Breakdown of Судья поверил адвокату, после того как посмотрел доказательства.
посмотреть
to watch (perfective) / to look at (perfective)
поверить
to believe (perfective)
после того как
after (conjunction)
адвокат
the lawyer
доказательство
the evidence
судья
the judge
Questions & Answers about Судья поверил адвокату, после того как посмотрел доказательства.
How does the phrase после того как work in this sentence?
It acts as a conjunction connecting the main action (поверил) to the action that happened first (посмотрел). Notice that the comma comes right before после, keeping the entire phrase после того как together in this specific sentence. It literally translates to 'after that how'.
Why is адвокат in the Dative case (адвокату) instead of the Accusative?
The verb верить (and its perfective form поверить) requires the Dative case for the person you believe. You are essentially giving your trust 'to' the lawyer, so адвокат becomes адвокату.
Why doesn't the second part of the sentence say он посмотрел (he looked)?
In Russian, when the subject of the subordinate clause (the person who looked) is the exact same as the subject of the main clause (the judge), you can safely drop the pronoun. It sounds much more natural to just use the verb посмотрел by itself here without repeating он.
Судья ends in -я like a feminine noun, so why is the verb поверил in the masculine form?
Судья (judge) is a noun that ends in -я but grammatically refers to a person's role or profession. If the specific judge being talked about is male, the verb takes the masculine past tense поверил. It declines like a feminine noun but takes masculine verbs and adjectives when referring to a man.
English uses the singular word 'evidence', but why is доказательства plural?
In English, 'evidence' is an uncountable mass noun, but in Russian, доказательство is countable (meaning 'a proof' or 'a piece of evidence'). Because the judge looked at a collection of proofs, the plural form доказательства is used here in the Accusative case.
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