Most Frequent Sentence Beginnings

Frequencies of word forms occurring at the start of a sentence in the Songkorpus — revealing lyrical conventions, discourse-structuring strategies, and stylistic fingerprints. The table lists the most frequent sentence-initial words; use the column headers to re-sort. Relative frequency expresses the share of all sentences in the selected view that begin with a given word.

Linguistic Insights

Perspective and parataxis

The two dominant patterns in sentence-initial position are Ich and Und, which together occupy the top two ranks in almost every archive — trading which one leads, but rarely conceding to a third word. Du, the natural third candidate, is far less stable: third at corpus level, but as low as 21st for Hannes Wader. Song lyrics frame experience from the speaking subject outward, then unfold it through addition and contrast (Und, Doch) rather than syntactic subordination — each new sentence a beat in an emotional sequence rather than a branch in an argument.

Sentence boundaries as editorial interpretation

Lyric texts vary considerably in punctuation practice: where sentence-final markers are absent, boundaries are set editorially in the Songkorpus, introducing an interpretive layer into the data. Conjunction-initial counts are particularly sensitive to this effect: whether a line-initial Und or Doch is logged as sentence-initial depends directly on whether its predecessor is treated as sentence-final. The frequencies in this table should be read accordingly: as a window onto poetic register and the annotation decisions that make it measurable.

Most frequent sentence beginnings – Full Corpus (all archives)

First Word (case-sensitive) Absolute Frequency Relative Frequency
Ich54,7940.101833
Und27,4740.051060
Du15,9980.029732
Die11,4040.021194
Wir10,7290.019940
Das9,4450.017553
Es9,3830.017438
Sie9,1230.016955
Doch7,9750.014821
Der6,9790.012970
Wenn6,6300.012322
Was5,7540.010694
Ja5,5200.010259
Denn5,5040.010229
Ein3,8680.007189
Alles3,7490.006967
In3,5520.006601
So3,5480.006594
Mein3,5460.006590
Er3,5060.006516
Wie3,2970.006127
Ihr3,2730.006083
Komm3,1950.005938
Aber3,1660.005884
Meine3,0440.005657
Mit2,6390.004905
Auf2,5660.004769
Sag2,5380.004717
Wer2,5360.004713
Oh2,4700.004590
Nur2,3500.004367
Da2,3400.004349
Ey2,3050.004284
Lass2,2970.004269
Dann2,2210.004128
Alle2,1930.004076
Für2,1610.004016
Hab2,1230.003946
Jetzt1,9630.003648
Immer1,9600.003643
Deine1,9090.003548
Jeder1,8930.003518
Im1,8760.003486
Keine1,8290.003399
Mach1,8050.003355
Warum1,7660.003282
Wo1,7640.003278
Yeah1,6900.003141
Bin1,6230.003016
Baby1,6210.003013
Nein1,5990.002972
Weil1,5920.002959
Guck1,5860.002948
Hier1,5650.002909
Von1,5430.002868
Man1,5010.002790
Kein1,4880.002765
Gib1,4690.002730
Heute1,4290.002656
Dein1,4110.002622
Auch1,3990.002600
Ah1,2390.002303
Also1,2380.002301
Als1,2040.002238
Ist1,2000.002230
Zu1,1800.002193
Eine1,1490.002135
Vielleicht1,1310.002102
Keiner1,1290.002098
Egal1,0430.001938
Fick9870.001834
An9740.001810
Nicht9580.001780
Bitte9450.001756
Hey9070.001686
Aus8940.001661
Bei8880.001650
Mir8840.001643
Diese8630.001604
Will8400.001561
Manchmal8270.001537
Dass8190.001522
Geh8020.001490
Ohne8010.001489
Am7860.001461
Bis7740.001438
Oder7680.001427
Nie7530.001399
Bist7480.001390
Hast6990.001299
Nach6970.001295
Mann6970.001295
Scheiß6760.001256
Noch6630.001232
I6440.001197
Jeden6330.001176
Ach6310.001173
Schon6220.001156
Nimm6220.001156
Ganz6130.001139

Click any column header to sort. Default order: descending absolute frequency. Relative frequency = share of all sentences in this view beginning with this word.

These analyses are based on corpus data as of July 29, 2026.