Volume 40, Issue 3

This paper compares two versions of one of the most influential 18th century German texts, namely Goethe’s Leiden des jungen Werthers , the 1774 first print edition and the 1787 work edition, with respect to the presence or absence of final schwa. Written Early New High German and older New High German characteristically show variation on this point: while final schwa disappeared in many of the German dialects, it was reintroduced in written texts in many cases. In this paper a detailed discussion on the factors favoring or disfavoring final schwa in the two versions of the text is provided. It turns out that fina^l schwa is missing in many cases in the first print edition from 1774, but is present in the 1787 edition. However, the new schwas are introduced only in certain morphological contexts, while in others, schwa is less frequent in the later edition. In many respects the 1787 version corresponds to the forms and norms suggested by the influential contemporary stylist and grammarian Johann Christoph Adelung.

What is fascinating about German expressions such as “So kochen Sie ihren Mann schlank” (literally, “Thus you cook your husband slim”, i. e. “This is how you cook for your husband to make him slim”) is not only their deviation from the default setting of the verb in terms of form and content, but also that with such formations there is no end to the possibilities of analysis. The following paper is concerned with transitive constructions: besides non-referential and non-directional prepositional phrases such as “jemanden zu Tode prügeln” (“beat someone to death”), primarily adjectival resultative phrases such as “jemanden tot schießen” (“shoot someone dead”). Within all grammar models one assumes a simple dichotomy between verbal and so-called fake objects, which in construction grammar too ultimately leads to more or less invariant analysis proposals. Instead it will be shown that new objects are frequently based on more or less central verbal frame values, as well as how this comes about. In various constructions linked to specific scenarios, these are passed on to the patient role and/or licenced through the context. In this sense it is a matter of the proposal of a medial and mediating level between a purely schematic construction (Goldberg) and a verb licenced mini-construction (Boas). Between lexeme and construction-based licencing no dichotomy is assumed. In the conclusion the medial level is located in the total system of transitive resultative constructions.

This paper is concerned with the interaction of verbal mood and the interrogative sentence mood (in German). Relying on conversational backgrounds and partition semantics , in Lohnstein (2000; 2007; 2012), a semantic account is developed allowing indicative and past subjunctive verbal mood to occur in the interrogative sentence mood, however, excluding the present subjunctive and the imperative from this domain. Building on authentic corpus data showing fully acceptable present subjunctive wh-interrogatives as well as results of an experiment applying paired comparisons to test particular imperative wh-interrogatives, this paper suggests an alternative approach which anchors the restriction on the (pragmatic) level of illocutionary acts and models the data by building on classical speech act theory .