Finnish to Tamil: the person who likes something can have a dative form
Finnish marks the liked item with an elative
A Taste of Finnish illustrates Hän tykkää pizzasta and Aino tykkää sinusta. In these sentences, the person likes pizza or likes the addressee. The -sta form identifies what or whom they like. It does not say that the person receives pizza, travels from pizza, or likes something on somebody else’s behalf.
For Tamil, keep the experiencer distinct from the liked item before considering either language’s endings. In the first example the experiencer is the person identified by hän; in the second it is Aino. The marked Finnish complement is not the one experiencing the preference simply because it carries a conspicuous case suffix.
This separation is especially useful when translating a preference involving another person. Aino liking you does not mean that you like Aino. Transferring a Finnish complement into a Tamil role by the apparent meaning of a case name could reverse the relationship while retaining the same two names or pronouns.
Tamil’s piDi construction organises that preference differently
Harold Schiffman’s University of Pennsylvania handout describes piDi among Tamil stative predicates with dative experiencers. It gives adu enakku piDikkum, meaning that I like that. The dative enakku identifies the person who likes, rather than a recipient to whom the liked thing is being delivered.
The handout also distinguishes animate targets, which receive accusative marking in the construction described, from otherwise unmarked targets. Thus the contrast between liking pizza and liking a person can affect the Tamil target’s marking. It does not follow that Finnish -sta has one fixed Tamil suffix equivalent regardless of the complement.
The source Finnish verb agrees with its subject, but the Tamil handout describes these dative-stative predicates with neuter person-number-gender marking. A target form that does not mirror Aino’s personal properties is therefore not automatically a sign that Aino ceased to be the experiencer. The construction must be interpreted as a whole.
Do not convert the preference into giving or knowing
A dative expression in Tamil can look like something described in English as “to me.” In this particular predicate, that gloss helps explain the form but does not describe an actual transfer. Adding a giver, delivery or beneficiary to a Finnish preference would invent an event that is absent from the original.
The Finnish lesson also permits tykätä with an infinitive, for liking an activity. This shows why identifying the preference comes before constructing its complement: the source can describe liking a thing, a person or doing something. The Tamil noun-target discussion above should not be imposed as a complete analysis of every activity complement.
For the cited Finnish noun and pronoun examples, preserve who feels the preference and its target. Then use the Tamil preference construction appropriate to those participants. This keeps the liked person from becoming the liker and prevents a grammatical dative experiencer from being mistaken for someone receiving a gift.
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