Group Member: Hanchen Xu, Ruoyi Ma, Jiaqi Yu

Linguistic 100

German Morphorlogy Analysis

Group Member: Hanchen Xu, Ruoyi Ma, Jiaqi Yu

Abstract

This Document is a brief analyze of German Language from the perspective of morphology and syntax.

Introduction

German is one of the world’s major languages with estimated 95 to 100 million native speakers. The reason we choose German as our analyze object is because German has many words derived from English as well as its grammar.

Grammatical Categories Recognition:

Nouns

Singular and plural forms of nouns

As we all know, we describing plural nouns by adding endings such as –s or – es in English. In German, there are five basic plural indicators: -en, -n, -e, -er, or ‘Umlant’, a kind of German vowel.

Examples of nouns in German:

Singular / Plural
English / Year / Years
das Jahr / Jahre
English / Egg / Eggs
das Ei / Eier

Genitive Case

German nouns ending with –s or –es represent masculine and neuter nouns. In this case, German always uses a definite article ‘des’ in front of the noun. Feminine and plural nouns does not have ending in the genitive case and the definite article is der for this type of nouns.

Example Data:

das Auto meines Bruders
my brother's car
die Bluse des Mädchens
the girl's blouse
der Titel des Filmes (Films)
the title of the film

Nouns derived from nouns

German Nouns ending with –er often represents an expert in a special field. For example, buchhalter means accountant in English.

Nouns with the suffix –in

In German, nouns with the suffix –in, which are added to masculine nouns, are feminine nouns.

Data Example:

-die Professorin (female beings, professor)

-die Schulerin (the female students)

Infinitive verb as a noun:

In German, there are a group of infinitive form of a verbs can appear as nouns. These verbs often capitalized and are neuter in gender. In English, a verbal noun ending with –ing has the same meaning.

Example:

Infinitive / Verbal Noun
empfangen / das Empfangen
to receive / The receving/reception
senden / das Senden
to send / the sendings

Adjectives as nouns:

Some German adjectives some times also functioned as nouns and they are also capitalized.

Example:

Angehorig means belonging (to) in English, it will appears as a noun in the sentence:

…mehrere Angehorige einer Familie

… several members of a family

Verbs

Basic Subject- Verb Agreement:

Basic subject in German is same in English. The first person singular form is ich as I and the plural version wir as the word we. The singular form of second person subject you is du and the plural form is ihr. Finally, the third person singular form is er (he), sie (she), and es (it). The plural form is sie (they).

Verbs describe actions and states. Same as English, German verbs has curtain agreements with the subject and different tenses:

· In the present tense, "ich" has an "e" ending

· In the present tense,"er/sie/es" has a "t" ending

· In other tenses, the "ich" and "er/sie/es" either both take an "e" ending or they both do not have endings.

Verb tenses:

Unlike English’s various types of tenses, German verbs generally have only two tenses, either a present tense or a past tense. From the book, we do found some rules for verbs in present and past tense:

· Often there is a vowel change from present tense to past tense ie.gehen – gingen

· Some times, a "t" is added instead of changing a vowel ie. spiele - spielte

· In some other cases, there is both a vowel change and an addition of a "t" ie. Wiss-wussten

Verbs with prefixes:

Most of German verbs are combination of prefixes and basic verbs. There are verbs with ‘inseparable’ and ‘seprable’ prefixes

Inseparable prefixes are always attached to the verbs such as get-forget or come-become

Example:

erscheinen-- to appear

enthalten -- to contain

sich verbinden -- to combine

From these combined verbs, basic verbs are scheinen, halten, and binden.

Separable prefixes appear after the veb in the present and past tenses, usually at the end of the clause such as the English verbs: get-get on, and give-give up.

Example:

voranstellen -- to put in front

sich auseinandersetzen (mitetwas) -- to have a good look (at some-thing)

Basic verbs are stellen and setzen.

Adjectives

An adjective modifies a noun, or pronoun by describing words.

Adjectives before nouns:

Theses type of adjectives have endings -e,-em,-en,-er,or -es

For instance:

●das religiose Leben der germanischen Volker

the religious life of the Germanic peoples

●Leben und Werk des großen deutschen Philosophen

life and work of the great German philosopher

●die sogenannte Muller-Lyersche Tauschung

the so-called muller-lyer illusion

Complex adjectives derived from nouns:

These type of adjective is very common in German.

Example:

in der funfbandigen Ausgabe -- in the five volume edition

nach einem funfjahrigen Aufenthalt -- after a five-year sojourn

Complex adjectives derived from verbs:

Some of German adjectives are derived from verbs:

weitverbreitet - widespread (verbreiten - to spread)

weitgehend -far-reaching (gehen - to go)

gleichbedeutend - synony-mous (bedeuten - to mena)

Adverbs

An adverbs is a word that describes and modifes verbs.

Adverbs before adjectives:

German adverb comes before the adjective. The adverb usually takes non ending. For instance:

die chronologisch augfebaute Anthologie

the chronologically constructed anthology

der scheinbar kleinere Kreis

the apparently smaller circle

Adverb darauf :

Da- or dar- connected with a preposition sometimes before daß

… achtete man in der Regel darauf, daß jeder fur sich seinen eigenen Therapeuten erhielt

… it was generally arranged that each was allocated his own therapist

(darauf achten, daß - to take care that)

Adverb daruber:

Da- or dar- combined with a preposition sometimes before a dependent clause

Eine solche Theorie muß Voraussagen machen daruber, was zukunftige Beobachtungen und Versuche zeigen sollen

Such a theory must make predictions about waht future observations and experiments shall show

Derivation

Derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word by adding affixes.

Affixation

Prefixation

Inseparable and Separable Prefixes

In many language, using prefix is to change the meaning of a verb. In German, a verb with a prefix produces a completely new meaning. There are two kinds of prefixes in German: inseparable and separable. be-,emp-, ent-, er-,ge-, miss-, ver, zer- are eight basic inseparable prefixes. durch-,hinter-, uber-, um-, unter-, voll-, wider-, wieder- are eight primarily separable prefixes.

There are three derivatives of the verb stehen formed with inseparable prefixes:

bestenhen / to exist / order besteht eine innere Beziehung…?
or does an internal relationship exist…?
entstehen / to originate / Wie ist die Sprach entstanden?
How did language originate?
verstehen / to understand / Warum ist die Neue Musik so schwer zu verstehen?
Why is Modern Music so difficult to understand?

The good method to determine which kind of prefix is to find the location of the stress.Inseparable prefixes are easily identified because they are never the stressed syllable of the verb. However, for separable prefixes, the stress is on the prefix of the verb.

Other Prefixes

The prefix vor- has two ways in forming words regarding to the lexical cateory. First,words with the prefix vor- cannot be easily understood on the basis of the basic meaning of the component parts(prefix and root).They are all independent words. This also applies to many words with other prefixes.

For example: der Teil →der Vorteil→ der Nachteil

parts advantage disadvantage

In addtion, the prefix vor- has the same fuction as the English pre-.

For instance: industriell→vorindustriell (industrial→preindustrial)

geschichtlich→vorgeschichtlich (historical→prehistorical)

das Wort→ das Vorwort (word→preface,foreword)

Infixation

The compound words in German usually combined with infixation. For example:

Bauer (Farmer) + -n- + Hof (Yard) → Bauernhof (Farm)

Backe (Jaw) + -n- + Bart (Beard) → Backenbart (Whiskers)

Melie (Mile) + -n- + Stein (Stone) → Meilenstein (Milestone)

Sonne (Sun) + -n- + Brille (glasses) → Sonnerbrille ( Sunglasses)

Auge (glasses) + -n- + Blick (look) → Augenblick (Moment)

Suffixation

The verb suffixes in German are only four: -en, -ern, -eln, -ieren (generally used for foreign words). -ik, -ung, and -ie are noun suffixes. The suffix -los, -haft, -bar, -chen, -lein, -er, -sch added to nouns, forms adjectives. For example:

In English, when you need to describe a specific place, you can add clause or adjectives in front of the name of a place, like “the shop near the Nick’s grocer”. However, in German,”-er” has been added as adjectives to designate the location or the place of origin of persons or objects. For example:

der bekannte Oxforder Historiker

the well-known Oxford historian

Similar with”-er”, the suffix“-sch” designates the personal names. “-sch”ha sbeen added as adjectives. For examples:

die sofenannte Muller-Lyersche Tauschung

the so-called Muller-Lyer illusion

Compounding

The so-called compound words (Komposita) refers to two or more of the synthesis of a new noun phrase. In German lexical category, it is free to generate compound word on a combination of oral or written. In other words, the amount of German nouns can theoretically be unlimited . People in everyday spoken dialogue, the document is written in literature are free to create new words, as long as the meaning of a word can be logical. The basic form in compound words are: Qualifiers (Bestimmungswort) + Basic word (Grundwort) = compound words (Komposita). A basic word here can only be performed by a noun, the modification qualifier can be noun, verb and adjectives. Each class in the following give an example:

Noun + Noun: Wort (word) + Schatz (treasure) = Wortschatz (vocabulary)

Verb + Noun: Hoer (listen) + Saal (Hall) = Hoersaal (classroom)

Adjective + Noun: Rot (red) + Wein (wine) = Rotwein (red wine)

Grammatical Form Changing Derivation

Noun to Adjective: die Kunst (art)→ kunstlich (artificial)

Verb to Noun: versuchen (to try) → versuch (experiment)

Verb to Adjective: verbreiten (to spread) → weitverbreitet (widespread)

Verb to Noun: vorgehen (to proceed) →der Vorgang (process)

Adjective to Noun: besser (better) → verbesserung (improvement)

Inflection

German inflection appears from nouns, verbs, and adjective combines with rules of using various affixations.

Prefixation

Most of German prefixes have their own special meaning and directions.By adding them, words may change its properties and meanings. These prexies are derivational prefixes rather than inflectional.

Inseperable prefixes

There are some German verbs somes with permanent prefixes. The most common permanent prexies are ver-, ge-,be-,er-, ent-,and zer-. The meaning of these permanent prefixes may vary depends of its roots. Gernerally speaking, they are not inflrctional prefixes.

Seperable prefixes

Some of German words contains seperable prefixes. An perfect example will be the prefix -aus. When you put a word contains a prefix -aus into a sentence, the prefix moves to the end.

For instance: I look good - Ich sehe gut aus. The basic word (to look) in this sentence is aussehe, when we put this word into the sentence, the prefix -aus moves to the end.

Another example will be the prefix -auf, “She isn't stopping - Sie hört nicht auf. The basic word (to stop) is aufhort, and the prefix -auf moves to the end within a sentence.

Infixation

Infelctional infixation system is not very common in German.

Suffixation

German infinitive verbs consists of the root and the suffix -en. When infinitive verbs ending with el, er, and the e, the suffix -en is dropped.

laufen (to run)

Other inflectional characters

There are three person types, two number forms and four moods in German considered to be inflectional Also, there are two basic tenses (present and past) in German. The other four tenses are compounded. Regarding to verbs, German has weak and strong verbs.

Past participle

Basically, German weak verbs conducct their past participles with ge- plus the third person singular form of the verb. Example:

●fragen (er fragt) → gefragt

●passen (es passt) → gepasst

●antworten (er antwortet) → geantwortet

Some other verbs with no initial stress do not have ge- added to the verb.

●verführen (er verführt) → verführt

●miauen (er miaut) → miaut

If these verbs are used alone, without an infinitive, they have a regular participle.

Ich habe den Chef besuchen dürfen (I was allowed to see the boss)

Present participle

To create the basic form of a present participle, attach the suffix -d to the infinitive of the verb.

laufen – laufend ("walk" – "walking")

verraten – verratend ("betray" – "betraying")

aufbauen – aufbauend ("establish" – "establishing")

Future participle

The way to combine a German future participle tense is complicated. The basic priniciple is to put the word zu before the infinitive verbs.

●zu suchen ("to be looked for")

●Der Schlüssel ist zu suchen ("the key needs to be looked for")