Verb-Preposition Collocations 4

In the previous module VPC 3, you practiced using prepositions with personal pronouns (von ihm, bei euch) or da-compounds (davon, dabei…). In this module, we look more closely at how da-compounds are used as reference words.

Activity 1

Read sentence examples below paying special attention to the parts of text to which the da-compound refers. These sentences are taken from the DWDS corpus (a large electronic collection of texts). If you find the text hard to read, you can go directly to the DWDS Corpus using the links provided below the images.

a.

b.

Which rule best reflects the difference between the sentence sets (a) and (b)?

Activity 2

Da-compounds more frequently link the prepositional verb to a following clause (sentence set (b) in Activity 1 above) than to a preceding clause or sentence (sentence set (a) in Activity 1). Look at the corpus examples below paying special attention to the type of clause that follows the da-compounds.

Which rule best describes clause patterns that can follow da-compounds?

Activity 3

On your own. Review the corpus examples in the activities above and then write five sentences about yourself with da-compounds that link a prepositional verb to a following clause. Then create a related question that you might want to ask your classmates. Refer back to module VPC 1 for a list of possible verbs.

For example:

Ich träume davon, dass ich im Sommer nach Deutschland reise. OR
Ich träume davon, im Sommer nach Deutschland zu reisen. Und wovon träumst du?

 Nina Vyatkina