A Foundation Course in Reading German, 2017a

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12/8/2017
translate the preposition if it stood on its own, and only then express that meaning
using English.
Unit: 5: Prepositions, reflexives
3. Prepositional Phrases
Prepositional Phrases
“Pre-positions,” as their name suggests, usually appear before nouns, pronouns,
and sometimes adjectives. They mark the beginning of a prepositional phrase, and
the corresponding noun marks the end of that phrase. Examples:
Der Junge steht hinter dem Stuhl.
The boy is standing behind the chair.
Sie fährt in die Stadt mit ihrer Freundin.
She is travelling to town with her girlfriend.
Trotz schweren Unwetters kam das Flugzeug pünktlich an.
Despite bad weather, the airplane arrived on time.
As you begin to read longer German sentences, it becomes very useful to recognize
prepositional phrases and remember the absolutely reliable law that prepositional
phrases are stand-alone, self-enclosed units of meaning (just as in English). All of
the words enclosed between a preposition and its object (usually a noun) all belong
within that phrase – and thus are not modifiers of anything outside of that phrase!
Consider, for example:
Lange sinnte sie über seine frühen Gedichte in der Zeitschrift nach.
First you can easily identify über seine frühen Gedichte and in der Zeitschrift as two
prepositional phrases. That leaves you with a much simpler sentence skeleton to
work on: Lange sinnte sie … nach, or roughly: “For a long while she pondered ….”
Next, moving your attention to the prepositional phrases, you can confidently take
as an absolute law that, for example, seine frühen are words applying only to
Gedichte. Even as you then add in the prepositional phrases, respect the solid work
you’ve done so far on the skeleton; don’t let the addition of the prepositional
phrases corrupt it. Likewise, as you add on the prepositional phrases to your
skeleton, respect the integrity of the prepositional phrases. Thus: “For a long while