Kurze Fragen über Deutsch/Quick German questions

[alice]

Is there any practial difference regarding the location of a preposition relative to its object, as in Ich gehe den Baum unter versus Ich gehe unter den Baum?

[Vijay]

Aren't only separable prefixes supposed to go at the end of a sentence in German? Is ich gehe den Baum unter even grammatical in German?

[alice]

Perhaps unter is a bad example. I've seem entlang used like this: entlang die Strasse versus die Strasse entlang.

[Zju]

Wiktionary has to say the following about entlang specifically:

 · The postposition usage is more common than the preposition, not only but particularly in speech.
· Apart from the ways of construction mentioned above, additional ones are possible in older or regional usage. One may still hear the postposition used with a bare dative: Ich gehe dem Fluss entlang. The preposition has also been construed with the accusative: Ich gehe entlang den Fluss. The latter is now nonstandard, however.

(other than rection; it should be entlang der Strasse, at least in common speech)

[Linguoboy]

Perhaps unter is a bad example. I've seem entlang used like this: entlang die Strasse versus die Strasse entlang.

Entlang is a rare exception. I have a friend who's doing the Duolingo German tree and I was surprised to discover it's introduced fairly early on.

Postpositions are unusual in contemporary German and often rather literary. Maybe the other German-speakers here can come up with more, but the only other ones I can think of besides entlang which can also be prepositional are:

• zufolge (einem Bericht zufolge or zufolge eines Berichts)
• wegen (des Geldes wegen or (von) wegen dem Geld)
• nach (in postpositional usage it means "according to" rather than "towards", e.g. meiner Meinung nach)

As you can see, changing the order sometimes changes the meaning and almost always changes which case the adposition governs.

[Linguoboy]

Aren't only separable prefixes supposed to go at the end of a sentence in German? Is ich gehe den Baum unter even grammatical in German?

No, but you could have:

Es geht unter den Baum. "It goes under the tree."
Es geht der Baum unter. "The tree is going down."

(If you want to keep the same article in both cases, swap out Baum for a feminine or neuter noun, e.g.:
Es geht unter die Sonne. "It goes under the sun."
Es geht die Sonne unter. "The sun is going down.")

[alice]

alice is enlightened.

[Vijay]

Is it also possible to say der Baum geht unter to mean the same thing as es geht der Baum unter, and die Sonne geht unter to mean the same thing as es geht die Sonne unter?

[WeepingElf]

Yes.

[Linguoboy]

Yeah, the effect of using a dummy es there is similar to having a cleft in English. I just added it for parallelism.

[alice]

How many words are there which end in nonhomorganic clusters of nasal + obstruent? I can think of Amt, Senf, and Hemd, but I'm sure there are more. For that matter, are there any similar verb stems?

[cedh]

Samt, Zimt, fremd, Hanf, fünf.

But that's about it, as far as reasonably common lexical root words are concerned. The clusters /mk np nk ŋp/ do not seem to exist in coda position at all AFAICT.

Word-final /mt/ (and to a lesser extent /ŋt/) clusters are common in inflected verb forms though (present 3sg and 2pl, and past participles, some of which have become lexicalised as adjectives or adverbs, e.g. bestimmt, verdammt, unbedingt), because stem-final nasals do not assimilate in POA to an inflectional -t:
rammt, hemmt, nimmt/nehmt, stimmt, kommt, summt, schämt, strömt, krümmt, träumt, reimt (also in loanwords: boomt, streamt)
fangt/fängt, sprengt, singt, bringt, verjüngt

There are also some verbs that have forms with coda /rmt lmt/: schwärmt, formt, filmt...

(I haven't looked at the clusters /ms mps mts ŋs ŋks ŋts/ in detail, but those all exist, again mostly but not exclusively in morphologically complex words.)

[Creyeditor]

There is assimilation in Senf, Hanf and fünf for me.

[Linguoboy]

There is assimilation in Senf, Hanf and fünf for me.

I’ve even heard fünf colloquially pronounced [fʏm].

[Pabappa]

the German surname Hamtramck suggests that coda /mk/ is at least treated as natural, unless this name dates from the era when spelling was an unreliable guide to pronunciation, or belongs to a dialect which isnt considered part of standard German.

[Creyeditor]

Looks like a form of (Low German/Dutch/Frisian) diminutive -ke to me, which was either shortened or not expanded in the first place. So a complex form of non-standard origin. But it seems pronounceable at least.

[hwhatting]

[*] wegen (des Geldes wegen or (von) wegen dem Geld)
As you can see, changing the order sometimes changes the meaning and almost always changes which case the adposition governs.

Nitpick: in formal Standard German, wegen also governs the genitive when it's preposed. The colloquial language uses the dative, and the genitive is falling out of use also in written German, but you still may come across peevers who insist that only using the genitive is correct German.