Why is Accusative First and Then Dative Follows?

Bahasa Indonesia - Deutsch

I have learnt German since I was at the Senior High School (SMA 78 Kemanggisan, West Jakarta). I still can remember a sentence:

Ich gebe dem Kind eine Schokolade.

It was an example, which our German teacher used to show us the order of the grammatical cases. There are some verbs, which need 2 objects (in the past it used to be object, now Ergaenzung is preferred to object) and these objects have their own cases. The one has the dative, the other has the accusative.

In the above example dem Kind gets the dative case and eine Schokolade gets the accusative case. Because the objects are nouns, the order should be: dative first, then accusative.

Now I teach German and use also das studio d A1 Deutsch als Fremdsprache Kurs- und Uebungsbuch (Berlin: Cornelsen, 2006). It surprised me, why the objects order is inverted: first accusative, then dative. I found many sentences with this inverted order in that book.

Examples:
1. Koennen Sie die Saetze den Begriffen zuordnen?
2. Ordnen Sie die Bilder den Texten zu.
3. Ordnen Sie die Fotos den Namen zu.

According to the grammar the right order should be:
1. Koennen Sie den Begriffen die Saetze zuordnen?
2. Ordnen Sie den Texten die Bilder zu.
3. Ordnen Sie den Namen die Fotos zu.

Then I asked the publisher.

Following is the answer from a nice expert:

Ms Duden (not the right name):

You are right, according to the grammar nouns with dative case are in front of nouns with accusative case. However exception can be made if for example someone would make a remark on something. An example: "Ordnen Sie die Gespraeche den Fotos zu." Here "die Gespraeche" is remarked on. The sentence is made according to the remark.

Hmm, the remark was the reason. :-)


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