Breakdown of Das ganze Schloss war mit Moos überwuchert.
sein
to be
mit
with
ganz
quite, completely; whole
das Schloss
the castle
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
das Moos
the moss
überwuchern
to overgrow
Questions & Answers about Das ganze Schloss war mit Moos überwuchert.
Why does this sentence use war instead of wurde for the passive voice?
This sentence uses the stative passive (Zustandspassiv), which describes a finished state or condition. It is formed with sein (here in the simple past as war) plus the past participle. If we used wurde überwuchert (the action passive, or Vorgangspassiv), it would mean the action of the moss actively growing over the castle was happening at that exact moment in the past.
Why doesn't the past participle überwuchert start with ge-?
The verb überwuchern has the inseparable prefix über-. Verbs with inseparable prefixes (like be-, ent-, ver-, and often über-) do not take the ge- prefix when forming the past participle.
Since Schloss is a neuter noun, shouldn't the adjective be ganzes instead of ganze?
No, because the definite article Das already clearly shows that the noun is neuter and in the nominative case. When the article does the heavy lifting of showing the gender and case, the adjective just takes the weak ending -e, giving us Das ganze Schloss.
What case is Moos in this sentence, since it has no article?
It is in the dative case because the preposition mit always forces the following noun into the dative. Even though we can't see a dative ending or article here (because Moos is an uncountable noun being used in a general sense), the grammatical case is still dative.
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