Breakdown of Det er tankevækkende at læse hendes historie.
være
to be
det
it (neuter)
læse
to read
hendes
her
historien
the story
at
to
tankevækkende
thought-provoking
Questions & Answers about Det er tankevækkende at læse hendes historie.
How does object incorporation work in the word tankevækkende?
It combines the noun tanke (thought) with the present participle of at vække (to wake/arouse), which is vækkende. Instead of using a clunky phrase like noget, der vækker tanker (something that wakes thoughts), Danish fuses the object and the participle into a single, elegant adjective.
Is the noun tanke singular or plural when incorporated into the participle?
It is in its uninflected root form, which looks like the singular. Even though a thought-provoking story might provoke many thoughts (tanker), object incorporation almost always strips the noun down to its barest root form: tanke-.
Why doesn't tankevækkende get a -t ending to agree with the neuter subject Det?
Present participles ending in -ende are invariable when used as adjectives. This means they never take a -t for neuter subjects or an -e for definite/plural subjects. It stays tankevækkende no matter what it describes.
Why do we use hendes (her) here instead of the reflexive possessive sin?
The reflexive sin/sit/sine is only used when the object belongs to the grammatical subject of the clause (in the 3rd person). Here, the grammatical subject is the dummy pronoun Det (representing the act of reading). Because the story doesn't belong to Det, we must use the non-reflexive hendes.
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