Grammatica - loco

8
Pronouns
84
8.4
8.4.1
Demonstrative pronouns
Aanwijzende voornaamwoorden
The demonstratives deze/dit and die/dat (see 6.1) can also be used
pronominally just as ‘this/these’ and ‘that/those’ can be in English (although
we usually say ‘this one’, ‘these ones’ etc. in English):
Die stoel was duur maar deze was erg goedkoop.
That chair was expensive but this one was very cheap.
Dat (referring to boek) heb ik gisteren gekocht.
I bought that (one) yesterday.
In very formal style an archaic genitive form of the demonstrative still
occurs, e.g. schrijver dezes ‘the author (of this document)’ (see chapter 6).
Nadien ‘afterwards’ (literally ‘after that’), voordien ‘before’ (literally ‘before
that’) and indien ‘if’ (literally ‘in that [case]’) preserve archaic dative forms
of die, but these are no longer felt to be such (see 10.3.21.1, 10.3.21.4
and 12.2.1.5 respectively).
8.4.2
There is also a pronominal usage of dit and dat (compare also het, 8.1.2.3
(c)) which differs greatly from English: dit and dat (and het) can be followed
by a plural form of zijn (as well as blijken, blijven, lijken, schijnen and
worden) and can refer to a plural quantity in which case they replace English
‘they’, ‘these’ and ‘those’:
Dat zijn Italianen.
They are Italians.
Dat (dit) zijn de enige vorken die ik heb kunnen vinden.
Those (these) are the only forks I was able to find.
As with het (see 8.1.2.3 (c)), dit and dat can only be used in this way if
the complement following zijn etc. is a noun or an adjective used as a
noun; otherwise zij or die are used:
Ze (die) zijn erg duur.
They are very expensive.