Volume 47, Issue 1 - Themenheft: „Redewiedergabe – reloaded“ besorgt von Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen

Abstracts Erlebte Rede (free indirect style) is a narrative technique used to present reports of consciousness which to some extent blends direct and indirect speech. It is characterized by the interaction of specific linguistic markers which allow the presentation of a character’s point of view while simultaneously maintaining the narrative frame. A character’s thoughts are expressed in the third person, indicative and narrative tense giving the impression that the voice of both the narrator and the character somehow overlap. This contribution summarizes the research on erlebte Rede , focussing on German. Regarding narratological aspects, I discuss linguistic problems specific to identification and analysis of texts which employ erlebte Rede . This paper primarily addresses the use of erlebte Rede in fiction, although it is also found in non-fiction.

Regarding verbal mood and complementation patterns of reporting verbs, the distinction between direct and indirect reported speech is well established in present-day German. This paper looks into the history of German: Common knowledge has it that both the use of verbal mood as well as the quality of clause linkage undergo considerable changes giving rise to the question how these changes affect the manifestations of indirect reported speech in earlier stages of German. The historical record of the 16th century (with an outlook on the 17th century) shows that the distinction between direct and indirect reported speech is not yet grammaticalized in historical sources at the time. In particular with respect to dependent (in)direct reported speech, both types prefer V2-complements with only verbal mood differentiating between the types. Although present and past subjunctive have a much wider distribution in earlier stages of German, the occurrence of free indirect speech likewise testifies to its increasing use as a marker of indirect reported speech. The growing conventionalization of patterns of indirect reported speech in the course of Early Modern German may be considered as an example for an increase of subjectification in its development.

The article deals with formal and functional aspects of reported speech in printed natural history texts from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period from a pragmatic point of view. The topos of authority played a crucial role in medieval and early modern non-fictional literature and served to legitimize the knowledge offered by the author. Originally, direct or indirect citation proved knowledge of the authorities, a means by which the author claimed the truth for his statements. In the course of time, direct and indirect speech in scientific texts became more and more a formal and functional tool for positioning one’s own way of thinking in opposition to other opinions.

This article looks into what structures are used to report longer sequences of speech in German, English and Norwegian online press media. In German the subjunctive is used to signal speech report, and so there is a wider range of structural possibilities in German than in English and Norwegian, which have no counterparts to the subjunctive. The study is corpus-based and identifies and compares recurring patterns in reported sequences in the three languages, as well as type and range of verbs of utterance. The concept of syntactical integration of the reported speech and markers of report (Leistner 2016) is central. The study shows that also in the two languages without subjunctive the source of a text part is in general clear: The reader knows whether the text part stems from the journalist or from a reported person. The structural variety in German is outweighed by long sequences of direct speech in English and Norwegian, unambiguously identified as report. This seems to entail a stronger obligation to the wording of the original in English and Norwegian than in German, which on the other hand displays a stronger structural variation.

Starting out from examples of citing in scientific texts and based on the critical assessment of linguistic accounts, the paper argues for a domain specific pragmatic account of (speech) representation in texts. It introduces a new three-dimensional model that identifies different kinds of representation drawing on the linguistic means of presenting the speech of others, the specific functions in narrative, reporting, and argumentative texts, and the varying communicative constellations  – i. e. whether literal, oral, or mental, original or imagined sources are (re-)presented. By focusing on the different functions and constellations in domains like science, journalism and literature the model can serve as a framework for future comparative investigations of (speech) representation.

This contribution presents a quantitative approach to speech, thought and writing representation (ST&WR) and steps towards its automatic detection. Automatic detection is necessary for studying ST&WR in a large number of texts and thus identifying developments in form and usage over time and in different types of texts. The contribution summarizes results of a pilot study: First, it describes the manual annotation of a corpus of short narrative texts in relation to linguistic descriptions of ST&WR. Then, two different techniques of automatic detection – a rule-based and a machine learning approach – are described and compared. Evaluation of the results shows success with automatic detection, especially for direct and indirect ST&WR.