Breakdown of Igår var lådan tom. Vi hade ingenting, absolut inget värdeföremål.
vara
to be
vi
we
ha
to have
igår
yesterday
Questions & Answers about Igår var lådan tom. Vi hade ingenting, absolut inget värdeföremål.
Why does the sentence use both ingenting and inget? Could I swap them?
No, they serve different roles here. ingenting is exclusively a standalone pronoun meaning "nothing". inget acts as a determiner here, meaning it must attach to a noun to mean "no [noun]". You can see this because inget is placed directly in front of the noun värdeföremål.
If inget is a dual-purpose form, could I have said Vi hade inget instead of Vi hade ingenting in the first half?
Yes! Because inget is dual-purpose, it can act as a standalone pronoun meaning "nothing", just like ingenting. However, ingenting is often preferred when you want to strongly stress the idea of "nothing" as a standalone concept, which fits nicely with the emphatic tone of this sentence.
Could I use ingenting in the second half, like absolut ingenting värdeföremål?
No, that would be incorrect. Because ingenting is exclusively nominal (it acts as a noun on its own), it cannot be used as an adjective or determiner to modify another noun. You must use inget (or ingen for en-words) when placing it directly before a noun.
Why is it var lådan instead of lådan var in the first sentence?