Download Past Participles

Wann werden sie gebraucht?
Grammar: why it matters
• Sentences are like buildings, and grammar is like the blueprints
for the various buildings. If you want to build a 2-bedroom house,
a blueprint for a church isn’t gonna cut it.
• If you want to use the conversational past and instead use the
subjunctive, your sentence isn‘t serving the purpose you intended for it.
You‘re building a church, when what you wanted was a house.
• If you want the building to stay sturdy, you need to have the right
parts to build it, and you have to put the parts in the right order.
You don‘t want to build your house out of straw, and you don‘t
want to put the toilet in the middle of the living room.
• If you want your sentences to be sturdy and make sense, you need the
right parts in the right places. You can play around a little bit, like not
every house will have the kitchen in the same exact place, but you need to
be sure the essentials are there.
Past participles need help!
• Past participles are weak alone. They need a helping verb as
support beams. Otherwise, the rest of the sentence
collapses in on it and makes no sense.
• The type of helping verb required depends on what you want
to do with the sentence (church or house?)
• Helping verbs that can be used with past participles include
the following:
• sein
• haben
• werden
When kinds of sentences use past
participles?
• There are two main uses for past participles:
• Past tense: conversational past (Perfekt)
• Passive voice
There are a few other times when past participles are used:
• as adjectives:gekochte Kartoffeln, ein erfahrener Lehrer, die
angesehene Schauspielerin
• predicate adjective to describe a state: Es ist heute bedeckt. Der
Laden ist schon geschlossen. Berlin war durch eine Mauer
getrennt.
• Plusquamperfekt
• Futur II
But for now, we‘ll focus on just the passive and the present perfect.
Remembering Past Participles
• Most past participles are formed by taking the prefix ge-,
attaching it to a stem and adding either a –t or –en ending.
• Weak (regular) and mixed verbs get –t endings
• Strong (irregular) verbs (verbs that have a stem-vowel change in one or
more tenses) get –en endings
• There are some exceptions:
• Verbs ending in –ieren are weak, and don‘t take a ge- prefix: hat studiert,
ist explodiert, hat sich konzentriert, hat fotografiert
• Verbs that already have an inseparable prefix, like ver-, be-, and miss- don‘t
get a ge- prefix: hat besucht, hat erlebt, hat verkauft
• When a verb is irregular in English, it‘s usually irregular in German
too: sing:has sung::singen:hat gesungen, speak:has
spoken::sprechen:hat gesprochen, swim:has
swum::schwimmen:ist/hat geschwommen
Perfekt (conversational past tense)
• Format for Perfekt:
• Helping verb: haben or sein
• haben: most verbs take haben as a helping verb
• sein: verbs that show motion or a change in condition
• Whether you use haben or sein, the helping verb is conjugated and in
the second position
• Past participle (ge-verb)
• This goes at the end of the sentence or clause.
• This is not conjugated (you can‘t conjugate past participles)
• Examples:
• Ich habe den ganzen Tag gearbeitet.
• Wir sind nach Detroit gefahren.
• Was hast du am Wochenende gemacht?
Passiv
• Format:
• Helping verb: werden
• Your helping verb is ALWAYS werden.
• werden is conjugated and in the second possition
• Past Participle (ge-verb)
• Goes at the end of the sentence
• Examples:
• Ein schönes Lied wird gesungen.
• Das Glas Wein wird getrunken.
• Der Mann wurde gestern erschossen.