German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Sign up to join this community
On the Duden entry for ziehen, there is this sentence:
er zog ihn an den Haaren
DeepL and Google disagree as to the translation. I looks like it means:
He pulled on his hair.
This could mean that he pulled on his own hair, or he pulled on another person’s hair. Or it seems to me it could be saying:
He pulled him by his hair.
This clearly means he is pulling on someone else's hair. Can this sentence be interpreted out of context, or not?
No, the sentence in question is unambiguous:
Jemanden an den Haaren ziehen (to pull someone by their hair)
So if he pulls his own hair, it would be
Er zieht sich an den Haaren
If he pulls someone else by their hair
Er zieht ihn an den Haaren
Er zieht sie an den Haaren
There is another possibility, if you want to express to pull at someone's hair, which uses the dative, not the accusative:
Er zieht sich an den Haaren (In principle this is ambiguous, to the sentence above, however since you can only pull at your own hair, not pull yourself by your hair, this sentence will be inferred)
Er zieht ihm an den Haaren.
Er zieht ihr an den Haaren.
The first translation is inaccurate and would be a translation of the sentence 'er zog an seinen Haaren' which has the same ambiguity in German as in English.
The second translation is accurate and has no ambiguity in either German or English.
