Breakdown of De pers blijft vragen stellen over de crisis.
de vraag
the question
blijven
to stay
over
about
stellen
to pose (a question)
de pers
the press
de crisis
the crisis
Questions & Answers about De pers blijft vragen stellen over de crisis.
Why does Dutch use stellen here instead of vragen to mean "asking"?
While the verb for "to ask" is vragen, the standard Dutch expression for "to ask a question" is een vraag stellen (literally: "to put/place a question"). Saying vragen vragen for "asking questions" would sound repetitive and unnatural to a native speaker.
How does the construction blijft ... stellen work in this sentence?
The verb blijven (literally "to stay" or "to remain") combined with an infinitive is the standard way to express that someone "keeps doing" an action. Blijft acts as the conjugated verb in the second position, pushing the infinitive stellen to the end of the core clause.
Why is over de crisis placed after the infinitive stellen? I thought infinitives always go at the very end.
While verbs usually close the sentence in Dutch, prepositional phrases (like over de crisis) are a major exception. They can often be placed after the final verb(s) to make the sentence feel less cluttered. You could grammatically say De pers blijft vragen over de crisis stellen, but putting the prepositional phrase at the very end flows much better.
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