Suomen kieli ulkomaalaisille/Sisältö/Genitiivi prepositiot

Genitive Prepositions

The locatative case endings -lla, -ssa, -lle, are used to describe absolute place. (e.g. se on pöydällä it's on the table. But sometimes we need to express location of one object relative to some other object. To do this we use of the many relative locatative words in the Finnish Language which are often used prepositionally, i.e. they come after the words that they relative to. In English , many of the equivalent words are prepositional, i.e. the come before the word that they are relative to. Postpositions are virtually non-existant in English, whereas in Finnish they are very common indeed. Most postpositions in Finnish govern the use of the genitive case.

Pallo on sohvan alla

The ball is under the sofa

Note the different sequencing of the words and the fact that sofa is in the genitive form sohvan.

These postpositional words may be expressed statically, but sometimes also with movement.

Often these words are associated with location (in front of, behind, below, above, etc.)

Sometimes they express...(to be continued)