Tom heeft zijn gordel niet mogen losmaken totdat het lampje uitging.

Tom was not allowed to unbuckle his seat belt until the light went off.

Breakdown of Tom heeft zijn gordel niet mogen losmaken totdat het lampje uitging.

• Tom: Tom
• hebben: to have
• niet: not
• zijn: his

Questions & Answers about Tom heeft zijn gordel niet mogen losmaken totdat het lampje uitging.

Why is the sentence in the perfect tense heeft … mogen losmaken rather than using the present tense modal mag?

Because the speaker describes a past situation. Dutch uses the perfect tense with the auxiliary hebben (here heeft) plus infinitives to talk about past actions or permissions. When you combine a modal verb like mogen with another verb, both infinitives go to the end of the clause:

• heeft (auxiliary)
• mogen (modal infinitive)
• losmaken (main infinitive)

So Tom heeft zijn gordel niet mogen losmaken literally means “Tom has not been allowed to unfasten his belt,” referring to something that happened (or didn’t happen) in the past.

Why is the negation niet placed before mogen instead of before losmaken or at the very end?

In Dutch, niet usually precedes the part of the sentence you want to negate:

• niet mogen = not being allowed
• niet losmaken = not unfastening (the act itself)

Putting niet before mogen clarifies that the permission was denied. If you said Tom heeft zijn gordel mogen niet losmaken, it would be ungrammatical. And if you wrote Tom heeft zijn gordel niet losgemaakt, you’d simply say “Tom did not unfasten his belt,” with no comment on permission.

What does losmaken mean, and could I use another verb here?