Breakdown of Vill kunden ha den bakkammade stilen?
ha
to have
vilja
to want to
den
the (with en-words)
kunden
the customer
Questions & Answers about Vill kunden ha den bakkammade stilen?
Why is the particle bak attached to the front of kammade?
This is the core rule of obligatory prefixing! The original phrasal verb is kamma bak (to comb back). However, when you turn a phrasal verb into a past participle to use as an adjective (meaning "combed-back"), you cannot leave the words separate. You must move the particle to the front to form a single compound word: bakkammad.
If I used it as a regular verb in a sentence, would bak still be a prefix?
Usually no. As an active verb, the verb and particle stay separated and the particle gets the stress. For example: Han kammar bak håret (He combs back his hair). It is specifically the transformation into a participle adjective that forces them to merge into one word.
Why does bakkammad become bakkammade here? Shouldn't definite adjectives end in -a?
You are right that most regular adjectives take an -a ending in the definite form (for example, den snygga stilen). But past participles ending in -ad are a strict exception: they always take -e for their definite and plural forms. Hence, we get den bakkammade stilen.
Why do we need both den and the -en ending on stilen?