【芬兰语语法】§88 PREPOSITIONS

 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.