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Alvorens, door, in plaats van, na, zonder
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English version by Bieneke Berendsen :: other languages
I will simply repeat what I said on the previous page: The words door, na, alvorens, om, in plaats van and zonder can mark the beginning of a short subclause. If they do, the subclause always contains a "te + infinitive" construction. You can read more about this under Internal link short subclauses.

The word 'om' is a special case and was discussed on the previous page. We will now look at alvorens, door, in plaats van, na and zonder.

alvorens
prior to 		door
by		 in plaats van
instead of 		na
after		 zonder
without


Alvorens, door, in plaats van, and zonder

The construction is very simple: After the prepositions mentioned above follows 'te' + infinitive.

Alvorens te beginnen, moet men de stekker in het stopcontact steken. Prior to starting (on it), one has to put the plug in the socket.
Door elke ochtend een half uurtje te lopen, zag hij er tien jaar jonger uit. By walking ten minutes every morning, he looked ten years younger.
In plaats van te helpen, maakten ze het hem juist moeilijker. Instead of helping (out), they just made it more difficult for him.
Ze staken de straat over zonder uit te kijken. They crossed the street without looking out.


Na

A short subclause that begins with na always has a  perfect tense. This means that we are dealing with a 'te + infinitive + past participle' construction. See also  past participle.

In other words, we do not use the construction 'after dining with our neighbours', but only 'after having dined with our neighbours'.

De timmerman kwam thuis na daar te hebben gewerkt. The carpenter came home after having worked there.
Na een uur te hebben rondgelopen, gingen we.. After having walked around for an hour, we went... (lit)
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