Breakdown of Mótmælandinn hafði gagnrýnt hræsnina.
hafa
to have
gagnrýna
to criticize
mótmælandinn
the protester
hræsnin
the hypocrisy
Questions & Answers about Mótmælandinn hafði gagnrýnt hræsnina.
How would we rewrite this sentence to say 'What the protester had criticized was the hypocrisy' using this lesson's grammar?
You would use the abstract pseudo-cleft structure: Það sem mótmælandinn hafði gagnrýnt var hræsnin. Notice that hræsnin (the hypocrisy) shifts to the nominative case here because it is now the subject complement following var (was), rather than the direct object of the verb.
What type of noun is mótmælandinn, and why is it useful to recognize its ending?
Mótmælandi (protester) is a masculine noun formed from the present participle of the verb mótmæla (to protest). Nouns ending in -andi usually refer to a person performing an action. They are very straightforward because their singular declension is simple: they stay exactly the same (mótmælandi) in the accusative, dative, and genitive cases. The -nn here is simply the nominative definite article.
Hræsni ends in -i. Why does it take the feminine accusative definite article -na to become hræsnina?
While many nouns ending in -i are masculine or neuter, hræsni belongs to a specific group of abstract feminine nouns (like gleði or lygi) that end in -i. These nouns do not change their core ending in the singular cases. Since the verb gagnrýna governs the accusative case, we just attach the feminine accusative definite article -na to the base word.
Does the verb form gagnrýnt change depending on the gender of the protester or the object?
No. Because it follows the auxiliary verb hafa (here as hafði) to form the past perfect tense, gagnrýnt is in the supine form (sagnbót). The supine form is invariable, meaning it looks exactly like the neuter singular nominative of the past participle, but it will never change to agree with the subject or the object.
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