Breakdown of Vad påstod talaren att huvudpoängen var?
vara
to be
vad
what
att
that
påstå
to claim
talaren
the speaker (person)
huvudpoängen
the main point
Questions & Answers about Vad påstod talaren att huvudpoängen var?
How does "sentence intertwining" (satsfläta) work with vad in this sentence?
The question word vad belongs logically to the subordinate clause (the speaker claimed that the main point was what). However, to form the question, Swedish extracts vad and moves it all the way to the front of the main clause. This "weaves" the two clauses together into a single overall question.
Why is the word order påstod talaren instead of talaren påstod?
This is the V2 (verb-second) rule in action. Because the extracted word vad occupies the very first position in the main clause, the main verb påstod must take the second position. This forces the subject talaren into the third position.
Why isn't there a som after vad? I thought intertwined sentences often needed one.
You only add a dummy som when the extracted question word acts as the subject of the subordinate clause (for example: Vem tror du som ringde?). In our sentence, the subject of the subordinate clause is huvudpoängen, not vad. Since vad is just the complement, we leave som out.
Does extracting vad change the word order in the rest of the att-clause?
No, the subordinate clause keeps its standard subclause word order: subject (huvudpoängen) followed by the verb (var). The spot at the end of the sentence where the complement (vad) would normally sit is simply left empty.
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