Breakdown of Het eerste hoofdstuk is door de dichter geschreven.
zijn
to be
eerste
first (1st)
schrijven
to write
door
by (agent in a passive sentence)
het hoofdstuk
the chapter
de dichter
the poet
Questions & Answers about Het eerste hoofdstuk is door de dichter geschreven.
Why do we use door here to mean "by"?
In passive sentences, Dutch uses the preposition door to introduce the agent—the person or thing that actually performs the action. Here, it tells us that the chapter was written door de dichter (by the poet).
Does is ... geschreven mean "is written" or "has been written"?
It translates well to both! In Dutch, is geschreven shows that the writing is already finished, leaving a completed state. If the poet were writing it right now, you would use the present passive with worden: Het eerste hoofdstuk wordt door de dichter geschreven (The first chapter is being written by the poet).
Why is the verb split up, with geschreven at the very end of the sentence?
In Dutch sentences with a helping verb (like is) and a past participle (like geschreven), the past participle is pushed to the end of the clause. The phrase explaining who did it (door de dichter) must come before the past participle.
Why does eerste have an -e at the end?
Ordinal numbers like eerste (first) follow the same grammar rules as regular adjectives. Because it describes a neuter noun (hoofdstuk) and comes right after the definite article het, it gets the standard -e ending.
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