Why is this sentence incorrect?
I hope that someone may be able to help with the following sentence;
‘The woman, to whom the dog belongs, is young’
I’d translate it as follows;
die Frau, der DEN Hund gehört, ist jung
my reasoning being that the dog is the object of the subclause (as it is owned by the woman who is the subject) and so is ‘den Hund’
however, I understand this to be incorrect and that it should be as follows;
die Frau, der DER Hund gehört, ist reich
Sorry if I'm (as usual) missing something obvious and however, I don’t see how this can be correct and hope very much that someone can explain it to me (I'd be very grateful!).
Thanks
Gemma
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Answers · 4
1
Hello Gemma. I am a German native speaker, but not an expert on our grammar. However, in your sentence, "der Hund" is in the nominative case (first case), because - if I remember correctly from elementary school - the question you need to ask is "Wer gehört der Frau?", and this provokes the nominative. So I guess that "der Hund" is indeed the subject of the subordinate sentence, not an object. The first "der" (der der Hund gehört - first "der" of those two) is in the Dativ case (third case), because it answers to the question "Wem (gehört der Hund)?". Maybe this helps.
1
My German is a little rusty, but I would suggest separating it into two sentences.
Der Hund gehoert der Frau. Die Frau ist reich.
To make the first sentence a subordinate clause, you would have to rearrange the order and drop saying 'Frau' twice.
Die Frau, der (Frau) der Hund gehoert, ist reich.
0
Die Frau, der dieser Hund gehört, ist jung. (Die Frau ist jung. Ihr gehört dieser Hund.)
oder
Die Frau, die zu diesem Hund gehört, ist jung.
So würde ich es ausdrücken. Da ich meine Muttersprache intuitiv anwende, kann ich es grammatikalisch nicht begründen.
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