English Translation
I don’t feel like playing.
ChatGPT’s explanation for this sentence is totally wack. It didn’t understand it at all.
To be fair, neither did Google translate, nor DeepL.
But ChatGPT gives us through its explanation an insight as to what exactly it misunderstands.
It says “haluta” is in the infinitive here, which is wrong in many ways:
- After “ei” never comes an infinitive, but always a connegative. (*)
- It says it’s “because the subject is not explicitly mentioned”. No such thing. There is “nollapersoona”, but that’s 3rd person, which often looks the same as the infinitive.
- “ei haluta” can be the negative of the passive: halutaan → ei haluta, but not in this sentence.
- In this sentence the verb is actually “haluttaa” (haluttaa - Wiktionary, the free dictionary), and this is a negative nollapersoona, i.e. “haluta” is the connegative of “haluttaa”. This pattern of causative verbs (-ttaa) together with “minua” (i.e. partitive object) is often called “feeling verbs” (see also Emotive Causative Verbs -TTAA or -TUTTAA - Uusi kielemme)
This ambuguity led ChactGPT to interpret the sentence as “I am not wanted to play” or “No one wants to play with me” when it’s actually “I don’t feel like playing” or “I’m not in the mood for playing”.
This is a great example of why ChatGPT’s explanations are to be taken with a grain of salt.
At least it basically admitted that it didn’t understand it, because it claims that it “may sound a bit awkward or potentially incorrect”, when it’s perfectly fine.
Edit:
(*) There are cases that look like there’s an infinitive after “ei” / “en” etc. For example:
Osaan numerot, mutta en lukea enkä kirjoittaa.
But this is actually:
Osaan numerot, mutta en (osaa) lukea enkä (osaa) kirjoittaa.