Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
German pronouns are German words that function as pronouns. As with pronouns in other languages, they are frequently employed as the subject or object of a clause, acting as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases , but are also used in relative clauses to relate the main clause to a subordinate one.
German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of ...
German sentence structure is the structure to which the German language adheres. The basic sentence in German follows SVO word order. [1] Additionally, German, like all west Germanic languages except English, [note 1] uses V2 word order, though only in independent clauses. In dependent clauses, the finite verb is placed last.
The gender matches the receiver's gender (not the object's gender) for the dative case, and the owner's gender for the genitive. Dative: Ich gebe die Karten dem Mann – I give the cards to the man. Genitive: Die Entwicklung unseres Dorfes – The growth of our village. For further details as to the usage of German cases, see German grammar.
Many loanwords from English adopt the gender of their native German equivalent; the gender of other loanwords may be deduced by the word's form or ending. For example, nouns from English - ing forms are neuter when referring to actions, but masculine when not referring to actions e.g. der Looping , 'loop' esp. in context of a rollercoaster.
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning.
Word order is subject–verb–object, except that a direct object pronoun or reflexive pronoun comes before the verb (io les vide, 'I see them'). [35] [40] Adjectives may precede or follow the nouns they modify, but they most often follow it. [35] The position of adverbs is flexible, though constrained by common sense. [40]
More specifically, if this pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, it is always suppressed. If it is the direct object, then it is usually suppressed, though it is also correct to leave it in. (If it is suppressed, then the special preposition et, used to mark the direct object, is suppressed as well.) If it is the object of a ...