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The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages.Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and gender in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses.
German sentence structure is the structure to which the German language adheres. German is an OV (Object-Verb) language. [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.
There exist a reasonable number of bigovernate prepositions in German; these are an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor and zwischen. [1] These prepositions can take either the accusative or dative grammatical cases. The accusative case is used when there is movement relative to the object with which the preposition agrees (e.g.
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 ...
In German, prepositions and modifying prefixes are frequently attached to verbs to alter their meaning. Verbs so formed are divided into separable verbs which detach the prefix under certain circumstances and inseparable verbs which do not.
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.
Das Buch liegt auf dem Tisch(e) (dative: The book is lying on the table), but Ich lege das Buch auf den Tisch (accusative: I put the book onto the table). In addition the four prepositions [an]statt (in place of), trotz (in spite of), während (during), and wegen (because of) which require the genitive in modern formal language, are most ...
Some prepositions always take the accusative case and some always take the dative case. Students usually memorize these because the difference may not be intuitive. A third group of prepositions, called two way prepositions, take either the accusative case or the dative case depending on the phrase's exact meaning. If the statement describes ...