About an “unusual” sentence structure?

Question

In German, most sentences have a simple structure: subject, verb, object.

Ich liebe dich.

But there are some verbs such as gefallen or gelingen, where this structure doesn't apply. Instead, the word order is Es gefällt mir or Es gelingt mir, with the object es in the first position, and the subject mir in the third position, and the DATIVE case. (The verb is still in the second spot.)

What is this kind of construction called in German?

Is it true that most of these verbs begin with ge-, and would there be a reason for this?

Are there more common examples of such constructions? How might I look them up?

Answer 1

Is it true that most of these verbs begin with ge-, and would there be a reason for this?

For your examples, I always find a counterexample with 'miss-':

• es misslingt mir
• es missfällt mir

aber auch ein

• Dir misstrau ich

without Dir getrau ich, but Dir vertrau ich, which leads to many more constructs with ver~. But I didn't count them.

Other constructs:

• es reicht mir
• es langt mir
• es schmeckt mir
• es schmeichelt mir ...

without prefix.

Answer 2

The structure also applies to your samples. In "Es gefällt mir", Es is the subject, and mir is the object. You can even reverse the order to "Mir gefällt es", and still es is the subject in nominative and Mir is the object in dative case. There is no strict subject-predicate-object order in German.