German Participle Attributes

Hello everyone,

and welcome back to the YourDailyGerman Online course and I have good news for all beginners:

You have a day off!

Well, if you want to.
Why?
Well, the topic today is not exactly something you need when you make your first steps in German, so you could go outside and touch some grass.

But then again… it’s not TOO difficult to understand. You’ll do just fine, and you would gain some insight into the mechanics and structure of German and how crazy it can be.

Like…

It looks silly, for sure.
But it is possible and the thing we need to it work are the topic of today.

German Participle Attribute (in Present) – Partizipialattribut Praesens

Wow, what a word.
What are they?

Well, it’s when we use a verb or a verbal phrase as an adjective in front of a noun.
That’s the theory, and in practice, it looks like this.

• The tasty looking plate of pasta.

Tasty looking pasta is a participle attribute of the sentence “The pasta looks tasty.”.
These also exist in the past tense. Then they would look like this:

• The falsely accused unicorn.

But today, we’ll focus on the first kind, the participle attribute in present tense.
We’ll find out how to build them in German, and also when to use them, because there are some differences here.
They’re really useful for writing and the underlying ideas and concepts are even more useful and also interesting for beginners whole like reading about structure.

So if you’re ready, let’s hop right in.

We’ll take our time for this and build it up properly, so let’s start with some background that’s also useful in general as a way of thinking about structure.

Info, Slots and the Purpose of Participle Attributes

Suppose we have a very basic thing like red wine and we make a short sentence with it.

• Der Rotwein kostet 3 Euro.
• The red-wine costs 3,88 dollars.

That’s a 2007 example, by the way. Now it’s like 10 bucks.
But yeah, let’s put on our “box”-glasses for a second and analyze the sentence with them.
If you’re like “What glasses?!” don’t worry. You’ll understand as we go.

The red wine is our who-box, (as in who does something) and in that box we have the article der followed by the actual noun, Rotwein.

After the who-box, we have the verb, and then, we have 3 Euro . That is our what-box (as in what does it cost?).

Cool.
Now let’s imagine we have some additional information about the red wine: it is tasty.
How can we communicate all we know about red wine?
We could simply make 2 sentences and combine them with und.

• Der Rotwein kostet 3 Euro und er ist lecker.

But if we were always talking like this, that would be pretty damn boring.
It would be cooler if we could fit the tasty-info into our first sentence somehow.
And we can.

In German, just as in English and many other languages by the way, there are 2 slots or options where you can fit in additional information about a thing or a person.
Here they are:

• Der [info slot 1] Rotwein, [info slot 2], kostet 3 Euro.

The first slot is between the article and the noun and the second one is after the noun.
And now here 2 basic facts about this:

• The slots use different grammar.
  If you want to move info from one to the other you have to modify the phrasing to make it fit.

• Some pieces of information are always put in slot 1, some always in slot 2 and some works fine in both slots.

So… let’s get back to our red wine example.

• Der [1]Rotwein,[2], kostet 3 Euro.
• Der Rotwein ist lecker.

And now let’s add the info of the second sentence into the first one, using both slots.

Slot 1:

• Der leckere Rotwein kostet 3 Euro.
• The tasty red wine costs 3 Euros.

Slot 2:

• Der Rotwein, der lecker ist, kostet 3 Euro.
• The red wine, which is tasty, costs 3 Euros.

Clearly, the slot 1 version is the better choice here. The information that the wine is tasty is just one adjective so it is very short. Such information is well placed in the first slot. The slot 2 version isn’t wrong, it just sounds needlessly complicated.
But not every piece of information is that short. In fact, the majority of information we give about things every day needs a whole sentence with verb and everything to be expressed.
Like this one:

• The red wine tastes a little like vanilla.
• Der Rotwein schmeckt ein bisschen nach Vanille.

For information that needs a verb to be expressed, usually slot 2 is the better choice…

• Der Rotwein, der ein wenig nach Vanille schmeckt, kostet 3 Euro.
• The red wine, which/that tastes a little …., costs 3 Euros.

But in German, we could also put this piece of information into slot 1

• Der ein bisschen nach Vanille schmeckende Rotwein kostet 3 Euro.

This doesn’t work in English, but this is a participle attribute.
And that is their core purpose:

participle attributes make a piece of information that contains a verb suitable for slot 1.

Why is it called “participle attribute”? Because it uses the participle form of the verb, here schmeckend.
Basically, it transforms a relative sentence into a sort of adjective.
Like… a really really loooong adjective, that, just like any other adjective, gets the normal adjective ending.

• Der einbisschennachvanilleschmeckend-e Rotwein kostet 3 Euro.
• Der lecker-e Rotwein kostet 3 Euro.

Cool.
Now we know what participle attributes are and what their purpose is and the next step would be to talk about how exactly to build them. Because in higher level exams, you’ll have to do some transformer action.

But before we get to that, there’s actually one question many of you have in your minds right now: WHY?

Why even use Participle Attributes

We just learned that participle attributes basically transform a relative sentence and make it suitable for slot 1, in front of the noun.
And the question is why we would even want to do that. Why not just keep adjective-based info in slot 1 and verb based info as a relative sentence in slot 2.

• Der französiche (slot 1) Rotwein, der ein bisschen nach Vanille schmeckt (slot 2), passt gut zu weißen Shirts.
• The French red wine, that/which tastes a little like vanilla, goes well with white shirts.

I mean, this is beautiful and balanced. Both slots are used nicely.
But now let’s imagine we have ANOTHER piece of information about the wine. A third one.

• Meine Mutter hat mir den Wein vor einem Jahr zum Geburtstag geschenkt.
• My mom gave me the wine as a birthday present a year ago.

Suppose we want to fit that into our sentence too.
Well, this is a piece of information that can only come after the subject in slot 2.
I will answer why in a little bit, but take my word for it now.
So this mom bit has to be behind Rotwein.
Fine.
We can do that using und

• Der französische Rotwein, der ein bisschen nach Vanille schmeckt, und den mir meine Mutter vor einem Jahr zum Geburtstag geschenkt hat, passt gut zu Bier.

This is correct, but is it beautiful? Not really. There is just a short word in slot 1 while slot 2 has this really really long block of info. That can be a problem.

• The French red wine, which tastes a little like vanilla and which my mom gave me as a birthday present a year ago, is a book I have yet to read.

I mean, you probably caught what I did here, but I hope you can see my point.
Slot 2 is soooo long that you slowly forget the beginning of the sentence.
So it would make for better writing, if we could make the whole thing a little more balanced.

And at least in German, we can.
The mom-part HAS to stay where it is ( again, we’ll see later why) but we could use a participle attribute and move the vanilla-part to the front.

• Der ein bisschen nach Vanille schmeckende, französische Rotwein, den mir meine Mutter vor einem Jahr zum Geburtstag geschenkt hat, passt gut zu Fisch.

This is a lot better.

The additional info we want to give about the wine is more evently distrubuted and we have less problems to track where we are.
Now, cramming that much info into one sentence is nothing people do very often in spoken German. It takes some processing to say something like this quickly. But just open a newspaper, and you will see these things everywhere.

Cool.
So now we know why we might need them.
Time to learn how to build them.

How to Build a Partizipialattribut

In order to understand how a participle attribute is made, it is very useful to first look at how information is put into slot 2.
And that is done by a relative sentence.
Here are some English examples.

• The man, who drinks beer, will have to pee eventually.
• The horse, with which I am good friends, stars in Man of Steel.
• My brother, whom I haven’t seen in a while, is bored.
• The green book I read blew.

ttNow, I have a whole series about relative clauses in German, so I don’t want to go into details here. But the 2 main features are:

• Most of the relative pronouns are the definite articles: der, die, das, dem, den etc…
• All relative clauses are subordinate clauses, so the type where ALL the verbs are at the end.

Here is the example we’ll work with.

• Die junge Frau, die in dem Café als Köchin arbeitet, studiert Geschichte.
• The young woman, who works as a chef in that café, studies history.

It consists of a main sentence:

• Die junge Frau studiert Geschichte.

And then we have a relative clause about the woman in slot 2.

• die junge Frau, die in dem Café als Köchin arbeitet….

What we want to do now is transform the relative clause into a participle attribute, so we can move it into slot 1.
And here’s the step-by-step approach:

And now we’re ready to insert it.

• Die schöne, in dem Café als Köchin arbeitende Frau studiert Geschichte.

That’s it.
And now let me point out what we didn’t do:

When learners have this task of changing a relative sentence into a participle attribute or vice versa (which is something you ONLY ever do in a test), then they often start meddling with the word order, because that’s usually a thing. But here it is not.
Think of the relative clause one block. You take it out of slot 2, remove the article, adjust the verb and then you plunk it into slot 1.
All you have to touch is the beginning and the end of it. The rest is solid and remains unchanged.

Here is proof.
The following sentence is not nice German, it is hard to understand and follow, even for a native. But grammatically, it is correct and some of our philosophers and authors did write that way.

• Der [___empty slot 1____] Mann,
  [der den Kaffee, den ihm die offensichtlich demotivierte Kellnerin nach langem Warten endlich auf den mit einem seit Tagen nicht mehr ausgespülten Lappen gewischten Tisch gestellt hatte, trinkt,]
  raucht.
• Der der den Kaffee, den ihm die offensichtlich demotivierte Kellnerin nach langem warten endlich auf den mit einem seit Tagen nicht mehr ausgespülten Lappen gewischten Tisch gestellt hatte, trinkt trinkende Mann [___empty slot 2___], raucht.

It is hard to translate that using only one sentence in English:

• The man, who is drinking the coffee, which, after a long wait, the obviously not motivated waitress had put on his table, wiped with a cloth that hadn’t been rinsed out for days, is smoking.

Go ahead compare the 2 German versions, nothing changed anywhere apart from removing the article and picking the right verb form – the participle.

Today, we’re focusing on the present, so we need the present participle and that really is the easiest verb form in German.

This d-form does corresponds to the English -ing to some extent, but be careful with that, because it often does not work.

And speaking of not working… German can do a lot more with these participle attributes than English.

English and German – Difference in Usage

Let’s now look at some examples where we transform a relative sentence into a participle attribute.

• Der Hund, der bellt, nervt.
  Der bellende Hund nervt.
• The dog that barks sucks.
  The barking dog sucks.

Here, the participle attribute structure works in both languages because it’s basically just the verb.
However, as soon as we extend the verb with some info, it stops working in English.

• Ich mag keinen Käse, der nach Füßen riecht.
  Ich mag keinen nach Füßen riechenden Käse.
• I don’t like cheese that smells like feet.

You can not say “I don’t like like feet smelling cheese.” but in German that structure is possible.
Here are a couple more examples:

• Das Kind kommt nicht an die Keksbox, die auf dem Schrank steht.
  Das Kind kommt nicht an die auf dem Schrank stehende Keksbox.
• The child can’t reach the cookie box that sits on the cupboard.

• Der Professor, der über Zeitreisen forscht, bestellt eine Pizza.
  Der über Zeitreisen forschende Professor bestellt eine Pizza.
• The professor who does research about time travel orders a pizza.

Is this something you need to do in daily life?
No. But you will find it in writing, especially in very dense writing where lots of information is squeezed into one sentence.

There are limits to what you can do though, so let’s look at those next

Limits to Present Participle Attributes

We learned that we can use a participle attribute to move information about a noun from slot 2 to slot 1. Or in other words, by transforming a relative clause into a participle attribute.

But if we want to do that, a couple of conditions actually have to be met.

Here’s what I mean:

• Die Frau, die am Laptop arbeitet, ist meine Schwester.
• The woman who works on the computer is my sister.

• Ich sitze neben der Frau, die am Laptop arbeitet.
• I sit next to the woman who is working on the laptop.

In the main sentence, the woman has different roles in the sentences. In the first one, she is the subject, in the second one, she is a prepositional object. But in the relative sentence, she is the subject in both examples, so both can be rephrased using a participle attribute.

• Die am Laptop arbeitende Frau ist meine Schwester.
• The woman working on the laptop……
• Ich sitze neben der am Laptop arbeitenden Frau.
• I sit next to the woman who is ….
  (English can’t do the German structure here)

Now, how about this example.

• Der Laptop, mit dem die Frau arbeitet, ist meine Schwes… oh ist ein Sony.
• The laptop, with which the woman is working/the woman is working with, is a Sony.

Our noun here is laptop. The slot 2 sentence gives additional info about laptop. But laptop is not the subject in the slot 2 phrase. The woman is. She does the working, the laptop is just an object. And there is NO WAY to make that into a particle consumption.
It is impossible.

So, this subject-condition is a grammatical one and there is no working around it.

The second condition or limit to using participle attributes is more of a stylistic one.

Technically we can do it. EVERY verb has a d-form. But for said verbs it sounds anything from bad to just really, really awful.

• The horse that is being groomed by Thomas is enjoying itself.
• Das Pferd, das von Thomas gestriegelt wird, hat Spaß.
• Das von Thomas gestriegelt werdende Pferd hat Spaß… is really strange.

• The man, who has no more cash money, is paying with a card.
• Der Mann, der kein Bargeld mehr hat, zahlt mit Karte.
• Der kein Bargeld mehr habende Mann zahlt mit Karte…. again… really really strange

So that’s the two conditions… subject in the participle part and the verb is not modal or helper.

And then in general, slot 1 is well suited for short info.
So stuff like adjectives and simple actions like barking, tea drinking, car driving and so on.
We’ve seen some uber long participle attributes here but those are NOT something considered good style. 200 years ago, maybe. But not today, so don’t feel compelled to do this kind of stuff in a C1 writing exam.

When you have lots of additional info, try to balance it nicely and not squeeze everything into one slot.
You have 2, so try and use them both.

All right.
So now we know all the ‘facts’ about present participle attributes.
Time to have some fun.

Having fun with Participle Attributes

We’ve already seen that German can do some stuff with its participle attributes that English can’t do. But let’s push it a bit and how crazy we can make it.
Let’s say there is a woman, and she is tired. And she is watching a roe deer as it crosses the little creek that is there. And that woman has a horrible secret.
These are a bunch of pieces of information and our goal is to squeeze all of these into ONE sentence.
First, let’s make a list of the pieces as boring main sentences

• Die [slot 1] Frau, [slot] hat ein schlimmes Geheimnis. (our main sentence)
• Die Frau ist müde.
• Die Frau beobachtet das [slot 1] Reh [slot 2].
• Das Reh überquert den kleinen Bach.

Now let’s combine this into one sentence. The English version could be something like this:

• The [ tired] woman [who is watching the [slot 1: empty] roe deer [that is crossing the little creek] has a horrible secret.

Not a pretty sentence maybe but it gets the job done.
Here it is in German:

• Die muede Frau, [die das Reh, [das den kleinen Bach überquert], beobachtet], hat ein schlimmes Geheimnis.

Also not pretty.
But you know how we can make it REALLY weird?
By using participle attributes instead of relative clauses.
Ready?

• Die [das [den kleinen Bach überquerende] Reh beobachtende] Frau hat ein schlimmes Geheimnis.

And there we have it!!!
A legit sentence that starts with die das den that I promised you in the beginning of our journey. Is this good style?
No, absolutely not!
But is it fun?
I think so. Bring it up at parties or on a date and you’ll see.

And with this great piece of advice, I think we’ll wrap it up.

Hooray.

At some point, I’ll do a lesson on participle attributes in the past tense, but for today, we have done enough.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions about this, just leave me a comment.

I hope you liked it and see you next time.