Object

This lesson is about the Finnish object which is an interesting beast. There is no denying that it is for many students of Finnish language one of the hardest things to learn. I boldly claim that that is because it is not tought properly. The Finnish object is a philosophy, a state of mind, a view world - and now we will have a first look into it.

The philosophy
The question is always whether what you do leads to an end result. Is something completed, did you all of it, did you do it fully? If the answer is yes, then you will express that with the full object and the corresponding case of a noun. If the answer is no, you will use the partial object.

The cake
Enough of the philosophy, let's talk about the cake. You can have your whole cake or you can eat it up - or you can have some of it and it some of eat. These states of things you can express with the full and partial object. So far this is quite simple: if you eat a part of cake, you use the partitive like we have done in previous lessons. But if you eat up entire cake, so that it is finished, you use the full object and to mark the full object you will use the genitive in this case.

The genitive here has nothing to do with posession. The cake does not own anything, and in fact in many grammar books and especially older ones you will see that genitive as an object is not called the genitive but the accusative. We will use the more recent and more descriptive naming convention and call a genitive a genitive.

The philosophy of some verbs
Not everything is as easy as eating a cake. The result of your actions isn't always the complete or partial destruction of something sweet. The lesson on object begins with three pairs of verbs where one of the pair uses the full object and the other one uses the partial object.

Näen hevosen - katson hevosta. The result of seeing a horse is that your visual perception of it goes from 0 to 100 %. Even if you only see half of the horse your view of the world has completely changed and now includes the horse. Looking at the horse, on the other hand, won't do anything. Looks can't kill, for example. (And what has the horse done to you any way?)

Muistan hevosen - ajattelen hevosta. Remembering is like seeing, you either remember the horse or not. Sure, it could be that you do not remember every detail about the horse but the result is that you remember the existence of the horse. Thinking on the other hand... well, you can think about your work as much as you want to but that won't get it done.

Löydän hevosen - etsin hevosta. It is the same story here as before and finding something is clearly a resultative happening. These verbs are not really clear and after some wine (viiniä) one could argue endlessly about the correct interpretation and split hairs. For example, you can in a very determined tone of voice say, "Minä etsin itselleni hevosen!", which means that you are going to search until you find yourself a horse¹. You can try to reason your way to the correct case, full or partial object, or you can just try to remember them for some verbs, or both.

Rakastaa, vihata, pelätä. This section also introduces two new verbs for feelings, rakastaa (to love) and vihata (to hate). We have already used pelätä (to be afraid of, to fear) with partitive and actually you always use partitive with all verbs of emotion. Love + partitive does not mean that you only love someone in part. It just means that your love will not transform them. You can buy an expensive self-help book to tell you that, or just learn from the wisdom of the ancient Finnic tribes.

Many things
If the object is in plural, for example when you have eat or remember or remember to eat many cakes, you face another choice. If you use the full object that means that you do your thing to all (kaikki) cakes. All of what? If there is nothing else mentioned, all of the worlds cakes. Sometimes the context can provide a clue that you are not eating all the worlds cakes but all the cakes at the table, of a woman etc. This is when you use the full object.

The partial object you use in rest of the cases, meaning that you use it in most of the cases.

Note! In the singular, full object can be genitive or nominative. So far you have not been tought about the grammatical situations where you need to use singular nominative (imperative, passive voice, necessity construction etc.) so for this excercise the singular full object is always the genitive. For plural, the full object is always in nominative.

No!
If a sentence is in negative, always use partial object. No exceptions. None. Ever. Sigh of relief!

Time
Have you ever tried eating a whole cake at once while saying that you are at that very moment eating an entire cake? If you do try, make sure you do it in company where someone knows the Heimlich maneuver. That is why the finishing of a whole cake from all to nothingness never takes place right now but always in the past (even if very recent) or in the future (oh how I wish that it were to happen in the near future).

That is why the choice between full and partial object may also give a clue as to when something will happen. And since Finnish does not have a grammatical future tense this may come handy.

Partitive is the strongest
Above you have read a lot about rules for choosing between partial and full object. One rule to keep in mind is that the partitive is always the strongest. If there is any reason to use a partitive, then you use the partitive. It doesn't matter if other things in the sentence cry for a full object, the full object always loses to the partitive.

1. With some verbs it really can make a big difference in meaning if you use the full object in stead of the partial object. For example the verb ampua, to shoot, with the full object means that someone shoots someone dead. That is final, indeed. With the partial object the object may have just wounded or maybe you missed altogether. Another important example is the verb naida which with full object means to marry. This verb is not used a lot in modern language and it is a bit archaic but "maanviljelijä nai opettajan" means that a farmer married a teacher. If you use the partial object, opettajaa, the verb gets a lot more carnal meaning.