Prepositions and postpositions (§89) take either the genitive or the partitive.
There are many more postpositions than prepositions in Finnish.
Prepositions precede the words whose case they determine, e.g. ilman
‘without’ (ilman raha/a ‘without money’). The following prepositions take
the partitive case:
ennen before lähe/llä, -ltä, -lle near
ilman without paitsi besides; except
keske/llä, -ltä, -lle in the middle of pitkin along
kohti towards päin towards
vasten against
ennen tois/ta maailmansota/a before the Second World War
Oletko ilman raha/a? Don’t you have any money? (‘Are
you without money?’)
Koira makaa keskellä lattia/a. The dog lies in the middle of the
floor.
Ajan kohti Kuopio/ta. I drive towards Kuopio.
Paitsi viini/ä tarvitsemme Besides wine we need beer, too.
oluttakin.
Varas juoksi pitkin Eerikinkatu/a. The thief ran along Eric’s Street.
Kaikki menee päin helvetti/ä. Everything is going bloody badly (‘to
hell’).
Nojasin vasten seinä/ä. I leaned against the wall.
The following prepositions take the genitive case; there are not many of
these.
alle under (not in locative sense) läpi through (temporal)
halki through (locative) sitten since
kautta throughout
kesken in the middle of (temporal sense)
222 Finnish: An Essential Grammar
Mies painaa alle sada/n kilon. The man weighs under 100 kilos.
Kuljen halki metsä/n. I walk through the wood.
Hänet tunnetaan kautta maa/n. He/she is known throughout the
country.
Kesken tunni/n Pekka lähti ulos. In the middle of the lesson Pekka
went out.
läpi vuotisato/j/en through the centuries
Sitten viime syksy/n en ole Since last autumn I have not been
käynyt ulkomailla. abroad.
