#Verb positioning

7 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

stark dock
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I've seen and know (I'm pretty sure) how word positioning goes in sentences with one or two verbs, but I have yet to learn how sentences work with three, four, or more verbs, and I'd like to know. Take these sentences for example:

"Ich liebe Minecraft"
"Ich liebe Minecraft zu spielen" (correct me if I'm wrong here)


Example of what I mean by sentences with three verbs, kind of different though

"The boy went shopping, swimming, and then played a game."


But how would you add a third, fourth, etc. verb to sentences in German? Where does it go, what case does it take? Help would be greatly appreciated.
nova summit
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You just string them on the end.
Ich hätte gehen können müssen.

stark dock
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is there a specific order though

lavish wasp
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Verbs don't really work per sentence. They work per clause. So like in your example, "The boy went shopping, swimming, and then played a game." it doesn't matter that there are multiple verbs in this sentence. They all function independently of each other, because in this example, they're basically in different clauses. Then you just put them together in whatever way makes sense. Same as in English.

Think of it like this. Your sentence has three parts: The boy went shopping. The boy went swimming. The boy played a game.
When you put them together, you just cut out the repeated parts: The boy went shopping, (the boy went) swimming, and then (the boy) played a game.
It works the same in German, basically.

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Der Junge ist einkaufen und schwimmen gegangen und hat danach gespielt. (Might not be the best way to phrase it, so feel free to provide a better translation.)

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On the other hand, if you're talking about an example like what Delli wrote, where you have 3+ verbs in one clause, then the basic word order is that they go backwards from the end of the sentence (aside from the finite verb which goes wherever it usually goes). And the cause of the object is based on whatever the verb is that's being directly applied to the object.

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I'll give a basic example... Let's say you want to write "I would like to be able to learn German."
Verbs:
would like = möchte
to be able = können
to learn = lernen

And the verbs connect in the same way as they do in English in 99% of situations.
would like -> to be able -> to learn -> German
möchte -> können -> lernen -> Deutsch

The difference with German is that, like I said earlier, they go backwards from the end (except for the finite verb möchte since word order rules force it to be in the 2nd position):
Deutsch <- lernen <- können.
Ich möchte Deutsch lernen können.