Table of Contents Chapter 27 27.4 Order of the adverbial qualifications
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Chapter 27: Word order in a phrase

  27.4 Order of the adverbial qualifications

The position of the adverbial qualifications and the adverbs is determined by the following rules.

The Rules
  1) Adverbs and adverbial qualifications are directly behind the verb.
  2) If there is only a direct object (or be it NO indirect object) adverbs and adverbial qualifications are behind the direct object.
  3) Adverbs and adverbial qualifications are always after the indirect object.
  4) If the direct object is a pronoun, this direct object goes in front of the indirect object and thus rule (3) is still valid.
  5) If the object is a noun, the temporal adverbs can be before the objects.


Rule: Examples  
  1 Ich schreibe heute.
  2 Ich schreibe den Brief morgen.
  2 Ich schreibe ihn heute.
  3 Ich schreibe Andrea heute einen Brief.
  3 Ich schreibe ihr heute einen Brief.
  4 Ich schreibe ihn ihr heute.
  1 Ich esse jetzt.
  5 Ich esse jetzt Kartoffeln.
  2 Ich esse sie jetzt.
  5 Ich mache morgen einen Kuchen.
  2 Ich mache ihn morgen.
  3 Ich mache Andrea morgen einen Kuchen.
  4 Ich mache ihn ihr morgen.

Puh! It seems a bit difficult, but we are going to show this in a graphical way and we hope that it's going to be easier to understand. The following table does not include rule no. 5.
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