Demo, Basic constituents, Summary exercise 4

Summary exercise

Select the appropriate term from the dropdown list of each gap. Note that the resulting text is a summary of the basic constituent order in English sentences. Once you have finished the exercise, you may check the key and print it out as a summary.

In English clauses we usually find a sequence of . This sequence is relatively as English no longer has sufficient morphological (inflectional) marking to identify the various unambiguously. Therefore, this identification is mainly established by means of . In other words, we use information to decide which constituent is the subject or the object, for example. Languages of this sort are often called languages.

German, on the other hand, is more of an language, expressing many grammatical relations by the means of . Therefore, the elements can be moved around more in a German clause, although SVO is quite common as well.

Compare:

Meine Mutter ruft den Notarzt. ~ Den Notarzt ruft meine Mutter.

My mother is calling an ambulance. ≠ An ambulance is calling my mother.