Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
Inflected languages have a freer word order than modern English, an analytic language in which word order identifies the subject and object. [1] [2] As an example, even though both of the following sentences consist of the same words, the meaning is different: [1] "The dog chased a cat." "A cat chased the dog."
German articles are used similarly to the English articles, a and the. However, they are declined differently according to the number , gender and case of their nouns. Declension
An example with the neuter definite article with the German word for "book". d as Buch ( nominative ) "the book" [as a subject] (e.g. Das Buch ist gut - the book is good) d es Buch (e)s ( genitive ) "the book's/ [of] the book" (e.g. Die Seiten des Buchs sind grün - the pages of the book are green)
For example, Hund (dog) is a masculine (der) word, so the article changes when used in the accusative case: Ich habe einen Hund. (lit., I have a dog.) In the sentence, "a dog" is in the accusative case as it is the second idea (the object) of the sentence. Some German pronouns also change in the accusative case.
This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have declension. This list will mark the case, when it is used, an example of it, and then finally what language(s) the case is used in.
There are also strong and weak declensions of German adjectives. This differs from the situation in nouns and verbs in that every adjective can be declined using either the strong or the weak declension. As with the nouns, weak in this case means the declension in -n. In this context, the terms "strong" and "weak" seem particularly appropriate ...
Old High German is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five grammatical cases in Old High German.