Breakdown of Direktøren beordrer assistenten til at hente sin bil.
bilen
the car
sin
his/her/its own (common)
hente
to fetch
at
to
til
to (preposition) / for (purpose) / at (an event or occasion) / at (good at something)
direktøren
the director (of a company)
beordre
to order (to command)
assistenten
the assistant
Questions & Answers about Direktøren beordrer assistenten til at hente sin bil.
Whose car is being fetched here, the director's or the assistant's?
It is the assistant's car. In Danish, a reflexive pronoun like sin always refers back to the logical subject of its own clause. Even though Direktøren is the grammatical subject of the main sentence, the assistant is the one performing the action of the infinitive verb (at hente). Because the assistant is the logical subject of fetching the car, sin points back to the assistant.
How would we write the sentence if the director wanted his own car fetched?
You would say: Direktøren beordrer assistenten til at hente hans bil. Since the assistant is the logical subject of the fetching action, using hans (his) instead of the reflexive sin signals that the car belongs to a different male person in the context, which here would naturally be the director.
Why do we use sin here instead of sit or sine?
The reflexive pronoun must agree in gender and number with the object being possessed, not the owner. Because bil is a singular common-gender noun (an en-word), we use sin. If the object were a neuter et-word, like hus (house), it would be sit hus, and if it were plural, it would be sine biler.
Why is there a til before at hente?
The verb beordre (to order) pairs with the preposition til when specifying what someone is ordered to do. When a preposition is followed by an infinitive action in Danish, it is almost always linked with at, giving us the structure til at hente.
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