A small clause is a clause stripped to its bones: a subject and a predicate, but no finite verb linking them. When you say Jeg malte huset rødt ("I painted the house red"), the chunk huset rødt is a miniature clause — "the house [is] red" — embedded inside the bigger one. Norwegian uses small clauses heavily, and in most cases the structure maps neatly onto English. The one place it diverges, and the place to concentrate your attention, is agreement: the predicate adjective inside a Norwegian small clause inflects to match its subject, where English adjectives never change. This page assumes you know infinitive control constructions (the å-infinitive with a controlling subject); small clauses are different precisely because they lack that infinitive marker.
Resultatives: a result-state predicate
A resultative small clause names the state something ends up in as a result of the action. The verb describes the action; the small clause (object + predicate) describes the resulting state of that object:
Hun malte døra rød.
She painted the door red. (the door ends up red)
Jeg drakk koppen tom.
I drank the cup empty. (drank until the cup was empty)
Han slo seg fordervet på sykkelen.
He hurt himself badly on the bike. (lit. 'beat himself spoiled')
The logic is causal: the action causes the object to reach the predicate's state. Drakk koppen tom does not mean the cup was already empty — the drinking made it empty. English builds resultatives exactly this way ("hammer the metal flat," "wipe the table clean"), so the structure itself is familiar. What is not familiar is the inflection.
Agreement is the tricky bit
The predicate adjective in a Norwegian resultative agrees with the object in gender and number — neuter -t, plural -e — just as a predicate adjective agrees with its subject in an ordinary copula sentence:
Jeg malte huset rødt.
I painted the house red. (huset is neuter → rødt)
Vi malte stolene grønne.
We painted the chairs green. (stolene is plural → grønne)
Hun vasket gulvet rent.
She washed the floor clean. (gulvet neuter → rent)
Compare the three: rød (common-gender door), rødt (neuter house), grønne (plural chairs). The adjective tracks the object's gender and number. This is invisible to an English speaker, because English "red" / "clean" / "green" never inflect — and it is the single most likely place to slip up. Treat the object–adjective pair as a tiny copula clause ("the house [is] red") and inflect the adjective as you would there.
A subset of resultatives uses a particle rather than an adjective — igjen (shut), opp (up), i stykker (to pieces). These don't inflect:
Hun slo døra igjen så det smalt.
She slammed the door shut so it banged.
Depictives: a state during the action
A depictive small clause looks similar but means something different: it describes the state the object (or subject) is already in while the action happens, not a state caused by it:
Han spiste kjøttet rått.
He ate the meat raw. (the meat was raw as he ate it)
Vi drikker hvitvinen kald.
We drink the white wine cold. (it's cold while we drink it)
The difference from a resultative is causation. Drakk koppen tom (resultative) = the drinking made the cup empty. Spiste kjøttet rått (depictive) = the meat was already raw during the eating. The same agreement rule applies — rått is neuter to match kjøttet, kald(t) matches the wine — so the inflection drill is identical.
Perception verbs + bare infinitive
Verbs of perception — se (see), høre (hear), kjenne (feel), merke (notice) — take a small clause whose predicate is a bare infinitive: object + infinitive with no å. This is the accusative-and-infinitive (AcI) pattern, and it matches English "see him fall," "hear her sing" exactly:
Jeg så ham komme gående nedover gata.
I saw him coming / come walking down the street.
Vi hørte henne synge i dusjen.
We heard her singing in the shower.
Jeg kjente hjertet slå raskere.
I felt my heart beat faster.
The critical point is bare infinitive: se ham komme, never se ham å komme. English speakers reliably over-insert til å or å here, because their model is the controlled infinitive (be ham om å komme "ask him to come"). Perception verbs are not control verbs — they take a small clause — so the infinitive marker is wrong. You can also add a directional particle: så ham komme inn ("saw him come in").
The consider-class and finne
A third family — anse (consider), finne (find), kalle (call), velge (choose/elect), gjøre (make/render) — takes an object plus a predicate naming a property or role. Some take a bare predicate, some take som ("as"), some take til ("to/as a"):
Vi anser ham som kompetent.
We consider him competent.
Jeg fant døra åpen da jeg kom hjem.
I found the door open when I got home.
Nyheten gjorde ham glad.
The news made him glad / happy.
De valgte henne til leder.
They elected her (as) leader.
Note the splits. Anse takes som (anser ham *som kompetent); *velge takes til when the predicate is a role/noun (valgte henne *til leder); *gjøre and finne take a bare adjective that agrees (gjorde ham glad, gjorde dem glade in the plural). There is no single rule that predicts which verb takes som, til, or nothing — this is a memorise-the-verb situation, and pretending otherwise would mislead you. Learn the frame with each verb.
Common Mistakes
❌ Jeg så ham å komme nedover gata.
Incorrect — inserting the infinitive marker å after a perception verb.
✅ Jeg så ham komme nedover gata.
I saw him coming down the street.
Perception verbs take a bare infinitive. The å belongs to control verbs, not to se / høre / kjenne.
❌ Vi malte huset rød.
Incorrect — adjective fails to agree with the neuter object 'huset.'
✅ Vi malte huset rødt.
We painted the house red.
The resultative adjective agrees with the object: neuter huset → rødt. Run the "huset er _" test to catch the ending.
❌ Vi malte stolene grønn.
Incorrect — singular adjective with a plural object.
✅ Vi malte stolene grønne.
We painted the chairs green.
Plural object stolene forces the plural adjective grønne. English keeps "green" invariant; Norwegian does not.
❌ Vi anser ham kompetent.
Incorrect — 'anse' requires 'som' before the predicate.
✅ Vi anser ham som kompetent.
We consider him competent.
Anse is a som-verb. The frame is fixed and must be learned with the verb; gjøre and finne, by contrast, take a bare agreeing adjective.
❌ De valgte henne leder.
Incorrect — 'velge' takes 'til' before a role noun.
✅ De valgte henne til leder.
They elected her leader.
When the predicate is a role, velge selects til. There is no logical shortcut for which verb takes which linker — anse/som, velge/til, gjøre/bare adjective — so build a small list and memorise it.
Key Takeaways
- A small clause is a subject + predicate with no finite verb; Norwegian uses it for resultatives, depictives, perception complements, and consider-class predicates.
- Resultatives and depictives inflect: the predicate adjective agrees with the object in gender and number (huset rødt, stolene grønne). Test with "object + er + adjective."
- Perception verbs take a bare infinitive (så ham komme), with no å — unlike control verbs.
- The consider-class is lexically idiosyncratic: anse
- som, velge
- til, gjøre/finne
- agreeing adjective. Learn the linker with each verb.
- til, gjøre/finne
- som, velge
Now practice Norwegian
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Infinitive Clauses and ControlB2 — Infinitive clauses with their own structure — the for…å frame that gives the infinitive an explicit subject, subject vs object control, the perfect infinitive (å ha + supine), and the bare-infinitive perception/causative construction (jeg så ham gå).
- Causatives: få noen til å, la, and få noe gjortB2 — How Norwegian builds 'make/get someone to do' (få … til å), 'let someone do' (la + bare infinitive), and 'have something done' (få + object + participle) — and why the til å is the trap.
- Long-Distance Extraction and IslandsC1 — How Norwegian moves question words and topics out of embedded — and even relative — clauses, permitting extractions that are sharply ungrammatical in English.