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Questions & Answers about In de kroeg drinkt niemand een cocktail.
How would you convert this active sentence into a natural-sounding passive sentence?
To make it passive, the direct object (een cocktail) becomes the subject: Een cocktail wordt in de kroeg door niemand gedronken. However, because een cocktail is an indefinite subject, Dutch strongly prefers using the dummy subject er at the start: Er wordt in de kroeg door niemand een cocktail gedronken.
The current lesson is about passive voice restrictions on indirect objects. How does that apply here?
It actually doesn't, because this sentence has no indirect object! It only has a direct object (een cocktail). However, it serves as a good baseline: remember that while direct objects can easily become the subject of a worden passive sentence, indirect objects (like 'me' in 'He gave me a drink') generally cannot do this in Dutch, unlike in English.
Could I use geen instead of niemand to express this same meaning?
Why is the verb drinkt placed before the subject niemand?