Page:A simplified grammar of the Danish language.djvu/65

Rh they are followed by an objective; as, Det er mig, 'It is I (me);' Det bliver dig! 'It must be you (thee)!'

The defective auxiliaries skulle, ville, burde, turde, lade, are followed immediately by an infinitive present, without the intervention of at, 'to;' as, Jeg..., skal..., vil, or burde komme, 'I shall, will, or ought to come;' Hun turde ikke tale, 'She did not dare to speak;' Lad ham gå i Fred, 'Let him go in peace.' The at is similarly dispended with after verbs which express a function of the senses; as, Jeg hörte Barnet skrige, jeg så ham falde, jeg fölte ham slippe fra mine Hænder, 'I heard the child cry,' 'I saw him fall,' 'I felt him slip out of my hands.'

All active verbs may be put in a passive form by the transposition of the subject and the object, the former being in that case governed by a preposition; as, Jægeren skyder Haren, 'The huntsman shoots the hare;' Haren skydes af Jægeren, 'The hare is shot by the huntsman.'

A passive sense may be imparted to an active verb by the use of the auxiliary at blive, 'to be;' as, jeg elsker, 'I love;' jeg bliver elsket, 'I am loved,' (instead of jeg elskes).

The s, which now forms the distinctive characteristic of the passive form in Dano-Norwegian verbs, is a survival of the Old Northern st, which represented the still older affix sk, contracted from sik, modern sig, which is the reflective pronoun 'self.'

Deponents, which are often defective, and must always be conjugated with at have, 'to have,' differ from passives, with which they otherwise agree, by requiring that the participle past shall end in ts; as, Det lykkets Majoren