Question about word order with conjunctions
•"Bleibe bei uns, denn es will Abend werden."

•"Ich weiß nicht, was ich heute Abend mach soll."

•"Ich will, dass du deine Hausaufgaben machst."

I do not understand how the sentences above are formed.

I am especially concerned about verb placement and what gets conjugated vs. what doesn't.

I think the joining of phrases with conjunctions has something to do with wether or not the phrases that are being joined can function as independent sentences, I don't know the specifics or how it works. If you could explain this type of sentence structure, and how it works, that would be great!

Thanks!

Question

Question about word order with conjunctions
•"Bleibe bei uns, denn es will Abend werden."

•"Ich weiß nicht, was ich heute Abend mach soll."

•"Ich will, dass du deine Hausaufgaben machst."

I do not understand how the sentences above are formed.

I am especially concerned about verb placement and what gets conjugated vs. what doesn't.

I think the joining of phrases with conjunctions has something to do with wether or not the phrases that are being joined can function as independent sentences, I don't know the specifics or how it works.  If you could explain this type of sentence structure, and how it works, that would be great!

Thanks!

Answer

That should be: ... was ich heute Abend machen soll.

The situation isn't all that different from English: Apart from "independent" or "main" clauses that can stand by themselves, there are also "dependent" or "subordinate" ones that can't. They're usually introduced by a certain conjunction: "*because* it's raining", "*that* you do your homework" and so on. What's special in German is that the conjugated part of the verb(*) is moved to the *last* position in a dependent clause, that's why you have "soll" and "machst" at the end of the sentence in your examples. The page you referred to in another discussion provides more information:

http://germanforenglishspeakers.com/other/conjunctions/

(*) Not the entire verb construction, but only the conjugated part. This is important when you have an auxiliary verb (for composite tenses) or a modal one:
– ich habe ihn gesehen → ... weil ich ihn gesehen habe
– er muss morgen kommen → ... dass er morgen kommen muss