Valency
Verbs are combined with other sentence constituents like the subject, the object or adverbials. Verbs can determine the obligatory and/or optional arguments of a sentence. This property is called valency.
| Examples | |||||
| Ich | brauche | heute | unbedingt | ein Auto | für den Möbeltransport. |
| obligatory | optional | optional | obligatory | optional | |
Depending on the way verbs are combined with other sentence arguments (subject, object), they are classified as follows:
| Examples | Description | |
| personal | ich spiele, du schreibst | subject in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd person |
| impersonal | es regnet, es schneit | the impersonal es is always the only subject |
| transitive | ich brauche Hilfe | object in the accusative |
| intransitive | ich helfe dir | object not in the accusative |
| reflexive | ich wasche mich | subject and object are identical |
| reciprocal | wir treffen uns | a mutual relation between multiple subjects and objects is expresssed |