# Heb een CD er bij gedaan.



## elroy

A Dutch friend sent me a letter in which she had enclosed a CD.

She wrote, "Heb een CD er bij gedaan." 

What does this "er" refer to?  The letter?  

The reason I ask is that she did not mention the letter before this sentence.  Is that because it's just understood that she's talking about the letter?

Thanks!


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## ALOV

Exactly, 'erbij' or 'er...bij' means something is added somewhere (or to something else). 
I should say 'Ik heb er een CD bij gedaan/gestopt'.


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## elroy

Thanks, Alov. So is it common just to say "er" without an explicit antecedent?


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## jester.

I think this is very similar to German:

Ich habe eine CD *da*zu getan.

Does this ring a bell, elroy?


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## Salmantina

elroy said:


> Thanks, Alov. So is it common just to say "er" without an explicit antecedent?


 
Hi.

Yes, we do that a lot. I´m studying translation and one time, out text book dedicated an entire page to all the possibilities there are to translate it. What it means is often "left in the middle". It´s not very clear. Using this word allows you to leave out a whole bunch of other things in a sentence, because the context is often clear enough. But other language do often require some kind of specification in these situations. I made up this graph. I hope it explains things. To make things even more complicated, it shows that "er" can also be combined with other words  
*er**1* (personal pronoun.)
*1* from such things or persons. (usually in colloquial Dutch)

*er**2* (adverb)
*1* there, on a certain place 
*2* undetermined significance, without a certain place in mind

*er·aan* (adverb)
*1* attached to what has been mentioned

*er·ach·ter* (adverb)
*1* behind what has been mentioned

*er·af* (adverb)
*1* away from what has been mentioned

*er·bij* (adverb)
*1* with what has been mentioned

*er·bo·ven* (adverb)
*1* above/ over what has been mentioned


Greetings


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## elroy

jester. said:


> Ich habe eine CD *da*zu getan.


 Uh, I'm not sure I would have written this without a previous reference to what "da" refers to.

I know what the sentence means; what surprised me was that "er" seemed to come out of nowhere and I had been under the impression that in order to use it in a sentence like this one you would have had to mention its antecedent previously.  

So I guess this phenomenon exists in German too.  Would you write something like this? 

"Wie lange bist Du noch in Deutschland?  Hoffe, Dich bald zu sehen!  Habe eine CD dazu getan für Dich.  Hoffentlich gefällt sie Dir." 

_(This is the translation of the sentences preceding and following the sentence in the title.)_


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## jester.

elroy said:


> So I guess this phenomenon exists in German too.  Would you write something like this?
> 
> "Wie lange bist Du noch in Deutschland?  Hoffe, Dich bald zu sehen!  Habe eine CD dazu getan für Dich.  Hoffentlich gefällt sie Dir."



Hmmm.... probably not. But I think that, grammatically, this is the same, or at least it is very similar.


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## elroy

jester. said:


> Hmmm.... probably not. But I think that, grammatically, this is the same, or at least it is very similar.


 Yes, it is.  My problem was not with the grammar of the sentence or the meaning.  As I said, it was with the fact that the "er" was used without an explicit antecedent.  

Maybe this is another one of those differences between German and Dutch.


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## Lugubert

'Er' is quite tricky to us foreigners. This adverb is found in *FIVE *different functions.
I. 'Formal' subject: Er is iemand aan de deur 'There's somebody at the door'.
II. Place reference: Ken je Amsterdam? - Ik heb er gewoond. 'Do you know A'dam? - I have lived there.'
III. In combination with a preposition: Je zit erop 'You sit on it'.
IV. In combination with a numeral: Ik heb er vier 'I have five (of those)'.
V. Subject in a passive clause: Er werd tot laat in de nacht gedanst 'There was dancing until late in the night'. (Another nice parallell to German and Swedish, by the way: Es wurde bis spät in die (der?) Nacht getanzt./Det dansades till sent in på natten.) An interesting case of having to fill the sentence "slot" #1, reserved for the subject.


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## elroy

Surprisingly (?), I don't have too many problems with "er."  It was immediately obvious to me that the "er" in this sentence was of the third type you list.  As I said, my problem was with the missing antecedent.


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## jippie

Elroy, I think you're right. It is uncommon / not correct to use the 'er' without antecedent. There's no difference here with German. It probably has to do with the fact that we Dutch people are getting very lazy in our use of the language... In this case you understand what is meant because the CD is physically in the letter, and therefor it is written that way...


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## ALOV

I agree, using 'er' in combination with a proposition (in, op, naast, van, bij etc), one normally expects an antecedent. The only reason it can see, is the object refered to is actually 'present'.
Idem: Someone serving me soup can say 'Wil je er brood bij?' without having mentionned the soup before.


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## elroy

Thanks, Jippie and Alov, for your further commentary.  It makes a lot more sense now.


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