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In canoonet "hingegen" is considered a conjunctional adverbs with position one! (Link)

But examples that dwds (https://www.dwds.de/wb/hingegen) gives "hingegen" is not in the position one, even the verb comes in position 3, how?

  • am Wochenende schien die Sonne, heute hingegen regnet es

  • Diebstähle kommen noch vor, Mordfälle sind hingegen selten geworden

  • er ist sparsam, sie hingegen verschwendet

3 Answers 3

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I'm not familiar with your "position 1" terminology (which I only know as a concept used to describe the position of verbs). At any rate, and as you may suspect based on the DWDS examples, the adverbial connector hingegen is not subject to any of the positional limitations frequently imposed on connectors (Pasch et al., Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren, vol. 1, 2003, p. 712), meaning that it can, potentially, fill the prefield (e.g.: Hingegen vertrat Herr Müller die Position, dass ...), the position right after the first sentence constituent (Nacherstposition, literally: post-first position) (e.g.: Er ist sparsam, sie hingegen verschwendet ihr Geld.) as well as the midfield (e.g.: Diebstähle kommen noch vor, Mordfälle sind hingegen selten geworden.). In addition, hingegen, sporadically, fills the pre-prefield (Nullposition) (e.g.: Ich bin durchaus kritisch beim Einkaufen, wenn es um kleine Kinder geht. Hingegen: Was soll an Nutella schlecht sein?).

As a general matter, it appears that contrastive-comparative adverbial connectors have a certain affinity for the post-first position. See, Breindl et al., Handbuch der deutschen Konnektoren, vol. 2,1, 2014, p. 542. In the case of hingegen, it seems to be a close call, however. Breindl et al. observe that in their (admittedly small) sample of 100 randomly selected occurrences of the connector, in 54 cases it filled the post-first position, in 45 cases the midfield, and in only one case the prefield. Id., at 543.

If you have similar questions in the future and are looking for a reliable resource, I commend you to consult the dictionary of connectors by the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS). You can find it at https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/konnektoren; as an example, the entry for hingegen can be found at https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/konnektoren/407057.

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In the cases where the verb seems to be at position 3 hingegen is actually an attribute of the first part of the sentence.

Am Wochenende schien die Sonne, heute hingegen regnet es.

Here hingegen belongs to heute, so the first part of the sentence is heute hingegen.

Er ist sparsam, sie hingegen verschwendet.

Here hingegen belongs to sie, so the first part of the sentence is sie hingegen.

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Don't take that word classification too seriously. German makes no sharp distinction between conjunctions and adverbs. That's why run-on-sentences with some coordinating adverb-conjunctions sprinkled all over it are best practice in German.

Er hingegen riss jeweils alles an sich, was an Arbeit anlag.

Er riss hingegen jeweils alles an sich, was an Arbeit anlag.

Hingegen riss er jeweils alles an sich, was an Arbeit anlag.

Hingegen riss er alles jeweils an sich, was an Arbeit anlag.

Jeweils riss er hingegen alles an sich, was an Arbeit anlag.

etc etc. Word order in these cases is dominated by emphasis.

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