Sentence Structures in German and Korean

Valence theory is easy to understand and used to explain the sentence structures for beginners learning German. According to the valence theory the verb has the central position of the sentence and the other constituents are dependant on the verb. These constitutents are divided into two groups: complement (Erganzung) and adjunct (Angabe). Complements are specific to the subclasses of the verbs, while adjuncts are related to the whole sentence. Complements are separated into two groups, the obligatory and the optional complement, depending on whether complements are omissible especially in communication. The combinations of the verb and the complements result in sentence models (Satzbauplane). Schumacher (1987) proposes 42 sentence models of German