CLASS 7 · LEARNING KNOWLEDGE
Adverbial and prepositional complements – basics and distinction
How it works
Adverbials provide more detailed circumstances of an action, for example place, time, reason or manner. They can occur as an adverb, as a noun group, as a prepositional group or as a subordinate clause. Prepositional complements, by contrast, are verb-bound sentence elements with a fixed preposition. It is important to distinguish free adverbial modifiers from such verb-bound complements.
Note
Adverbials provide additional information and can usually be added or replaced freely. Prepositional complements, by contrast, belong firmly to a specific verb combination; in this case, the preposition is not freely selectable, for example with ‹warten auf› or ‹sprechen mit›.
Adverbials provide additional information and can usually be added or replaced freely. Prepositional complements, by contrast, belong firmly to a specific verb combination; in this case, the preposition is not freely selectable, for example with ‹warten auf› or ‹sprechen mit›.
An example
Which sentence element in the following sentence is a prepositional complement? – ‹Sie wartet auf den Bus.›
The prepositional complement is ‹auf den Bus›, because ‹warten› is used in this combination with the preposition ‹auf› as a fixed unit. This shows that ‹auf den Bus› is verb-bound here and not simply a free adverbial indication.
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50 Exercises
To the learning unit →Own explanation and own practice exercises by AmyMath. Subject reference framework: German. The topic assignment may vary by federal state.