Breakdown of Bakarinn verður búinn að hnoða deigið snemma.
að
to (infinitive marker)
snemma
early
verða
to become; will be
bakarinn
the baker
Questions & Answers about Bakarinn verður búinn að hnoða deigið snemma.
How does the future completion ('will have kneaded') work in this sentence?
Icelandic doesn't use the verb 'to have' for this. Instead, it uses the future of 'to be' (verða), followed by the adjective búinn ('finished'), the infinitive marker að, and the main verb in the infinitive. So it literally translates to 'The baker will become finished to knead'.
Why is búinn in the masculine form here?
In the vera/verða búinn að construction, the word búinn acts like an adjective and must agree with the subject in gender, number, and case. Since bakarinn (the baker) is a masculine singular nominative noun, we use the masculine singular nominative form búinn (rather than the feminine búin or neuter búið).
Could I say 'Bakarinn mun hafa hnoðað' instead?
Technically yes, as munu hafa plus the past participle also forms a future perfect. However, in everyday spoken Icelandic, the verða búinn að construction is much more natural and common for expressing that an action will be completed by a certain point in the future.
What case does the verb hnoða (to knead) assign to its object, deigið?
It takes the accusative case. Deig (dough) is a neuter noun, and its accusative definite form is deigið, which happens to look exactly the same as its nominative form.