Breakdown of In de loop van de dag werd de winnaar benoemd.
in
in
de dag
the day
worden
to become
van
from (possession, starting point) / made of
Questions & Answers about In de loop van de dag werd de winnaar benoemd.
The current lesson is about genitive relics. Why does this sentence use van de dag instead of a formal genitive form like we see in in de loop der tijd?
While the phrase in de loop... (in the course of...) often triggers a genitive relic with abstract nouns or plurals (like in de loop der tijd or in de loop der jaren), it sounds highly unnatural to use it with a specific, everyday singular noun like de dag. For standard, concrete nouns, Dutch sticks to the modern van de construction.
Why do we use werd (from worden) here instead of was to mean "was appointed"?
This is the dynamic passive voice, which describes the actual event of the appointment taking place. In Dutch, an action being done to the subject uses worden (or its past tense werd). If you used was (from zijn), it would be the static passive, describing the state of the winner after the action was already entirely completed.
Why does the verb werd come before the subject de winnaar?
This is due to inversion. Because the sentence starts with the long prepositional time phrase In de loop van de dag, the subject and the conjugated verb must swap places so that the verb werd stays in the strict second position of the sentence.
What is the difference between benoemd and a more common word for choosing, like ?