Prepositions

In this chapter, there is only one grammar topic: prepositions.

Prepositions seem to be easy. They are short. They are not declined or conjugated. However, they have a variety of functions in a sentence, and, what is really annoying, many of them are also used as separable prefixes. Therefore, you may find one of these short words and you have to know immediately if it is a preposition or a separated prefix or you may misunderstand a sentence completely.

• Hör auf! means 'stop' and is the imperative of 'aufhören'.
• Hör auf deine Frau! does not mean 'stop your wife', but 'listen to your wife' and is the imperative of 'hören auf (jemanden)'.

Don't worry! You will develop an eye for real prepositions. You can always recognize separable prefixes because of their location at the end of the sentence and because of the fact that they are never followed by an object of their own.

Remember that, independently or as part of verb case-government, each preposition rules a particular case; it is followed by a noun or pronoun, and that word must show the case demanded by the preposition. Some prepositions are followed by the accusative, others by the dative, a few by the genitive. There are some prepositions which may, depending on the sense, rule the accusative in some instances, in others the dative.

Let's focus on these real prepositions.

We have already encountered them in one of their major functions: as part of a prepositional complement. In this case, the verb rules the preposition, though the preposition still rules the noun.

We also said that prepositions ruled by verbs do not really have a meaning, but mostly a function; we may end up translating or understanding the whole complex of

verb + preposition + object

as

verb + object.

By the end of this chapter, you will understand this better!

Prepositions, however, used in prepositional phrases do have a meaning one can define and translate, more or less - well, each preposition may have quite a few meanings. That is a nuisance, but since English prepositions work exactly the same way...

Prepositional phrases give additional information about the action or communication expressed in the subject-predicate-object core of the sentence. This additional information may include:

• the time in which the action (expressed in the subject-predicate-objects part) takes place
• the place where the action occurs
• the direction in which the action moves
• the manner in which things are done or executed
• the mood in which things are done
• the reason for which things are done
• the goal which motivated the action
• the materials used in the action
• the relationship between what is said in the subject-predicate-object part to something else
• the benefit the action provides

We have never yet talked about all these additional elements of information in the form of prepositional phrases, although we already used them in every single dialogue. Here are just a few examples:

• Es klingelt an der Tr.
• Sie gehen in die Kche.
• Wie kommt man am besten von hier zurUniversität? Mit der Straßenbahn.
• Ulrike sitzt auf der Terrasse vor der Mensa.
• Da kommen Andreas und Thomas aus der Mensa.
• Die beiden sehen Ulrike und gehen zu ihr.
• Ich bin erst nach Eisenach, Weimar und Wittenberg gefahren.
• Bis gleich.
• Alles klappt ohne Probleme.
• Der Geburtstag wird bei Annas Eltern gefeiert.
• Seit dem Holokaust kann man in Deutschland an die Versprechen einer Traum-Kultur nicht mehr recht glauben.

The reason we didn't discuss these examples earlier is that prepositional phrases function the same way in English and in German. German, of course, has some special features, the main one being the way prepositions demand that their objects be in a particular case.

Another trick you may have noticed is that some of them like to combine with the article of the noun that follows them, or with a pronoun object. Prepositions are easy to recognize but it is a job to learn to use them correctly!

In this chapter we will present some of the most commonly used prepositions, grouped by the case they govern: