Thu Jan 2, 2025
by malmesjo@gmail.com on Twos
- Meillä on passit (we have passports)
- In this sentence, the true grammatical subject is not "meillä" or "passit", but the existence of the possessed object in the possessor's sphere. The verb "on" (third-person singular of "olla") is used impersonally to denote this existential relationship. The possessed object ("passit") isn't the syntactical subject; it's treated as an emphasized entity within the possession context.
- Why third-person singular?
- The third-person singular "on" is default in these existential possession structures because Finnish doesn't inflect the verb "olla" to agree with the grammatical subject in this type of sentence. Instead, "on" serves as a "neutral" marker of possession, emphasizing the relationship rather than agreement.
- Locative cases shift focus:
- The "meillä" (locative form of "me") isn't a subject here. It's a locative adverbial phrase indicating where the passports exist or who possesses them. The real subject is abstract and unspoken—the notion that the passports exist "with us."