German Question

[ajaxfetish]

Okay, so I was originally torn up as to which of the following would be the proper hierarchy for German auxiliaries:

1)
Future
Modal
Perfect
Passive

2)
Future
Perfect
Modal
Passive

The new hypothesis is that the order is as follows:

3)
Future
----Modal A
Perfect
----Modal B
Passive

This predicts that the future will always occur higher in the structure than any other auxiliary, and the passive will always occur lower. Modals and perfective auxiliaries may occur in either order relative to each other, but the difference in ordering will imply a difference in meaning. It would still be very unlikely, of course, to find all four types of auxiliaries in the same clause. Looking through Centurio's suggested examples for various combinations of auxiliaries (post #10), everything seems consistent with this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sentence 1: Der Euro muss eingeführt worden sein
----Modal
----Perfect
----Passive

Sentence 2: Der Euro muss eingeführt werden
----Modal
----Passive

Sentence 3: Er sagte, dass der Euro eingeführt worden sein muss / müsse
----Modal
----Perfect
----Passive

Sentence 4: Sie müssen den Euro eingeführt haben
----Modal
----Perfect

Sentence 5: Der Euro wird eingeführt werden müssen
----Future
----Modal
----Passive

Sentence 6: Der Euro muss (bereits) eingeführt gewesen sein
----Modal
----Perfect
----Passive? Another Perfect?
(I'm not yet familiar with this exact construction. I'm used to the plusquamperfect or past perfect involving a preterite form of sein along with a past participle. Here it looks like we've got the infinitive of sein followed by the past participle of sein followed by a past participle. I'm guessing the influence of the modal required the first sein to be in infinitive, making a preterite form impossible, but I couldn't have predicted the result. I'm also unclear as to whether the two stacked sein's mean plusquamperfect, passive, or both. Regardless, it doesn't seem to contradict the above hierarchy)

And for Ser Clegane's mega-sentence with all four auxiliaries: Der Euro wird eingeführt worden sein müssen
----Future
----Modal
----Perfect
----Passive

One other question this raises for me is whether it's ever possible in a German sentence to have two different modals, one in each of the possible modal slots. I suspect it's not, but it would be very intriguing if it is.

Ajax

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

German is so complicated, but a good language to learn .

[Joooray]

This whole thread just made me realized how little I know about German grammer, me being a native German speaker. A shame really.

But I guess when it comes naturally, you don't really care too much about why you say it the way you do.

[Husar]

This whole thread just made me realized how little I know about German grammer, me being a native German speaker. A shame really.

But I guess when it comes naturally, you don't really care too much about why you say it the way you do.

I know, neither do I, I don't know English grammar either and I forgot all the latin (and incidentally also german) grammar again. Either I get a "feeling" for it or I'll forget it.

[Joooray]

I know, neither do I, I don't know English grammar either and I forgot all the latin (and incidentally also german) grammar again. Either I get a "feeling" for it or I'll forget it.

Thanks for pointing out that my English spelling is even worse than my German grammar.

The only thing where I really miss not having learned the rules better when I was young is when it comes to punctuation. It sucks to not be sure how to use it and need your girlfriend to take a look and any important text you write.

[Husar]

Thanks for pointing out that my English spelling is even worse than my German grammar.

The only thing where I really miss not having learned the rules better when I was young is when it comes to punctuation. It sucks to not be sure how to use it and need your girlfriend to take a look and any important text you write.

First off, I don't blame you, a lot of english people seem to spell grammar wrong as well, you may have just picked it up from someone thinking he spelled it correctly.
And then at least you have a girlfriend...
What I don't really get in either language is when it's "English" and when it's "english", the built-in spellchecker here wants me to write "English person" but to me it's "english person" since english is used as an adjective of person, if it were just "the English are coming!" then it's a capital E in german since "English" is a noun now but in English (the language, thus capital E, right?) it's a capital E since it's a distinctive name like first and last names or city names, which are also capitalized.
I have to think about this for a second every time I have to decide what to do.
Oh, add to that that I have a tendency to leave the Shift key before pressing the letter key and that may explain any mix you might come across...

[ajaxfetish]

This whole thread just made me realized how little I know about German grammer, me being a native German speaker. A shame really.

But I guess when it comes naturally, you don't really care too much about why you say it the way you do.

Yeah, you don't need to have a conscious understanding of your own grammar. You know it much more completely than I do, it's just subconscious. I couldn't have described English grammar with much accuracy or depth before I started studying it.

What I don't really get in either language is when it's "English" and when it's "english", the built-in spellchecker here wants me to write "English person" but to me it's "english person" since english is used as an adjective of person, if it were just "the English are coming!" then it's a capital E in german since "English" is a noun now but in English (the language, thus capital E, right?) it's a capital E since it's a distinctive name like first and last names or city names, which are also capitalized.

Yeah, we've got different rules for capitalization in the two languages, which throws me off all the time, too. For us, it's proper names that get capitalized, regardless of part-of-speech. I do pretty well capitalizing all my nouns in German, but I always want to capitalize proper adjectives as well, like Amerikanische Studenten.

Ajax