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WORD GRAMMAR
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Verb
- Conjugation in indicative
- Person and number
- Tenses
- Voice
- Mood
- Verb categories
- Valency
- Semantic categories of verbs
- Finite / non-finite verb forms
- Noun
- Adjective
- Adverb
- Article
- Pronoun
- Preposition
- Conjunction
- Particle
- Interjection
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Verb
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SENTENCE GRAMMAR
- Clause types
- Complex clauses
- Constituents of a sentence
- Sentence structure
- Word order in a sentence
- Negation
Gender
DA1
In German, there are three genders that are indicated by the definite article.
Examples | article | ||
gender | masculine | der Motor | der |
feminine | die Nacht | die | |
neuter | das Buch | das |
In contrast to the number and case of a noun that undergo changes, the gender of a noun remains unchanged.
Grammatical vs natural gender
The grammatical gender is, to a great extent, arbitrary. That is why one should learn it with the noun. There are no particular rules that determine the gender of a noun, except some morphological features that can, sometimes, indicate the gender of a noun.
Nouns that refer to people or other animate creatures have both a natural (male or female) and a grammatical gender, which are consistent.
Example | Mann | Frau |
natural gender | masculine | feminine |
grammatical gender | der Mann | die Frau |
There are, however, a few exceptions. The noun Mädchen, for example, which is neuter (grammatical gender: neuter das Mädchen), although it refers to a person of the feminine gender (natural gender: feminine).
When referring to animals, quite often the natural gender is not consistent with the grammatical gender, especially with
- nouns that indicate a group of animals of the same species e.g. das Pferd, die Biene, das Rind, das Schwein etc.
- or young animals like das Lamm, das Kalb, das Küken, der Welpe etc.