The article dwells on the notion of inchoativity and its role in relation to the semantic category of the verbal action, which highlights the phase of an action or state - the beginning, the middle and the end.In the system of phasic meanings, to start represents the primary meaning. In German, the inchoative meaning is expressed through lexical means in particular. The main group of lexical means of inchoativity include verbs with corresponding semantics and adverbial lexical indicators. The main role belongs to the combination of phasal verbs with inchoative semantics, anfangen, beginnen with  the infinitive and verbal-nominal constructions with functional verbs, since they both realize theinchoative meaning according to the structural-semantic models existing in the language.