Breakdown of Hvíta glerið bræðir hún í ofni.
hún
she
í
in / into / to (before the hour, in telling time) / per (in frequency expressions)
hvítur
white
glerið
the glass (material)
ofninn
the oven
bræða
to melt (something)
Questions & Answers about Hvíta glerið bræðir hún í ofni.
Why does the verb bræðir come before the subject hún in this sentence?
This is the V2 (verb-second) rule in action. Because the object Hvíta glerið has been moved to the front of the sentence for emphasis (topicalization), the verb must stay in the second grammatical position. This forces the subject hún to invert and move immediately after the verb.
Since Hvíta glerið is a neuter phrase, its nominative and accusative forms are identical. How can we tell it is the object and not the subject?
Grammar and context give it away. The verb bræðir needs a subject, and we have the explicitly nominative pronoun hún (she) right after it. If Hvíta glerið were the subject and hún were the object, the pronoun would have to be in the accusative case (hana), and the sentence would bizarrely mean 'The white glass melts her.'
Why is the adjective hvíta used here instead of the standard neuter form hvítt?
Because the noun glerið has the attached definite article (the -ið ending), the preceding adjective must take the weak declension. For a neuter singular noun in the accusative case, the weak adjective ending is -a.
Could I use the verb bráðna instead of bræða to say 'melt' here?
No, because they represent entirely different types of melting. Bræða is transitive, meaning someone is actively melting something else (she melts the glass). Bráðna is intransitive, used when something melts on its own, like a glacier in the sun.
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