Even though this text reports on demands (look at the verb eisen) and on questions (see the verb vragen om), it only contains reported speech: it does not give the exact demand or question in speech marks (The text does not say: Ze eisen: "Geef ons meer veiligheidsmaatregelen!" or: Ze vroegen: "Mogen wij een overleg met de minister?").

It is possible to have a question or a command within a declarative sentence. This happens when direct speech is incorporated into the declarative:

A declarative always contains a >>subject and a >>finite verb. In a main clause the finite verb always occurs in second position. Any other verbal element occurs in penultimate position. In the examples above the subject occurs in the first position of the clause. However, it is quite normal in Dutch for another element to occur in first position, as in the second sentence of the example below.

By putting the phrase met deze actie in first position, the author of the text picks up the main information from the previous clause (putting the names of bullies on a notice board). The pragmatic effect is that that information is now highlighted as the topic of ‘conversation'. The syntactic effect is that the grammatical subject of the sentence has to occur somewehre else, because only one element can occur in the first position of a declarative. The next place for the subject to occur is immediately after the finite verb. This effect is called inversion (it is as if the order of subject and finite verb is turned around).

Note: when the subject is the second person pronoun (jij or je), the verb form is normally stem + t; but when jij/je follows the verb (i.e. with inversion), the verb form is just the stem:

Some sentences are not declarative in form, but have the >pragmatic effect of a declarative.

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