Wortstellung - Word Order - In German Sentences

When you write sentences (or even speak them) you are stringing together words, phrases, and punctuation so that you create something meaningful. You want to convey information, and whether you know it or not, you use a very well-organized system of rules to do this. The study of how we create meaningful sentences is called syntax, and now we will examine modern German syntax and see how simple elements like nouns, verbs, prepositional phrases, and other parts, can make complex and unique German texts.

The basic idea in the syntax of German statements of fact, for our purposes, is:

First Position	Second Position	3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. Position	Final Position
Subject	Verb	Everything Else	Other verbal elements To be examined later

There is flexibility in German statements of fact. After studying these pages, go and examine how the subject of a German sentence can be in Third Position.

Punctuation - periods, commas, question marks, exclamation points, colons, semicolons - also play a huge role in creating a meaningful sentence. These are used in generally the same way as in English. Visit a Website on English grammar and punctuation for a review.

Now using the vocabulary we have learned thus far as examples, let's see what "subjects - verbs - everything else" actually means.

Subjects....

are the noun phrases which do the action of the verb. A noun is a word representing a person, place, thing, or idea. When we speak about a phrase we talk not only of the noun itself, but also of any articles, adjectives, or even other sentences that describe the noun.
Examples:

Der kluge Junge ist 15 Jahre alt.
Der kluge Junge, a noun phrase, is the subject; it is doing the action of the verb, ist which means is (from the German infinitive "sein" - English "to be). The word kluge - intelligent is an adjective; it describes Junge and is part of the noun phrase.
Das junge Mädchen hört Musik.
Das junge Mädchen, a noun phrase, is doing the action of the verbal phrase, Musik hören, to listen to music. The word junge - young is an adjective describing Mädchen and is part of the noun phrase.
Die Frau heißt Sara.
Die Frau, a noun phrase, is doing the action of the verbal phrase, Sara heißen, to be called/named Sara.
Das ist Katharina.
The word Das is the subject; it means that. Sometimes the subject is only one word, as when a proper noun is the subject of the sentence:

Günter spielt Golf sehr gut.
Luise geht nach Hause.
Harald kommt aus Deutschland.

Noun phrases from this unit. Review, memorize, review again. Do the exercises found there. Learn the noun with its proper definite article.

Verbs and Verbal Phrases

The verb is the word or group of words which describes the action of the of sentence. Every complete sentence requires a subject noun phrase and a verb to describe what the subject is doing.

German verbs describe not only action but also when the action occurs. This is known as tense. There are in German 6 different tenses, as in English, and they are used in similar ways to describe when the action is occurring. Verbs also must agree with their subject, that is, the basic verb form - the dictionary form of the verb known as the infinitive - is conjugated with the subject. The infinitive changes form in order to agree with the subject. Let's study verb forms in the Present Tense and see how they behave to create meaningful sentences.