Breakdown of Uit het experiment moet je de waarheid kunnen afleiden.
uit
out of / from
kunnen
can
moeten
to have to, must
de waarheid
the truth
je
you (unstressed form of jij)
het experiment
the experiment
afleiden
to deduce
Questions & Answers about Uit het experiment moet je de waarheid kunnen afleiden.
Does moet mean "are required to" in this sentence?
Why does the sentence say moet je instead of je moet?
Because the sentence starts with the prepositional phrase Uit het experiment. In Dutch, whenever a main clause starts with anything other than the subject, the verb and subject swap places (this is called inversion). The conjugated verb moet must stay in the second position.
Why are there two verbs, kunnen and afleiden, stacked at the end?
When you use a conjugated modal verb like moeten, any other verbs in the clause get pushed to the end as infinitives. Here we have two: kunnen (to be able to) and afleiden (to deduce). Dutch groups these infinitives together at the very end of the sentence.
Afleiden is a separable verb (af + leiden). Why isn't it separated here?
Separable verbs only split when they act as the conjugated verb in the sentence (for example: Ik leid de waarheid af). Because moet is the conjugated verb here, afleiden is pushed to the end and remains in its full, unseparated infinitive form.
Why do we use uit at the beginning of the sentence?
The preposition uit (out of / from) pairs directly with the verb afleiden. To say you deduce something from something, Dutch uses the fixed combination iets afleiden uit iets. The phrase Uit het experiment was just moved to the front for emphasis.
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