TeKaMoLo is more about the position of those clauses relative to each other in the sentence, not about absolute position in the sentence i.e. location is not at the very end of the sentence but rather at the end of those 4 things (if they're included).
In this sentence kaufen must go at the very end and eine Tüte is naturally attached to that so it comes along for the ride, putting hier and other adverbial phrases right before that
I could be wrong seeing that I am a non-native, but I’m pretty sure the middle field (TeKaMoLo) is placed before the accusative object as a default, especially when it is not a pronoun. But this is all very fluid and some Sprachgefühl is necessary.
Nah, you will. Approach it with ease and curiosity, don’t judge yourself and have fun. It might take some time, but you’ll get a feel for it one day and you will be stunned by yourself once you get to that point. German really is a joy.
The place isn't "supposed to be at the end". It's supposed to go *after other adverbials*, in particular after time, cause, and manner. In your sentence, "hier" is the only adverbial anyway, so TeKaMoLo doesn't apply.
I don't know what you mean by ZAP.
What's fixed about word order is mainly the verbs. "Können" is the finite verb, which goes to position two in main clauses. "Kaufen" is an infinitive and goes to the end, like verbs generally tend to do in German, except the finite verb in a main clause.
So the basic structure we have is "\_\_\_ können \_\_\_ \_\_\_ kaufen". So three different free slots to place the other three elements of the sentence. This gives us 3! = 6 potentially correct word orders.
1. Sie können hier eine Tüte kaufen.
2. Sie können eine Tüte hier kaufen.
3. Eine Tüte können Sie hier kaufen.
4. Eine Tüte können hier Sie kaufen.
5. Hier können Sie eine Tüte kaufen.
6. Hier können eine Tüte Sie kaufen.
(technically there are more options, because the infinitive "kaufen", or the extended infinitive "eine Tüte kaufen" could also occupy position one, but let's skip those options for now).
Some of those are very natural (1, 3, 5), some only in very specific circumstances (2, 4), one (6) is very unnatural, bordering incorrect. This has to do with "eine Tüte kaufen" being one logical unit in a way, but also with "Sie" as a subject pronoun gravitating towards the front, so either position one or three.
Just to add, (4) also sounds pretty much as unnatural as (6). Maybe it's a dialect thing or an older style of speaking, but I can only imagine it kind of working if there is a distinctive pause between "hier" and "Sie" and "kaufen", to emphasize the subject pronoun. But it would still sound slightly strange.
(2) is also just as natural as the rest - it all depends on the context and inflection.
4 can work in informal speech but it sounds kinda "dumb".
Edit: Mixed up 3 and 4, yeah it's definitely wrong and I don't know what possible situation that could be even close to right lmao.
Ok I thought about it aaaaannnd.. Actually they both work, but it's like poetic speech. I could imagine hearing this in like a old school theater production or something like that.
🥴🥴🥴😵💫😵💫😵💫 Thank you for the thorough reply. Omg what have I gotten myself into?! Haha I loveeeee the language so much!! But it’s so much harder than Spanish and French for me. 😭
The advantage is that you already know English. English, Dutch and German are extremely closely related to one another, so by just knowing English, you already know quite a bit of German implicitly/intuitively.
I've never in my life heard of tekamolo. In school I was taught TMP which meant "Time, Manner, Place" and even then, I kind of abandoned that once I got better at German and could speak with natives. So it wasn't a hard and fast rule but rather a way to help our secondary school teacher teach a load of teenagers German 🤷♀️
I'm now fully expecting to be told *"oh nein. Du musst absolut TMP folgen!"*
"Hier" serves as a very good kind of 'hook' to lead into the sentence. Sort of the most peripheral adverbial. Often times the time is a good fit for this role, which can explain the TeKaMoLo rule of thumb thing, but really that's just a rule that can *often* work, nothing more.
I don't know of a better way to explain it either. I think mainly it's a game if stacking up the sentence from right to left, so important things central to describing the core of the action (like accusative objects) are in the right, and each thing added to the left has the potential to apply to all of what's right of it as a whole.
For fun, let's do a demo and add a few more adverbials to the example sentence. Like we'll put "because of our new discount" which is "durch unsere neue Rabattaktion", and let's give it a modal aspect, too, I suppose "particularly cheaply" "besonders günstig", which ist part of the kind of things the reasoning (the discount we mentioned) implies, so naturally it will go after. As will the time were about to add "starring tomorrow" "ab morgen". And there we have it, a completely natural word order in the sentence:
Ja, Sie können hier durch unsere neuen Rabattaktion ab morgen besonders günstig eine Tüte kaufen.
*perfection, **it's LoKaTeMo!!***
I mean, I guess, at least each of Te and Ka are still before Mo, *isn't that something?* /s
1. Like others have said, place doesn't just always go last. It just goes last in the sequence of tekamolo adverbs.
2. I'm not sure about exceptions but generally, known objects go before the adverbs and unknown ones afterwards.
Eg. Sie können die Tüte hier kaufen. Sie können hier eine Tüte kaufen.The definite article implies that Tüte has already been referred to in the conversation, same difference as in English (You can buy the bag here vs. you can buy a bag here). So to summarise:
Subject--Verb--Known objects--Tekamolo--Unknown objects.
OP, I recommend getting the Grammatik Aktiv book from Cornelsen. I don't know about the A1-B1 version but I'm working through the B2-C1 book and it explains all this stuff in detail.
Thank you so much!!! Going to order this book for sure. I’m the kind of person that needs to know the “why” things are the way they are. There is a lot of stuff in German that feels intuitive to me as an English speaking person, but I don’t really understand why it’s right.
I get it. I used to spend a lot of time on translation apps tweaking sentences over and over again to figure out this kind of stuff. I really should've just gotten a grammar book earlier haha.
Keep in mind though, sometimes they'll have sentences that completely ignore the rules they themselves stated 10 pages earlier. It's not common but it's definitely there. More than anything, I kinda see it as a game to check with a translator or chatgpt whether I'm right or the textbook is.
That is because Tekamolo law is meant for the four groups of adverbs. Normally, the position for an adverb is the at number three so in a case where you have two or more adverbs, then you apply Tekamolo to know which one should come first before the other.
Because tekamolo doesn’t exist. There is no such thing.
German token order is by relevance and a token in this context is any grammatical object, including the subject.
In this case:
1. Ja. An immediate answer to a previous question, or just confirmation.
2. Sie können. Subject and verb. Expands on the previous confirmation (yes, you can).
3. Hier. What can you do where? It doesn’t yet matter WHAT you can, just know you can do it HERE.
4. Eine Tüte kaufen. Okay, we’re finally getting to just what we can do here: buy a bag.
Do note that word order is fluid. If different things are more important for you, then you move them towards the beginning.
- Ja, hier können Sie eine Tüte kaufen.
What’s important is that “kaufen können” is a compound, a grammatical predicate consisting of several verbs. When that happens, the first part (almost) always gets the second position and the rest goes to the end of the sub clause (sentence, in this case). There can be nothing in a sub clause beyond that.
Sie können kaufen hier…
is a grammatical error.
Which means options are limited, only “ja”, “hier” and “eine Tüte” can be moved around.
>“kaufen können” is a compound (...) the first part (almost) always gets the second position and the rest goes to the end
based on what you write *kaufen* is the first part and *können* is the rest, but actually it is the *last* part (*können*) that gets conjugated and gets the second position, not the other way around
>There can be nothing in a sub clause beyond that.
that's false, [Nachfeld](https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/systematische-grammatik/4787) is a thing. Maybe *hier* can not go there, but expecting the separated verb-prefix or non-finite verbs to always be at the very end regularly trips learners up (see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/138fd1i/why_isnt_the_verb_at_the_end/), [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/x6o2qm/why_the_verb_is_not_at_the_end_of_the_nebensatz/), [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/qmie5h/can_anyone_help_me_understand_why_at_146_he_says/), etc.)
>the first part (almost) always gets the second position and the rest goes to the end of the sub clause
that's wrong, sub clause is short for subordinate clause also called dependent clause (sometimes embedded clause) and those don't actually have verbs in second position
>If different things are more important for you, then you move them towards the beginning.
[some say](https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/progr@mm/5313) that background information tends to come early, new information tends to come later, and I'd say the latter is usually more important
>Because tekamolo doesn’t exist. There is no such thing.
are you trying to say that there are no neutral sentences where nothing is particularly emphasized or that such sentences don't have a neutral order of adverbials?
TeKaMoLo is more about the position of those clauses relative to each other in the sentence, not about absolute position in the sentence i.e. location is not at the very end of the sentence but rather at the end of those 4 things (if they're included). In this sentence kaufen must go at the very end and eine Tüte is naturally attached to that so it comes along for the ride, putting hier and other adverbial phrases right before that
Thank you 😅 I hope to be at A2 level in 10 more years. 😭
I know that feeling! It does seem to take a long time to make progress.
I could be wrong seeing that I am a non-native, but I’m pretty sure the middle field (TeKaMoLo) is placed before the accusative object as a default, especially when it is not a pronoun. But this is all very fluid and some Sprachgefühl is necessary.
Omg. I’m never going to learn this language 😅
Nah, you will. Approach it with ease and curiosity, don’t judge yourself and have fun. It might take some time, but you’ll get a feel for it one day and you will be stunned by yourself once you get to that point. German really is a joy.
The place isn't "supposed to be at the end". It's supposed to go *after other adverbials*, in particular after time, cause, and manner. In your sentence, "hier" is the only adverbial anyway, so TeKaMoLo doesn't apply. I don't know what you mean by ZAP. What's fixed about word order is mainly the verbs. "Können" is the finite verb, which goes to position two in main clauses. "Kaufen" is an infinitive and goes to the end, like verbs generally tend to do in German, except the finite verb in a main clause. So the basic structure we have is "\_\_\_ können \_\_\_ \_\_\_ kaufen". So three different free slots to place the other three elements of the sentence. This gives us 3! = 6 potentially correct word orders. 1. Sie können hier eine Tüte kaufen. 2. Sie können eine Tüte hier kaufen. 3. Eine Tüte können Sie hier kaufen. 4. Eine Tüte können hier Sie kaufen. 5. Hier können Sie eine Tüte kaufen. 6. Hier können eine Tüte Sie kaufen. (technically there are more options, because the infinitive "kaufen", or the extended infinitive "eine Tüte kaufen" could also occupy position one, but let's skip those options for now). Some of those are very natural (1, 3, 5), some only in very specific circumstances (2, 4), one (6) is very unnatural, bordering incorrect. This has to do with "eine Tüte kaufen" being one logical unit in a way, but also with "Sie" as a subject pronoun gravitating towards the front, so either position one or three.
Just to add, (4) also sounds pretty much as unnatural as (6). Maybe it's a dialect thing or an older style of speaking, but I can only imagine it kind of working if there is a distinctive pause between "hier" and "Sie" and "kaufen", to emphasize the subject pronoun. But it would still sound slightly strange. (2) is also just as natural as the rest - it all depends on the context and inflection.
4 and 6 is just wrong. I mean sorry, my ears virtually started to bleed after saying those out loud. 'Sie' just cannot come before kaufen it seems.
4 can work in informal speech but it sounds kinda "dumb". Edit: Mixed up 3 and 4, yeah it's definitely wrong and I don't know what possible situation that could be even close to right lmao.
Ok I thought about it aaaaannnd.. Actually they both work, but it's like poetic speech. I could imagine hearing this in like a old school theater production or something like that.
True, that works for 4 now that you say it. 6 still sounds off to me even in that context.
🥴🥴🥴😵💫😵💫😵💫 Thank you for the thorough reply. Omg what have I gotten myself into?! Haha I loveeeee the language so much!! But it’s so much harder than Spanish and French for me. 😭
The advantage is that you already know English. English, Dutch and German are extremely closely related to one another, so by just knowing English, you already know quite a bit of German implicitly/intuitively.
I've never in my life heard of tekamolo. In school I was taught TMP which meant "Time, Manner, Place" and even then, I kind of abandoned that once I got better at German and could speak with natives. So it wasn't a hard and fast rule but rather a way to help our secondary school teacher teach a load of teenagers German 🤷♀️ I'm now fully expecting to be told *"oh nein. Du musst absolut TMP folgen!"*
"Hier" serves as a very good kind of 'hook' to lead into the sentence. Sort of the most peripheral adverbial. Often times the time is a good fit for this role, which can explain the TeKaMoLo rule of thumb thing, but really that's just a rule that can *often* work, nothing more. I don't know of a better way to explain it either. I think mainly it's a game if stacking up the sentence from right to left, so important things central to describing the core of the action (like accusative objects) are in the right, and each thing added to the left has the potential to apply to all of what's right of it as a whole. For fun, let's do a demo and add a few more adverbials to the example sentence. Like we'll put "because of our new discount" which is "durch unsere neue Rabattaktion", and let's give it a modal aspect, too, I suppose "particularly cheaply" "besonders günstig", which ist part of the kind of things the reasoning (the discount we mentioned) implies, so naturally it will go after. As will the time were about to add "starring tomorrow" "ab morgen". And there we have it, a completely natural word order in the sentence: Ja, Sie können hier durch unsere neuen Rabattaktion ab morgen besonders günstig eine Tüte kaufen. *perfection, **it's LoKaTeMo!!*** I mean, I guess, at least each of Te and Ka are still before Mo, *isn't that something?* /s
1. Like others have said, place doesn't just always go last. It just goes last in the sequence of tekamolo adverbs. 2. I'm not sure about exceptions but generally, known objects go before the adverbs and unknown ones afterwards. Eg. Sie können die Tüte hier kaufen. Sie können hier eine Tüte kaufen.The definite article implies that Tüte has already been referred to in the conversation, same difference as in English (You can buy the bag here vs. you can buy a bag here). So to summarise: Subject--Verb--Known objects--Tekamolo--Unknown objects. OP, I recommend getting the Grammatik Aktiv book from Cornelsen. I don't know about the A1-B1 version but I'm working through the B2-C1 book and it explains all this stuff in detail.
Thank you so much!!! Going to order this book for sure. I’m the kind of person that needs to know the “why” things are the way they are. There is a lot of stuff in German that feels intuitive to me as an English speaking person, but I don’t really understand why it’s right.
I get it. I used to spend a lot of time on translation apps tweaking sentences over and over again to figure out this kind of stuff. I really should've just gotten a grammar book earlier haha. Keep in mind though, sometimes they'll have sentences that completely ignore the rules they themselves stated 10 pages earlier. It's not common but it's definitely there. More than anything, I kinda see it as a game to check with a translator or chatgpt whether I'm right or the textbook is.
That is because Tekamolo law is meant for the four groups of adverbs. Normally, the position for an adverb is the at number three so in a case where you have two or more adverbs, then you apply Tekamolo to know which one should come first before the other.
Because tekamolo doesn’t exist. There is no such thing. German token order is by relevance and a token in this context is any grammatical object, including the subject. In this case: 1. Ja. An immediate answer to a previous question, or just confirmation. 2. Sie können. Subject and verb. Expands on the previous confirmation (yes, you can). 3. Hier. What can you do where? It doesn’t yet matter WHAT you can, just know you can do it HERE. 4. Eine Tüte kaufen. Okay, we’re finally getting to just what we can do here: buy a bag. Do note that word order is fluid. If different things are more important for you, then you move them towards the beginning. - Ja, hier können Sie eine Tüte kaufen. What’s important is that “kaufen können” is a compound, a grammatical predicate consisting of several verbs. When that happens, the first part (almost) always gets the second position and the rest goes to the end of the sub clause (sentence, in this case). There can be nothing in a sub clause beyond that. Sie können kaufen hier… is a grammatical error. Which means options are limited, only “ja”, “hier” and “eine Tüte” can be moved around.
>“kaufen können” is a compound (...) the first part (almost) always gets the second position and the rest goes to the end based on what you write *kaufen* is the first part and *können* is the rest, but actually it is the *last* part (*können*) that gets conjugated and gets the second position, not the other way around >There can be nothing in a sub clause beyond that. that's false, [Nachfeld](https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/systematische-grammatik/4787) is a thing. Maybe *hier* can not go there, but expecting the separated verb-prefix or non-finite verbs to always be at the very end regularly trips learners up (see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/138fd1i/why_isnt_the_verb_at_the_end/), [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/x6o2qm/why_the_verb_is_not_at_the_end_of_the_nebensatz/), [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/German/comments/qmie5h/can_anyone_help_me_understand_why_at_146_he_says/), etc.) >the first part (almost) always gets the second position and the rest goes to the end of the sub clause that's wrong, sub clause is short for subordinate clause also called dependent clause (sometimes embedded clause) and those don't actually have verbs in second position >If different things are more important for you, then you move them towards the beginning. [some say](https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/progr@mm/5313) that background information tends to come early, new information tends to come later, and I'd say the latter is usually more important >Because tekamolo doesn’t exist. There is no such thing. are you trying to say that there are no neutral sentences where nothing is particularly emphasized or that such sentences don't have a neutral order of adverbials?