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Haben and Sein with the past participle | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6546 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 5 08 July 2009 at 8:37pm | IP Logged |
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Before I ask about the sein/haben constructs with participle, I think I'll explain my purpose for my question. I'm currently writing a course on the website "ikindalikelanguages" for the purpose of putting all what I find useful in grammar manuals into one easy "virtual" notebook. This is mainly for future reference for myself, although I hope it could be useful to others as well. The main texts I'm using are Routledge's Modern German Grammar, various websites and April Wilson's German Quickly.
The format of this virtual notebook follows a challenge response format: in addition to brief grammar explanations, a window appears after each prompt to which the user is supposed to enter in the correct response. I've decided that I want to cover the 6 tenses as quickly as possible, so I decided to stick with the 3rd person form for now. My plan is the following series: present, present perfect, pluperfect, simple past, future, and then future perfect. I've covered the weak verbs and the necessary sein and haben for the auxiliary. I've linked the 3rd person form of the present tense with the ge- prefix, so there was nothing more memorize besides the note about inseparable prefix verbs which don't add the ge- prefix. My "easy" rule to follow is as follows: 1. Is the verb expressing something that has happened to people outside of their control rather than something that people have done? If the verb is outside of their control, use sein. Think Heidegger's Dasein who is being thrown into the world. n.b. I don't know anything about the philosophy of Heidegger. I just think it's sort of odd/neat that German grammar would actually care about whether or not the verb is is being done by the individual's control or by external forces. 2. Verbs with no motion. Go on no further and use haben 3. If the verb has motion, then check for direct object(accusative object). If there is a direct object, then use haben. If there is no direct object, use sein. Prepositional objects don't count. 4. Remember that the verbs werden(to become), sein, geschehen and blieben will always use sein. These are the rules that I've gleaned from the grammar manuals. Now, I'm confused with rules 1 and 2. Should rule 1 always come first? Consider the verb geboren. If rule 2 came first, then one could mistakenly use haben because geboren doesn't involve motion. Does this mean that one should always ask this question first: who is controlling the verb, outside external forces or the person/it? Where should I include the "all-encompassing rule" about intransitive verbs taking sein, and transitive verbs taking haben? How many exceptions should be noted? Take losgeworden. Endlich bin ich ihn losgeworden. This breaks the rule about direct objects taking haben. Should losgeworden be thrown in the pile of verbs that always take sein as the auxiliary verb? Should I include the rule about haben being allowed to take intransitive verbs when the activity is expressed with the focus being on the activity, not to where the activity is taking you? Ich bin heute geschwommen. Ich habe heute geschwommen. (I don't care where you were swimming to. I just care that you had a swim today. But this breaks the rule where not having a direct object means taking sein as the auxiliary. How would you organize the rules? Here is what I've written http://labs.ikindalikelanguages.com/lesson.php?id=50 Before I write lesson 2 I figured I should wait for some input from experienced learners/natives of German. Edited by Kugel on 08 July 2009 at 9:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5774 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 5 08 July 2009 at 11:41pm | IP Logged |
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Too complicated. I as a native speaker was told:
Intransitive verbs of motion generally use sein, all others haben. (Transitive words with the same constuction would take on a different meaning ... dang, how do you call the construction with sein + Partizip Perfekt like "er ist (aus Schokolade) gemacht" "ich bin (wie) gerädert"?) There are some exceptions. There are some words that sometimes or in some contexts/areas in Germany use one or the other. And there are a few common mistakes of native speakers as well. (Transitive + intransitive forms of hängen ... one of my pet peeves.) I think loswerden uses sein because werden does, btw. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6546 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 5 09 July 2009 at 3:33pm | IP Logged |
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So you think these 4 rules are too much? These grammar manuals are surprisingly unhelpful in this area.
Take for instance passieren. Some websites say passieren is a word that belongs in the pile of words that always take sein. My grammar manual, however, says that it's okay to say: Wir haben den Zoll noch nicht passiert. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5774 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 5 09 July 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
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Sorry, Kugel, those are homonymous words.
(1) passieren (intransitive, perfect formed with sein) to happen, to occur (2) passieren (transitive, perfect formed with haben) to pass, top pass through, to strain through a sieve In my family there are regulary ... occurring bad puns on "Passierte Tomaten" that imply that these tomatoes just happened. I am not a teacher of German, just a native speaker, so it is quite difficult for me to find the rules that seem natural for my language. Page about Bavarian - it has some nice explanations on the words that differ between northern and southern Germany. (Btw for me there is a difference between "ich habe getreten" (=I kicked somebody or something; transitive + accusative object) and "ich bin getreten" (=I stepped on someplace; intransitive + dative object) :D) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Belardur Octoglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5619 days ago 148 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2, Spanish, Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Lowland Scots Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Italian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean | Message 5 of 5 17 July 2009 at 8:48am | IP Logged |
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Ok, I'm going to try to explain what I was taught as rules, bear with me (it doesn't help that I was taught all the rules IN German, haha). Maybe it will help you.
Transitive (also with accusative objects), intransitive without motion and without time restriction, verbs with dative and prepositional objects (still without motion), reflexive verbs (with some exeptions), modal verbs (also with some exeptions) and impersonal verbs all take haben. Intransitive verbs of motion, intransitive verbs that are a change of state (but be careful, as many of these can be used with an accusative object and become transitive, thus taking haben) and verbs of event take sein. LOL, unless you are in Bavaria. Of course, I live there, so "ich bin gerne gesessen" :) Actually, a really good reference (in my opinion) is Hueber's Übungsgrammatik für Fortgeschrittene, but it is in German, so that may stick you in a recursive loop, depends on your ability. Working through that grammar (preparing for the KDS, :P) is, in my opinion, helped me take the step from "I can manage to speak and understand, even very well" and "I'm completely comfortable auf Deutsch." 1 person has voted this message useful |
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