![]() 'I dreamt that a monster would eat me' and Mich dünkt dies gut. Other cases where one could argue whether the accusative object actually is a direct object would be sentences such as Mich träumte, ein Ungeheuer fräße mich. sounds really strange, at least without an appropriate context. But with German requiring the indirect object to precede the direct object in unmarked Subject-Verb-Object-Object sentences, we can safely assume that den Mann is an indirect accusative object, because Dies kostete 50 Euro den Mann. 'This cost the man 50 Euro.' cannot be passivised to 50 Euro wurden den Mann gekostet or Der Mann wurde 50 Euro gekostet. ![]() This has nothing to do with the objecthood of sie.įor this reason Dies kostete den Mann 50 Euro. The reason lies in the semantics of treffen where none of the participants actually acts and does something, which often bars passive formation. Ich habe sie im Bus getroffen 'I met her in the bus.' can for most people not be passivised to Sie wurde von mir im Bus getroffen. This is particularly true of verbs where there is nobody doing anything voluntarily, such as treffen in the sense of 'to come across someone' (neither hitting someone with an object nor the reflexive use 'sich mit jmdm. There may be semantic reasons why a verb cannot be passivised. You have to be careful with the passivisation test in one respect. So, while both objects are in accusative case, only Mathematik is the direct object. In diesem Raum wird komplizierte Mathematik gelehrt 'In this room, complicated mathematics is taught' is a fine sentence in German, whereas In diesem Raum werden die Studenten gelehrt is not. The direct object here is komplizierte Mathematik, as a simple passivisation test will show: Only one of these is a direct object.Ĭonsider a sentence such as Ich habe die Studenten komplizierte Mathematik gelehrt 'I taught the students complicated mathematics'. Consider a verb such as lehren 'teach' or kosten 'cost' that in the standard language take two accusative objects (although colloquially one often hears the more regular dative-accusative alignment pattern with lehren). ![]() Direct object and accusative object are nearly always the same thing in German, however there are a few exceptions. ![]()
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