in | | May we have a break in an hour? |- | | for | | May we have a break for an hour? |- | | for (in a negative statement) | | We have not had a break for two hours. |- | | during | | We worked during the holidays. |} Ambipositions The general rule is that prepositions are placed before the word they are referring to. However, there are a few so-called ambipositions'' that may appear on either side of the head: {| class="wikitable" |- ! Adposition ! Meaning ! Succeeding adposition (postposition) ! Preceding adposition (preposition) ! Translation |- | | around | | | around the kingdom |- | | between | | | between brothers |- | | through | | | through the night |} Syntax Being a Germanic language, Swedish syntax shows similarities to both English and German. All three languages have a subject–verb–object basic word order, but Swedish sides with English in keeping this order also in dependent clauses (where German puts the verb last). Like German, Swedish utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs, adverbial phrases, and dependent clauses. Adjectives generally precede the noun they determine, though the reverse is not infrequent in poetry. Nouns qualifying other nouns are almost always compounded on the fly; the last noun is the head. A general word-order template may be drawn for a Swedish sentence, where each part, if it does appear, appears in this order. Main clause {| class="wikitable" |- | Fundament | Finite verb | Subject (if not fundament) | Clausal adverb/negation | Non-finite verb (in infinitive or supine) | Object(s) | Spatial adverb | Temporal adverb |} Subordinate clause {| class="wikitable" |- | Conjunction | Subject | Clausal adverb/Negation | Finite Verb | Non-finite verb (in infinitive or supine) | Object(s) | Spatial adverb | Temporal adverb |} The "fundament" can be whatever constituent that the speaker wishes to topicalize, emphasize as the topic of the sentence. In the unmarked case, with no special topic, the subject is placed in the fundament position. Common fundaments are an adverb or object, but it is also possible to topicalize basically any constituent, including constituents lifted from a subordinate clause into the fundament position of the main clause: (lit. "him want I not that you meet", i.e. "I don't want you to meet him") or even