Why does 'geben' break the TeKaMoLo rule?

Answer 1

First of all, we have to acknowledge that TeKaMoLo is a tendency and not a rule. It's an observation of a pattern and there are certainly examples where it is not observed.

Often, these instances can be explained by another tendency: for important phrases - things the speaker wants to emphasize - to be "fronted" or brought forward to the beginning of the sentence. This, of course, messes with TeKaMoLo. Let's take a look at some example sentences.

Gestern (Te) habe (V) ich (S) das Projekt (O) wegen des Termins (Ka) mit dem Auto (Mo) ins Büro (Lo) gebracht (V2).

Yesterday I brought the project to the office with the car due to the deadline.

But in order to emphasize that it was due to the deadline that you did this, you could say....

Wegen des Termins (Ka) habe (V) ich (S) das Projekt (O) gestern (Te) mit dem Auto (Mo) ins Büro (Lo) gebracht (V2).

Other times, the unexpected word order is not necessarily due to emphasis, and is just an exception. There are exceptions to these tendencies all over the language and that's why you can't think of them as rules. Here's a demonstration of what I think you're talking about:

Es (S) gibt (V) hier (Lo) immer (Te) wegen der hohen Luftfeuchtigkeit (Ka) so viele Wanzen (O).

There are always so many bugs here because of the humidity.

That can't be comfortably rephrased and isn't in this order due to emphasis. It's just an exception. You could say

Es (S) gibt (V) IMMER (Te) hier (Lo) so viele WANZEN (O)!!!!

...but that would be adding a lot of emphasis, if you ask me. The point is that the "unmarked," or natural way to say it, is the unexpected word order, that doesn't follow the tendency, as you observed, and unfortunately, the simple explanation is that that "rule" isn't a rule.