Breakdown of Had de speler niet getrapt, dan had de scheidsrechter het doelpunt niet afgekeurd.
niet
not
hebben
to have
dan
then
de speler
the player
Questions & Answers about Had de speler niet getrapt, dan had de scheidsrechter het doelpunt niet afgekeurd.
Why does the second clause use had ... afgekeurd instead of zou hebben afgekeurd for "would have disallowed"?
This is the Double Past Perfect structure taught in this lesson. For past situations that didn't actually happen (past counterfactuals), Dutch often skips zouden entirely. Instead of using the conditional (zou ... hebben afgekeurd), you can simply use the past perfect (had ... afgekeurd) in both the condition clause and the result clause. It sounds very natural and concise.
Where is the word for "if" (als) at the beginning of the sentence?
It was dropped! Just like in English ("Had the player not kicked..."), Dutch can omit als by putting the conjugated verb first (Had de speler...). If you wanted to keep als, the clause would use standard subclause word order: Als de speler niet had getrapt, ...
Why does the second half of the sentence start with dan, and how does it affect the word order?
Dan (then) is highly recommended to introduce the "result" clause when you have dropped als from the condition clause. Because dan counts as the first element in this main clause, the conjugated verb (had) must come immediately after it to satisfy the verb-second (V2) rule: ... dan had de scheidsrechter ...
Why is niet placed right before afgekeurd at the end?