One of the most difficult things for learners of Danish to “wrap their heads around” is a rule in main clauses, that changes the position of the verb under certain conditions. This is sometimes referred to as “inversion”. But a simpler way of looking at it is to say, that any sentence in Danish must have the verb in the second position (with the exception of yes-no-questions and imperatives). This is illustrated in (1).
1)
a. Jeg tager bussen nu >>>. nu tager jeg bussen
b. Vi spiser kylling om lørdagen >>> om lørdagen spiser vi kylling
c. Du får 500 kr hvis du hjælper mig >>> hvis du hjælper mig, får du 500 kr
d. Vi drikker mest kaffe om morgenen >>> kaffe drikker vi mest om morgenen
In these examples, the first version is the so-called “unmarked” one, the normal one, if you will, while in the second version, some part of the sentence has been put in front and causes the verb to move up to the second position. In (1a) it is the adverb ‘nu’, in (1b) the adverbial clause ‘om lørdagen’, in (1c) it is the entire conditional clause ‘hvis du hjælper mig’ while in (1d) the object noun ‘kaffe’ is fronted.
In terms of sentence structure, the promotion of the verb to the second position expresses, that the structure is unusual and does not follow the normal pattern. But what is the communicative function of this fronting?
I usually tell my students, that fronting is used for either focus or for topic continuity.
Focus could be like (1a) where the second sentence ‘nu tager jeg bussen’ focuses on the fact, that the action is just about to take place, and that this is significant to the conversation or the situation. The same could be said of (1c) where the speaker wants to emphasise the condition upon which the money will be paid.
Topic continuity indicates that some part of the sentence is a continuation of what was just said in the previous part of the conversation. So in (1b) we might imagine, that someone just asked the question ‘Hvad plejer I at få at spise om lørdagen?’ and then the topicality of the adverbial clause ‘om lørdagen’ causes the fronting. Likewise in (1d) someone might just have asked something like ‘Drikker du mest te eller kaffe om eftermiddagen?’ and then the object ‘kaffe’ is fronted, because it is the topic of conversation. While this fronting is not obligatory in Danish, it is used perhaps more often than not, when speakers feel the need to emphasise some aspect of a sentence. And as we have seen the options are many: adverbs, adverbial clauses, subordinate clauses (conditionals, adverbials, relative clauses, object clauses), and object nouns or pronouns.
There are even cases with object pronouns, where the fronted version is the preferred one (2a), or even the only possible one (2b-c).
2)
a. Jeg har lige set en film med Paprika Steen. Hende kender jeg ikke.
b. Du skulle rejse med mig til Australien. Det kan jeg ikke.
c. Spiller du skak? Ja, det gør jeg.
In (2a) there are grammatically three options: ‘jeg kender hende ikke / jeg kender ikke hende / hende kender jeg ikke’ but in this context, the last option is by far the most common and preferred.
In (2b-c) the pronoun ‘det’ replaces (references) the entire sentence that came before and its function is to avoid unnecessary repetition. In such cases this structure is the only option as e.g. ‘*Jeg kan det ikke’ is not a correct alternative to (2b).