Word
Der alte Dachboden blieb völlig unberührt.
Meaning
The old attic remained completely untouched.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Der alte Dachboden blieb völlig unberührt.
alt
old
bleiben
to stay
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
völlig
completely
Questions & Answers about Der alte Dachboden blieb völlig unberührt.
Why do we use blieb unberührt here instead of just saying it was untouched (war unberührt)?
Using blieb (the simple past of bleiben, meaning to stay or remain) emphasizes that this state continued over a period of time. While war unberührt just states the fact that it was untouched at a specific moment, blieb unberührt highlights the ongoing, continuous state of non-occurrence.
How is the word unberührt formed, and can I do this with any verb?
It is built by taking the past participle of berühren (to touch), which is berührt, and adding the negative prefix un-. You can do this with many transitive verbs (verbs that take a direct object) to describe a state where an expected action did not happen, such as unentdeckt (undiscovered) or ungeöffnet (unopened).
Why is the adjective ending alte instead of alter here?
Dachboden is a masculine noun in the nominative case since it is the subject of the sentence. Because the definite article Der already does the heavy lifting of showing the masculine case, the adjective takes the weak ending -e. You would only use the strong ending -er if there were no article at all, like in the phrase alter Dachboden.
Could I use komplett or ganz instead of völlig in this sentence?