VVV

a. Negation in longer sentences

As covered in Chapter 7, niet normally goes right before whatever it negates — but the V2 rule always wins. Niet can sit in front of a verb, an adverb, or an adjective — but never in front of the finite verb.

In longer sentences with two verbs (left / middle / right parts), the negation usually concerns the verb, so niet most commonly sits between the middle and right parts, right before the non-finite verb:

Sometimes niet instead goes before time, place, manner, or the direct object — to stress that it's that being negated, not the verb itself:

b. Inversion

We know a sentence breaks into Left (subject + finite verb), Middle (time, manner), and Right (place, second verb):

That's the standard order — but "time" or "place" can also move to the very front of the sentence. When they do, the subject and finite verb swap places (inversion):

c. The many uses of "er"

Er often stands in for something already mentioned, or about to be:¹

Sometimes er acts as a placeholder subject, with the real (non-specific, undefined) subject following later — and this also triggers inversion:

1. More on "er": dutchgrammar.com