You saw the basic structure of clauses and sentences in chapter 1 (1.7-1.10). This chapter tells you more about the order of words and phrases within the sentence. At the end of the chapter you will fi nd a comprehensive word order table for reference. It is helpful to use this together with the table of sentence patterns (8.1): the VALENCY of the main verb determines what objects and other complements form part of the clause or sentence.

German word order can be more fl exible than English word order because the function of each noun phrase in the sentence is defi ned by its CASE (indicated by endings), not by its position (as is usual in English). There are four principles to remember, and these are explained in this chapter: