What are participial constructions meant to convey in German?

Question

I am reading a book on sociology, and I find that many times, a long gap is kept between the definite article and the noun. I had previously enquired about translating it here. However, I am still confused on how the semantics are different when the definite article is right in front of the noun vs after a long gap. Could it be explained more?

Answer 1

It is not entirely clear what you are asking:

Do you mean the bracket that is formed between the definite article and the referred noun? Like in

Die [bereits im vorangegangenen Kapitel behandelten] Dinge ...

Here, the definite article and the referred noun form a sort of bracket that contains a closer description of the noun.

You could replace this construct with a relative clause (this is probably what English would do), for example,

Die Dinge, die bereits im vorangegangenen Artikel behandelt wurden,....

and the meaning would be exactly the same. The latter example has the closer description behind the noun, the former has it before it, so that you still know what the noun was when the sentence goes on. It's very probably a matter of taste what you use. A native speaker might probably prefer the latter for spoken sentences, and the former for written material.

Answer 2

I already tried to explain this in my answer to your other question, but here is another attempt:

In German, if you have a nominal phrase which consists of a noun, an article, and some adjectives, the phrase must start with the article and end with the noun. This means that the adjectives (with all their attributes, if they have any) will separate the article and the noun. That's all there is to it. If you don't understand this I would ask to explain what exactly you have problems understanding.