Verb-Preposition Collocations 2

Intermediate to Advanced

In the previous module VPC 1, you reviewed some German verb-preposition collocations (VPCs).  It is important to know, however, that one and the same verb may be followed by different prepositions or by other words that look like prepositions.  Let’s review a few such cases.

Activity 1

First, let’s review usage examples for three word strings with the verb denken (other than the most frequent denken an = ‘to think about’, see module VPC 1) and choose which of the following statements explains the pattern that you notice.  These sentences are taken from the DWDS corpus (a large electronic collection of texts). They are presented in form of a concordance – stacked lines of examples with the search words bolded and centered.  If you find the text hard to read, you can go directly to the DWDS Corpus using the links provided below the images.

denken in concordance
DWDS search results for “denken um” retrieved May 17, 2021.
denken über concordance
DWDS search results for “denken über” retrieved May 17, 2021.
denken in concordance
DWDS search results for “denken in” retrieved May 17, 2021.

A.

B.

Activity 2

Choose the correct preposition/ particle from the drop-down menu [an, in, über, um] to complete the following sentences taken from the DWDS corpus.


 Nina Vyatkina

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