Breakdown of Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten mit Büchern.
Questions & Answers about Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten mit Büchern.
German auf is a two-way preposition:
- with dative = location (where something is)
- with accusative = direction (where something is going)
In this sentence, the boxes are already there, so it’s about location:
- Wo? (Where?) → auf dem Dachboden → dative
- Wohin? (Where to?) → auf den Dachboden → accusative (e.g. Wir bringen die Kisten auf den Dachboden.)
Dachboden is masculine:
- nominative: der Dachboden
- dative: dem Dachboden
- accusative: den Dachboden
So auf dem Dachboden is correct for “in the attic / on the attic floor” (location).
German often uses position verbs instead of a general sein:
- liegen – to lie (be lying horizontally)
- stehen – to stand (upright)
- sitzen – to sit
- hängen – to hang
Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten … literally:
“On the attic lie old boxes …”
This sounds very natural in German and subtly suggests the boxes are lying around / lying there.
You could say:
- Auf dem Dachboden sind noch alte Kisten mit Büchern.
This is grammatically fine but less vivid and a bit more neutral. Liegen paints a clearer picture of how the boxes are positioned.
German often expresses English “there is / there are” by:
- putting a place expression at the beginning,
- then a verb,
- then the thing that exists.
Pattern:
- Ort (place) + Verb
- Subjekt
Example:
- Auf dem Tisch liegt ein Buch. → “There is a book on the table.”
- Im Garten stehen zwei Autos. → “There are two cars in the garden.”
Your sentence:
- Auf dem Dachboden – place
- liegen – verb
- noch alte Kisten mit Büchern – subject (what exists there)
So the structure itself carries the meaning “there are … (there)” without using a separate word for “there”.
The subject is alte Kisten.
Proof:
- The verb form is liegen (3rd person plural).
- This must agree with a plural subject.
- Alte Kisten is plural; Kisten is the noun whose form matches the verb.
Full structure:
- Auf dem Dachboden – prepositional phrase (place), moved to the start
- liegen – verb (2nd position)
- noch alte Kisten mit Büchern – subject phrase (what is lying there)
German main clauses follow the V2 rule:
The finite verb (here: liegen) must be in second position in the clause.
“Second position” means second element, not second word.
Elements here:
- Auf dem Dachboden – entire prepositional phrase = element 1
- liegen – verb = element 2
- noch alte Kisten mit Büchern – rest of the sentence
So:
- Element 1: Auf dem Dachboden
- Element 2: liegen (V2!)
- Element 3+: the remaining elements
That’s exactly what German requires in a main clause.
In this context, noch means “still” in the sense of “they are still there / they remain there”.
Nuance examples:
Auf dem Dachboden liegen alte Kisten mit Büchern.
→ There are old boxes with books in the attic. (neutral statement)Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten mit Büchern.
→ There are still old boxes with books in the attic.
(They haven’t been removed yet / unexpectedly still there.)
Position:
Noch is an adverb usually placed before what it modifies or before the main part of the predicate:
- Es liegen noch alte Kisten auf dem Dachboden.
- Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten.
Moving noch too far away, e.g. Auf dem Dachboden liegen alte Kisten noch mit Büchern, sounds wrong or very odd.
This is about adjective endings.
- Kisten is nominative plural (subject of the sentence).
- There is no article before it (no die, meine, etc.).
- With plural, no article, nominative, adjectives take the strong ending -e.
So:
- nominative plural without article: alte Kisten, neue Bücher, rote Schuhe
Compare:
- Die alten Kisten liegen auf dem Dachboden.
Here, die is a definite article, so the adjective takes the weak ending -en → alten.
In your sentence there is no article, so alte is correct.
In German, plural indefinite nouns often appear without an article when you mean “some …”, not specific, known items.
- Auf dem Dachboden liegen alte Kisten mit Büchern.
→ “There are (some) old boxes with books in the attic.” (unspecified boxes)
If you meant particular, known boxes, you would likely say:
- Auf dem Dachboden liegen die alten Kisten mit den Büchern.
→ “The old boxes with the books are in the attic.”
So, no article here signals that we are talking about unspecified / not previously mentioned boxes and books.
Two things are happening here:
- Mit always takes the dative case.
- Dative plural nouns in German normally add -n if they don’t already end in -n.
Bücher is plural of Buch:
- nominative plural: Bücher
- dative plural: Büchern
Because of mit (dative):
- mit Büchern = “with books”
So mit Bücher would be wrong; you need the dative plural Büchern, even though in speech the final -n is sometimes not clearly heard.
Both are possible, but they mean slightly different things.
- mit Büchern – indefinite plural, “with books” (some books, not specified which)
- mit den Büchern – definite plural, “with the books” (specific books already known or mentioned)
Your sentence:
- … alte Kisten mit Büchern.
→ We learn for the first time that these are boxes with books in them, not some particular known set of books.
If the books were already known from context, mit den Büchern could be preferred.
Yes. That sentence is grammatically correct and natural.
Difference in emphasis:
Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten mit Büchern.
→ Focuses first on the place (the attic). “In the attic, there are still old boxes…”Alte Kisten mit Büchern liegen noch auf dem Dachboden.
→ Starts with the things (the boxes). “Old boxes with books are still in the attic…”
Both are fine; you just choose what you want to highlight first in the conversation (place vs. objects).
Yes. That is also correct and common.
Structure:
- Es here is a dummy subject (sometimes called “expletive es”), similar to English “there” in “There are …”.
- Real subject is still alte Kisten mit Büchern (plural), so the verb is plural liegen.
Comparison:
- Auf dem Dachboden liegen noch alte Kisten mit Büchern.
- Es liegen noch alte Kisten mit Büchern auf dem Dachboden.
Both mean essentially: “There are still old boxes with books in the attic.”
The version with Es sounds slightly more neutral and general; the version starting with Auf dem Dachboden emphasizes the location more.
They are related but not the same:
Dach – roof itself.
- auf dem Dach = on the roof (outside, on top of the house)
Dachboden – attic; the space under the roof, usually for storage.
- auf dem Dachboden ≈ “in the attic” (German uses auf, not in, here)
Dachgeschoss – top floor of a building, usually a proper living floor with apartments or rooms, not just storage.
- im Dachgeschoss = on/in the top floor
Your sentence uses Dachboden, so we are talking about a storage attic, not a regular living floor.