Modern German Grammar: A Practical Guide, Second Edition

9 Indirect questions

 For direct questions see^7 (p. 12).

When the interrogative adverbs (wann, wo, wie, etc.), pronouns ( 30 ) (wer, wessen),

adjective (44.2) (welcher) and determiner ( 24 ) (was für ein) introduce an indirect

question, the finite verb (5.1) must go to the end of the clause:

Wir fragten ihn, wie lange er bleiben möchte.

We asked him how long he would like to stay

Meine Mutter möchte wissen, wer am Wochenende dorthin fährt.

My mother would like to know who’s going there at the weekend.

Bitte sagen Sie mir, welche Kollegen diesen Kurs schon besucht haben.

Please tell me which colleagues have been on this course.

 See also 30.4b (p. 56).

10 Relative clauses

10.1 These are subordinate clauses which relate back to a noun ( 25 , 28 ), noun phrase
(42.3a–b), pronoun ( 30 ) or determiner (24.1c) in the main clause. They are introduced
by an appropriate form of the relative pronoun (der, die, das or plural die). The relative
pronoun sends the finite verb (see 5.1) to the end of the clause, and must agree in
number ( 29 ) and gender ( 25 , 27 ) with the noun or phrase it refers to. (In the plural, of
course, it only needs to agree in number.) The case of the relative pronoun is decided by
its role in the subordinate clause (see 8 ):

Haben Sie den Mann gesehen, der das Paket abgeholt hat?

Did you see the man who picked up the package?

Die Frau, der ich diesen Auftrag gegeben habe, arbeitet schon

lange bei uns.

The woman I gave this job to has been working for us for a long time.

 See also 30.1 (p. 54). For functions using relative clauses see 73.3, (p. 231) identifying

people.

10.2 As the following table shows, the relative pronouns decline like the definite articles
(see 22.2) with the exception of the highlighted forms, i.e. the masculine and neuter
genitive singular (dessen), the feminine genitive singular (deren), the genitive plural
(deren) and the dative plural (denen):

Singular Plural

Masculine Neuter Feminine All genders

Nominative

Accusative

Dative

Genitive

der

den

dem

dessen

das

das

dem

dessen

die

die

der

deren

die

die

denen

deren

9

WORD ORDER