Breakdown of Met een verdrietige blik en trillende lippen staat het kind daar.
een
a/an
en
and
het kind
the child
daar
there
met
with
verdrietig
sad
staan
to stand
trillen
to vibrate
de blik
the gaze
de lip
the lip
Questions & Answers about Met een verdrietige blik en trillende lippen staat het kind daar.
How does the met construction function here, and why is trillende used instead of a normal adjective?
The phrase starting with met describes the accompanying circumstance - the physical state of the child while standing. Trillende is the present participle of trillen (to tremble) used as an adjective. Adding the -e ending allows it to describe the plural noun lippen, acting just like a normal adjective.
Why is the verb staat placed before the subject het kind?
Because the sentence begins with the long prepositional phrase Met een verdrietige blik en trillende lippen. In Dutch, any time a sentence starts with something other than the subject, the conjugated verb must immediately follow it in the second position (the V2 rule). Therefore, the verb staat comes right before het kind.
Why does verdrietig get an -e ending in een verdrietige blik?
The word blik (gaze or look) is a de-word (de blik). When you use the indefinite article een with a de-word, the adjective before it must take the -e ending. If it were a het-word, the adjective would remain verdrietig.
I learned that blik means a tin can. Why does it mean gaze here?
The noun blik has two common meanings that take different grammatical genders. As a de-word (de blik), it means a look, gaze, or glance. As a het-word (het blik), it means tin metal or a tin can. Here, the context of a face and the -e ending on verdrietige tell us it is the de-word meaning a gaze.
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