Volume 42, Issue 1

The system of German capitalisation seems to be based on dissimilar levels of linguistic description, i. e. semantics, morphology, and syntax. This leads to several competing scientific models as well as a large range of different rules which appear to be widely autonomous and incompatible with each other. This paper opens an integrative view on the topic by focussing on a pragmatic perspective, which is capable not only on integrating all major application areas of German capitalisation but also of motivating them. Based on the Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) the text pragmatic model can add a functional perspective to established theories by making similar predictions on capitalisation but additionally specifying communicative reasons for them. Therefore it claims explanatory adequacy from the functional perspective.

When looking at seminal works in contemporary literary criticism (exemplary: Martinez/Scheffel 2012), it is apparent that the subject of “time”, or, “the representation of time”, receives a great deal of significance. Regarding the ontogenesis of literary research discourse over the past 50 years, Käte Hamburger’s “The Logic of Poetry” (original “Die Logik der Dichtung”, 1957) is a work that has fundamentally shaped the research discourse. But not only within the field of literary studies has the subject of “tense and narration” has been received and discussed – also the field of linguistics also demonstrates an intensive engagement with the subject of narration (cf. e. g. Weinrich 1964, Ehlich 1980) and tense. For example, Rolf Thieroffs monograph “The finite Verb in German: Tense – Mood – Distance” (original “Das finite Verb im Deutschen: Tempus – Modus – Distanz”, 1992) elaborates a conceptualisation of the German temporal system with reference to Weinrich’s representation of time in fiction and non-fiction texts (cf. Thieroff 1992, 298). This contribution joins at the interface between linguistic research on tenses and literary research on narration. The aim is to show that there is an interaction between choice of tense and narrative context, or, in other words: the use of different tenses activates different states of consciousness, and thereby different ‘forms’ of narration are created. The latter are captured from empirical data arising from language acquisition and speech genesis as well as, in accordance with Iser (1991) and Sartre (1940/1994), not in a dichotomic fashion but as a trias-system, and are opened for discussion. The remodeling does not regard the two poles of “every­day narration” and “literary narration” as contrasting, but rather as a continuum, which can show transitions relative to the genre of the text and the speech competence of the narrator.