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German Word Order | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Frieza Triglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5148 days ago 102 posts - 137 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German | Message 1 of 6 15 September 2010 at 7:29pm | IP Logged |
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Looking for clarification on a specific point.
Lesson 25 of series 2 of Deutshe Welle's Deutsch - Warum Nicht? explains in its usual concise (yet clear) manner that when a sentence has both an Akkusativ and a Dativ complement and they're both pronouns, the Akkusativ complement comes before the Dativ one. So, in case we wanted to say "I'll bring him the towels" but using only pronouns, it would be: Ich bringe sie ihm. However, in lesson 24 the following sentence had appeared: Habe ich Ihnen das nicht erzählt? Doesn't this sentence go against the abovementioned rule, under which terms it would be 'Habe ich das Ihnen nicht erzählt?' instead? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6898 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 6 15 September 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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The rule certainly applies in the case of personal pronouns but das is a demonstrative so I believe the personal pronoun precedes it in this instance.
(I'll have to go and dig out my Hammer's German Grammar & Usage to check though) Edit: Section 21.4.2 Personal pronouns precede other pronouns Thus er, dir, Ihnen, ihm, etc. (and man) come before demonstrative pronouns such as der, das, dieser, etc. irrespective of case... Edited by Andy E on 15 September 2010 at 9:25pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6265 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 6 16 September 2010 at 9:13am | IP Logged |
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In general (discounting this pronoun rule), German word order can be summarized as one
of two patterns: Starting with a subject - [Subject] [Verb 1] ([Indirect Object]) ([Time or Adverb]) ([Manner]) ([Place]) ([Direct object]) ([Anything else]) ([Verb 2 or separable prefix]) Starting with something else - [Time or Adverb or Subclause] [Verb 1] [Subject] ([Indirect Object]) ([Time or Adverb]) ([Manner]) ([Place]) ([Direct object]) ([Anything else]) ([Verb 2 or separable prefix]) The second one is actually just like the first, except we're adhering to the rule of "the verb always comes in 2nd position" and moving everything else over. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5139 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 4 of 6 16 September 2010 at 9:49am | IP Logged |
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@Sprachprofi I've got a question about the sentence stuff also. Where you have [Time or
Adverb]. Can you have both time and adverb, if so what would be the order of that? What is the structure of the subordinate clause? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6265 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 5 of 6 16 September 2010 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
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@zekecoma I was mostly thinking of adverbs that replace the time, e. g. "gerne".
However, you're right that it's possible to have both. Adverbs can come before and/or after the time, e. g. "Ich schicke ihm schnell morgen noch per Post seine Fahrkarte zu." There is also no difference in meaning or accentuation if you place "schnell noch" together before or after "morgen", as far as I can tell. In subclauses, everything stays the same except [verb 1] moves to the end of the sentence as well; after [verb 2 or separable prefix], that is. EDIT: Unilang has another nice example sentence: Ich gebe dem gefährlichen Mann vorsichtig das Geld meines Vaters am vereinbarten Platz vor der Kirche (I cautiously give the dangerous man my father's money at the predetermined square in front of the church). In this one, the direct object was moved ahead, which is sometimes possible and sometimes not, so I'd still go with the universal rule above. The Grammar Constructs "phrasebook" contains interesting examples like this in many languages. Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 September 2010 at 4:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Frieza Triglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5148 days ago 102 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German | Message 6 of 6 16 September 2010 at 7:54pm | IP Logged |
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What I really like about German is how structured a language it is. Everything has a reason to be so.
I usually wait for things to be explained later, but I was really wondering about the word order in the aforementioned sentence. Now that I think about it, all examples given in the lesson were indeed with two personal pronouns. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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