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Change in German word order. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 19 24 January 2014 at 1:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Like most Germans I often use present tense to talk about future events and add adverbs or other indicators of time to make clear I mean some future event.
"Ich glaube nicht, dass wir das bis dahin fertiggestellt haben können" sounds pretty natural to me, though I wouldn't bat an eyelid if somebody added an unstressed "werden" or changed around the word order a bit. In a way it doesn't sound like a real tense to me but rather like adding a modal particle. But hearing somebody stressing "werden" or saying "Ich glaube nicht, dass wir das bis dahin fertiggestellt gekonnt haben werden" would irritate me. I find it really hard to come up with possible sample sentence that include können as a modal verb and make sense using Futur II. (I do sometimes use Futur II in spoken German, if only to irritate people. Err, I mean, to amuse them.) In most cases it just doesn't make sense to specify that at some uncertain point in the future somebody will be able to do something, which in turn will have been finished at some specific time later on. Much easier to assume the uncertain time in the future is similar to the present, only maybe it's not this very moment, but perhaps this day or this week. Also, you have fewer verb forms to worry about. Edited by Bao on 24 January 2014 at 2:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5322 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 10 of 19 24 January 2014 at 9:23am | IP Logged | |||||
IMHO, in spoken and written German, Präsens or Futur I verb forms with future references are much more common: Ich glaube nicht, dass wir das bis dahin fertigstellen [werden].
I also had a hard time coming up with examples, and the only examples that immediately came to mind were sentences with subjunctive forms of modals. For example: a) Strong possibility/likelyhood (= it's very likely, but I'm not 100% sure): Er müsste/dürfte/sollte das [eigentlich] bis dahin fertiggestellt haben. b) Ability (= he's certainly capable of doing it, but I don't know if he'll actually do it): Er könnte das [eigentlich] bis dahin fertiggestellt haben. EDIT: There are no clear-cut differences between a) and b). Version b could also be used to indicate that the possibility existed. Edited by Doitsujin on 24 January 2014 at 9:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4033 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 11 of 19 24 January 2014 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe the German rule that the 1-3-2 order must be used ONLY for IPP and 3-2-1 ONLY for Werden will retire too, as I have read variations for both using 1-3-2/1-2-3/3-1-2/3-2-1 in other dialects. I like German dialects, maybe even a bit more than Standard. (don't tell them I said that) They are simpler too but still schwer enough to be German. http://books.google.co.th/books?id=jAiByFADxgcC&printsec=fro ntcover#v=onepage&q&f=false 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5322 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 12 of 19 24 January 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are countless papers like the one that that you linked to that perpetuate the myth of a more flexible word order in German. However, most of them, IMHO, don't reflect actual language use and rely too heavily on insufficient corpora or relatively small sample sizes.
For example, a quick Google search turned up this PDF version of a Powerpoint presentation, which claims that all of the following variants are generally acceptable:
IMHO, many Germans would probably disagree... 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 19 24 January 2014 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your sentence would fit a scenario where a company already has the contract for a commission but something unexpected came up (a delay in production, a change in the design) and they think they can't complete it in the agreed time frame. Mine would fit when two parties talk about a planned commission and the buyer wants to know if the producing company has the capacity to fill the order in time. But I didn't say that my sentence must be the most common, it's just that it wouldn't be difficult to understand or sound awkward when somebody uses it. Futur II usually does, I think its use is limited to literary style and should be used sparingly even there. And Futur II with modals ... no. Just no. As for your examples, I guess it depends on prosody. I would take an unstressed könnte for stating the possibility (but you'd have to check), but stressing könnte, adding eigenlich or schon, and exaggerating pitch seems to convey "he should be done by then, but it is rather unlikely he will finish in time and I am quite angry about it" even more strongly than when using the other modals. The Maria example, b) and f) sound affected. (I might be guilty of using that word order.) The other examples don't sound particularly wrong, even though there are other ways of expressing the same idea that sound more natural to me. Maria glaubt/erwartet, dass sie hören wird, wie Peter die Arie singt. (+ description of that aria.) But the structure of the sentence itself is what it makes hard to tell whether one option might be more natural than the other. It means: Maria is listening attentively because she expects Peter to sing a certain aria, but she is about to hear something different - somebody else singing that particular aria, Peter singing something else, Peter playing the aria on the piano, Peter making a completely different sound, somebody or something else making a completely different sound. But when you tell that tale, and you know that Maria expects one thing to happen and something different happens, then you also know what the different thing is. And when you decide to describe what Maria is experiencing you still communicate that whatever she expects, she is going to be surprised. More than that, you know exactly what is not in the final scene, and you are quite likely to stress that particular detail. This sentence, however, stresses the fact that Maria is listening and about to hear something she doesn't expect. I could imagine somebody saying such a vague sentence when describing a scene in a candid camera setting or when doing a voice description for a movie for the blind. But even then I assume that most speakers would unconsciously phrase it in a way that prepares the listener for which part of the scenario is going to be different from the expectation. So even though the options might all be viable or none of them - they are not so correct or wrong that I could make a decision based on such a sample sentence. Still, in spoken German I'd expect the speaker to leave out the 'hören' part unless it's actually important, and then I'd expect them to stress it more - Maria glaubt, dass das, was sie gleich hören wird, die Arie ist, die Peter seit Wochen jeden Tag übt (aber tatsächlich hört sie einen Heiratsantrag, oh wie romantisch!), and in written German ... I'd decide the person is an awful writer. Oh, and I could also imagine it to be part of an exercise you can find in a textbook. Edited by Bao on 24 January 2014 at 6:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 19 24 January 2014 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
From Haider's The Syntax of German (Cambridge Syntax Guides) 2010: '' In the Austrian vernacular (notably in eastern varieties and especially in Viennese varieties), IPP is used without verb inversion. The participle is just replaced by the infinitive without any change in the order of verbs: (i) dass er sie nicht fragen können/müssen/lassen hätte that he her not ask can/must/let had-subjunctive '' Edited by Medulin on 24 January 2014 at 4:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw1 Newbie Australia Joined 4033 days ago 30 posts - 35 votes | Message 15 of 19 24 January 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I get frequent contradictions from different German natives on how one should say things. Is the IPP really seldom? My book doesn't say how frequently it is used. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 16 of 19 24 January 2014 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
It probably depends on where you are and who you talk to most of the time. I certainly use it, and I've been stared at for the more adventurous of my sentences including a form of haben, two modals and a full verb as infinitives. And I think when people talk like Doitsujin's samples I probably use those forms when talking to them (unless I want to make them feel more distant to me.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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