Correct cases in a composite complement involving more than a single preposition

Question

Prepositions like an, auf, zwischen, vor and others can be used in a double sense: if you need to convey the idea of movement you need to use the accusative case along with them, while if the person/object stays still you use the dative.

But what happens if you have a composite complement (one which is built using more than a single piece)? For instance, let's say that you want to translate:

The children are walking in the street in front of the house

I'd like to know which case is correct for "in front of the house": the children move in the street, so for this part of the sentence you'd use the accusative case, but what about the second part, where no idea of movement is directly implied? I then have two proposals:

1. Die Kinder gehen in die Straße vor das Haus (double accusative)

2. Die Kinder gehen in die Straße vor dem Haus (accusative and dative)

EDIT: the comments below outline all the possible cases. In this particular case, since the children are (and move) in the street, and this street is in front of the house, then the sentence number 2 is correct, as in case (6) in Eugene Seidel's comments.

Answer 1

Okay, much clearer now :)

The children are walking in the street in front of the house.

In German you can only use "in" in connection with streets if you're actually referring to the row(s) of buildings in it - where you would use "on" in English. (He lives on Baker Street - Er wohnt in der Baker Street)

Literally, you'd probably translate your sentence to:

Die Kinder gehen auf der Straße vor dem Haus.

Note, however, that for many Germans this will sound as though you're trying to emphasise the fact that they're walking on the pavement/blacktop as opposed to the sidewalk or something.

The most common expression to say what you want to say is:

Die Kinder gehen die Straße vor dem Haus entlang. (The children are walking along the street in front of the House.)

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One logical thing: The children are of course moving in a way when they're walking in the street, BUT grammatically they are stationary: no matter at which point of their walk you observe them, they're still walking in the same street. You could say that their situation is static. So in German you need the dative here. The accusative denotes movement in the sense that the situation of the subject is different before/after the action of the verb.

Answer 2

The key thing to understand is that it doesn't matter whether there is movement involved or not. What matters is the question the particular prepositional phrase is answering. When you talk about location there are 3 possible options:

• destination
• current location
• origin

So the part with the preposition can be the answer to one of the following three questions:

• where to? (wohin)
• where? (wo)
• from where? (von wo/woher)

This is universally true and has nothing to do with German in particular. However, German is very,very precise when it comes to marking things. Roman languages always mark the three possibilities by using different prepositions. English sometimes marks and sometimes it doesn't. German always marks. But there are different kinds of marks. Sometimes the mark is a preposition (nach), sometimes it is the adverb (hin) and for the two way prepositions, the case is the mark. So if your prepositional phrase answers the question wo? then you use Dative. If it answers wohin? then you need accusative. You can walk at a place or to a place, so movement is not the point. Just think of what you are trying to express. It'll be:

"in die Strasse"

if the kids are somewhere else and Strasse is where they're headed. It'll be:

"in der Strasse"

if they're already there and they're just walking. So bottom line... forget the whole movement thing! And burn all books that say that! It doesn't matter. Just analyze what question you're answering (wo/wohin) and the journey is save.

Answer 3

I think your problem of double prepositions is very interesting, and it has bothered me for ages.

The grammar books I have consulted don't mention this subtle difficulty, but from my readings of German language literature I would tend to think that germanophones write

Ich setze mich auf den Stuhl neben der Couch

and

Er legte sich auf das Bett an der Wand.

The logic seems to be that I move in the direction of the bed, hence the accusative, but that the bed doesn't move toward the wall, hence the dative.

Answer 4

Prepostitions do matter here. See also this related question:

• Is there a rule which preposition to use for a place?

But not only the preposition but also the case determines the meaning, which can be nicely shown in variations to the example you gave:

Let us look at the first part:

Die Kinder gehen in die Straße (acc.) - The children enter the street
Die Kinder gehen auf der Straße (dat.) - The children walk in the street
Die Kinder gehen auf die Straße (acc) - The children go out (on the street)
Die Kinder gehen zu der Straße (dat.) - The children go to the street
Die Kinder gehen an die Straße (acc.) - The children approach the street
Die Kinder gehen an der Straße (dat.) - The children walk at the street
[...]

Now for the second part:

vor das Haus (acc.) - to the front of the house
vor dem Haus (dat.) - in front of the house
zu dem Haus (dat.) - to the house
an dem Haus (dat.) - at the house an das Haus (acc.) - to the house
neben dem Haus (dat.) - by the house
neben das Haus (acc.) - next to the house [...]

The case here also depends on the object we want it to relate to. Accusative relates to the children walking (resp. going) and dative is related to the location of the street.

As we do not have a gerund in German we may express this by adding e.g. "gerade":

Die Kinder gehen gerade die Straße vor dem Haus entlang.

^{"entlang gehen" (acc. - "to walk along") is just another alternative here}