Finnish to European Portuguese: identify whose purpose the infinitive expresses
Two Finnish forms can assign the second action differently
The Finnish Language Office contrasts Seura hankki pelaajan vahvistaakseen keskikenttää with Seura hankki pelaajan vahvistamaan keskikenttää. Both concern a club obtaining a player and strengthening its midfield, but the explanation assigns the strengthening to the club in the first and the player in the second. A similar-looking infinitive does not guarantee the same understood actor.
This is important in European Portuguese purpose clauses. Translating either sentence as a vague sequence of recruitment followed by strengthening can hide the distinction. Establish whether the club’s intention is being expressed through the main subject or whether the recruited player is the participant expected to carry out the second action.
Portuguese can make the purpose clause’s subject explicit
Carla Marques’s Ciberdúvidas explanation distinguishes purpose clauses with para plus infinitive from those with para que plus subjunctive. Within infinitival clauses, a subject different from the main clause’s subject can be expressed with a personal infinitive agreeing with that subject. The target therefore has resources for retaining the participant distinction instead of leaving it accidental.
The short examples Trabalhavam para comer and Trabalhavam para as crianças comerem contrast people working so that they themselves eat with people working so that the children eat. These are structural illustrations, not translations of the Finnish football sentences. They show why changing the purpose clause’s actor changes the meaning of the whole account.
A possessive-looking Finnish suffix can identify an actor
The source guidance describes the possessive suffix in the vahvistaakseen type as identifying the main predicate’s actor and emphasising that actor’s intention. Here the suffix is part of interpreting the subordinate event. It is not an instruction to add an owner to the Portuguese noun phrase for the midfield.
In the vahvistamaan version, the source explanation instead associates the strengthening with the player, the object of recruitment. Omitting that distinction could make the Portuguese reader assign the intended work to the club as an institution. Conversely, explicitly assigning the work to the player in the first version would narrow a subject-centred purpose in a way the grammatical contrast does not require.
Inflection is not a mechanical echo of Finnish morphology
The Portuguese guidance presents an uninflected infinitive as the preferred pattern when both clauses have the same subject, while acknowledging stylistic personal-infinitive uses. Thus the presence of Finnish person-identifying morphology does not mean the Portuguese infinitive must visibly carry an ending that looks equally personal. The relevant relationship is shared or separate agency.
For this direction, interpret the Finnish purpose structure before compressing it into Portuguese. Preserve the club’s recruitment as one event and the intended strengthening as another, then decide who is understood to perform the latter. That preserves the practical difference between acquiring someone for a task and stating the acquiring organisation’s own purpose without confusing actor identification with possession.
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