# 1st infinitive (used as a noun) vs. 4th infinitive



## Gavril

[After posting this, I remembered that the _-minen _infinitive is considered the 4th infinitive, not the 3rd (as I'd originally written) -- I've requested that the thread title be changed to correct this.]


Iltaa,

I just came across a sentence that seems to use both the 1st and 4th infinitive as nouns (source):



> Ulossulkemista on ruokkia mielikuvaa, että klassisesta musiikista nauttiakseen pitää olla kultin jäsen – sellainen, joka osaa ulkoa vuosiluvut ja opusnumerot ja osaa nyrpistellä "hieman vaatimattomalle fortelle Adagio-osassa".



I would translate the first part of this sentence 

"To close oneself off to the outside is to foster the idea that ..."

but the verb I highlighted in blue corresponds to the 4th infinitive in the Finnish text, and the verb highlighted in green corresponds to the 1st infinitive.

Were the different infinitives used here for stylistic reasons (i.e., to avoid repetition), or are there other (semantic/grammatical) reasons at work here?

For ex., would it be acceptable if she had written
_
Sulkea ulos on ruokkia mielikuvaa, että ...

_or

_Ulossulkemista on mielikuvan ruokkiminen siitä, että ...


_(As I was writing the second sentence above, I noticed that it was a little bit difficult to incorporate "mielikuva" into an equivalent phrase with the fourth infinitive, so maybe that was part of the original writer's reason for choosing the first infinitive.)

Kiitos


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## Grumpy Old Man

"_Ulossulkemista on mielikuvan ruokkiminen siitä, että ..."
_This sounds more natural to my ear than your first sentence even though it is probably also correct grammatically.


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## Finland

Hello!

A bit off topic, but still:



Gavril said:


> "To close oneself off to the outside is to foster the idea that ..."



Actually, "Ulossulkemista" refers here to excluding _others_. So "Fostering the idea that... is tantamount to excluding others outside."

HTH
S


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## Gavril

Finland said:


> Hello!
> 
> A bit off topic, but still:
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, "Ulossulkemista" refers here to excluding _others_. So "Fostering the idea that... is tantamount to excluding others outside."
> 
> HTH
> S



Thanks -- I should have noticed that _ulossulkeminen _contains the transitive form _sulkea, _not the middle/intransitive _sulkeutua_.

Still, I wonder if _ulossulkemista _is the subject or the predicate in this case: which of these do you think is the best translation of the sentence?


1) "To exclude others is to foster the image that you need to be a member of a cult to enjoy classical music"
[In other words, it's already known that other people are being excluded, but the writer is pointing out that the exclusion fosters this image.]

2) "To foster the image that you need to [...] is to exclude others."
[= People already know that they're fostering this image, but the writer is pointing out that they're excluding others by doing so.]


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## Marsario

Hi Gavril!
I can't help you with the translation of your sentence, but I can tell you that:


> Ulossulkemista on ruokkia mielikuvaa


In this sentence "ulossulkemista" is the subject, and "ruokkia mielikuvaa" is a subordinate clause that acts as predicative.
In Finnish, the subject can only be in the fourth infinitive and not in the first, unlike in English, where you can say both "to exclude others is..." and "excluding others is...".

Viceversa, in Finnish the predicative can be either in the first or or the fourth infinitive. Therefore, "Ulossulkemista on ruokkia mielikuvaa, että" and "_Ulossulkemista on mielikuvan ruokkiminen siitä, että" are _both correct. (Grumpy Old Man said that the second option is the best, even though I would believe that it is rather due to the use of the pronoun "siitä" than to the mode of the verbs, but I might just be wrong).



> _ Sulkea ulos on ruokkia mielikuvaa, että ..._


 I would say that this is wrong, because the subject is in the first infinitive. 

Please natives confirm.


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## Grumpy Old Man

I see nothing wrong with "sulkea" used as the subject in a clause.  Mind you, I'm definitely not a Finnish grammar expert, though.  You'll have to wait for other members for a reliable answer.  All I can say is that sentences such as the next one sound perfectly acceptable to me and are used in Finnish whether the experts think they are correct or not:

_*Nähdä* auringon nousevan varhain kesäaamuna on unohtumaton kokemus._

This usage is rather literary, not at all common in conversational Finnish.

Terminology also varies around the globe.  In English the term "predicative" isn't used very much, as far as I know. A comprehensive American dictionary doesn't know the word at all as a grammatical term. "Complement" is close to the Finnish "predikatiivi" in meaning.  This definition is from Random House Unabridged Dictionary:

*complement*
6.    Gram.
    a. a word or group of words that completes a grammatical construction in the predicate and that describes or is identified with the subject or object, as small in _The house is small_ or president in _They elected her president_.


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## Marsario

> I see nothing wrong with "sulkea" used as the subject in a clause.



Mmm... let's take for instance:
Pelata jalkapalloa on hauskaa.
Jalkapallon pelaaminen on hauskaa.
On hauskaa jalkapallon pelaaminen.
On hauskaa pelata jalkapalloa.
I thought the first was wrong. But I might remember wrong...

_*Nähdä* auringon nousevan varhain kesäaamuna on unohtumaton kokemus.


_Isn't your example rather uncommon and too poetic? I would think the the "standard sentence order" would be "on unohtumaton kokemus nähdä auringon nousevan varhain kesäaamuna". Then again, Finnish sentence order is quite free so you can set the predicative to the beginning of the sentence.



> *complement*
> 6.    Gram.
> a. a word or group of words that completes a grammatical  construction in the predicate and that describes or is identified with  the subject or object, as small in _The house is small_ or president in _They elected her president_.



This definition sounds a bit strange to me. We don't use terms like predicative, adverbial and so on studying Italian grammar; and I learnt them studying Finnish. We speak about complements; but in a sentence like "the house is small", "small" would be analysed as copula and not complement, in Italian...


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## Gavril

Grumpy Old Man said:


> Terminology also varies around the globe.  In English the term "predicative" isn't used very much, as far as I know. A comprehensive American dictionary doesn't know the word at all as a grammatical term. "Complement" is close to the Finnish "predikatiivi" in meaning.  This definition is from Random House Unabridged Dictionary:
> 
> *complement*
> 6.    Gram.
> a. a word or group of words that completes a grammatical construction in the predicate and that describes or is identified with the subject or object, as small in _The house is small_ or president in _They elected her president_.



"predicative" may not be so common in English, but "predicate" is a fairly standard term. Here's a definition of "predicate" from dictionary.com:



> _Grammar _. (in many languages, as English) a syntactic unitthat functions as one of the two main constituents of asimple sentence, the other being the subject, and thatconsists of a verb, which in English may agree with thesubject in number, and of all the words governed by the verbor modifying it, the whole often expressing the actionperformed by or the state attributed to the subject, as _ishere _ in _Larry is here._


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## Gavril

Marsario said:


> Mmm... let's take for instance:
> Pelata jalkapalloa on hauskaa.
> Jalkapallon pelaaminen on hauskaa.
> On hauskaa jalkapallon pelaaminen.
> On hauskaa pelata jalkapalloa.
> I thought the first was wrong. But I might remember wrong...



Maybe there have historically been different rules for the syntax of the first infinitive because it wasn't originally a nominative case form (unlike the 3rd/4th infinitives). But the modern English infinitive form (_to take, to breathe, _etc.) isn't in the "nominative" either, and yet it's become acceptable to use it as the subject of a sentence (e.g., "To give up now would be unthinkable") -- perhaps a similar development has happened (or is happening) with the Finnish 1st infinitive?


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## Grumpy Old Man

Marsario said:


> Pelata jalkapalloa on hauskaa.
> Jalkapallon pelaaminen on hauskaa.
> On hauskaa jalkapallon pelaaminen.
> On hauskaa pelata jalkapalloa.
> I thought the first was wrong. But I might remember wrong...
> 
> _*Nähdä* auringon nousevan varhain kesäaamuna on unohtumaton kokemus.
> 
> 
> _Isn't your example rather uncommon and too poetic? I would think the the "standard sentence order" would be "on unohtumaton kokemus nähdä auringon nousevan varhain kesäaamuna". Then again, Finnish sentence order is quite free so you can set the predicative to the beginning of the sentence.


_Pelata jalkapalloa on hauskaa_ is wrong.  I don't know why, though.  

Yes, my example is uncommon.  I said that it wasn't used in ordinary conversation myself.  Nevertheless, if I were writing a novel, I wouldn't hesitate to use it! That is something I like about Finnish as compared with English: there's more freedom of expression, there's more choice.  Not everybody uses exactly the same fixed phrases.  The slightest deviation from a standard phrase doesn't necessarily sound unnatural.  I suppose this is at least in part due to the countless inflections and affixes and the fairly free word order.


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## Marsario

> "predicative" may not be so common in English, but "predicate" is a  fairly standard term. Here's a definition of "predicate" from  dictionary.com:



It may be useful to point out the difference between predicate and predicative (if you can use this word in English).
Laura on sairas: Laura = subjekti; on = verbi (predikaatti); sairas = predikatiivi.


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## Gavril

Marsario said:


> It may be useful to point out the difference between predicate and predicative (if you can use this word in English).
> Laura on sairas: Laura = subjekti; on = verbi (predikaatti); sairas = predikatiivi.



In English, the whole phrase "on sairas" would be considered the predicate, and I imagine that Finn. _predikaatti _would be used similarly. The verb "on" by itself would be called the copula.

I don't think the word _predicative _is normally used as a noun in English, but we do use phrases such as _predicative adjective_ (which is what "sairas" would be in this case).


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## Grumpy Old Man

Gavril said:


> In English, the whole phrase "on sairas" would be considered the predicate, and I imagine that Finn. _predikaatti _would be used similarly.


You'll have to wait for the grammar experts but I think "finite verb" corresponds in meaning to the Finnish "predikaatti". An adjective such as "sairas" cannot definitely be a part of "predikaatti".  (Unless grammatical parsing has undergone some major changes since I attended school.)


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