why are märät hanskat in the plain plural form, not with -n like takin?

There are two different object patterns here:

  • Singular total object → genitive singular: takin
  • Plural total object → nominative plural: hanskat

Finnish total objects behave like this:

  • Singular:
    • Näen auton. (I see the car.) – auton = total object
  • Plural:
    • Näen autot. (I see the cars.) – autot = total object

So in your sentence:

  • hanskat is nominative plural and serves as a total object.
  • The adjective märät agrees with it: nominative plural as well.

If you used the partitive plural:

  • märkiä hanskoja
    that would mean some wet gloves or focus on a non‑completed or indefinite action (e.g. she is in the process of taking off some of the wet gloves).

Here, märät hanskat = all of the (specific) wet gloves are removed.

What does siltä mean here, and why is -ltä used?

Siltä = se (3rd person pronoun “it / that one”) + -ltä, the ablative case.

The ablative -lta / -ltä often means “off/from a surface” or “from on someone”, and with clothing or accessories it’s used for removing something from a person’s body:

  • ottaa hatun päästä = take the hat off (someone’s) head
  • riisua lapselta hanskat = take the gloves off the child
  • riisua siltä märät hanskat = take the wet gloves off it (i.e. the child already mentioned)

So:

  • Äiti … riisuu siltä märät hanskat.
    literally: Mother takes the wet gloves off from it.

Here siltä is standing in for lapselta (“from the child”) when the child has already been referred to.

Why is it siltä and not häneltä if we’re talking about a child?

In standard written Finnish, human beings normally take hän (“he/she”) and kuka (“who”). So for a child, many textbooks would first teach:

  • riisuu häneltä märät hanskat = takes the wet gloves off him/her

However, in everyday spoken and informal written Finnish, it is extremely common to use se (“it/that”) for people who are clear from context, especially:

  • small children
  • pets
  • people in casual, familiar contexts

So:

  • lapsi → se
  • ablative: siltä

That’s why siltä sounds very natural here. If you wanted to be more formal or careful, you could use häneltä instead:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin ja riisuu häneltä märät hanskat.
What is the difference between pukea and riisua?

They are basically opposites with clothing:

  • pukea = to dress, to put clothes on (someone), or to put a garment on a person

    • pukea lapsi = to dress the child
    • pukea lapselle takki = to put a coat on the child

  • riisua = to undress, to take clothes off (someone), or to remove a garment from a person

    • riisua lapsi = to undress the child
    • riisua lapselta / siltä takki = to take the coat off the child

So in your sentence:

  • pukee lapselle takin → puts a coat on the child
  • riisuu siltä märät hanskat → takes the wet gloves off the child
What about pukeutua? Could I use that instead of pukea here?

No, not in this exact sentence.

  • pukea = dress someone else or put something on someone.

    • Äiti pukee lapsen. = Mother dresses the child.

  • pukeutua = dress oneself, put clothes on one’s own body. It’s reflexive in meaning:

    • Lapsi pukeutuu. = The child is getting dressed (by itself).
    • Lapsi pukeutuu takkiin. = The child dresses in a coat.

In your sentence, the subject äiti is dressing the child, not herself. So you must use pukea, not pukeutua:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin… ✅
  • Äiti pukeutuu lapselle takin… ❌ (nonsense)
Why is there no possessive suffix, like hanskansa, in märät hanskat?

Finnish can express possession in several ways. Here the possessor is already shown by siltä (“from it”), so an extra possessive suffix is not required:

  • riisuu siltä märät hanskat
    = takes its wet gloves off it

You could say:

  • riisuu siltä märät hanskansa

This would be grammatically correct and explicitly mark hanskansa = “its own gloves”. It can sound more emphatic or a bit more formal/literary, because the possession is already clear from siltä.

In everyday Finnish:

  • If there is a phrase like lapselta, häneltä, siltä, etc., it is very common to just say hanskat without a possessive suffix.
Can I drop lapselle and just say Äiti pukee takin?

Yes, but the meaning changes a bit:

  • Äiti pukee takin.
    literally: Mother puts on the coat.
    Default interpretation: she puts a coat on herself (unless context says otherwise).

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin.
    clearly: she is putting a coat on the child.

If the context is already very clear (e.g. we’re watching her dress a child), speakers might omit lapselle, but then you’d rely on context alone to know who is being dressed.

Grammatically, lapselle is what explicitly marks the child as the target of the action.

Could the word order be Äiti pukee takin lapselle instead? Does that change the meaning?

You can say both:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin.
  • Äiti pukee takin lapselle.

The core meaning is the same: she puts a coat on the child.

Differences are about focus and information structure, not grammar:

  • lapselle takin (indirect object before direct object)
    → slightly more neutral, or mild focus on who is being dressed.

  • takin lapselle (direct object before indirect object)
    → can lightly emphasize the coat as the important new information (e.g. “It’s the coat she’s putting on the child (not something else).”)

In everyday speech, both orders are used; context and intonation carry most of the emphasis.

Why doesn’t märät change form to something like märkiä here?

The adjective must agree in case and number with the noun it describes.

  • Noun: hanskat = nominative plural (and in this sentence: plural total object)
  • Adjective: märät = nominative plural

If you used partitive plural:

  • hanskoja → partitive plural
  • märkiä hanskoja → adjective also in partitive plural

So:

  • märät hanskat = the (whole set of) wet gloves (as a complete object)
  • märkiä hanskoja = some wet gloves / an indefinite amount / ongoing action

In your sentence, the idea is that all the specific wet gloves are removed, so märät hanskat is the correct total‑object form.

Could I replace riisuu with ottaa pois or ottaa hanskat pois?

Yes, you can express “take off” with ottaa pois as well:

  • Äiti … ottaa siltä märät hanskat pois.
    = Mother takes its wet gloves off.

Differences:

  • riisua is the most direct verb specifically for taking clothes off.
  • ottaa pois is more general: “take something away/off/out”.

Both are natural. Riisua is slightly more compact and idiomatic with clothing, but in spoken language ottaa pois is also extremely common:

  • Äiti ottaa hanskat pois.
  • Äiti riisuu hanskat.
Is there an implied “and then” between the two actions, or could they happen in any order?

The conjunction ja literally means just “and”, and Finnish does not grammatically force a temporal order here.

However, native speakers will usually interpret such a sequence as happening in the order mentioned:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin ja riisuu siltä märät hanskat.
    Most people will imagine: coat first, then gloves off.

If you want to emphasize a different order, you’d typically rephrase or stress the order with adverbs (e.g. ensin, sitten):

  • Ensin äiti riisuu siltä märät hanskat ja sitten pukee lapselle takin.
    First she takes off its wet gloves and then puts a coat on the child.
Is there any special reason the sentence uses lapselle the first time and siltä the second time, instead of repeating lapselle or lapselta?

The alternation is stylistic and referential:

  1. First mention: lapselle

    • introduces lapsi (the child) explicitly as the person being dressed.

  2. Second mention: siltä

    • uses a pronoun instead of repeating lapselta.
    • this is normal: after introducing a noun, you often refer back to it with se / hän
      • case ending.

You could say:

  • Äiti pukee lapselle takin ja riisuu lapselta märät hanskat.

This is also correct, just more repetitive. The original version is more natural: once the child has been introduced, you refer back with a pronoun (siltä).