Breakdown of Að loknum blaðamannafundi mun stjórnin senda út yfirlýsinguna.
út
out (motion outwards)
senda
to send
munu
will
að
to, towards
stjórnin
the government, the board
lokinn
concluded
blaðamannafundurinn
the press conference
yfirlýsingin
the statement
Questions & Answers about Að loknum blaðamannafundi mun stjórnin senda út yfirlýsinguna.
Why use að loknum blaðamannafundi instead of simply eftir blaðamannafund?
This is the Dative Absolute construction, which uses að plus a past participle and a noun both in the dative case. It means the same thing as eftir (after), but it sounds much more formal and professional. It is commonly used in news, official announcements, and literature to describe an action that must be completed before the next one begins.
How do the words in the phrase að loknum blaðamannafundi match up grammatically?
In a Dative Absolute phrase, the preposition að forces both the past participle (loknum) and the noun (blaðamannafundi) into the dative case. They must also agree in gender and number. Since blaðamannafundur is a masculine singular noun, the past participle of ljúka (to finish) takes the masculine singular dative form loknum. Notice that the participle typically comes before the noun in this construction.
Why does the verb mun come before the subject stjórnin?
This is a classic example of the V2 (verb-second) rule. The entire Dative Absolute phrase Að loknum blaðamannafundi acts as a single block of time information occupying the first position in the sentence. Therefore, the finite verb mun takes the mandatory second position, pushing the subject stjórnin into the third position.
Could we change the word order to senda yfirlýsinguna út?
Yes, that is perfectly fine. Senda út is a phrasal verb, and when the object is a full noun like yfirlýsinguna (the statement), the directional particle út can go either before or after the object. However, if the object were a pronoun like hana (it), it would have to go in the middle: senda hana út.
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