How do you determine the case of relative clauses (Relativsätze)? I'm having trouble understanding how to determine whether a relative clause is in the nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive case

Taras

How do you determine the case of relative clauses (Relativsätze)? I'm having trouble understanding how to determine whether a relative clause is in the nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive case. I know that in some sentences I can look for certain key words within the sentence that indicate the case (i.e. words like durch, für, gegen, ohne, um indicate the accusative case). However, I don't know how to deal with complex sentences that use relative clauses. For example, the book I'm currently reading says that the article" dem" in the sentence "Das ist das Kind, dem ich geholfen habe." is an example of the dative being used. But why is that? I don't understand how I would know that. Another example is "Das is Peter, den ich noch aus der schule kenne." Here, the book says that "den" is used due to the accusative case. But again, I don't understand why that is. I see the word "aus" in the sentence, so why is it accusative instead of dative? I'm confused. Can someone who has a good understanding of German grammar please explain this to me?

Feb 27, 2019 11:22 PM

Answers · 8

The cases of objects are determined by the verb (or prepositions). Like in Russian helfen requires the dative case (помогать кому-л., что-л.) whereas kennen requires accusative case (знать кого-л., что-л.). Das ist das Kind, dem ich geholfen habe. - Это ребёнок, которому я помогал. Das ist Peter, den ich von der Schule kenne. - Это Пётр, которого знаю из школы.

February 28, 2019

The case is determined by the role of the pronoun in the clause, just like in a main clause. In your first example, it's the dative object of "helfen", in the second, the accusative object of "kennen". ("Aus" doesn't have anything to do with it, "aus der Schule" can be looked at separately.) Of course this means you have to know that "helfen" takes a dative and "kennen" an accusative object, but that's the case (no pun intended) when you want to use them in a main clause too, not just in a relative one. (Doesn't it work the same way in Ukrainian and Russian?)

February 28, 2019