Grammar and Text in Synchrony and Diachrony: In Honour of Gottfried Graustein 9783964562968

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword
Gottfried Graustein: A Bibliography
Grammar and text in synchrony and diachrony
Textual implications of adverbial placement
On the spread of WH-relativization in the history of English
The Ancrene Riwle: a medieval rule for nuns - intertextual relations of four of its versions
Persuasive strategies of British columnists
The conceptual space between conditionals and so-called concessives
Grammar and university language teaching
Reflexionen über Texte und Textlinguistik
Ist than wirklich auf dem Vormarsch? Eine korpusgestützte Untersuchung zu einem 'usage'-Problem
The interaction of textual and lexical factors in the identification of paragraph boundaries
Determiners and possessive form in the English noun phrase
Wer schrieb die erste deutsche Grammatik in englischer Sprache?
Jonathan Swift's English as seen from today
Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse
"A breezier idiom". The treatment of varieties in histories of the English language
Some notes on concessive but
Textkohärenz auf semantisch-logischer Grundlage
Text parameters in fiction
Was hat Tony Blair mit dem Gärtner zu tun?
Reading a Disney comics story as suture
Zur Beschreibung der funktional-semantischen Kategorien Adversativität und Konzessivität
List of contributors

Citation preview

Mechthild Reinhardt, Wolfgang Thiele (eds.) Grammar and Text in Synchrony and Diachrony

Leipziger Schriften zur Kultur-, Literatur-, Sprachund Übersetzungswissenschaft Bd. 3 HERAUSGEBER / EDITORS: Klaus Bochmann; Anne Koenen; Elmar Schenkel; Wolfgang F. Schwarz; Anita Steube; Ludwig Stockinger; Alfonso de Toro; Gerd Wotjak BEIRAT / ADVISORY BOARD: Angelika Hoffmann-Maxis; Karlheinz Kasper; Jürgen Kramer; Edgar Mass; Albrecht Neubert; Monika Ritzer; Ekkehard Stärk

Mechthild Reinhardt, Wolf gang Thiele (eds.)

Grammar and Text in Synchrony and Diachrony

In Honour of Gottfried Graustein

Vervuert • Iberoamericana • 1997

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

Grammar and text in synchrony and diachrony : in honour of Gottfried Graustein / Mechthild R e i n h a r d t ; Wolfgang Thiele (eds.). - Frankfurt am M a i n : Vervuert; Madrid : Iberoamericana, 1997 (Leipziger Schriften zur Kultur-, Literatur-, Sprach- und Übersetzungswissenschaft ; Bd. 3) ISBN 3-89354-263-9 (Vervuert) ISBN 84-88906-70-6 (Iberoamericana)

NE: Reinhardt, Mechthild [Hrsg.]; Graustein, Gottfried: Festschrift; GT © Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997 © Iberoamericana, Madrid 1997 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Gedruckt auf säure- und chlorfreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier Umschlaggestaltung: Michael Ackermann Printed in Germany

Gottfried Graustein

Contents Foreword

7

Gottfried Graustein: A Bibliography

9

Grammar and text in synchrony and diachrony Bergien, Angelika: Textual implications of adverbial placement

17

Dekeyser, Xavier: On the spread of WH-relativization in the history of English

33

Diensberg, Bernhard: The Ancrene Riwle: a medieval rule for nuns intertextual relations of four of its versions

41

Diller, Hans-Jürgen: Persuasive strategies of British columnists

59

Dirven, René: The conceptual space between conditionals and so-called concessives

77

Durrell, Martin: Grammar and university language teaching

97

Heinemann, Wolfgang: Reflexionen über Texte und Textlinguistik

117

Herwig, Rolf: Ist than wirklich auf dem Vormarsch? Eine korpusgestützte Untersuchung zu einem 'usage-Problem

127

Hoey, Michael: The interaction of textual and lexical factors in the identification of paragraph boundaries

141

Hoffmann, Achim: Determiners and possessive form in the English noun phrase

169

Hüllen, Werner: Wer schrieb die erste deutsche Grammatik in englischer Sprache?

179

Kirsten, Hans: Jonathan Swift's English as seen from today

195

Lörscher, Wolfgang: Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse

209

Pollner, Clausdirk: "A breezier idiom". The treatment of varieties in histories of the English language

223

Reinhardt, Mechthild: Some notes on concessive but

233

Steube, Anita: Textkohärenz auf semantisch-logischer Grundlage

245

Tärnyikovä, Jarmila: Text parameters in fiction

253

Thiele, Wolfgang: Was hat Tony Blair mit dem Gärtner zu tun?

261

Todenhagen, Christian: Reading a Disney comics story as suture Weise, Günter: Zur Beschreibung der funktional-semantischen Kategorien Adversativität und Konzessivität

277

List of contributors

303

287

Foreword Gottfried Graustein was born on 10 May, 1932. He is widely recognized as a most distinguished and innovative linguist. This collection of papers is presented to him on the occasion of his 65th birthday as a token of our appreciation for his academic work and a gesture of grateful admiration to a brilliant and respected teacher and colleague. Gottfried Graustein studied English, Russian and German at the University of Leipzig from 1950 to 1954. Afterwards he worked as an assistant in the University archives and later taught English at this university. The first stage of Gottfried Graustein's development as a scholar was mainly characterized by his studies in English literature. He wrote his doctoral dissertation Entwicklungstendenzen im Schaffen Doris Lessings under Professor Walter Martin, and in 1963 he received his doctorate from the University of Leipzig. Within his broad range of interests Gottfried Graustein then concentrated on language teaching and English linguistics, although he - as a philologist never gave up his liking for British and American literature completely. His translations of British and American authors reflect this. In 1970, Gottfried Graustein was appointed Senior Lecturer of English, and in 1976 Full Professor of English at the University of Leipzig. Gottfried Graustein's excellent command of the English language, his solid background in linguistics and English philology, his long experience in teaching and his pedagogical skills provided an ideal basis for his notion of studying English as a philological discipline. Not only did it qualify him to develop training programmes for students on teacher training courses; Gottfried Graustein also initiated and - in cooperation with colleagues in Leipzig and from other universities who shared and complemented his interests - realized English language projects which became standard textbooks for studying English (e.g. English Grammar. A University Handbook; Modern English for Teacher Students). Within this framework, Gottfried Graustein set himself the task of giving his students an understanding of linguistics which was designed to help them in their own teaching of English. He adapted linguistic insights to their needs, making the meaning and structure of the English language transparent. This included the use of authentic language material as a general principle of language, and linguistic teaching as an academic subject. Gottfried Graustein's wide perspective of research interests is reflected in a great number of books (e.g. Englische Zeichensetzung, Properties of English Texts) and articles, often co-written with Wolfgang Thiele and other colleagues. His habilitation thesis Die Beschreibung englischer komplexer Sätze

8

als semantisch-syntaktische Beziehungstypen convincingly demonstrated the need for a synthesis of meaning and form when describing English complex sentences. It also marked the starting point for an integrative view of English texts and their units. Therefore it is not surprising that the books and articles cover such diverse linguistic topics (and their interplay) as grammar, lexicology, textlinguistics, varieties of English and the history of the English language (e.g. linguistic analyses of works by Jonathan Swift). The results of his restless academic activities prove his brilliant manner of writing, his clear-cut reasoning and his openness to other people's approaches and fields of research. His invitation to act as a consultant for Collins Cobuild English Grammar is only one example of his recognition from linguists abroad. Gottfried Graustein was a hard-working teacher and scholar. 'Success comes before work only in the dictionary' has been and continues to be the motto of his work. In spite or because of all his activities, Gottfried Graustein has always supported and encouraged his students and young scholars during the stages of their careers, and again and again he has taken the time for stimulating talks with them and his colleagues. His personal involvement and courage was also needed after the Wall came down in 1989. He played a prominent part in renewing the ideas and the structures of English studies at the University of Leipzig. Some of Gottfried Graustein's achievements are reflected in the research of scholars who are currently working within the tradition he has established. The present volume includes contributions by some of these linguists. Moreover, it also contains papers of scholars whose research work is related to Gottfried Graustein's linguistic topics and interests and who are drawn to his work and his linguistic ideas. The Editors

Gottfried Graustein: A Bibliography A: Books, articles, translations 1954 "An Philosophischen Fakultäten deutscher Universitäten von 1885-1895 angenommene anglistische Dissertationen und Habilitationsschriften (I)". In: Zeitschrift für Anglistik1 Amerikanistik (ZAA) 2, 255-258 (mit A. Neubert) "Fortsetzung (II)". In: ZAA 3, 365-370 (mit A. Neubert) "Fortsetzung (HI)". In: ZAA 4, 484-489 (mit A. Neubert) 1962 English for Junior Students. Manuskriptdruck. Leipzig 1963 Entwicklungstendenzen im Schaffen Doris Lessings. Phil. Diss. Leipzig (Ms.) "Entwicklungstendenzen im Schaffen Doris Lessings". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 2. Leipzig, 529-533 1965 "Zum 220. Todestag von Jonathan Swift", Radio DDR n, 17.10. (Sendemanuskript) 1967 Swift, J.: Ausgewählte Werke. Bd. 1, 2. Berlin/Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag (Übersetzung) 1968 Brüning, E. (Hg.): Amerikanische Dramen aus fünf Jahrzehnten. Berlin/Weimar: AufbauVerlag (Teilübersetzung) "Zur Verwendung eines neuen Grammatikmodells in der Sprachausbildung". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 4. Leipzig, 519-523 1969 Studienprogramm für die Ausbildung der Fachlehrer der allgemeinbildenden polytechnischen Oberschule im Fach Englisch. Berlin (Leiter der Zentralen Fachkommission) 1970 Wright, R : Black Boy. Leipzig: Reclam (Übersetzung) "Der relative Anschluß im modernen Englisch". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 4. Leipzig, 549-565 (mit W. Thiele) 1972 "Zur Zeichensetzung im modernen Englisch". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 2. Leipzig, 163-80 Konzeption für das Lehrbuchwerk Grundkurs Englisch. In: ZAA 4, 392-411 (mit Redaktionsrat)

10 Brüning, E. (Hg.): Amerikanische Protestdramen. Berlin: Henschelverlag (Teilübersetzung) 1973 Practical English I. A teacher-training course. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) 1974 Practical English II. A teacher-training course. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) English grammar. A university handbook. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter, Hg. und Mitautor) "Klausurtagung Grundkurs Englisch". In: 7AA 1, 78-80 (mit A. Hoffmann) "Zur Beschreibung englischer Nominalphrasen". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 2. Leipzig, 207-216 "Zu Form und Funktion des komplexen Satzes in der Kommunikation" In: Arbeitsmaterial 22. Halle (mit W.Thiele) 1975 Practical English III. A teacher-training course. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) Practical English IV. A teacher-training course. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) Englische Zeichensetzung. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie (mit W. Thiele) Brüning, E. (Hg.): Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. 200 Jahre Kampf um Demokratie in den USA. Berlin: Rütten & Loening (Teilübersetzung) Die Beschreibung englischer komplexer Sätze als semantisch-syntaktische Beziehungstypen. Diss. B. Leipzig (Ms.) 1976 "Tendenzen in der Beschreibung englischer komplexer Sätze (bes. im 18. Jahrhundert)". In: Zeitschrift fur Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung (ZPSK) 5/6, 468-471 1977 "Zu Form und Funktion des komplexen Satzes in der Kommunikation". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 4. Leipzig, 393-398 (mit W. Thiele) "Englische Textanalyse im Hinblick auf die Hierarchisierung kommunikativer Tätigkeiten". In: Arbeitsbericht des Forschungskollektivs KFS undFSU 48. Halle (mit W. Thiele) Modern English for teacher students I. Berlin: Volk und Wissen (Projektleiter und Hg.) Modern English for teacher students I. Lehrerbeiheft. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) "Beziehungstypen englischer Sätze". In: ZAA 2, 121-132 English grammar. A university handbook. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie (Projektleiter, Hg. und Mitautor)

11 1978 "Ergebnisse und Problemstelhingen auf dem Gebiet der angewandten englischen Textlinguistik". In: Linguistische Arbeitsberichte (LAB) 19. Leipzig, 12-26 (mit W. Thiele) "Beziehungsinhalte als Ausdruck semantischer Kohärenz bei der Analyse englischer Texte". In: LAB 19, 27-36. Leipzig (mit W. Thiele) Modern English for teacher students II. Lehrerbeiheft. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) "'Modem English' - ein Beitrag zur Lehrerbildung". In: Fremdsprachenunterricht 11, 542-546 1979 "Textlinguistische Aspekte im Fremdsprachenunterricht". In: Potsdamer Forschungen A 33, 97-102 (mit W. Thiele) "Towards an analysis of English texts". In: ZAA 1, 62-74 (mit W. Thiele) Modern English for teacher students II. Berlin: Volk und Wissen (Projektleiter und Hg.) Trends in English text linguistics. Linguistische Studien A 55 (Hg. mit A. Neubert) "An approach to the analysis of English texts". In: Linguistische Studien A 55, 3-15 (mit W. Thiele) "Tendenzen in der Entwicklung der Leipziger sprachwissenschaftlichen Anglistik". In: LAB 24, 57-71. Leipzig (mit A. Neubert) Jonathan Swift: Respektlose Schriften. Leipzig: Reclam (Übersetzung) Modern English for teacher students III. Lehrerbeiheft. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Projektleiter und Hg.) 1980 Modern English for teacher students III. Berlin: Volk und Wissen (Projektleiter und Hg.) English grammar. Workbook. Manuskriptdruck. Potsdam (Mitautor) "Zur Struktur der Bedeutung von englischen Texten". In: LAB 24. Leipzig, 12-28 (mit W. Thiele) "Gibt es eine Textgrammatik?". In: Linguistische Studien A 67, 73-81 (mit W. Thiele) 1981 Relevanz von Fremdsprachen für die DDR - Konsequenzen für Theorie und Praxis. LAB 30. Leipzig (Hg. mit W. Thiele) "Zur Rolle der englischen Sprache in der internationalen Kommunikation unter Berücksichtigung des wissenschaftlich-technischen Fortschritts". In: LAB 30. Leipzig, 16-26 Englische Zeichensetzung. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie, Neubearb. (mit W. Thiele) English grammar. Workbook. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie (Mitautor) English text analysis. LAB 31. Leipzig (Hg.) "Principles oftext analysis". In: LAB 31. Leipzig, 3-29 (mit W. Thiele) "Die Bedeutungsstruktur englischer Fachtexte und Probleme ihrer Realisierungsformen". In: ZAA 3, 243-265 (mit W. Thiele) "Zur Bedeutungsstruktur und Realisierungsform englischer Fachtexte". In: Tagungsberichte TH Karl-Marx-Stadt, 57-64 (mit W. Thiele) "Semantische Aspekte der Textstruktur". In: Arbeitsmaterial des Forschungskollektivs KFS undFSWHr.16. Halle (mit W. Thiele)

12 1982 "Zu Merkmalen und zur Klassifizierung von Teiltexten". In: Linguistische Studien A 100, 165-177 (mit W. Thiele) "Zur lexikalischen Kohärenz in englischen Texten". In: Protokollband der KMU zur 'Sprachlichen Nomination'. Leipzig, 107-115 (mit W. Thiele) English in Science and Technology. Reader. Manuskriptdruck. Leipzig (mit M. Künne et al.) "'Modern English' - Kontinuität und Weiterentwicklung". In: Fremdsprachenunterricht 12, 609-613 Swift, J.: Ausgewählte Werke. Bd. 1, 2. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp (Übersetzung) 1983 "Detaining elements of textual structure". In: ZAA 2, 149-159 (mit W. Thiele) "Linguistische Aspekte von Lehrbuchtexten fur Englischstudenten". In: Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der FSV Jena, 7-15 (mit W. Thiele/R. Kupetz) "Vergleich von Lehrbuchtext und Zeitungstext aus linguistischer Sicht". In: LAB 39. Leipzig, 49-59 (mit W. Thiele/R. Kupetz) "Textanalyse aus konfrontativer Sicht". In: Hansen, K. (Hg.): Studien zur Sprachkonfrontation (Englisch-Deutsch). Berlin, 223-233 (mit W. Thiele) "Zu Eigenschaften von Teiltexten als Ebenen der Textstruktur". In: Linguistische Studien A 112, 49-71 (mit W. Thiele) Lessing, D.: Afrikanische Tragödie. Berlin: Volk und Weh (Nachbemerkung) "Anglistische Li-Arbeit - Ein Zwischenbericht". In: LAB 39. Leipzig, 14-24 (mit S. Braun) English text linguistics. LAB 41. Leipzig (Hg. mit W. Thiele) "English monologues as complex entities". In: LAB 41. Leipzig, 1-26 (mit W. Thiele) Swift, J.: "Bescheidener Vorschlag". (Übersetzung) In: Schlösser, A. (Hg.): Englische Essays aus drei Jahrhunderten. Leipzig: Dieterich, 120-132 Lehrprogramm für die Ausbildung in der Grundstudienrichtung Diplomlehrer für Erwachsenenbildung Englisch (Leiter der Arbeitsgruppe) 1984 "Episodes in English textlinguistics. An overview" (I). In: ZAA 2, 101-113 "Episodes in English textlinguistics. An overview" (II). In: ZAA 3, 197-210 CALU - Complex analysis of language utterances. Manuskriptdruck. Leipzig. (Hg. mit W. Thiele) Swift, J.: Betrachtungen über einen Besenstiel. Berlin: Eulenspiegel (Teilübersetzung) "Element and relation in English texts". In: Linguistische Studien A 121, 2-12 (mit W. Thiele) "Beziehungen zwischen Elementen englischer Fachtexte". In: Festag, E./Mewes, A. (Hg.): Der Text - seine Struktur und Funktion im Fremsprachenunterricht. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der FSU Jena, 101-112 (mit W. Thiele) 1985 "Zum Komplexitätsgrad in ausgewählten englischen Textsorten". In: Arbeitsberichte und wissenschaftliche Studien Halle 106, H.1, 31-40 (mit W. Thiele). Englische Textlinguistik. LAB 50. Leipzig (Hg. mit W. Thiele) Specimens of English varieties. Manuskriptdruck. Leipzig (mit H. Hecker/S. Reuter)

13 "Konfigurationen im Fachtext". In: Linguistische Studien A 133, 63-72 (mit W. Thiele) Beiträge zur englischen Textlinguistik. Linguistische Studien A 135 (Hg. mit A. Neubert/W. Thiele) "Rhetorische Transformationen aus textlinguistischer Sicht". In: Linguistische Studien A 135, 1-14 (mit W. Thiele) "Aspects of a relational text model". In: Linguistica XI. Prag, 11-23 (mit W. Thiele) 1986 "Zur Einführung in die Textlinguistik". In: Fremdsprachenunterricht 2/3, 125-133 (mit W. Thiele) "English grammar - a scholarly handbook in teacher-training in the GDR". In: Leitner, G. (Hg.): The English reference grammar. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 25-44 "Linguistische Einheiten im Text". In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften G 6, Berlin, 121-123 (mit W. Thiele) 1987 Properties of English texts. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie (mit W. Thiele) Progress in English linguistics. LAB 57. Leipzig (Hg. mit W. Thiele) "Relations revisited". In: ZAA 1, 58-67 (mit W. Thiele) "From text to sentence: a grammatical perspective". In: LAB 57, 3-23. Leipzig (mit W. Thiele/H. Hecker). Swift, J.: "Einwände gegen die Abschaffung des Christentums". (Übersetzung) In: Malkowski, R. (Hg.): Von Tugenden und Lastern. Frankfurt a. M.: Insel Verlag, 31-47 Förster, H. (Hg.): Was ist ein Amerikaner? Zeugnisse aus dem Zeitalter der amerikanischen Revolution. (Teilübersetzung) Leipzig/Weimar: Kiepenheuer 1988 Theoretical and methodological aspects of English textlinguistics and grammar. LAB 65. Leipzig (Hg. mit W. Thiele) "Englische Zeichensetzung - Zufall oder Absicht?" In: Fremdsprachenunterricht 2/3, 133-136 (mit A. Bergien) "Komplexe Gegenstandssicht - Voraussetzung für adäquate Textlinguistik". In: Zeitschrift fur Germanistik 4, 463-472 (mit W. Thiele) "On merits and demerits of grammatology and textology". In: LAB 65. Leipzig, 10-21 1989 Reference grammars and modern linguistic theory. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Hg. mit G. Leitner) English textlinguistics. A coursebook. Manuskriptdruck. Leipzig (mit W. Thiele) Variety specimens of English. Lehrmaterial. Leipzig (mit H. Hecker/S. Reuter) Englische Textlinguistik und Varietätenforschung. Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 69. Leipzig (Hg. mit W. Thiele) "Grammar at the interface of language, linguistics, and users". In: Graustem, G./Leitner, G. (eds.): Reference grammars and modern linguistic theory, 1-20 (mit G. Leitner) "Grammar and text". In: Graustein, G./Leitner, G. (eds.): Reference grammars and modern linguistic theory, 90-110 "Zur funktionalen Bedingtheit von Varietäten". In: LAB 69. Leipzig, 2-10 (mit W. Thiele)

14 1990 Sinclair, J. et al.: Collins Cobuild English grammar. London/Glasgow: Collins (consultant) "English grammars: linguistics, language, users". In: ZAA 3, 234-246 "Contrastive aspects of a text analysis in English and German". In: Fisiak, J. (ed.): Further insights into contrastive analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 487-497 (mit W. Thiele) 1991 "Linguistic theorizing and grammar writing". In: Bahner, W. et al. (eds.): Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Linguists. Berlin 1987. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Vol. I, 311-319 (mit G. Leitner) "Configurational text description". In: Bahner, W. et al. (eds.): Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Linguists. Berlin 1987. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Vol. HI, 2093-2095 (mit W. Thiele) 1992 "Nominalizations in Swift's satires". In: ZAA 1, 25-34 "Swift - Grammatik und Text". In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der MLU Halle. Gewi 41, H. 2, 103-110 (mit W. Thiele) Furlong, W.: Audio Arts. Beunruhigende Versuche zur Genauigkeit. Leipzig: Reclam (Teilübersetzung) 1993 "Meditations upon a text". In: Jäger, G. et al. (eds.): Text and Meaning. Kent Translation Studies. Vol. I, 65-81 (mitW. Thiele) 1994 "Zu Swifts Schreibvarianten. Anstelle einer Fußnote". In: ZAA 4, 327-331 1995 "Jonathan Swift's sermonic pamphleteering - Some textlinguistic aspects". In: Salnikow, N. (Hg.): Sprachtransfer - Kulturtransfer. FASK - Publikationen des FB Angewandte Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germersheim, Reihe A, Bd. 19. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 199-216

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15 1972 Heringer, H. J. (1970): Theorie der deutschen Syntax. In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 1. Leipzig, 87-88 1973 Edgren, E. (1971): Temporal clauses in English. In: ZAA 2, 202-205 Friederich, W. (1973): Probleme der Semantik und Syntax des englischen Gerundiums. In: ZAA 4, 426-428 1974 Schödel, S. (1972): Linguistik. In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 2. Leipzig, 220-221 Venetzky, R.L. (1970): The structure of English orthography. In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 2. Leipzig, 221-222 König, E./Legenhausen, L.: Englische Syntax 1. In: ZAA 1, 81-82 1975 Bald, W.-D. et al. (1972): Die Behandlung grammatischer Probleme in Lehrwerken für den Englischunterricht. In: ZAA 1, 82-83 (mit W. Thiele) Kakietek. P. (1972): Modal verbs in Shakespeare's English In: Shakespeare Jahrbuch 111,203-204 1978 Jacobs, R.A./Rosenbaum, P.S. (1973): Transformationelle Grammatik der englischen Sprache. In: ZPSK 4, 416-418 Fries, U.: Studien zur Textlinguistik Frage- und Antwortsätze. In: ZAA 2, 187-189 Kalverkämper, H. (1978): Textlinguistik der Eigennamen. In: Namenkundliche Informationen 34, 58-61 1979 Quirk, RVGreenbaum, S. (1973): A university grammar of English. Close, RA./Bald, W.D. (1975): A university grammar. Übungsbuch. In: ZAA 2, 165-167 Werlich, E. (1976): A text grammar of English. In: ZAA 3, 277-279 1980 Fichtner, E. G. (1979): English and German syntax. In: Deutsche Literaturzeitung 6, 458-461 Friederich, W. (1977): Die Interpunktion im Englischen. In: ZPSK 6, 748-749 Tomic, O.M. (1978): Generative syntax in theory and practice. In: ZAA 2, 178-179 (mit W. Thiele) Gülich, E./Raible, W. (1977): Linguistische Textmodelle. In: ZAA 3, 278-280 1981 Diller, H.-J. (1978): Metrik und Verslehre. In: ZPSK 3, 390 Plett, H. F. (1975): Textwissenschaft und Textanalyse. In: ZAA 2, 182-183 Brumfit, C.J./Johnson, K. (1979): The communicative approach to language teaching. In: Jounal of Pragmatics 5/4, 376-379

16 1982 Marfurt, B. (1977): Textsorte Witz. In: ZAA 1, 90-91 Gimson, A.C. (1980): An introduction to the pronunciation of English In: ZPSK 3, 340-342 1984 Englisch fiir Ökonomen 1983. In: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der KMU, GSR 3. Leipzig, 347-348 1985 Hansen, B. et al. (1982): Englische Lexikologie. In: ZPSK 2, 180-181 Lamprecht, A. (1983): Relationale Satzanalyse. In: ZAA 3, 285-286 1986 Krause, H. P./Gronke, E. (1984): Kurze Grammatik - Englisch. In: ZAA 3, 276-277 1987 Quirk, R. et al. (1985): A comprehensive grammar of the English language. In: ZAA 2, 168-171 1988 Noel, D. (1986): Towards a functional characterization of the news of the BBC World Service. In: ZAA 1, 81 CobuildEnglish language dictionary (1987). In: ZAA 3, 257-258 Jordan, M.P. (1984): Rhetoric of everyday English texts. In: ZAA 4, 361-362 1989 Quirk, R (1986): Words at work. In: ZAA 3, 252 1990 Wells, S./Taylor, G. (eds.) (1989): William Shakespeare: The complete works. Electronic edition. - Oxford University Computing Service: Micro-OCP. In: ZAA 3, 246-248 1991 Gfaadessy, M. (ed.): Registers of written English. In: ZAA 1, 62-63 1992 Propp, M. (1989): Die englische Aussprache im 18. Jahrhundert. Teil 1. In: ZPSK 2, 220-221

Fasold, RW./Schiflrin, D. (eds.) (1989): Language change and variation. In: ZAA 1, 71-72

Angelika Bergien {Leipzig)

Textual implications of adverbial placement 1. Introduction In his book The sentence and its parts Ralph Long describes adverbials as "the most miscellaneous of the parts-of-speech categories" (1961: 269). Sharing this view, Schreiber (1972: 247) concludes that the measure of any substantial work on English adverbials can at least partially be taken "by the order which the work extracts out of the seeming chaos". As a possible way to achieve this "order" Allerton and Cruttenden (1974) provide factors for isolating adverbials as a syntactic subclass. It soon became clear that, although other factors were involved, the question of which syntactic subclass the adverbial belonged to was a prime factor, and that it was necessary to examine the syntax of the adverbials - and thus also their semantics - in detail. (Allerton and Cruttenden 1974: 1)

However, although the syntactic and semantic behaviour of adverbials has been analysed in numerous studies on the subject, linguists are still faced with considerable problems when describing adverbials. This is reflected in labels such as "rag-bag category" (Virtanen 1992: 7) or in characterisations which emphasise their formal and semantic "Zwittercharakter" (Ungerer 1988: 1). In part, these characterisations stem from the observation that adverbials have a wider range of meanings, forms, and positions than other elements of the clause. The term 'adverbial' is used to denote a syntactic function other than subject, verb, object, subject complement, and object complement (cf. Greenbaum and Quirk 1990: 158). Quirk et al. (1985: 479-653) distinguish four parameters within which adverbials operate: semantic role, grammatical function, formal realisation, and linear position. In their approach special emphasis is placed on the semantic roles (e.g. place, time, manner) which can be represented by adverbials. With regard to their grammatical function, adverbials are divided into adjuncts, subjuncts, disjuncts, and conjuncts. This classification is mainly based on the different degrees of integration into the clause and operates with the help of parameters such as 'centrality' vs. 'peripherally'. The formal realisation of adverbials includes phrases (e.g. NP, PP, AvP) as well as clauses (FC, NFC, VLC). Being relatively mobile in the sentence, they offer more choice in their placement than other clause elements. Quirk et al. (1985: 490-501) distinguish three main positions of adverbials

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Angelika Bergien

(initial, medial, end) and several subordinate variants of them. However, even a consideration of all four parameters, when analysing adverbials, sometimes fails to provide the necessary criteria for setting off adverbials clearly, since their grammatical definition is relatively vague. For example, subjuncts are described as having "to a greater or lesser degree, a subordinate role in comparison with other clause elements" (Quirk et al. 1985: 566), whereas adjuncts "closely resemble other sentence elements such as S, C, and O" (ibid.: 504). Adjuncts are further divided into predication adjuncts, which may be obligatory or optional, and sentence adjuncts. Conjuncts and disjuncts, on the other hand, are more or less peripheral to the structure of the clause. Starting from a basically syntactic approach to the description of adverbials, Graustein et al. (1980: 236) distinguish three main types of adverbials and call them 'complements'. Complement 1 (Compl) is integrated into the verb phrase, whereas the other complements have a less close (Comp2) and looser (Comp3) relation to the verb phrase. As noted above, in this classification the semantic role of the adverbial is not taken into consideration. Thus, for example, an adverbial denoting place can occur with different syntactic functions. The following examples from Quirk et al. (1985: 514-515) are described as space adjuncts. However, a close relation between adverbial (Compl) and verb can only be found in (1), whereas examples (2) and (3) illustrate Comp2 and Comp3 functions respectively. (1) The children were running towards the park. (2) The children were running very fast to the park. (3) People move to a new house quite frequently in America.

If more than one complement occur in the sentence, the standard position is at the end, i.e. Compl usually precedes Comp2 and Comp3. It is further shown that mobility within the sentence is least with Compl and greatest with Comp3, from which it follows that deviation from the basic position makes Compl very prominent, Comp2 prominent, whereas it has only little effect with Comp3. (Graustein et al. 1980: 237)

The mobility of adverbials is convincingly demonstrated in a study by Thiele (1974), who analysed more than 7,000 adverbials in a corpus containing fictional and non-fictional texts. He found that 30% of the adverbials functioning as Comp2 and 36% of those functioning as Comp3 occurred in clause-initial position, whereas only 5% of the adverbials in Compl function occurred in front position. While the basic position of adverbials is at the end

Textual implications of adverbial placement

19

of a clause, clause-initial position can be defined as the place before the subject of a clause. That means, an adverbial is considered clause-initial even if it follows a conjunction or another adverbial. Clause-initial position is considered especially important since it puts emphasis or prominence on the initially positioned item (cf. Thiele 1974: 405, Virtanen 1992: 16, Ungerer 1988: 11-12). As Greenbaum and Quirk (1990: 474) point out, "Whatever is placed first will seem relatively introductory and scene-setting." In other words, what is placed at the beginning serves as the natural starting-point for the rest of the clause or sentence. However, the scope of the initially placed adverbial is not necessarily restricted to the clause or sentence in which the adverbial occurs. The following extract from a sample text illustrates the dual role of the adverbial For the heads of department (For a detailed discussion of the corpus texts see 2.). UES For the heads of departments, the task of compiling a bid is proving monumental. The UGC requires detailed completion of a 55-page questionnaire, .

If the adverbial occurred in end position, its relation to the verb phrase is proving monumental would be fairly close: The task of compiling a bid is proving monumentalfor the heads of department.

In that case the adverbial in question can, according to Thiele (1974), Graustein et al. (1980), be described as Compl. Thus, shifting it to initial position puts special emphasis on this unit. However, in the above example the adverbial introduces not only a sentence but a whole paragraph. All sentences that follow refer in one way or other to For the heads of departments, which thus has a function similar to that of a subheading. What is more, this placement must be seen in connection with the preceding paragraph in which the plan of the University Grant Committee (UGC) is described. The realisation of this plan provides a number of practical problems for the heads of departments. Semantically, the adverbial For the heads of departments thus helps to signal a concessive relation to the preceding stretch of text. From this, two conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, in addition to their syntactic functions in clauses or sentences, initial adverbials may introduce and/or connect units beyond the size of an orthographic sentence. Secondly, the function of expressing relevant connections between parts of texts is not limited to conjuncts. Other initially placed adverbials, too, can be used as indicators of text structure above sentence level. The present study is primarily concerned with the description of initiallyplaced adverbials and can be seen as an attempt to throw more light on their

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structure, meaning, and textual function. Although it would be interesting to examine adverbials in all positions and with regard to their interplay in the sentence in which they occur, this would go beyond the scope of this paper. For this reason, a syntactic subclassification of initially placed adverbials has not been attempted. As an exception to this, however, conjuncts are listed separately (cf. 2.).

2. Material and Methods The present study is based on a relatively small corpus of 25 non-fictional texts, totalling approximately 23,000 orthographic words. A detailed presentation of all sample texts (title, source) can be found in Bergien 1993 (62, 158-160). All of the frequency counts cited in the following chapters are based on this corpus. However, to reach the level of statistical reliability, one would of course need a much larger corpus. Thus the findings can first of all be seen as an attempt at clearing the ground and of suggesting fields for further investigation. To allow for a comparison as to the structure of the corpus texts, only nonfictional texts were included. According to the criteria suggested by Gläser (1990) these texts can be grouped into scientific articles, popular-scientific articles, and short newspaper articles. Four popular-scientific articles are adaptations of scientific articles which are also contained in the corpus. Popular-scientific articles are marked by both features of scientific texts and journalistic elements typical of newspaper articles. It is therefore interesting to observe whether characteristic features of the particular text group to which the article belongs influence the use of adverbials. Initially, clause-initial adverbials were counted and grouped according to the following criteria: 1. The form of the adverbial (finite clause (FC), non-finite clause (NFC), verbless structure (VLS)) 2. The semantic type of the adverbial. For the analysis the 15 relation types described by Graustein et al. (1980) proved to be useful 3. The preceding and following punctuation mark Several studies on punctuation (cf. Quirk et al. 1985, Graustein/Thiele 1981, Meyer 1987, Bergien 1993) have shown that the use of a punctuation mark after an initially-placed adverbial may depend on various factors, including the degree of integration into the structure of the clause, its length, and its

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meaning. The present study, however, also includes the preceding punctuation mark, e.g. indentation and full stop, full stop, semicolon, comma, or zero punctuation. A consideration of the preceding marks helps to avoid confusion caused by the use of terms such as 'sentence-' or 'clause-initial'. Initial adverbials following conjunctions or other adverbials (e.g. conjuncts) were listed separately. The frequency of all parameters was determined for the whole corpus, and individually for the three different text groups. Furthermore, the sample texts were analysed as to their form and content structure, using the criteria and procedures described in Graustein and Thiele (1987).

3. Result As a starting-point the frequency of initial adverbials (per 100 words) was examined. It amounts to 1.4 for all corpus texts. However, a closer look at the three text groups individually reveals that the frequency is slightly higher in scientific articles (1.5), whereas popular-scientific articles and short newspaper articles each have 1.3 initial adverbials per 100 word units. Table 1 gives an overview of the results of the quantitative analysis according to the parameters discussed in 2. Tables 2 to 4 present findings in each of the three text groups.

Table 1. Initial adverbials in all corpus texts (%) preceding p.m.

form

FC

19.9

NFC

VLS

-ing

-ed

to...

3.4

2.9 7.4

1.1

other 23.6 49.1 72.7

indent + f.s.

f.s.

col/ comdash ma /sem

23.2

59.3 2.3 88.0

following preceded by coord, p.m. or adv. co- adv com- zero ord ma

conj

3.2

7.5 4.5 12.0

69.0 31.0

adv = adverbial; col = colon; conj = conjunct; coord = coordinator; f.s.= full stop; indent = indentation; p.m.= punctuation mark; sem = semicolon.

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Table 2. Initial adverbials in scientific articles (%) preceding p.m.

form FC

NFC

VLS

-ing

-ed

to...

2.4

0.5 4.4

1.5

19.6

conj other 29.4 46.6 76.0

indent + f.s.

f.s.

preceded following by coord or p.m. adv col/ com- co- adv com- zero dash ma ord ma /sem

13.2 64.7 3.4 85.7

4.4

8.8 5.5 14.3

66.7 33.3

Table 3. Initial adverbials in popular-scientific articles (%) form FC

NFC

VLS

-ing

-ed

to...

6.7

4.8 12.4

0.9

19.0

following preceded by coord or p.m. adv col/ com- co- adv com- zero dash ma ord ma /sem

preceding p.m. indent + f.s.

f.s.

conj other 17.1 51.5 27.6 61.0 1.0 68.6 91.5

1.9

5.7

2.8 8.5

73.3 26.7

Table 4. Initial adverbials in short newspaper articles (%) form FC

NFC -ing -

23.3

preceding p.m.

-ed 9.3 9.3

VLS to... -

in- f.s. dent + f.s.

preceded following p.m. by coord or adv col/ com- co- adv com- zero dash ma ord ma /sem

conj other 11.6 55.8 60.5 30.1 67.4 90.6

-

4.7

4.7 9.4

69.8 30.2

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Textual implications of adverbial placement

In addition, the most frequent meaning relations to be found in connection with initial adverbials were identified. For reasons of space only the five dominant relations in each group, forming nearly two third of all meaning relations in the corpus, are shown.

Table 5. Dominant meaning relations expressed by initial adverbials all corpus texts temporal: local: conditional: concessive: consecutive:

scientific articles 20.7 15.9 12.8 11.1 9.6

local: temporal: consecutive: conditional: concessive:

19.1 15.2 13.2 11.8 10.8

popular-scientific articles temporal: 23.8 14.3 conditional: 13.3 local: 10.5 concessive: consecutive: 8.6

short newspaper artides temporal: 39.5 concessive: 14.0 14.0 conditional: 6.9 consecutive: local: 6.9

Compared to the above listed meaning relations (cf. Table 5), other types of meaning (e.g. causal, additive, processual, comparative) played only a minor role.

4. Discussion 4.1. The form of initial adverbials The results presented in Table 1 show that verbless structures greatly exceed finite and non-finite clauses in initial position. Compared to them the number of finite clauses is relatively small and that of non-finite clauses even smaller. There are several explanations for this phenomenon. First of all, the percentage of verbless structures is generally high in all positions, including mid and end position. This is, for example, demonstrated by Thiele (1974: 403-415), who found that 95% of all analysed Compl adverbials, 83% of all Comp2 adverbials, and 69% of all Comp3 adverbials have a verbless structure. According to Graustein et al. (1980: 294) verbless structures reveal an "increased information density" and "often reflect a more permanent meaning" than other structures. In contrast, adverbials containing a finite or non-finite verb form have a potentiality for greater explicitness. Secondly, verbless structures in initial position are often used to achieve what Greenbaum and Quirk (1990: 474) call a "scene-setting" effect. This is supported by the generalisation potential of verbless structures. For illustration

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three adverbials in initial position, reflecting the same meaning relation, are chosen. MFR(a) As soon as biologists became involved in voyages of discovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were struck by the global patterns of vegetation and animal communities and the ways in which some areas can support a greater diversity of life than others. MFR(b) When investigating frogs in Amazonia, B.L. Zimmerman and R.O. Bierregaard found the richest sites to be those which contained the mud wallows of the collared peccary, thus supplying the precise needs of breeding frogs. MFR(c) In the past, most research has been concentrated on the influence of latitude and isolation in controlling biological diversity, together with the effects of major climate and environmental disturbances such as the onset of glaciation.

In all of the above examples the initial adverbial provides the background or setting for the clauses which follow. In addition to this, the non-finite clause in (b) and the verbless structure in (c) serve as an explicit link to the preceding context. In (b) the adverbial When investigating frogs in Amazonia introduces an exemplification of the general facts mentioned at the beginning of that paragraph, whereas In the past in (c) signals a contrastive relation between the paragraph in which it occurs and the preceding paragraph, in which the present research situation is described. The scope and 'scene-setting' effect of initial adverbials seems to be highest with verbless structures. Of these structures nearly one third can be classified as conjuncts, which, as their name implies, help to express relevant connections between clauses or other parts of a text. Consider, for example, the additive relation in MST and the concessive relation in NSM: MST Finally, an outbreak of canine distemper in the Faeroe Islands in the early 1940s was followed by the occurrence of an unusually large number of cases of multiple sclerosis in the next 15 years. NSM On the positive side, Maughan wants to provide information to evaluate the role of exercise in maintaining health.

The percentage of conjuncts is highest in the scientific articles and lowest in short newspaper articles (see Tables 2-4). A possible explanation could be that the frequency of conjuncts is closely related to text length. In addition, short newspaper articles have very short paragraphs, i.e. often one paragraph comprises one sentence only. Consequently, additional signals of text structure are rare. Moreover, the number of finite and non-finite adverbials in

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this text group greatly exceeds the number of finite and non-finite clauses found in the other two text groups. In other words, nearly one third of initially placed adverbials in short newspaper articles are finite or non-finite constructions (see Table 4). As to the syntactic behaviour of the initial adverbials examined in this paper, the vast majority of them can be said to be sentence adverbials. According to Quirk et al. (1985: 511) sentence adverbials have a "relatively 'peripheral' relationship to the rest of the sentence as compared with the relatively 'central' relationship of the predication adjunct". However, a detailed analysis must also consider the meaning relations found with initial adverbials.

4.2. The meaning of initial adverbials Quirk et al. (1985: 491) point out that adverbials denoting time, and time expressions in general, are the typical semantic category to be associated with initial position. There is no exact numerical information on this, however. Virtanen (1992: 18) reports on a study by Gustafsson, who analysed adverbials in the Brown Corpus. He found that in the genre of journalism 38.9% of the initially placed adjuncts denoted time and 17% place. In scientific writing, place adjuncts covered 26.9% of the initially adjuncts, while the figure for adjuncts expressing time was 16.1% in that genre. The present paper concentrates on a restricted group of non-fictional text forms and can thus not directly be compared with the material used by Gustafsson. However, the quantitative data (cf. Table 5) seems to support Gustafsson's observation. Adverbials expressing temporal and local relations indeed appear frequently in clause-initial position. With regard to all corpus texts, time adverbials cover 20.7% of the total figure, while 15.9% denote time. A closer look at the individual text group, however, reveals that in scientific articles the order is reversed: local adverbials appear in that position more often than temporal adverbials. In popular-scientific articles and short newspaper texts, temporal adverbials clearly dominate, while local adverbials no longer take up the second position in the hierarchy of meaning relations. Local and temporal adverbials mainly occur as verbless structures, which can be seen as further explanation for the high frequency of verbless structures found in the corpus. They serve as structural indicators of locational or temporal text progression (cf. Quirk et al. 1485: 1970). Temporal progression can often be found in popular-scientific and short newspaper articles. Consider, for example, the following extract:

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Angelika Berglen MCI That observation was put to use. In the American Civil War army surgeons deliberately put blowfly maggots into wounds to clean away decayed tissue. By 1928, an orthopaedic surgeon was using maggots successfully to treat diseases, rather than injuries. Now with the surge of interest into novel antibiotics, researchers have been looking in detail at how exactly maggots keep gangrene at bay.

The high percentage of local adverbials in scientific articles is, among other things, due to the fact that often metacommunicative relations are established to the reader. TIS In the run presented in Fig. 3, data were accumulated over 36 h. CAF In this paper I have attempted to summarise some of the more intransigent problems that a Memex would have to be capable of dealing with the relatively well understood field of free text searching. However, a consideration of the wider context in which CAF occurs, reveals that the local adverbial In this paper does not signal locational text progression; it rather points at a consecutive relation, i.e. it introduces a consequence that results from the shortcomings of previous research in that field. A s the following extract shows, the locational aspect is of minor importance only. CAF In 1945 Vannevar Bush published a remarkable visionary paper describing a non-existent machine called a 'Memex1. The influence of Bush's paper has been acknowledged explicitly by many researchers in information retrieval and can be detected in many promising new developments in text processing. Each of the distinct technologies that Bush envisaged has been developed and even exceeded, yet no Memex has yet been built. In this paper I have attempted to summarise some of the more intransigent problems that a Memex would have to be capable of dealing with in the relatively well understood field of free text searching. On the other hand, place adverbials can signal contrastive relations between parts of text, as the following example shows. OHD In normal air, nitrogen oxides are able to lock up chlorine in the form of nitrates, which then cannot destroy ozone. In the denitrified antarctic air, chlorine does other things. In O H D the local adverbials imply a conditional element (If they occur in normal air ). In addition, the two adverbials signal an adversative relation between the two sentences. They indicate what Quirk et al. (1985: 1470) call "compatibility in a balanced text strategy", which is not indicated otherwise.

Textual implications of adverbial placement

27

Thus, in addition to being elements in clause structure, time and place adverbials often help to realise different types of connections and text strategies. Apart from time and place adverbials, adverbials denoting effective relations (cf. Graustein et al. 1980: 325) are represented relatively frequently (cf. Table 5). Of these, conditional relations are mainly expressed by finite or non-finite structures. GCM If a character has been judged unimportant in one area yet important in another, the genetic architecture of the two populations may well differ.

The relation to the preceding stretch of text is then often signalled by a conjunct or conjunction which are placed before the finite clause. GCM In addition, if past selection for yield characters has been rigorous then all populations might be expected to display the same modes of inheritance. MST It seems possible that the disease may have several different causes and that in some circumstances the distemper virus is one of those; but if there is a single cause then that cannot be closely associated with dogs.

In general, adverbials with preceding conjuncts or conjunctions are relatively infrequent in the corpus (cf. Tables 1-4) and these combinations mainly occur with finite or non-finite adverbials denoting condition or cause. Consecutive and concessive relations are mainly signalled by conjuncts in initial position. CAF Consequently, the resolution of the index can be coarse, . CAF Yet the whole purpose of using computers is surely to surpass manual indexing methods, .

However, there seems to be a tendency in popular-scientific articles and short newspaper articles to express concessive relations with a coordinator. CLT The belief that the velocity of light does not change with direction, or even with the speed of its source, lies at the heart of Einstein's special theory of relativity. But there have recently been suggestions that the speed of light in some directions in space, as seen from the Earth, may differ from that in others because of the largescale structure of the Universe.

The tendency to use coordinators rather than conjuncts helps to explain the fact that the two text groups - popular-scientific and short newspaper articles have a lower frequency of conjuncts if compared to scientific articles.

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4.3. Initial adverbials and punctuation 4.3.1. Punctuation marks preceding adverbials As part of the present study, punctuation marks both preceding and following initial adverbials were counted. The results can be seen in Table 1. The vast majority of adverbials (88%) is preceded by a punctuation mark. The rest (12%) is immediately preceded by a coordinator or another adverbial. This relation is only slightly modified in the individual text groups (Tables 2-4). There is no case in which the adverbial is not preceded by a punctuation mark or a particular linking device (coordinator/another adverbial). As expected, most adverbials (59.3%) occur after a Ml stop within a paragraph, whereas 23.2% occur in paragraph-initial position, i.e. they follow an indentation and full stop. This combination has a reinforcing effect on the scene-setting function of the adverbial and the scope of its meaning. Adverbials in this position often thematise the setting for the whole of the following paragraph and can thus be compared to subheadings. On the other hand, they relate the paragraph at the beginning of which they occur to the preceding stretch of text (cf. MFR In the past, 4.1.). However, the figure for short newspaper articles presented in Table 4 needs further comment. Here more than twice the number of adverbials with full stops can be found in paragraph-initial position. This is due to the fact that the paragraphs in this text group are very short and often comprise not more than one sentence. Only a minority of adverbials follow punctuation marks such as colon, dash, semicolon, or comma. In short newspaper articles none of these combinations could be found. From a textual point of view paragraph-initially placed adverbials are of special interest and it is therefore worth analysing their structure and meaning. As indicated above, short newspaper articles have very short paragraphs and thus reveal no reliable picture as to the function of paragraph-initial adverbials. Therefore only scientific and popular-scientific articles were considered in this analysis. In both groups verbless structures clearly dominate (72% in scientific articles; 76% in popular-scientific articles). The rest is mainly formed by FC (24% in scientific articles and 21 in popular-scientific articles). Non-finite clauses are rare at paragraph-initial position (4% in scientific and 3% in popular-scientific articles). Differences between these two text groups mainly regard the meaning relations involved. It is interesting to observe that in scientific articles local adverbials dominate (36%) and temporal adverbials take second position (20%). The rest is marked by descriptive, additive, or causal relations. However, compared to this, popular-scientific articles reveal a different picture. Here temporal relations dominate (48%) and the second

Textual implications of adverbial placement

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largest group is formed by concessive relations (21%). Only 10% of all paragraph-initial adverbials express local relations. The rest, as with scientific articles, is clearly divided among descriptive, additive, or causal relations. The dominance of local relations in scientific articles accounts for the fact that in this group directions to the reader (cf. 4.2.) are often placed in initial position of the paragraph and the explanations follow in the paragraph. This is not the case in popular-scientific articles. The high percentage of temporal relations supports the general tendency according to which more temporal relations than other relations are found in popular-scientific articles (cf. Table 5). This also supports the observation in 4.2. that popular-scientific texts often prefer a text structure which is marked by temporal progression. The following example serves as an illustration. MSL is a scientific article, MST its popular-scientific adaptation. In MSL the sentence introduced by Since 1909 occurs in the middle of a paragraph, whereas the adapted sentence in MST occurs at the beginning of a paragraph. MSL . Since 1909 there have been three major epizootics of distemper, all originating in south-west Iceland, and presumed to have been initiated by the unwitting importation of an acutely infected dog. The 1944 outbreak was associated with the war-time occupation by British troops, and the 1966 outbreak was probably caused by a dog illegally imported. The map shows how distemper spread. MST Since 1909 there have been only three outbreaks of the disease, all originating in the South-West region, and all assumed to have been introduced by the import of an infected dog. On each occasion the distemper outbreak was brought under control before it had spread to all parts of the island. Since 1941, there has been no distemper at all in the greater part of Iceland. Between 1946 and 1965 there were 129 cases .

In both sample texts the paragraphs each form part of the chunk FINDINGS (for a detailed description of chunks and their configurations see Graustein and Thiele (1987)). However, in MST these findings are organised as temporal progression, whereas in MSL they are not arranged in this way, but rather follow a GENERAL-SPECIFIC pattern. All epizootics of distemper are, on the other hand, detailed in a map forming part of the chunk FINDINGS.

4.3.2. Punctuation marks following adverbials Because of their scene-setting function and their ability to indicate relations between two units, initial adverbials somehow fall outside the syntactically integrated clause structure. This is often emphasised by the use of a

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punctuation mark (i.e. comma) that immediately follows the adverbial. In his study on American punctuation, Meyer (1987) demonstrates that length and complexity of the initially-placed adverbial affect punctuation practice. He found that lengthy phrases and clauses were usually punctuated (1987: 35). Similarly, Graustein and Thiele (1981) recommend punctuation of finite and non-finite clauses in initial position. With regard to verbless structures, however, they place more emphasis on the intention of the writer: "Verblose Teilsätze werden unabhängig von ihrer speziellen Strukturform nicht abgetrennt, wenn keine Abhebung der Erweiterung beabsichtigt ist." (1981: 44). The quantitative analysis of the corpus data shows that more than two thirds (69%) of all adverbials are followed by a comma (cf. Table 1). This is similar in all text groups (Tables 2-4). The results confirm the findings by Meyer (1987) and Graustein and Thiele (1981) insofar as clauses (finite, nonfinite) were nearly always punctuated. Exceptions occurred where the clauses were relatively short. Thus, compare the following extracts from one and the same sample text. GCM When the techniques for the study of quantitative variation have been applied to the study of different populations within a species, such differences of genetic control were found. GCM When these occurred their effects were removed by replacing entries in the dialled table with the mean of the reciprocal crosses.

There is much more variety in connection with the punctuation of verbless structures. The results show that, with a few exceptions, there is generally no direct link between meaning and following punctuation mark. Exceptions can be found with adverbials expressing contrastive relations. They were always punctuated. Sometimes one and the same adverbial is punctuated differently even if it occurs in the same text. Compare the following examples from CAF. CAF Their introduction into an existing text is more difficult than the creation or amendment of the text itself; indeed they form part of the text. CAF This is not however always the case; indeed, the very reason for adopting a computer may have been to cope with such otherwise unmanageable searches as the relative rates of occurrence of'of followed by 'and' and 'of followed by 'a'.

A possible conclusion would be that the length of the clause following the adverbial may also have an impact on punctuation. If the following clause is long, a comma thus clearly helps to identify the scope of the adverbial. On the

Textual implications of adverbial placement

31

other hand, verbless structures, especially in popular-scientific articles, were punctuated even if the following clause was relatively short: CHS During the summer, the surface cracked but did not break up. UES For the heads of departments, the task of compiling a bid is proving monumental.

In CHS the comma may be motivated to show that the adverbial stands outside the structure of coordination and to show that the units linked by 'but' are within the scope of the adverbial. In UES, the adverbial has a relatively close relation to the verb phrase. Initial position and punctuation thus have an emphasising effect. Both examples occur at the beginning of a paragraph. The comma after the adverbial has a double function. Firstly, it sets the adverbial off from the clause to which it otherwise would have a very close syntactic relation. Secondly, it relates this phrase to what is going on in the preceding paragraph (cf. the discussion of UES in 1.). In order to find out whether there is a tendency to punctuate adverbials in paragraph-initial position, all occurrences in scientific and popular-scientific articles were analysed. The results show that compared to the average number of adverbials followed by a comma (cf. Tables 1-4), the figure for punctuation marks after adverbials in paragraph-initial position is higher. Scientific articles contain 80% of paragraph-initial adverbials with a following comma, popularscientific articles show a similar figure with 82% of all occurrences being followed by a comma. It is clear, therefore, that adverbials introducing a paragraph are more commonly marked by a following comma than other adverbials. Punctuation may thus be an important means to support the textual relevance of the adverbial.

5. Conclusion In the present study, an overall analysis of the syntactic and semantic characteristics of initially-placed adverbials was undertaken. The findings support previous expectations in that they show how the placement of adverbials in initial position is influenced by a complex of semantic and syntactic factors, including form and meaning of the adverbial. Moreover, adverbial placement, which at first sight seems to concern sentence structure, cannot be fully accounted for unless the textual neighbourhood of the adverbial is considered. Finally, it is evident that the text type has a crucial

32

Angelika Berglen

influence on a number of parameters, and hence, on the placement of adverbials. References Allerton, D.J./Cruttenden, A. (1974): "English sentence adverbials: their syntax and their intonation in British English". In: Lingua 34, 1-30 Bergien, A. (1993): Synchronisch-diachronische Untersuchungen zur Zeichensetzung in englischen Texten. Egelsbach/Köln: Hänsel-Hohenhausen Gläser, R. (1990): Fachtextsorten im Englischen. Tübingen: Narr Graustein, G./Thiele, W. (1981): Englische Zeichensetzung. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Graustein, G./Thiele, W. (1987): Properties of English texts. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Graustein, G. et al. (1980): English grammar. A university handbook. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Greenbaum, S./Quirk, R. (1990): A student's grammar of the English language. London: Longman Long, R. (1961): The sentence and its parts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Meyer, C.F. (1987): A linguistic study of American punctuation. New York: Lang Quirk, R. et al. (1985): A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman Schreiber, P.A. (1972): "Two approaches to English adverbials". In: Lingua 29, 347-359 Thiele, W. (1974): "Zur Beschreibung englischer Adverbiale". In: Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 22 (4), 392-418 Ungerer, F. (1988): Syntax der englischen Adverbialien. Tübingen: Niemeyer Virtanen, T. (1992): Discourse functions of adverbial placement in English. Abo: University Press

Xavier Dekeyser {Antwerp)

On the spread of WH-relativization in the history of English Two strategies in a given language tend to complement each other; as one advances, the other recedes. (Maxwell 1982: 150)

0. Introduction The history of English Relative Clause Formation has always been characterized by the co-existence of two (competing) strategies: a non-casecoding COMP {pe in Old English, since Early Middle English that) and a pronominal COMP (a deictic in Old English, WH- in Middle and Modem English). Regardless of how these are generated in terms of transformationalgenerative grammar, it is generally assumed that the latter is the more complex strategy, as it involves case assignment. As regards the Old English data, I demonstrated that in the English version of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica case-coding relatives were significantly more frequent than in the (non-translated) English of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (see Dekeyser 1994). As far as Middle English is concerned, the data suggest that (case-coding) WH- began to trickle in in the more difficult functions, such as Prepositional Phrases and Genitives, and after its spread to all the other positions it became a hallmark of more sophisticated registers. In this paper I shall document this diachronic expansion of WH- from Middle English to the present times and draw some conclusions.

1. The origin of WH-relatives 1.1. In Early Middle English two COMPs were used: pe, inherited from Old English, and the newly introduced pat or that, neither of which allowed preposition stranding. My data from the Peterborough Chronicle (1070-1154) suggest that the very first instances of WH- occurred predominantly in such Prepositional Phrases, where, as far as we can judge, stranding seemed to be syntactically impossible (Dekeyser 1986: 100-102). Here are two examples:

34

Xavier Dekeyser (1)Pet. Chron. 1085: 7 Se cyng lett awestan J)et land abutan J>a sas, J)et gif his feond comen upp Jiet hi nxfdon na ON HWAM (dative) hi fengon swa raedlice. (Clark 1958: 8) Gloss: And the king made waste the land about the sea, that if his enemies landed (that) they would have nothing on which they took so quickly. (2) Pet. Chron. 1110: 7 Jjurh ungewxdera FOR HWAN eorj) westmas wurdon swij)e amyrde . (Clark 1958: 35) Gloss: and because of bad weather for (as a result of) which crops were badly damaged .

1.2. Some linguists ascribe the introduction of interrogative pronouns as Relative COMPs to the influence of Latin qui, qu&, quod and (or) to the influence of French qui, que (Romaine 1980 and Bailey/Maroldt 1977: 47). Though the spread of WH-, particularly in more complex registers, may be put down to Romance influence, I am convinced that the incipient phase of this strategy is rooted in the morpho-syntax of Late Old English. Seeing that the lexicon of the Peterborough Chronicle, even in the Middle English continuations (1121-1154), is only marginally affected by Anglo-French (also see Dekeyser 1986), the syntax cannot have been 'creolized' by that acrolect at such an early date. And if Latin were the donor language for the relative caiques, why are there no Latin-influenced relatives in 9th and 10th century Old English, particularly in translations and glosses. In my opinion WH- was introduced to compensate for the virtually extinguished deictic strategy, typically in prepositional slots where, as I have pointed out above, there was a functional need for a pronominal COMP compatible with pied-piped prepositions.1 And the morphological material needed was not a Latin or French caique, but was provided by Old English indefinites with an implied antecedent, such as hwa (swa) = 'whoever' and hwcet (swa) = 'whatever'. The close semantic-syntactic relationship between these two classes of pronouns is borne out by examples like (3) and (4) from the Chronicle: the indefinites occur with a preceding Noun Phrase that can be interpreted as a near antecedent because of coreferentiality with the implied antecedent (I have used capital letters to mark this NP): (3) Pet. Chron. 1123: f>a bed se kyng heom j)aet hi scoldon cesen hem AERCEBISCOP to Cantwarabyrig SWA HWAM SWA SWA hi woldon . (Clark 1958: 43) Gloss: then bade the king them that they should choose them(selves) (an) archbiscop to Canterbury whomever they would (have) .

On the spread of WH-relativization in the history of English (4) Pet. Chron. 1123: Gloss:

35

J)et hi mosten cesen of clerchades MAN SWA HWAM SWA SWA hi wolden to ercebiscop. (ibidem) that they might choose of clerical order (a) man whomever they would (have) to archbiscop.

In such sentences, particularly (3), the difference between an indefinite and a 'real' relative pronoun is a tenuous one, and it was presumably such contexts that triggerd off the new WH-relativization strategy. 2. The spread of WH-relativization 2.1. In a pioneering article which appeared in Linguistic Inquiry (1977) Keenan and Comrie hypothesized that the possibilities of relativization are determined by the function that NPs fill in the relative clause, subjects being more easily relativizable than objects, etc. In terms of performance this implies that what they call a Case Hierarchy is translatable into language-specific frequencies; or as Keenan (1975: 139) puts it: "The frequency with which people relativize in discourse conforms to the CH, subjects being the most frequent, then direct objects, etc." In addition Keenan (1975: 141) argued that this frequency scale is register-sensitive; to verify this he used data from Animal Farm, Sun and Mirror (simple sources), which he compared with the supposedly more complex English from Woolf and Strawson. Clearly, the Case Hierarchy opened interesting perspectives for diachronic research as well. Romaine (1980 and 1981) must be given credit for being the first linguist who consistently applied the implications of CH to historical material. My own data convincingly demonstrate that WH- was first introduced in the more difficult slots of the CH and then worked its way up the scale in the course of Middle and Early Modern English. I shall first deal with the Middle English material and then address the development in Modern English. Table 1. The Middle English distribution of WHHomilies: 12th and 13th centuries (based on data from Van den Eynden 1984: 167)

pe t>at WHTotals

SUBJECT 58 (52.3%) 52 (46.8%) 1 (0.9%) 111 (100%)

OBJECT 26 (51%) 25 (49%) -

51 (100%)

OBLIQUE 2 (25%) 3 (37.5%) 3 (37.5%) 8 (100%)

GENITIVE -

TOTALS 86 (50.6%) 80 (47%) 4 (2.4%) 170 (100%)

36

Xavier Dekeyser

Higdin's Polychronìcon (Treviso), 1387 (based on Martens 1986: 16)

that WHTotals

SUBJECT 252 (99.6%) 1 (0.4%) 253 (100%)

OBJECT 20 (96.7%) 1 (3.3%) 30 (100%)

OBLIQUE 10 (35.7%) 18 (64.3%) 28 (100%)

GENITIVE -

TOTALS 291 (93.6%) 20 (6.4%) 311 (100%)

Middle English Sermons (MES) between 1378 and 1417 (Van den Eynden 1984: 169)

that WHTotals

SUBJECT 95 (91.3%) 9 (8.7%) 104 (100%)

OBJECT 42 (93.3%) 3 (6.7%) 45 (100%)

GENITIVE OBLIQUE 3 (14.3%) 18(85.7%) 4 (100%) 21 (100%) 4 (100%)

TOTALS 140 (80.5%) 34 (19.5%) 174 (100%)

Note: The percentages have to be read vertically and indicate the distribution of WHversus TH (J>e or J>at) in a particular slot. 'Oblique' stands for Prepositional Phrases.

Most strikingly, this table reveals the increasing incidence of WH- in the course of Middle English, together with its spread from difficult to easier slots: in Subject function WH- is very marginal in each of the investigated corpora, while it tends to be the dominant strategy in the OBLIQUE slot.2 The 12th and 13th century Homilies constitute an example of Early Middle English, with Old English pe still frequently used and WH- only in an incipient stage; the material from Trevisa (1387) and MES (1378-1417) show a moderate use of WH- mainly in difficult slots, though MES already has a fair number of WHsubjects. It should be added that the results arrived at by Caldwell (1974) for Early Scots English (ca. 1375 - ca. 1500) point in the same direction and interestingly corroborate my findings. 2.2. Let us now turn to the 16th century data, which consist of Drama (Comedy and Tragedy) and Informative Prose (essays dealing with literary theory, philosophy, etc.), published between 1551 and 1600 (see Dekeyser 1988: 30-31). Table 2. Distribution of WH-/THAT correlated with syntactic position Comedy that WHTotals

SUBJECT 96 (70.6%) 40 (29.4%) 136 (100%)

OBJECT 15 (37.5%) 25 (62.5%) 40 (100%)

OBLIQUE GENITIVE TOTALS 1 (11.1%) 112 (53.9%) 8 (88.9%) 23 (100%) 96 (46.1%) 9 (100%) 23 (100%) 208 (100%)

On the spread of WH-relativization in the history of English

Tragedy that WHTotals

Inf. Prose that WHTotals

SUBJECT 167 (73.6%) 60 (26.4%) 227 (100%)

SUBJECT 210 (39.1%) 327 (60.9%) 537 (100%)

OBLIQUE

GENITIVE

-

-

OBJECT 34 (38.6%) 54 (61.4%) 88 (100%)

17 (100%) 17 (100%)

OBJECT 35 (20.8%) 133 (79.2%) 168 (100%)

OBLIQUE GENITIVE TOTALS 7 (8.75%) 252 (31%) 73 (91.25%) 29 (100%) 562 (69%) 80 (100%) 29 (100%) 814 (100%)

37

TOTALS 201 (51.5%) 59 (100%) 190 (48.6%) 59 (100%) 391 (100%)

The development of WH- (and THAT) is almost ideally documented in this table. For one thing, it reveals a significant overall increase of WH- as compared with Middle English. We find this strategy to be particularly frequent in the more complex functions, where diachronically it originated, while the province of THAT is largely confined to the easy SUBJECT slot. It also shows that WH- is considerably more advanced in the complex register of Informative Prose (69%) than in the two Drama samples (46.1% and 48.6%); in the latter the ascendance of WH- over THAT only ranges from GENITIVE up to OBJECT, in the former the ascendance of WH- has also reached SUBJECT, which proves that this strategy is more widely spread here. 2.3. To find out whether this trend is continued in Modern English throughout I now turn to two samples of present-day English: Quirk's Survey of educated spoken English (see Quirk 1968) and Huddleston's corpus of scientific written English (Huddleston 1971: 259).

Table 3. WH-/THAT/ZERO in Present-day English

(DRAMA) QUIRK'S S U R V E Y

(INF. PROSE) HUDDLESTON

WH(286: 44.2%) 691 (53.5%) (562: 66.5%) 328 (71%)

THAT (313: 48.4%) 371 (29%) (252: 30%) 117 (25%)

ZERO (48: 7.4%) 228(17.5%) (30: 3.5%) 20 (4%)

TOTALS (647: 100%) 1290 (100%) (844: 100%) 465 (100%)

Note: Given the high incidence of ZERO (Contact Clauses) in present-day spoken English I have also included this strategy in table 3. The bracketed figures are the ones of the 16th century corpus and have been inserted for the sake of comparison.

38

Xavier Dekeyser

The data of table 3 show a continued but rather limited rise of WH- in the course of Modern English. Again, this relative is considerably more common in the formal register of scientific writing than in the spoken corpus, which is entirely in line with the 16th century dichotomy between Drama (written-tobe-spoken) and Informative Prose. Both Quirk's Survey and Huddleston's material reveal a decrease of THAT in 20th century English. This is particularly striking in the 'spoken' sample, where it drops from 48.4% to 29%; the available data seem to suggest that this decline of THAT has to put down to a comparable expansion of ZERO relativization in present-day (spoken) English, and, to a minor extent, a further increase of WH-.

3. Conclusion The data used in this paper are, perhaps inevitably, rather heterogeneous, so we should interpret them with extreme caution. Yet, the general drift is clearly discernible and confirms Maxwell's claim which I cited by way of introduction at the beginning. The history of relativization in English is unmistakably characterized by a gradual spread of WH- from the more difficult to the easier positions in the Case Hierarchy. This functional expansion of WH- has resulted in an overall increase to the extent that it is now more common than THAT and ZERO in present-day educated English, both spoken and written.3 Somewhat generalizing it can be stated that throughout the Middle English period COMP THAT was the almost universally used relativization strategy, while in Modern English it is WHthat is increasingly preferred. What also stands out from the data is that the (latter half of the) 16th century was, diachronically, the turning-point, or the 'locus' of linguistic change. Present-day educated English reveals two remarkable developments. On the one hand, there is the widespread adoption of WH-, which is historically rooted in more complex registers and whose rise may well be due to the impact of growing standardization on the English language.4 On the other hand, in its spoken variant there is an ever increasing tendency to make use of ZERO. I demonstrated in Dekeyser (1990) that contact clauses (or ZERO) originated in simple sentences in colloquial Middle English, and that, historically, they derive from THAT relatives. Very interestingly, the data in this paper confirm this link, seeing that decreasing THAT is just about commensurate with increasing ZERO. So, it is arguable that contact clauses continue the tradition of a non-case-coding COMP, but then in a modified form.

On the spread of WH-relativization in the history of English

39

References Bailey, Ch.-J. N./Maroldt, K. (1977): "The French Lineage of English". In: Meisel, J.M. (ed.): Langues en contact - Pidgins - Creoles - Languages in contact. Tübingen: Narr Caldwell, S.J.G. (1974): "The Relative Pronoun in Early Scots". In: Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, XLH Helsinki: Société Néophilologique Clark, C. (1958): The Peterborough Chronicle 1070 - 1154, edited from MS. Bodley Laud Misc. 636 with introduction, commentary, and an appendix containing the interpolations by Cecily Clark. London: Oxford University Press Dekeyser, X. (1986): "Romance Loans in Middle English: a re-assessment". In: Kastovsky, D./Szwedek, A. (eds.): Linguistics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries. In Honour of Jacek Fisiak on the Occasion of His Fifthieth Birthday. Volume 1: Linguistic Theory and Historical Linguistics. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 253-265 Dekeyser, X. (1986): "Relative Markers in the Peterborough Cronicle 1070-1154". In: Folia Lingüistica Histórica VII/1, 93-105 Dekeyser, X./Ingels, M. (1988): "Socio-historical Aspects of Relativization in Late 16th Century English: ca. 1550 - 1600". In: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia XXI, 25-30 Dekeyser, X. (1990): "Preposition Stranding and Relative Complementizer Deletion: Tmplicational Tendencies in English and the Other Germanic Languages". In: Adamson, S./Law, V./Nigel, V./Wright, S. (eds.): Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 87 - 109 Dekeyser, X. (1994): "Aspects of Clausal Postmodification in Old English Prose: a Psycholinguistic Approach". In: Carlon, K./Davidse, K./Rudzka-Ostyn, B. (eds.): Perspectives on English: Studies in Honour of Professor Emma Vorlat. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 98-110 Huddleston, R D. (1971): The Sentence in Written English: A Syntactic Study Based on an Analysis of Scientific Texts. Cambridge: University Press Keenan, E.L. (1975): "Variation in Universal Grammar". In: Fasold, RW./Shuy, RW. (eds.): Analysing Variation in Language. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press Keenan, E.L./Comrie, B. (1977): "Noun Phrase Acceptability and Universal Grammar". In: Linguistic Inquiry 8, 63-69 Lutz, A. (1982): "Die englischen Relativpronomina: Lehneinfluß oder eigenständige Entwicklung?" In: Klagenfurter Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Jg. 8, 240-260 Martens, L. (1986): The Process of Relativization and Personal Pronouns in Middle English: A Diachronic Approach Based on the Analysis of two Translations from Higdin's "Polychromcon" (ca. 1380-1440). K.U. Leuven: Unpublished dissertation Maxwell, D. (1982): "Implications of NP Accessibility for Diachronic Syntax". In: Folia Lingüistica Historical, 135-152 Quirk, R (1968): "Relative Clauses in Educated Spoken English". In: Essays on the English Language, Medieval and Modern. London: Longman, 94-108 Romaine, S. (1980): "The Relative Clause Marker in Scots English: Diffusion, Complexity and Style as Dimensions of Syntactic Change". In .Language in Society 9, 221-247 Romaine, S. (1981): "Syntactic Complexity, Relativization and Stylistic Levels in Middle Scots". In: Folia Lingüistica Histórica 2, 71-97

Xavier Dekeyser

40

Van den Eynden, N. (1984): The Process of Relativization in Middle English: A Diachronie Approach Based on the Analysis of 12th - Late 14th Century Theological Prose. K.U. Leuven: Unpublished dissertation

Notes 1

2

3 4

Lutz (1982: 253) makes the same assumption about the emergence of WH- in Early Middle English: "Das Eindringen des Interrogativums im Frühmittelenglischen von den der Relativierung schwerer zugänglichen Positionen der Zugänglichkeitshierarchie her erklärt sich also aus der eingeschränkten Verwendbarkeit der indeklinablen Partikeln pe und that in diesen Positionen und aus dem Verlust verwendbarer Formen bei den Demonstrativa." It should be noted that stranded prepositions were very unusual with WH- in Middle English and that stranding in general was a less common process than in Modern English (see Dekeyser 1990: 90-92). This must have promoted the use of WH- instead of THAT in the OBLIQUE position. This only seems to hold for educated English; (Romaine 1980: 235) points out that in Modern Scots and American English THAT and Contact Clauses are still preferred to WH-; "they are, she remarks, closer to a more colloquial or vernacular norm". This is indirectly bome out by the stand taken by most grammarians in the 18th century in favour of WHO/WHICH, which culminated in the well-known Humble Petition of Who and Which, in Spectator, No. 78, May 30, 1711 (see Leonard 1929: passim).

Bernhard Diensberg {Bayreuth)

The Ancrene Riwle: a medieval rule for nuns intertextual relations of four of its versions 0. Preliminary remarks Although this paper will deal - in the first place - with the relations between two Early ME versions of the Ancrene Riwle/Wisse, namely MSS Corpus (ca. 1230) and Nero (a 1250) - occasionally also MS Cleopatra (ca. 1230) - on the one hand, and a Late ME recension of the Ancrene Riwle, namely MS Vernon (ca. 1390), on the other hand, the following introductory remarks ought to be made (see Zettersten/Diensberg, forthcoming). The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (Mcintosh et al. 1986, vol. II: 387) gives North Worcestershire as the area of localization of MS Vernon (ca. 1390). Sajavaara (1967: 108; 118-119) expanded this area to include Warwickshire. I shall take up the question of localization towards the end of this paper. The scribe of the Vernon MS, who, with the exception of the table of contents, wrote the whole text (and is identical with the scribe of the Simeon MS (now British Library MS. Add. 22 283)), may well have had difficulties with the version of the Ancrene Riwle, in particular with the Corpus type exemplar he must have been copying from. Not only were the differences between the Corpus dialect, the so-called AB-language (cf. Tolkien 1929: 104ff ), and his own dialect considerable but also the fact that the Corpus language was almost 150 years old by the time the copy was made should be taken into account. In addition to the usual copying errors (slips of the pen, haplography and dittography, omissions, etc.) scribe B must have had a hard time to come to grips with his Corpus type 'original': Corpus (A) lanhure 'at least, especially1 (9b: 17, 10a: 3, 70b: 26) is rendered by the scribe of MS Vernon (V) by lowore C22/19; fol. 373b; 164/26; fol. 384a) and louh hire (84/4, fol. 378a), which shows that he did not understand this rare word (cf. Zettersten 1965: 226). This is equally true of Corpus aprusmin i pruh 'to confine to a coffin' (10a: 3), for which the Vernon scribe has forte haue jjrusmen him fiorw (23/13; fol. 373b), thus making nonsense of the passage (cf. Salu 1955: 16). The erroneous reading bicrept (V 108/12, fol. 380a) can only be explained on the basis of bitrept 'trapped' (A 47a: 12) while Nero has bistepped (77/17) in the corresponding passage (cf. Zettersten 1965: 61).

42

Bernhard Diensberg

In addition to this, the numerous Latin quotations were a problem for him, e.g. Corpus: et exuit se uestimentis sue uiduetatis (82a: 11-12) 'and took off the garments of her widowhood' (cf. Salu 1955: 134) is given by Vernon as: et exuit se vestimentis sue iocunditatis (192/8; fol. 386a) which makes nonsense of the quotation. Nor did scribe B always manage to cope with the punctuation of his copy, so that sometimes the meaning of a passage becomes obscure: such feste. makefi sum hore weenen. fiat heo wel do (141/18-19; fol. 382c) barely renders Corpus swuch feaste make5 sum hore. wened & ha wel do. (60b: 14) 'such a feast, , can make a woman into a whore' (Salu 1955: 99). Another striking punctuation mistake is found in the following passage: Mine men schulen eten ow. & schal euere hongren (136/4; fol. 382a) 'My servants shall eat, and you shall [always] be hungry' (cf. Salu 1955: 96; cf. Corpus 58a: 18f). Not infrequently, the scribe omits words or disfigures them so that the meaning of a given passage is hard to ascertain: hou fiat j e schulen [sc. hem = maydenes] loueliche leren. (10/11-12; fol. 372b) 'how you shall lovingly teach them' (Salu 1955: 6). A Latin example may also be cited: & sollicite [sc. ambularej cum domino deo tuo. (8/9-10; fol. 372b) 'and to walk solicitous with thy God' (Salu 1955: 5). 1. MS Vernon in relation to other manuscripts of the Ancrene Wisse

Riwle/

The evidence presented in the following will be of two kinds. To begin with, I shall concentrate on graphemic-phonemic differences between the MSS in question. As will be shown below, this kind of evidence is less conclusive than textual evidence (morphological, lexical, syntactical). 1.1. Phonemics, graphemics, morphemics As was pointed out above, the Vernon MS is of Southwest Midland origin (written about 1390) and thus belongs to the Late Middle English period. Consequently, it exhibits linguistic features typical of that period. Thus, on the graphematic level Early ME long u is consistently rendered by the ou/ow digraph, e.g. spous(e), fiousent, nou/now (V) against spus(e), fiusent, nu of the early versions of the Ancrene Riwle. The use of digraphs instead of single letters is also found with long close/open e and o, e.g. deest, neede(fi), seeke 'sick'; lees 'less', meel 'meal', eet 'ate'; boon 'prayer', doon; moon 'moan', maidenhood 'virginity'.

The Ancrene Riwle: a medieval rule for nuns

43

However, the use of digraphs is not found in MS Vernon as frequently as in classical ME texts (cf. the works of Chaucer, Gower, Langland). This fact may be due to the Vernon scribe's (Early) Middle English exemplar (of the Corpus type). Vernon shows consistently for the continuation of OE long a, of the early MSS only Corpus has preserved the traditional a-spelling (Diensberg 1975: 13-15, 37-38, 56-57). The question whether the ABlanguage (represented by MS Corpus of the Ancrene Riwle and MS Bodley of the Katherine Group) already had the back rounded vowel (ME /qf) in spite of the almost consistent use of a-spellings for OE long a, may nevertheless be answered in the affirmative (cf. Zettersten 1965: 172-174; Diensberg 1975: 14-15; cf. Smith 1991: 59, fn. 26). With the exception of initial position as in the prefix vn, ME /u/ is invariably written o, e.g. come(n), wor/yi, derworfie. This reflects the Late ME spelling practice of neutralizing the graphematic distinction between /u/ and /o/. The digraph for /iu/ (of both native and French origin) is replaced by or , and , e.g. A, N riwle - V rule; A, N triwes 'truce' - V truwes; A,N skiwes 'skies' - V scuwes; A, N giwes 'Jews' - V Iewes, etc. Moreover, has given way to , e.g. A, N cwite - V quite and hw has consistently been replaced by wh, e.g. A hwet 'what', N hwat - V what, etc.. Half-uncial d, i.e. d in A and N has been replaced by thorn (fi) in MS Vernon. Since MS Vernon must have been copied somewhere in the Southwest Midland area (Worcestershire, Warwickshire; see above), its linguistic features unequivocally agree with what is known about the West Midland dialect area about 1400, e.g. the current use of u, ui/uy and eo for (formerly) front rounded vowels. However, unrounding of the short and (to some extent) of the long vowel phonemes (i.e. OE /y,eo/ > ME /y, oe/) (cf. Diensberg 1975: 5-13, 35-53, 53-56) and of the ME diphthong /oeu/ (< OE eo + w) (cf. Diensberg 1975: 21-29, 40-48, 59-70) seems to have set in, as the following examples make clear: sinne(s), synne(s), synjul alongside sunne(s)/sunnen, sunful, kunne, stude, hulli\ herte, serwe, clepefi, werre(fj), werreor alongside heo 'she', heom 'them' and heore 'their', steorne 'strict'. OE Sow, which appears as /oeu/ in the early versions of the Ancrene Riwle (cf. Diensberg 1975: 29, 45, 47, 70), shows in the Vernon dialect unrounding of its first element in most of the examples, e.g. trewe, vntreweliche, treufjeschupe, heuj/heuh, hewes, spewefi, (to) chewefa newe (the usual form) - neowe (only three occurrences). As a matter of fact the Early ME MSS Corpus, Cleopatra and Nero preserve the front rounded vowels (Diensberg 1975: 13, 20-21, 35, 36, 40, 54, 56, 58-59).

44

Bernhard Diensberg

The rounding correlation seems to have been better preserved with the long vowel phonemes, namely ME /y,ffi / (>ei seen any of the Spectators? (L XIX, 24/3/1711, 143)

(iii) Sometimes the complement is even placed between verb and object, e.g. in: (18) Sir Thomas Frankland gave me to-day a letter from Murray, accepting my bill: . (L XXIV, 7/6/1711, 193)

Here Swift's word order still resembles that of present-day German. (iv) After adverbial complements in front position, Swift uses full inversion more widely than today in that it is not restricted to intransitively used verbs, (19) After dinner came in Lord Peterborow: . (L VI, 15/10/1710, 32) (20) Yesterday at noon died the Earl of Anglesea, the great support of the Tories. (LIH, 19/9/1710, 11)

but is also found in: (21)1 forgot to tell you that yesterday was sent me a narrative printed, with all the circumstances of Mr. Harleys stabbing. (L XXI, 16/4/1711, 159)

b) Fronting of object (cf. Graustein et. al. 1977: 233-234) is frequent when something mentioned before is taken up or referred to, as in:

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(22) But showers have hindered me from walking to-day, but that I don't love. (L XXX, 8/11/1711, 239) (23) And do you know I have taken more pains to recommend the Whig wits to the favour and mercy of the ministers than any other people. Steele I have kept in his place. Congreve I have got to be used kindly, and secured. Rowe I have recommended, and got a promise of a place. Philips I could certainly have provided for, if he had not run party mad, . (L LVII, 27/12/1712, 406) c) In interrogative clauses (conveying indirect questions) Swift repeatedly, though not exclusively, employs the word order of questions, e.g. in: (24) When I knocked at my lodgings, a fellow asked me where lodged Dr Swift? (L XXXII, 20/10/1711, 262) (25) I went to Mr Harleys levee; he came and asked me, what had I to do there, and bid me come and dine with him . (L XI, 22/12/1710, 80) A s this word order is one of the characteristics of HE (cf. Kirsten 1987: 69), it can be assumed that Swift's usage is influenced by the variety spoken in Ireland. d) In relative clauses Swift uses that more frequently than today, particularly in non-defining clauses and with persons as antecedents, e.g. in: (26) His father is a man of pleasure, that walks the Mall, and frequents St. Jame's Coffeehouse and the young son is principal Secretry of State. (LIX, 11/11/1710, 52) (27) there dined with us only Mr Lewis, and Dr Freind, that writ Lord Peterborow's actions in Spain. (L EX, 11/11/1710, 51) and apparently without any difference by the side of who: (28) I dined to-day with poor Lord Mountjoy, who is ill of the gout; (LIX, 19/11/1710, 56) That Swift's usage was in agreement with contemporary usage can be concluded from the following statement by Jespersen: In early Modem English that is the favourite relative and is found in non-restrictive as well as in restrictive clauses, but there is in literature a growing tendency to extend the sphere of wh-words so that they more and more oust that from the non-restrictive clauses . (Jespersen 1926: 107)

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This is bringing Addison's Humble Petition of Who and Which to mind, which was published during Swift's stay in London (The Spectator, No. 78, 30 May, 1711). Referring to Addison's article Jespersen continues: in which with total disregard of historical truth he makes these two pronouns complain of the injury done to them by the recent extension of the use of that. (Jespersen 1926: 107-108)

By the way, Swift does not comment on Addison's article in SJ, though he otherwise mentions Addison and The Spectator more than 50 times. e) Relative clauses without a relative are not only found with missing relatives as Obj but also in the function of Subj. Besides it was the joiner was hanged in (1), the following instances have come to hand in SJ: (29) That's something charms me mightily about London; (L V, 2/10/1710, 19) (30) your mother thinks it is want of exercise hurts you, and so do I (LX, 30/11/1710, 62) (31) Here is a young fellow has writ some Sea Eclogues . (LXLHI, 12/3/1712, 353)

Examples with missing relatives as Subj after introductory it is/that is/there is are also found in DJ. Swift's usage, however, is not restricted to such cases, but found in other contexts as well, e.g. in: (32) We chose two members; we were eleven met, the greatest meeting we ever had . (L XXXVI, 6/12/1711, 294) (33) and I am making a livery for him will cost me four pounds. (L XXIV, 25/5/1711, 184)

These examples are quoted in full to show that Swift used such structures himself and that Strang is wrong when she states: It is true that Swift's Polite Conversation (1738) includes a subject contact-relative, but the point of this work is to ridicule the gauche and uncultured manner of modish conversation; linguistic historians have all too often cited it as by Swift, as if it represented what Swift wrote in propria persona or thought should be said or written. (Strang 1974: 143)

Besides, such subject contact clauses are one of the characteristics of HE (cf. Kirsten 1987: 68), so that it again seems likely to assume influence of the English spoken in Ireland here.

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f) Generally, Swift's use of zwg-forms greatly resembles that of today, and only a few minor points will be mentioned here briefly. (i) There are still examples of the type went a swimming: (34) I fell a scolding when I heard they were coming; (L XHI, 4/1/1711, 95)

(ii) There are some examples of hybrids between verbal nouns (the writing of letters) and gerunds ('writing letters) of the type the + V-ing + Obj/Comp, e.g. in (35) Lord Treasurer's sickness, the Queen's gout, the forwarding the peace, occasion putting off the parliament a fortnight longer. (L XXXIV, 10/11/1711, 278) (36) Have you seen the red stamp the papers are marked with? Me thinks it is worth a halfpenny, the stamping it. (L LI, 7/8/1712, 381)

and of the type V-ing + of + noun: (37) I detest washing of rooms. (L XXXIV, 13/11/1711, 280)

However, compared with other contemporary authors, such as Defoe, Swift uses these structures only sparingly. (iii) In structures of gerunds with an own subject Swift uses the possessive form more frequently than today, as in: (38) Mr. Harley's going out yesterday has put him a little backwards. (LXVH, 6/3/1711, 132) (39) I hear nothing of Lord Mountjoy's comingfor Ireland. (L Vm, 8/11/1710, 48)

This is also in agreement with other contemporary writers of his time. 4. Periphrastic do/does/did 4.1. Causes negated by not When the whole proposition is negated by not, Swift uses do/does/did in the great majority of clauses. However, of a total of 406 instances there are still 90 (22 %) where periphrastic do is not used. These overall figures need some comment. A closer examination of the examples without do shows that 79 have I as Subj, 10 have a Subj in the 3rd Pers Sg and one has a Subj in the 3rd Pers Plur. All the

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examples with 1st Pers Plur and you as Subj show periphrastic do, which holds true of negated imperatives as well. Even more important seems the following observation: 61 of the 90 examples without do have know as verb (as against 41 with periphrastic do). Of these, 53 have I know not, e.g.: (40) I know not what it is. (L XII, 24/12/1710, 82) (41) / know not the truth; you will before me. (L XI, 9/12/1710, 69)

four I knew not, e.g.: (42) I knew not what to do . (L XXXVIII, 5/1/1712, 313)

two he knows not, e.g.: (43) He knows not where I lodge . (L XXVHI, 24/8/1711, 228)

and one each he knew not and they knew not. In addition, the following verbs appear with more than one example: care (6), value (4), doubt (3), mind (2). Seven of the ten instances with 3rd Pers Sg as Subj show Past Tense forms, four of them came not, as in: (44) Congreve was to be there, but came not. (L X, 5/12/1710, 67)

and one each knew not, regarded not, and saw not. Of the remaining three, two have he knows not and one has he goes not (45) He goes not these three weeks. (L IV, 20/9/1710, 17)

The only example with 3rd Pers Plur as Subj has knew not again: (46) My solicitors, that used to ply me every morning, knew not where to find me; (LXXH, 4/4/1711, 170)

This indicates that in clauses negated by not periphrastic do/does/did is prevalent, the forms without do being restricted to a few verbs where they exist side by side with the periphrastic form. This mainly concerns know and a few other mental verbs like care, doubt, mind value, and in the Past Tense also came. Defoe's usage is similar in that 11 of the 28 examples without do/does/did in DJ also have know as their verb and care, doubt and value are represented as well. Stein (1990: 269) states for the 17th century "a rather sudden rise from the level of do in nega-

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tives as shown for the Shakespeare corpus (up to 10 %) to a level of over 80 %". This tendency is confirmed by our data with the specifications given above. There is still one exception: Swift never uses periphrastic do/does/did with negated have. 4.2. Questions Here the situation is mutatis mutandis similar to that of clausal negation, though the overall figures of 52 with and 52 without do/does/did look quite different: All yas/rto-questions and all negated questions have periphrastic do/does/did All w/i-questions introduced by why, where and whom also have do/does/did The use without do/does/did is concentrated on w/i-questions introduced by how and what. Those introduced by how occur in more or less stereotyped expressions, such as How does MD? (47), How comes it ? (95), all having 3rd Pers Subj. 41 of the 52 examples without do/does/did are questions introduced by what (as against only 15 with periphrastic do/does/did). These figures seem to contradict the general tendency. A closer investigation, however, reveals that these 41 examples occur with two verbs only, namely with care in 34 and with say in 7 cases. More specifically, there are 21 instances of What care P., 10 of What care you?, and three of What cares Presto?, all of which may be considered to be more rhetorical than genuine questions. Of the seven examples with say, five are of the type What say you to ? and the remaining two show What says Presto/MD? All the other verbs show periphrastic do/does/did, e.g. What do you mean? (49), Whatdoyou do ? (248), What does itsigriify? (64). Again, have is exceptional in that it is always used without do/does/did. 4.3. Summary In general, periphrastic do/does/did has won the ground in questions and in clauses negated by not. There are just some pockets of resistance which show the older usage without do, in negated clauses know and some other mental verbs, and a number of more or less stereotyped w/j-questions introduced by how and what, the latter being restricted to the verbs care and say. With that, Swift's usage of periphrastic do/does/did in questions and in clausal negation seems to be in line with the general development of British English at the beginning of the 18th century (cf. also Stein 1990: 269-271).

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5. Mood and Modality Two points will be mentioned here: a) Swift uses the subjunctive in sub-clauses far more frequently than today. This mainly concerns sub-clauses introduced by if and (although, but is also found with whether, till/until and unless. Most examples show the subjunctive form be, e.g.: (47) his men are all at work with it, though it be Sunday. (L XXXVI, 2/12/1711,292) (48) and I did not like her, although she be a toast. ( L X X V m , 10/8/1711,220) (49) it is very sharply written: if it be not printed, I will send it you. If it be, it shall go in your packet of pamphlets. (L XXX1H, 25/10/1711, 268) (50) but whether the fault be in him, or the Queen, I know not; (LXLEI, 18/3/1712,356) (51) where he now lodges till his house be got ready in Golden Square. (L XXXH, 16/10/1711, 260)

There are also some examples with distinctive forms of other verbs, e.g.: (52) and if it come in my head I will mention it to Ned Southwell. (L XLIII, 8/3/1712, 351) (53)1 drank three or four glasses of champagne by perfect teasing, though it is bad for my pain; but if it continue, I will not drink any wine without water till I am well. (L XLIV, 29/3/1712, 364)

As shown by though it is badfor my pain and till I am well, indicative forms are also used by Swift, obviously mainly with 1st and 2nd Pers Subj, whereas all the examples given above with subjunctive forms have 3rd Pers Subj. Besides, factuality might be a factor here, i.e. if the sub-clause is factual, there is a tendency to use indicative forms, otherwise - futurity included - the subjunctive is preferred. But there are exceptions to that as well. It is not possible to go into further details here, but this problem deserves to be looked into more closely. b) Swift often uses would for volition where we would expect some form of want now, as in: (54) I would to Heaven I were this minute with MD at Dublin; ( L X m , 12/1/1711, 100) (55) to make up matters; but I would not. I don't know; but I would not. (L XEX, 3/4/1711, 148)

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6. Aspect and Tense 6.1. Aspect a) The Plain Present is sometimes used where we would now expect the Expanded Present. Thus, we can still find the plain form for something going on at the present, as in: (56) It rains hard this morning. (L XXXI, 9/10/1711, 249)

With future events, the Plain Present is found for private arrangements where now the Expanded Present is preferred (cf. Kirsten et al. 1994: 39-40). This is frequent in the phrase This [letter] goes to-night, e.g.: (58) This goes to-night; I will put it myself in the post-office. (L XXXIV, 17/11/1711,282)

but is not restricted to it: (59) and on Saturday I go to Windsor with Mr Secretary. (L XXIX, 30/8/1711,233)

Generally, however, the contours of present usage can be recognized. b) This also holds for the use of the expanded form in the other tenses. Thus Swift uses the Expanded Past for activities that were going on for some time in the past when something else happened, as in: (60) As I was dressing to go to church, a friend that was to see me advised me not to stir out; so I shall keep at home to-day, . (L XXXVD, 23/12/1711, 304) (61)1 was talking with the Duke of Argyle by the fireside in the bedchamber, when the ambassador came out from the Queen. (L LVD, 4/1/1713, 410)

The numerous examples of the Expanded Pre-Present also show a usage very similar to that of today in that the activity itself is in the centre of interest (cf. Kirsten et al. 1994: 57-61). This mainly occurs where repeated actions or actions of a longer duration are concerned, as in: (62) I have been visiting this morning, but nobody was at home . (LIX, 15/11/1710, 54)

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The following extract could be quoted for illustrating the main difference of the PF and the EF in present-day English: (63) I have nothing to do now, boys, and have been reading all this day like Gumdragon /activity without goal or result/ I dined with a friend hard by I came home early, and have read two hundred pages of Arrian [activity with result] (L XLH, 29/2/1712, 345)

Examples with the Expanded Future are rare, which may be due to such letters dealing mainly with present and past events. The few examples, however, are in line with the observations made for the other tenses: They contain statements about repeated activities in which the writer is interested or involved, as in: (64) Lord-Treasurer is at Windsor too: they will be going and coming all summer, while the Queen is there, and the town is empty; (L XXVI, 1/7/1711, 202)

Here again the present usage is indicated (see Kirsten et al. 1994: 73-78). c) There do not exist expanded passive forms yet: Swift still uses the active form with a passive meaning, e.g. in: (65) My Letter to Lord-Treasurer, about the English Tongue, is now printing-, (L XLVI, 10/5/1712,367)

This corresponds to Defoe's usage. 6.2. Tense What has been said of aspect holds for tense as well: In the majority of instances, Swift's usage is similar to that of today. Apart from that, the following deviations can be observed: a) The distinction between the Past Tense and the Pre-Present is not so clear-cut as today, i.e. in some contexts Swift uses the Past Tense where we would now expect the Pre-Present. This isfrequentin combination with ever and never, as in: (66) Did you ever see so open a winter in England? We have not had two frosty days; (LXH, 27/12/1710, 85) (67) I fear my whole chest of Florence is turned sour How plaguy unfortunate am I! and the Secretary's own is the best I ever tasted; (L XXI, 27/4/1711,64)

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(68) I never saw such a letter in all my life; (L XL, 8/1/1712, 332)

Examples with present-day usage exist but are very rare: (69) It is the finest garden I have ever seen about this town . (L XXIX, 1/9/1711, 234)

Swift's use of the Past Tense with ever and never is still one of the characteristics of HE (cf. Kirsten 1987: 71). On the other hand, the Pre-Present Tense is sometimes used by Swift in combination with ago, e.g. in: (70) Mrs Vedeau tells me, she has sent the bill a fortnight ago. (L XXIV, 1/6/1711, 187)

The few examples that have come to hand seem to indicate that this occurs only in contexts where otherwise Present Tense forms dominate. b) The Present Tense is frequently used by Swift where we now have the 'continuative use' of the Pre-Present, as in: (71) 'Tis fine moderate weather these two or three days last. (LXXXVm, 12/1/1712, 317)

There are only few examples with the Pre-Present in SJ. This use of the Present Tense is not found in DJ. It is, on the other hand, a characteristic of HE (cf. Kirsten 1987: 71-72), so that it can be assumed with certainty that Swift is influenced here by the English spoken in Ireland.

7. Conclusions An investigation of Swift's language shows that the forms and structures of present-day English were for the greatest part in existence, but still existed by the side of older forms and uses. This does not only concern morphology, e.g. comparatives and superlatives, it also manifests itself in a number of syntactic structures and morpho-syntactic uses, especially in: -

a more liberal word order in clauses a freer use of relatives the use of periphrastic do/does/did in questions and in clauses negated by not some provinces of mood and modality

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- a less pronounced distinction between the plain forms and the expanded forms and between the Past Tense and the Pre-Present Tense This coexistence between a number of older forms, structures and uses and those of present-day English seems to suggest that in Swift's days the development of the English language had not reached its present level yet but was at a stage immediately before it. In addition, Swift's language is not quite free of some characteristics of Hiberno-English, which is indicated by his use of subject contact relative clauses, of the Past Tense in combination with ever and never as well as of the Present Tense for the 'continuative' Pre-Present. References Defoe, D. (21911): A Journal of the Plague Year. London/New York: J.M. Dent and Sons Graustein, G. (1994): "Zu Swifts Schreibvarianten. Anstelle einer Fußnote". In: Zeitschriftßir Anglistik und Amerikanistik 42, 327-331 Graustein, G. et aL (1977): English Grammar. A University Handbook. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Jespersen, O. (1926): "Notes on Relative Clauses". In: S.P.E. Tract No. XXIV. Oxford University Press Kirsten, FL (1987): "Some Syntactic Characteristics of Hiberno-English". In: Hansen, K. (Hg.): Studien zur Sprachvariation (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Englischen). Berlin: Humboldt-Universität. Sektion Anglistik/Amerikanistik, 66-73 Kirsten, FL et aL (1994): Englische Verbformen. Bedeutung und kommunikative Leistung. Essen: Die Blaue Eule Ryland, F. (ed.) (1908J: The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Vol II. The Journal to Stella. London: George Bell and Sons Stein, D. (1990): The Semantics of Syntactic Change. Aspects of the Evolution of 'do' in English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter Strang, B.M.FL (1974): A History of English. London: Methuen

Wolfgang Lörscher ( L e i p z i g )

Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse 1. Einfuhrung Nach Noam Chomsky (1965: 3-4) ist der Gegenstand einer linguistischen Theorie in erster Linie ein idealer Sprecher-Hörer, der in einer völlig homogenen Sprachgemeinschaft lebt, seine Sprache ausgezeichnet kennt, in ihr also kompetent ist, und bei der Anwendung seiner Sprachkenntnis in der aktuellen Rede von solchen grammatisch irrelevanten Bedingungen wie begrenztes Gedächtnis, Zerstreutheit und Verwirrung, Verschiebung in der Aufmerksamkeit und im Interesse, sowie Fehlern (zufalligen oder typischen) nicht affiziert wird. Die Performanz-Phänomene, die hier als grammatisch irrelevant bezeichnet werden, sind für Chomsky zwar der Untersuchung wert, doch sollen sie nicht Gegenstand einer linguistischen bzw. grammatischen Theorie, sondern einer psychologischen Theorie der menschlichen Kommunikation sein (1965: 10). Während Chomsky den unsystematischen Charakter der Performanz und ihre allumfassende Variabilität hervorhebt, macht die Performanzanalyse, so wie sie sich heute in vielfaltigen Facetten zeigt, teils explizit, teils unausgesprochen, eine generelle Vorannahme, die der Ausfassung Chomskys entgegensteht. Um Performanz überhaupt sinnvoll, d.h. mit dem Ziel generalisierbarer Ergebnisse, untersuchen zu können, muß vorausgesetzt werden, daß es neben den unbestritten vielfachen und vielfältig in die Performanz hinein wirkenden Größen, wie Idiosynkrasien, unterschiedliche Kompetenzgrade, psychischphysische Befindlichkeit der Sprachbenutzer, situationeile und kontextuelle Faktoren, auch Regelhaftigkeiten in der Performanz gibt, die aufzudecken einen beträchtlichen Erkenntnisgewinn mit sich bringt. Die in die Performanz wirkenden Größen sollen damit in ihrer Bedeutung keineswegs unterschätzt werden. Gleichwohl stellt die Existenz performatorischer Regularitäten und die damit einhergehende Möglichkeit, Performanz zumindest partiell zu systematisieren, eine conditio sine qua non jedweder Performanzanalyse dar. Die Aufdeckung, Beschreibung und Analyse von Performanzregularitäten sollte es denn auch ermöglichen, die vielfachen in die Performanz wirkenden Größen, die z.T. noch kaum bekannt oder erforscht sind, und deren Zusammenspiel noch weitgehend unklar ist, systematischer, ökonomischer und besser zu erfassen und zu analysieren (Lörscher 1983: 188). Es wird zu zeigen sein, daß im Lichte heutiger Forschungsergebnisse der Performanzanalyse sich nicht nur das von Chomsky angenommene Verhältnis von Kompetenz und

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Performanz als sehr viel komplexer darstellt, sondern auch das Chomskysche Performanzkonzept als äußerst fragwürdig, ja, wie meine Ausführungen zeigen sollen, als inadäquat anzusehen ist.

2. Zwei Forschungsprojekte zur Beschreibung und Analyse von Performanz Nachfolgend sollen zwei Forschungsprojekte skizziert werden, in denen ich mich mit der Beschreibung und Analyse von Performanz beschäftigt habe: in einem ersten Projekt mit dem Lehrer-Schüler-Diskurs im Fremdsprachenunterricht, woraus die 1983 veröffentlichte Monographie Linguistische Beschreibung und Analyse von Fremdsprachenunterricht als Diskurs entstanden ist; in einem zweiten Projekt mit der Übersetzungsperformanz nichtprofessioneller Übersetzer, dessen - zumindest vorläufiger - Abschluß 1991 durch die Studie Translation Performance, Translation Process, and Translation Strategies. A Psycholinguistic Investigation markiert wird. Eine Synopse beider Forschungsprojekte findet sich in Gegenüberstellung in Abbildung 1 (vgl. S. 211). Die in den beiden Forschungsprojekten entwickelten und nachfolgend zu skizzierenden Analysemodelle sind anhand empirischer Korpora konzipiert worden. Die Kategorien und Strukturen der Modelle wurden also nicht am grünen Tisch geplant und dann dem Untersuchungsobjekt gleichsam übergestülpt. Sie haben sich dem Analysator vielmehr durch seine Beobachtung und Beschreibung von Performanz nahegelegt. Im folgenden sollen die beiden Analysemodelle kurz vorgestellt, in einigen Aspekten miteinander verglichen und Überlegungen darüber angestellt werden, welche Konsequenzen die beiden Modelle für ein Konzept sowie für die Beschreibung und Analyse von Performanz zeitigen.

2.1. Ein Analysemodell für den fremdsprachenunterrichtlichen Diskurs Das nachfolgend zu skizzierende Analysemodell für den fremdsprachenunterrichtlichen Diskurs (vgl. Lörscher 1983: 194-232) ist auf vier hierarchischen Ebenen angelegt und enthält eine potentiell zwischen den Ebenen angesiedelte Einheit. Die obersten Einheiten - 'Transaktionen' - bestehen aus 'Redewechseln', die ihrerseits von 'Zügen' gebildet werden. 'Akte' sind die Einheiten auf der hierarchisch untersten Ebene. 'Didaktische Einheiten' können zwischen diesen Ebenen operieren.

Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse

211

Abbildung 1: Zwei Forschungsprojekte zur Beschreibung und Analyse von Performanz Projekt 1:

Projekt 2:

Lehrer-Schüler-Diskurs im FU

Übersetzungsperformanz

Objektbereich

Explizit dialogischer Diskurs zwischen Lehrer und Schüler(n) im FU als eine Realisationsform von Performanz

Explizit monologischer Diskurs der Testpersonen, in dem sie ihre Übersetzungen verfertigten, als eine Realisationsform von Performanz

Erkenntnisinteresse und Ziel(e)

Die Spezifik dieses Diskurstyps sollte zunächst herausgearbeitet werden. Sodann sollte an einem Korpus ein Modell für die funktionale Analyse des Lehrer-Schüler-Diskurses im FU konzipiert werden, das die Spezifika der fremdsprachenunterrichtlichen Diskursstruktur angemessen erfassen und wiedergeben kann.

Die Übersetzungsperformanz sollte untersucht werden, um die unterliegenden Strategien, d. h. Verfahrensweisen zur Lösung translatorischer Probleme des Übersetzungsprozesses zu rekonstruieren. Die so gefundenen Übersetzungsstrategien wurden zunächst qualitativ im Hinblick auf ihre Binnenstrukturen analysiert, zu Typen zusammengefaßt und zu einem Analysemodell formalisiert. Sodann wurden sie quantitativ im Hinblick auf ihre Häufigkeit und Verteilung im Korpus ausgewertet.

empirisch

empirisch

Datenkorpus

10 videoaulgezeichnete und 4 audioaufgezeichnete Stunden Englischunterricht mit unterschiedlicher Thematik auf unterschiedlichen Schulstufen und -typen.

52 audioaufgezeichnete, mündlich durchgeführte Übersetzungen von 9 Texten durch 48 Testpersonen. 26 Hinübersetzungen Dt.-Engl., 26 Herübersetzungen Engl.-Dt.

Methodik

Datenerhebung, Aufzeichnung und anschließende Transkription zum Zweck der interpretativen Analyse. Nichtteilnehmende Beobachtung von Unterrichtsstunden vor und während der Aufzeichnungen, um an das Interpretationswissen von Lehrer und Schüler heranzukommen. Interpretative Rekonstruktion der Funktion(en) von Äußerungen im Diskurs.

Datenerhebung, Aufzeichnung und Transkription zum Zweck der interpretativen Analyse. Datenerhebung im wesentlichen mittels Lauten Denkens, um eine zusätzliche Quelle von Informationen über Zwischenstufen und -schritte des Übersetzungsproduktionsprozesses zu erschließen. Datenausweitung über einen sinnkonstituierenden Zugang zu den Performanzdaten Inteipretative Rekonstruktion hauptsächlich mittels bestimmter Strategieindikatoren

Datenanalyse

Qualitativ und partiell quantitativ

Qualitativ und quantitativ

ausgewertete Datentypen

a) verbale, b) parasprachliche, c) nonverbale

a) verbale, al) ZS-Text als Übersetzung, a2) Protokolle des Lauten Denkens, b) parasprachliche

Zugang zum Untersuchungsgegenstand

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I.Akte Sie können fünf kommunikative Funktionen haben, die ihrerseits drei Gruppen bilden: (1) elizitative, d.h. sprachliche Handlungen hervorrufende, und direktive, d.h. nichtsprachliche Handlungen hervorrufende (2) die zu (1) komplementären Funktionen: replizierende und reaktive (3) informative Im Objektbereich des Modells wurden zehn Gruppen von Akten gefunden. Sie bezeichnen u. a.: 1. Phatische Äußerungen (p) 2. Topische Äußerungen (t), d.h. Äußerungen, die sich auf das jeweilige Thema (= Topik) des Unterrichts beziehen, soweit dieses nicht metasprachlicher Art ist 3. Organisierende Äußerungen (o) 4. Metasprachliche/Sprachbezogene Äußerungen (s) 5. Freie Äußerungen (f) 6. Korrigierende/verbessernde Äußerungen (v), topisch und/oder metasprachlich 7. Kommentierende Äußerungen (k), topisch und/oder metasprachlich 8. Wiederholende Äußerungen (w) 9. Bewertende Äußerungen (b), topisch und/oder metasprachlich 10. Nebenbemerkungen (n) II. Züge Sie kommen als Initiierungszüge (IZ), meist vom Lehrer realisiert, als Reaktionszüge (RZ), meist vom Schüler realisiert, und als Rückmeldungszüge (RMZ), vom Lehrer realisiert, vor. In den Daten sind acht Haupt-Zugtypen enthalten: 1. Diskursstrukturierende Züge: 2. Organisierende Züge: 3. Sprachbezogene Züge: 4. Wiederholende Züge: 5. Topische Züge: 6. Freie Züge:

Rahmen und Fokussierungen IZ„, RZ0, RMZ IZS, RZS, RMZ IZw, RZw, RMZ IZt, RZt, RMZ IZf, RZf, RMZ

Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse

7. Kommentierende Züge: 8. Nebenzüge:

IZk, IZn,

213

RZk, RMZ RZ», RMZ

III. Redewechsel (WE) Sie werden in ihrer überwiegenden Mehrheit unterschieden nach Grundstrukturen, Erweiterungsstrukturen und Komplexionsstrukturen. Dem liegt die Erkenntnis zugrunde, daß Redewechsel zwar höchst komplex sein können, daß sie aber auf eine überschaubar kleine Zahl einfacherer Strukturen zurückgeführt werden können. Die Anwendung eines generativen Prinzips erlaubt es, Grundstrukturen in Erweiterungs- und Komplexionsstrukturen zu überführen. 'Grundstrukturen' sind die beschreibungstechnisch einfachsten Strukturen und bestehen in der Regel aus einem Dreischritt von Initiierungs-, Reaktionsund Rückmeldungszug wie im angegebenen Beispiel: ((WE,: IZ, - RZ, - RMZ)) 'Erweiterungsstrukturen' entstehen, wenn Grundstrukturen um RMZ/IZ-Zyklen 'erweitert' werden. Im Beispiel ist ein topisch ausgerichteter Redewechsel um einen Rückmeldungs-/Initiierungszyklus erweitert. ((WE,: IZ, - RZ, - RMZ/IZ,- RZ, - RMZ)) 'Komplexionsstrukturen' setzen sich aus mehreren, unterschiedlichen Grundund/oder Erweiterungsstrukturen zusammen. Im angegebenen Beispiel besteht der Redewechsel aus einem topischen und einem wiederholenden Teil. ((WE^: IZ, - RZ, - RMZ/IZw - RZ«, - RMZ))

IV. Transaktionen (TRS) Sie organisieren den Lehrer-Schüler-Diskurs in seiner thematischen Progression, wie im angegebenen Beispiel: ((TRStsw: WE, - WES - WEw))

Wolfgang Lörscher

214 V. Didaktische Einheiten (DE)

Sie leiten sich von der dem gesamten Unterrichtsdiskurs übergeordneten didaktischen Zielsetzung ab, die fremde Sprache in ihrem möglichst natürlichen Gebrauch zu lehren bzw. zu lernen. Sie fassen, auch über Zug-, Redewechselund Transaktionsgrenzen hinweg, sprachübende Diskursstücke zusammen. Z.B.: WE,*S - WES - WES - WE, I DE 1

2.2. Ein Modell zur strategischen Analyse des Übersetzungsprozesses Nachfolgende Skizze enthält das von mir zur Analyse der Übersetzungsperformanz entwickelte Modell (vgl. Lörscher 1991a: 92-123). Es besteht aus drei Ebenen. Auf der ersten sind jene Performanzphänomene angesiedelt, die als Elemente von Übersetzungsstrategien zu interpretieren sind. Die hierarchisch darüber liegende Ebene erfaßt die Manifestationen von Übersetzungsstrategien. Performanzphänomene, die als Übersetzungsversionen gedeutet werden, bilden die dritte Ebene. Sie können sowohl innerhalb einer Struktur als auch strukturübergreifend Schritte des Übersetzungsprozesses zusammenfassen. I. Elemente von Übersetzungsstrategien Sie werden unterschieden nach originären (a) und potentiellen (b). Erstere kommen nur in strategischen, d.h. auf die Lösung von Problemen abzielenden, letztere auch in nichtstrategischen Phasen des Übersetzungsprozesses vor. (a) originäre EP BP —>PL PL VPL PLa,b,.. PL0

: Erkennen eines Übersetzungsproblems : Benennen eines Übersetzungsproblems : Suchen nach einer (vorläufigen) Problemlösung : Problemlösung : Vorläufige Problemlösung : Teillösungen eines komplexen Übersetzungsproblems : Nullösung; Problemlösung steht noch aus

Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse PL = 0

: Negative Problemlösung

PAS

: Problem bei der Rezeption eines AS-Textsegments

215

(b) potentielle MAS MZS REPHRAS REPHRZS CHECK OAS OZS REZ [TS]k TRANS Ü —>Ü1,2.. ORG

: Monitoren (wörtliches Wiederholen) von AS-Textsegmenten : Monitoren (wörtliches Wiederholen) von ZS-Textsegmenten : Rephrasieren (sprachliches Abändern) von AS-Textsegmenten : Rephrasieren (sprachliches Abändern) von ZS-Textsegmenten : Testen von (vorläufigen) Problemlösungen : Mentale Organisation von AS-Textsegmenten : Mentale Organisation von ZS-Textsegmenten : Rezipieren (Lesen) von AS-Textsegmenten : Kommentieren von Textsegmenten : Transponieren; Lexemumstellungen in ZS-Textsegmenten : Nicht-strategisches Übersetzen : Erstellen einer erneuten Übersetzungsversion : Diskursorganisierende Äußerung

II. Übersetzungsstrategien Als Verfahrensweisen zur Lösung von Übersetzungsproblemen erstrecken sie sich vom Erkennen eines Übersetzungsproblems bis zum Auffinden einer Problemlösung oder dem Erkennen seiner (momentanen) Unlösbarkeit durch eine Testperson. Das nachfolgend abgebildete Flußdiagramm zeigt das Zusammenspiel der Elemente von Übersetzungsstrategien und damit die 'Wege' und Entscheidungen der Testpersonen vom Erkennen eines Problems bis zu seiner Lösung oder dem Erkennen seiner Unlösbarkeit.

Wolfgang Lòrscher

216

ra •o

V V V *II

9 T3

8"

3 5

> ae

e.

01

a e

fa

1 E PL) kann die Testperson eine (vorläufige) Problemlösung ((V)PL, PLa,b..) sogleich finden. In diesen Fällen (2), (3), (4) sowie nach dem Erkennen der (momentanen) Unlösbarkeit des Problems (1) kann der Problemlösungsprozeß seinen Abschluß nehmen (#). Nach dem Auffinden einer (vorläufigen) Problemlösung (2), (3), (4) kann die Testperson sich aber auch noch weiter mit dem Problem beschäftigen ( » > ) und gelangt so zum Entscheidungsknoten A oder B (»A / *B). Findet die Testperson keine (vorläufige) Problemlösung, so gelangt sie nur zum Entscheidungsknoten A. Dort stehen ihr acht unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten zur Wahl, die sie jeweils einzeln oder in Kombination nutzen kann, um eine (weitere/adäquatere) Problemlösung zu erreichen: das Kommentieren von Textsegmenten [TS]k, das Monitoren und mentale Organisieren ausgangssprachlicher (MAS, OAS) und zielsprachlicher (MZS, OZS) Textsegmente, das Rephrasieren ausgangssprachlicher Textsegemente (REPHRAS), die weitere Suche nach einer Problemlösung (—>PL) und das Konzipieren einer negativen Problemlösung (PL = 0). Als Ergebnis dieser Problemlösungsschritte kann die Testperson eine (vorläufige) Problemlösung finden oder die (momentane) Unlösbarkeit des Problems erkennen. Der Problemlösungsprozeß kann hier zu einem erfolgreichen (6), (7), (8) oder zu einem nicht-erfolgreichen (5) Abschluß kommen. Fährt die Testperson hingegen mit der Problembehandlung fort, so gelangt sie entweder zum Entscheidungsknoten A (nach (V)PL, PLa, b.. und PL0) oder zum Entscheidungsknoten B (nicht nach PL0). Am Entscheidungsknoten B stehen der Testperson zwei Strategieschritte zur Auswahl. Sie kann die jeweiligen ZS-Textsegmente ((V)PL, PLa,b..) überprüfen (CHECK) oder rephrasieren (REPHRZS). Das Ergebnis des Überprüfens ist eine Bestätigung ((V)PL+) oder ein Verwerfen ((V)PL-) der (vorläufigen) Problemlösung. In beiden Fällen kann die Testperson damit die Strategie abschließen ((9), (10), (11), (12)) oder ein weiteres Mal zum Entscheidungsknoten A oder B gehen usw. Das Ergebnis des Rephrasierens ist eine weitere (vorläufige) Problemlösung ((V)PL2,3.., PLa2,3.., PLb2,3..,..). Sie kann den Endpunkt der Strategie bilden, wie dies in (13) und (14) der Fall ist; oder die Testperson geht erneut zu einem der Entscheidungsknoten. Übersetzungsstrategien werden unterschieden nach Grund-, Erweiterungs- und Komplexionsstrukturen. 'Grundstrukturen' sind die beschreibungstechnisch einfachsten. Es kommen fünf Typen vor: Typ Typ Typ Typ

I II III IV

: EP - (V)PL#/PL0 : EP - ->PL - (V)PL#/PL0 : (EP) - BP - (V)PL#/PL0 : (EP) - (->FL) - BP - (~>PL) - (V)PL#/PL0; mindestens eine Suchphase (-»PL) Typen V : (V)PLa/PLa0 (V)PLb/PLb0 (V)PLc/PLc0 Typ Va : EP - (->PL) - (V)PLa/PLa0 - (->PL) - (V)PLb/PLb0

Wolfgang Lörscher

218 Typ Vb Typ Vc

: EP - (-»PL) - BPa - (-»PL) - (V)PLa/PLa0 - (-»PL) - BPb (-»PL) - (V)PLb/ PLb0 : EP - (-»PL) - (BPa) - (-»PL) - (V)PLa/PLa0 - (-»PL) - (BPb) (-»PL) - (V)PLb/PLb0

Typ I als beschreibungstechnisch einfachster Fall besteht aus dem Erkennen eines Problems (EP), woran sich sogleich eine Problemlösung oder das Erkennen der momentanen Unlösbarkeit des Problems anschließt. Typ II unterscheidet sich durch eine zusätzliche Phase des Suchens nach einer Problemlösung (-»PL), Typ III durch eine Phase des Benennens des Problems (BP) und Typ IV durch die Kombination von Suchphase und Problembenennung. Bei den Typen V handelt es sich um Strategien, in denen die Testpersonen ein komplexes Problem in Teile aufspalten und diese sukzessiv zu lösen versuchen. 'Erweiterungsstrukturen' entstehen, wenn Grundstrukturen zusätzliche Elemente ihrer selbst enthalten. Z.B.: ((EP - -»PL - BP - -»PL - BP2 - PL#)) Im angegebenen Beispiel ist Typ IV um eine zusätzliche Problembenennung (BP2) 'erweitert'. 'Komplexionsstrukturen' setzen sich aus mehreren Grund- bzw. Erweiterungsstrukturen und/oder Übersetzungsversionen zusammen. Z.B.: ((BP - P L 0 - -»PL - VPL)) Das Beispiel enthält je eine Realisationsform des Strukturtyps II und III.

III. Übersetzungsversionen Sie leiten sich von der die gesamte Übersetzung dominierenden Maxime, einen über die bloße Sinnwiedergabe hinausgehenden, den Gebrauchsnormen der Zielsprache entsprechenden, möglichst adäquaten ZS-Text zu verfertigen, ab. Sie können aus strategischen und/oder nicht-strategischen Elementen bestehen. Übersetzungsversionen können innerhalb von Strategien (als intrastrategische Versionen), zwischen Strategien oder Strategien übergreifend (intraversionale Strategien) angesiedelt sein.

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219

3. Modellvergleich und Konsequenzen für die Performanzanalyse Obwohl beiden Modellen sowie den Untersuchungen, aus denen sie erwachsen sind, unterschiedliche Zielsetzungen, Erkenntnisinteressen und z.T. unterschiedliche Vorannahmen und Methoden zugrunde liegen, und obgleich sie über unterschiedlichen Bereichen der Performanz errichtet wurden, weisen die Modelle dennoch viele Ähnlichkeiten auf. Die beiden wichtigst erscheinenden, aus denen sich bedeutsame Konsequenzen für ein Performanzkonzept ableiten lassen, sollen nachfolgend skizziert werden. 1. In beiden Modellen wird zwischen Grund-, Erweiterungs- und Komplexionsstrukturen unterschieden. Dem liegt die Erkenntnis zugrunde, daß sowohl die Interaktionseinheiten im fremdsprachenunterrichtlichen Diskurs als auch die Strategien im Übersetzungsprozeß zwar höchst komplex sein können und in ihren vielfältigen Ausformungen kaum oder nur noch sehr mühsam überschaubar und darstellbar sind, daß sie aber auf eine überschaubar kleine Zahl einfacherer Strukturen zurückgeführt werden können. Die Anwendung eines selbsteinbettenden generativen Prinzips erlaubt es deshalb, Grundstrukturen in Erweiterungs- und Komplexionsstrukturen zu überführen. Da beide Modelle aus Segmenten der konkreten Performanz heraus entwikkelt worden sind, stellt das generative Prinzip offenbar keinen bloßen modellinhärenten Heurismus dar, sondern verweist auf einen Aspekt von Performanz selbst, dem Performanzmodelle Rechnung tragen müssen, nämlich das Faktum, daß Performanz sowohl Systematizität als auch Variabilität aufweist. Variabilität stellt sich danach als Auswahlmöglichkeit aus einer begrenzten Gruppe von Phänomenen dar. Sowohl das Flußdiagramm als auch die beiden Modellskizzen zeigen, daß es mögliche und nicht-mögliche Kombinationen von Elementen zu Strukturen gibt und daß die Optionsmöglichkeiten für die Testpersonen beschränkt sind und angegeben werden können. Daß Performanz darüber hinaus aber auch schwer und nicht-systematisierbare Teile enthält, ist in meinen Untersuchungen ebenfalls deutlich geworden und schlägt sich in den Modellen u.a. durch die sogenannten Papierkorbkategorien (Nebenbemerkungen und Organisierende Äußerungen) nieder. Trotz dieses nicht-systematischen Restes ist Performanz aber größtenteils als systematisch anzusehen. Variabilität in Systematizität ist denn auch, wie zu Beginn ausgeführt, die Voraussetzung dafür, daß Performanz mit dem Ziel, generalisierbare Ergebnisse zu erhalten, beschrieben und analysiert werden kann. 2. Beide Analysemodelle sind in zweifacher Weise, strukturell und funktional, hierarchisch organisiert. Unter struktureller Hierarchie wird die Tatsache verstanden, daß die Modelle die Performanz auf verschiedenen Ebenen erfas-

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Wolfgang Lörscher

sen und so zu einer Strukturierung in aufeinanderfolgende Einheiten führen (Lörscher 1983: 194-195, 1991a: 92-119). Der strukturelle Aspekt der Hierarchie zeigt sich im Modell der Lehrer-Schüler-Kommunikation in vier Ebenen: denen der Akte, der Züge, der Redewechsel und der Transaktionen, und im Modell der Übersetzungsperformanz in zwei Ebenen: der der Elemente von Übersetzungsstrategien und der der Übersetzungsstrategien selbst. Funktionale Hierarchie bezeichnet das Faktum, daß die Modelle komplexe, den gesamten Diskurs oder bestimmte Phasen dominierende Zielfoki erfassen (vgl. Lörscher 1983: 229-232, 1991a: 119-123). In der Lehrer-Schüler-Kommunikation besteht die dem gesamten Diskurs übergeordnete Zielsetzung darin, die fremde Sprache zu lehren bzw. zu lernen. Einzelne Diskursphasen können zudem von thematischen Zielsetzungen (z.B. Bildbeschreibung, Nacherzählung) dominiert werden. Übergeordnete Zielfoki manifestieren sich insbesondere in den Didaktischen Einheiten des Analysemodells, in denen die durch die oberste Zielsetzung des Diskurses begründeten metasprachlichen oder sprachübenden Phasen funktional zusammengefaßt werden. Im Analysemodell für die Übersetzungsperformanz zeigen sich übergeordnete Zielfoki am augenfälligsten in den Übersetzungsversionen. Diese begründen sich aus der die gesamte Übersetzungsproduktion dominierenden Maxime, eine über die bloße Sinnübertragung hinausgehende, optimale Übersetzung zu verfertigen. Auch für die beiden Aspekte von Hierarchie gilt, was zuvor bereits im Zusammenhang mit dem generativen Prinzip ausgeführt wurde: Sie stellen keine bloßen modellinhärenten Heurismen dar, sondern verweisen auf Eigenschaften der Performanz selbst, denen Performanzmodelle Rechnung tragen müssen.

4. Performanzanalyse als Produkt- und als Prozeßanalyse Im vorangegangenen Teil dieses Beitrages wurden exemplarisch zwei Projekte vorgestellt, in denen Performanz unter zwei verschiedenen Perspektiven untersucht wurde. Die beiden Projekte können somit als Fälle von zwei Typen von Performanzanalyse betrachtet werden. Im Projekt 1 (Lehrer-Schüler-Kommunikation) wurde die Performanz als Produkt, als Gegenstand sui generis untersucht. Ziel dabei war es, Einsichten in den Aufbau und in die Funktionsweisen eines spezifischen Diskurstyps zu gewinnen, wie dies in der Diskurs-, Konversations- oder Gesprächsanalyse weithin üblich ist. In Projekt 2 (Übersetzungsperformanz) wurde Performanz unter dem Aspekt ihrer Produktion untersucht. Dadurch sollten Einsichten in jene mentalen Prozesse gewonnen werden, die der Produktion eines spezifischen Performanztyps zugrunde

Perspektiven der Performanzanalyse

221

liegen, wie dies in der empirisch arbeitenden Psycholinguistik weithin üblich ist. Performanzanalyse lcann demnach unter zwei Perspektiven durchgeführt werden: als Produkt- und als Prozeßanalyse. Beide setzen zwar an der Performanz an, konzentrieren sich aber auf unterschiedliche Performanzphänomene und -aspekte und interpretieren sie unter verschiedenen Perspektiven. Dazu kann es notwendig oder hilfreich sein, das Objekt 'Performanz' mittels bestimmter Maßnahmen so aufzubereiten, daß die jeweils spezifische interpretative Analyse möglichst viele Anknüpfungspunkte findet. Die apparativtechnische Aufzeichnung und die Transkription, wie sie beide in der Performanzanalyse üblich sind, stellen zwei solcher Maßnahmen dar. Da sie in strenger Bindung an das jeweilige Erkenntnisinteresse und gestützt durch bestimmte Vorannahmen durchgeführt werden, geht damit eine Reduktion von Performanz einher, bei der für die anschließende Analyse nicht-interessierende und/oder irrelevante Phänomene ausgeschieden werden, so daß zugleich die interessierenden und/oder relevanten hervortreten können (Dittmann 1979). Die angesprochene Reduktion ist eine zwangsläufige Begleiterscheinung jedweder Performanzanalyse. Daß sie von den jeweiligen Analysatoren in methodisch kontrollierter Weise durchzuführen und ofFenzulegen ist, stellt eine für wissenschaftliches Arbeiten selbstverständliche Forderung dar. Neben der Reduktion von Performanz bietet sich auch der umgekehrte Fall, nämlich der einer zielgerichteten Anreicherung an. In dialogischen Diskursen werden Realität zwischen den Partnern ausgehandelt und Sinn gemeinsam konstituiert (vgl. u.a. Bergmann 1994). Dies manifestiert sich häufig im produzierten Text und wird somit einer Analyse zugänglich. In monologischen Diskursen wird dagegen das Realitätsmodell des Diskursproduzenten unterlegt und sprachlich weit weniger explizit gemacht. Gleiches dürfte auch für die Sinnkonstitution gelten. Um diese Defizite zumindest partiell zu kompensieren, bieten sich verschiedene Verfahren an, unter denen, wie ich an anderer Stelle dargelegt habe (Lörscher 1991b), insbesondere das Laute Denken als geeignet erscheint. Mittels dieses Verfahrens sollte es möglich sein, die Performanz um solche Daten anzureichern, aus denen jene Informationen interpretiert werden können, die in dialogischen Diskursen häufig explizit gemacht werden, in monologischen dagegen nur implizit enthalten sind. Performanzanalyse als Produkt- und als Prozeßanalyse bildet den Inhalt eines dritten Forschungsprojektes. In ihm untersuche ich z.Zt. die Übersetzungsperformanz professioneller im Vergleich zu der nicht-professioneller Übersetzer. Das Projekt hat bereits erste, interessante Ergebnisse gezeitigt, deren Publikation in Kürze erfolgen wird (Lörscher n.d.).

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Literatur Bergmann, J.R. (1994): "Ethnomethodologisclie Gesprächsanalyse". In: Fritz, G./Hundsnurscher, F. (Hg.): Handbuch der Dialoganalyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 3-16 Chomsky, N. (1965): Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge/Mass.: MIT Press Dittmann, J. (1979): "Einleitung - Was ist, zu welchen Zwecken und wie betreiben wir Konversationsanalyse?". In: Dittmann, J. (Hg.): Arbeiten zur Konversationsanalyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1-43 Lörscher, W. (1983): Linguistische Beschreibung und Analyse von Fremdsprachenunterricht ab Diskurs. Tübingen: Narr Lörscher, W. (1991a): Translation Performance, Translation Process, and Translation Strategies. A Psycholinguistic Investigation. Tübingen: Narr Lörscher, W. (1991b): "Thinking-Aloud as a Method for Collecting Data on Translation Processes". In: Tirkkonen-Condit, S. (ed.): Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural Studies. Selected Papers of the TRANSIF Seminar, Savonlinna 1988. Tübingen: Narr, 67-77 Lörscher, W. (n.d.): Übersetzen als Prozeß. Eine systematisierende Untersuchung des Übersetzungsprozesses von Professionellen, Bilingualen und Fremdsprachenlernern. (in Bearbeitung)

Clausdirk Pollner ( L e i p z i g )

"A breezier idiom". The treatment of varieties in histories of the English language 1. The present structure of Leipzig University's English Department is to a great extent the result of Gottfried Graustein's vision, energy and commitment - it is, to name just one characteristic, one of the few departments of English in Germany where the teaching of and research into textlinguistics and varieties of English have been institutionalized. The following observations are in Professor Graustein's honour (or honor); they combine one of his central interests - the history of English - with one of the fields mentioned above - English in its various shapes. Histories of the English language are predominantly addressed to two groups of readers: the interested lay-person who is not a philologist but is nevertheless keen on learning about the background of his/her mother tongue; and students of English philology. To the uninitiated, it must be one of the most illuminating pieces of information to be gleaned from histories of English that what is usually referred to as 'Standard English' is not a God-given entity but one of a number of dialects of English; after all, it started off as a regional variety of English (i.e. South East Midland English/educated London English) and has by now developed into a non-localized social variety: namely into that variety of English that is used primarily for formal writing and that is used sometimes but by no means necessarily in tandem with RP - by a minority of speakers as their spoken medium (cf., e.g., Public School English). Trudgill (1995: 44) remarks, rather sweepingly, but with more than a core of truth: [The intelligentsia, the literati, the journalists, the politicians of England] are fanatical about the preservation of'standards' in speaking and writing. They support the fallacy that appears everywhere in every generation that their own language is in decline. But in actual fact they have no respect for any varieties except the standard written varieties of the major European languages. For them, minority languages and nonstandard dialects simply do not count. This denigration of vernacular varieties is potentially disastrous.

Linguistics, on the other hand, has seen an upsurge in the interest in national and non-standard varieties of, e.g., English, particularly since the birth of sociolinguistic studies in the middle of this century. Titles such as Labov (1970) The Logic of Non-standard English and, more tongue-in-cheek, Milroy and Milroy (1993) Real English - the Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles indicate a more positive attitude to non-standard forms of English than Trudgill's

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political intelligentsia evinces. Modern linguistics and particularly variety-studies keep pointing out that non-standard varieties of any language are not inferior to standard varieties but different and should not be called "bad' (as opposed to 'good' standards) but be seen to follow different sets of rules that enable their users to communicate equally efficiently. 2. Histories of the English language usually delineate the development of the language from West-Saxon (Anglo-Saxon) via Middle English with its lack of a written standard variety, and Early Modern English down to Modem Standard English, which has been, since about 1500, the basis of the majority of written material in English. This is fair enough; but most authors of language histories feel a need for mentioning the existence of varieties other than Standard English - and in some cases they even characterize some of these varieties in detail. This paper looks at a selection of English language histories and their treatment of nonstandard and national varieties of English. Fifteen histories of the English language form the basis of the following observations: Classen (1919), McKnight (1928), Wrenn (1949/1952), Brook (1958), Wood (1969), McLaughlin (1970), Barnett (1970), Halliday (1975), Leith (1983), Wakelin (1988), Millward (1989), Claiborne (1990), Baugh/Cable (1993), Pyles/Algeo (1993), and Barber (1993). (For bibliographical details, see references.) All 15 have been written by either a British or an American author. This particular selection has been chosen in order to reach at least some measure of representativeness on several counts: a) From the point of view of methodological approach - a number of authors treat their material chronologically (e.g. Wood 1969, Millward 1989), others prefer a systematic approach (e.g. Classen 1919, Wrenn 1949/52) b) From the point of view of publication dates - all decades of the twentieth century, apart from the first (1900-1909) and the fourth (1930-1939), are represented by at least one title c) From the point of view of the projected readership - there are those histories that are rather more 'academic' in that they seem to address predominantly a student readership (e.g. McLaughlin 1970, Leith 1983, Baugh/Cable 1993), others obviously aim at a rather more general audience in that they present their material in a somewhat more 'popular', non-technical way (e.g. Barnett 1970, Claiborne 1990) All histories considered here have some remarks on national forms of English, on local dialects/accents and/or social varieties, on formal/informal styles of English and on vocabulary varieties such as slang and register/jargon; none of them, however, devote space to all of these possible variants: which is very obvious in the light of the fact that we are here looking at books that delineate the development

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of Standard English first and foremost. Most authors show some preference for either the large(r) national varieties (ENL), or some local/social varieties either within Britain or the US or stylistic/vocabulary varieties. One notable exception is McLaughlin (1970), which strikes one as a typical product of the 1970s brand of linguistics, in that it is wholly TG-based. Apart from ME dialects, McLaughlin (1970) has no comments on even the existence of local/social dialects, accents, styles or registers. But then this is not to be expected - TG linguistics being less interested in (varying) data than in theoretical constructs of rule-governed grammars). With the exception of Classen (1919), who only discusses EngEng, and McLaughlin (1970), the one ENL variety that is treated in all histories considered here, however briefly in some cases, is English in the United States. The older term, AmEng, is used by the majority of writers - a term that is increasingly supplanted by the more accurate expression USEng. Most authors treat USEng under the angle 'differences between BrEng and USEng1, concentrating mainly on distinctions in the fields of pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary. Wrenn (1949/52: 190-194) and Pyles/Algeo (1993: 217-219) have specific sub-chapters on the USEng influence on EngEng: something that seems to be taken generally much more for granted in the 90s of this century than, say, in the 40s, when the beginning of this trend was not necessarily viewed with magnanimity by everybody in Great Britain. Wrenn (1949/52: 193) is somewhat careful in his appraisal: In some ways it will appear that the recent American influence has done something to revitalize and invigorate British English - especially in vivid metaphor. On the other hand, vivid expressions if used as mere stereotyped phrases, when they were intended first in America for occasions of special emphasis and strength of language, may seem an impoverishment rather than an enrichment of speech.

Claiborne (1990: 215) writes wryly and drily about the present situation: most British writers today take a less jaundiced view of American English. They may or may not use Americanisms themselves, but see no reason why Americans should not use them.

Thank goodness for such reported generosity of attitude. Brook (1958) is the first writer in my selection to have brief comments on ENL varieties beyond USEng: namely on CanEng, SAEng and AusEng. As a rule of thumb one can safely state that the later the publication date the more numerous and detailed are the author's comments on national varieties. Barrett (1970), e.g., has comments on both USEng and AusEng and brief remarks on NZEng, CanEng and SAEng. Barber (1993) mentions USEng, AusEng, NZEng, SAEng and WIEng; both he and Baugh/Cable (1993) have (subchapters on Pidgin and

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Creole varieties of English. Is is only in more recent publications that the term World English' is introduced (e.g. Millward 1989, Pyles/Algeo 1993, Baugh/Cable 1993), reflecting the fact that by the second half of the twentieth century English has spread - in various forms - round the world: both in the geographical sense and in its use as a lingua franca in fields such as computer science and technology, air traffic control and in the scientific community in general. Pyles/Algeo (1993: 233) put it very succinctly: Although America and Britain are the two major national varieties of the language, with the largest number of speakers and the greatest impact world-wide, there are many other varieties of English used around the globe. Today English is used as a first language (a speaker's native and often only language) [=ENL, spoken in Br, US, Aus, Can, Ir, NZ, SA. C.P.]; as a second language (in addition to a native language, but used regularly for important matters) [=ESL, spoken in, e.g., In, Phil, Mai, Tans, Ken, Nig, Lib, Caribb. C.P.]; and as a foreign language (used for special purposes, with various degress of fluency and frequency). [=EFL, used in Europe, apart from Br, Ir, and in Asia, Africa. C.P.]

Wherever English is used as a national language, it is never encountered as a homogeneous entity. The treatment of local variation within ENL countries is somewhat patchy in the histories considered. Some of the older titles make no mention of dialectal variation at all or just mention it in passing (e.g. Classen 1919, McKnight 1928, Wood 1969, Barnett 1970) apart, that is, from Middle English dialects. As a rule of thumb, British publications tend to have at least some remarks on British dialects (e.g. Wrenn 1949/52, Brook 1958, Wakelin 1988, Claiborne 1990), American histories on American local variation (e.g. Baugh/Cable 1993, Pyles/Algeo 1993). Millward (1989) is an exception to this rule: she treats both British and US-American dialectal variation, the latter in quite a detailed way. Baugh/Cable (1993), too, deviate from my somewhat simplified rule in that they have a short sub-chapter entitled English Dialects (310-313) - but they treat mainly Scottish and Irish English under this rather misleading heading. From a modern point of view, this classification may make sense. In historical terms, however, it is at best controversial. Social variation is at least mentioned in most of the titles considered. Classen (1919) acknowledges the existence of what he calls 'class dialects', as opposed to 'regional' and 'professional dialects', the latter referring to registers (248). Wood (1969: 208-209) tells his readers about U and non-U usage in vocabulary. Leith (1983) is exceptional in my list of histories in that his remit is, of course, particularly the treatment of local and social variation. Most of the more recent histories treat - however briefly - either British sociolects (e.g. Claiborne 1990, Barber 1993) or American ones (Pyles/Algeo 1993, Baugh/Cable 1993). Finally in this short survey: most authors in my group of lan-

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guage histories show some interest in vocabulary-variation, i.e. slang and/or registers/jargon. McKnight (1928: 551) devotes some space to slang and is careful to point out the important historical dimension and to reject the myth that USEng is particularly slang-prone: There is a prevalent belief that slang is a distinctively American product. This idea is obviously false. French slang, or argot, is perhaps even richer than American slang. Earlier English had its slang, although bearing a different name. The Elizabethan period of English had its 'pedlar's French' or 'fustian' or 'gibbridge'. The Restoration period had its fashionable cant so much objected to by Swift. The 'flash language' and 'canting terms' in this period and in the eighteenth century following are frequently alluded to and were collected in dictionaries. Their use in polite society arose in great part from a revolt from gentility in manners.

Other histories with sections on slang are Brook (1958), Wood (1969), Millward (1989) and all titles published in the nineties. McKnight (1928), Wood (1969), Claiborne (1990) and Baugh/Cable (1993) stress the fact that quite a number of slang words have managed to 'make it' into informal/colloquial English and in some cases even into 'normal', unmarked Standard English: banter, bluff, coax, crony, humbug, mob, phoney, pluck 'courage', queer, shabby, sham, simper, snob, stingy, wobbly are some of the examples given. Some of the varieties mentioned resist easy classification: a) Wrenn (1949/52: 188 and passim) talks about 'good English', albeit in inverted commas (see section 3 below); b)Wood (1969: 274) characterizes a stylistic variety that he calls 'headline English', claiming that it may differ from unmarked Standard English in syntax and vocabulary: Any kind of dispute, disagreement or difference of opinion becomes a 'row1; any person who is in a position of authority over others is a "boss1; anyone who is rebuked or reprimanded is 'rapped'; and anyone who is discharged or relieved of his position is 'sacked'.

c) Claiborne (1990) is rich in unusual varieties. He has remarks on 'cablese' (252-253; the clipped language of telegraphic cables); 'bureaucratese' (265; bureaucratic euphemisms); 'Boontling' (< Booneville lingo, 259-60: a particular local register invented in the eponymous American town around 1890, consisting of lexical items from other languages and of its own coinages, e.g. haireem 'hairy mouth' = 'dog'); and Claiborne (1990: 274-275) even has 'Watergate English', referring to very informal terms such as kicking butts, can of worms, playing hardball, used by Nixon and his cronies

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on the infamous tapes. Claiborne adds, sensibly, "I yield to no one in my detestation of Richard Nixon, but the fact that he had a bad character doesn't mean that he used bad English." (275) d) Pyles/Algeo (1993: 59) introduce the term 'eye dialect': pronunciation spellings, like spicket (for spigot) are used to show a dialect pronunciation. Spellings like sez (for says) and wuz or woz (for was) are used in writing dialog to suggest that the speaker is talking carelessly Such literary use of unconventional spellings is called 'eye dialect' because it appeals to the eye as dialect rather than to the ear.

3. Judgemental attitudes have no place in linguistics. Sociolinguists keep pointing out that there is nothing inherently bad (or good), ugly (or pretty) about any variety of any language. These kinds of judgemental attitudes or attitudinal judgements - be they positive or negative - are usually social judgements maskerading as linguistic ones. It is particularly suprising, then, to come across quite a number of such judgemental remarks in some of the 15 histories considered. Classen (1919: 250) has the following innocuous comment on IrEng: "The Irishman says 'will you be coming?' when he means 'are you coming?' and has many other delightful ways of expressing himself which are not found in Standard English." This is, of course, a judgement of the positive kind; but why should Irish grammar be considered to be 'delightful'? Presumably because the author likes Ireland and the Irish. On the other hand, Classen (1919: 256) has very sound things to say on the topic of correctness in language: The term 'correct' and 'incorrect', if taken with too narrow an interpretation, are misleading when applied to language; for 'correctness' implies a rigid standard from which it is impossible to depart, and such a standard does not and cannot exist in language.

Wrenn (1949/52: 188) enters the dangerous ground of unjustified judgement when he says: '"Good English' may be described as the English of the educated classes used without self-consciousness, [having enough discipline] to avoid vagueness and jargon or cliches." The rather unfortunate implication is obvious: if educated middle class English is 'good English' then uneducated working class English (or dialects?) must be "bad English'. Wrenn (1949/52: 189) goes on to say: 'Received Standard' is good English [no inverted commas. C.P.] in the sense already indicated. 'Modified Standard' is the speech of that large number of people who have been bred in a regional or occupational dialect, have 'corrected' this in

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schools and colleges, but have not succeeded in reaching to more than some half-way house between a local dialect and the standard English aimed at.

The author here constructs a hierarchy between Standard English (good, with or without inverted commas) and local dialects (by implication 'bad'), with the dreary half-way house of Modified Standard English in-between (more "bad' than 'good', presumably). What about speakers who have no opportunity or no wish to reach the detached villa of Standard English and who may even prefer their little terraced houses of local accents and dialects? But Wrenn (1949/52) is too much of a philologist to leave things at this and he fortunately continues: there is nothing necessarily superior in this 'good English' as against regional dialects. For a rural dialect may contain vivid and even delicate shades of expression, phrases or words, that are unequalled in the standard language: and a speaker to whom a regional dialect is natural, will not fully express his mind in a merely acquired type of speech. (189-190)

We have now been told that local dialects can be as 'good' as Standard English; leaving out epithets of the judgemental kind in the first place might have proved less troublesome. Brook (1958: 201) is of course right when he states that " dialect has its roots in the past as firmly as has Standard English." Wood (1969: 274) seems to me to spoil his remarks about "headline English' when he characterizes this written variety as "snappy, ungrammatical, nonsyntactical English" which is "often ambiguous, sometimes quite meaningless". Some headlines may indeed be ungrammatical and syntactically unsound; on the whole, however, they seem to me to follow certain sets of rules - only these are rules different from those that apply to more formal written styles. Bamett (1970: 143) mentions Sir Walter Raleigh's famous Devonshire accent. And then goes on like this: " even among the London literati, uncertainties of pronunciation were rife." What we have here is a - possibly unintended - equation of a local accent with "uncertainties of pronunciation". Bamett does not explain what it is that makes a particular accent wobbly. He does not because he cannot because it is not. The same author (1970: 209) quotes Robert A. Hall as saying that "all languages and dialects are of equal merit, each in its way". At least this particular reader gets the impression that the quote is given with less than full approval . On AusEng, Barnett (1970: 163-164) has the following comment: "Of all dominions, Australia speaks with a breezier and more vivid idiom than any other member of the British Commonwealth." Good news for Australia; but what exactly is it that makes a variety of English "breezy' and 'vivid'?

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Halliday (1975: 78) takes Middle English dialects to task, namely for having in the North - "harsh Scandinavianisms" and - in the South - "buzzing v's and z"s 'vrom Zomerzet'". "Buzzing" presumably refers to the voiced initial consonants typical of the West Country; but "harsh" Scandinavianisms? USEng, too, is told off: " American pronunciation became more nasal, flatter , less lively and varied than English, probably as a result of other European immigrants haltingly learning the language." (Halliday 1975: 115). We now know that AusEng is "more vivid", USEng pronunciation "less lively" than other varieties - the latter fact being 'probably' the fault of foreigners. The descriptive adjective "flat" (Halliday 1975: 115) - used frequently in non-technical texts on pronunciation - has really no place in a serious book on the history of English, because it is basically meaningless. And it is somewhat difficult to imagine what 'lively pronunciation' might mean. It gets worse. Halliday (1975: 116) does not even refrain from expressing a purely personal dislike of an American lexeme when he says: " the dreadful mortician for undertaker ". There is nothing intrinsically dreadful about the m-word, just as there is nothing particularly pretty about undertaker. Leith (1983: 133) rejects this kind of blatant judgemental attitude, when he comments on the pronunciation of /t/ in BrEng: It is as pointless to condemn as 'slovenly1 [or *bad', 'ugly1 etc. C.P.] these glottal, affricated, and voiced variants of /t/ as it is to say that weak forms, simplified consonant-clusters, and assimilations are the marks of incorrect pronunciation.

Or that a vocabulary item is 'dreadful'. Claiborne (1990: 241-242) is rather patronising about AusEng and Pidgin English when he remarks: the Strines [= Australians. C.P.] on board [of a flight from Sydney. C.P.] defeated me. Clearly they were speaking a kind of English - but not clearly enough for me to make much sense of it. (241) Of all the versions of our native tongue spoken around the world, easily the strangest is Pidgin English. (242)

Again it is rather difficult to see what it is that makes a variety of English 'strange'; and as far as AusEng is concerned: one man's 'breezy idiom' is another man's defeat. Incidentally, both Claiborne (1990) and Millward (1989) seem to me to misjudge the importance of Scottish literature and language. Millward (1989: 309) says that "educated spoken Scots has been so heavily influenced by

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[Southern Standard English] that today it is nearly identical to it except for pronunciation and a few vocabulary items and idioms". A few words and expressions? Even a cursory glance at the Concise Scots Dictionary teaches a different lesson altogether. Claiborne (1990: 224) claims something even more ridiculous: "Scots English produced its own literature, but a very modest one. Its only major figure is the magnificent Burns . The poverty of Scots literature in part reflects the centuries-long poverty of Scotland itself ". Burns may be magnificent or not; but he is certainly by no means the "only major figure" in Scottish literature. Four volumes of The History of Scottish Literature (Craig 1987-1988) testify rather magnificently to the absurdity of Claiborne's comment. 4. Histories of English will not easily change the way that (some national and almost all non-standard) varieties of English are frequently perceived - namely patronizingly. Leith (1983: 41) points to the historical perspective when he says: In the course of the sixteenth century, the growing sense of a literary norm can be seen by the numerous attempts to represent the speech of foreigners, the linguistic characteristics of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish people, and the speakers of other dialects of English. It is now that we begin to see the social stereotyping of such speakers. Increasingly, they play the role of buffoon or boor. Non-standard speech is equated with simplicity or roughness; .

Claiborne (1990: 218) is rather more down to earth in his way of putting it: "What exactly is a dialect? It has been said that a perversion is any kind of sex the speaker doesn't like, and for many people a dialect is any kind of English they don't speak." The majority of the histories of English considered in this paper attempt to introduce their readers fairly and in a linguistically sound manner to the existence and to some of the characteristics of a selection of national and/or local, social and functional varieties. It is therefore particularly regrettable that in a small group of the titles under perusal ill-founded judgements or purely personal preferences have found their way into books that ought to subscribe to a sentiment expressed by Millward (1989: 8): Because change is constant and has always been so, there is no such thing as a 'pure' or a 'decadent' language or dialect. There are only different languages and dialects, which arose in the first place only because all languages change.

Getting this over to the uninitiated is an uphill struggle as long as even some of the initiated are uninitiated.

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References Barber, C. ( 1993): The English Language - a Historical Introduction. Cambridge: CUP Bamett, L. ( 1970): History of the English Language. London: Sphere Baugh, A.C./Cable, T. (41993): A History of the English Language. London: Routledge ('1951) Brook, G.L. (1958): A History af the English Language. London: Deutsch Claiborne, R. (1990): English - Its Life and Times. London: Bloomsbuiy Classen, E. (1919): Outlines of the History of the English Language. London: Macmillan Halliday, F. E. (1975): The Excellency of the English Tongue. London: Gollancz Labov, W. (1970): "The Logic of Non-standard English". In: Wilhams, F. (ed.): Language and Poverty. Chicago: UP, 153-189 Leith, D. (1983): A Social History ofEnglish. London: Routledge McKnight, G.H. (with Bert Emsley) (1928): Modern English in the Making. New York/ London: Appleton McLaughlin, J.C. (1970): Aspects af the History of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Millward, C.M. (1989): A Biography of the English Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Milroy, J./Milroy, L. (eds.) (1993): Real English. The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London: Longman Pyles, T./Algeo, J. (41993): The Origins and Development of the English Language. Fort Worth: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich ('1964) Trudgill, P. (1995): "Dialect and Dialects in the New Europe". In: The European English Messenger, IV/1 1995, 44-46 Wakelin, M. (1988): The Archaeology of English. London: B.T. Batsford Wood, F.T. (1969): An Outline History of the English Language. London: Macmillan Wrenn, C.L. (1949/1952): The English Language. London: Methuen

Mechthild Reinhardt (.Leipzig) Some notes on concessive but 0. Aim of the investigation The different uses of the conjunction but are usually described as remaining more or less lexically undistinguished in English (cf. e. g. Abraham 1979: 89). A good example to illustrate the dilemma connected with this situation is Abraham's sentence: "Tery does not walk, but she crawls." (ibid.: 91) This sentence has two readings, a concessive and a non-concessive one. In the nonconcessive, adversative reading the validity of the preceding clause is excluded by the consequent clause. In the concessive reading it is conceded that Tery is not yet able to walk properly, but she can at least crawl. Abraham claims that "in contrast to the German usage, French, English and Dutch (as well as a host of other languages) are alike in that they do not distinguish lexically these two senses of the conjunction" (ibid.: 92). Martin (1992: 176) remarks in a similar vein: " but neutralizes the distinction between contrast and concession as far as relations between clause complexes are concerned." Against this background it should be of some interest to analyse concessive but in actual communication and to study its contextual surroundings. We analysed 20 essays from The Times in 1993 with regard to concessive but. The relatively small size of our corpus, which is furthermore restricted to one sort of text only, certainly does not allow any conclusions about the frequency of occurrence of concessively marked ¿»ui-sentences in comparison to unmarked occurrences. Our goal is thus not to assess the relevance and distribution of concessively marked ¿-sentences in English, but to focus on individual concessive markers which have often been neglected.

1. The term 'concessive' Most definitions of the concessive relationship are based on the notion of 'surprise'. Jespersen (1940: V 360) used the term "contradiction" to denote "an element of 'unexpectedness' in the factual coexistence" of the two contrasted statements. According to Quirk (1954: 6), the concessive relationship may be said "to exist between two parts of an utterance when one part is surprising in view of the other". Heidolph et al. (1982: 806) put it the following way:

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In dieser Relation stehen zwei Sachverhalte p und q, von denen p im "NormalfalT - auf Grund bisheriger Erfahrung, nach Ansicht des Sprechers usw. - einen Sachverhalt Neg(q) bedingt oder begründet .

König (1986: 4) talks about 'incompatibility' or 'conflict' (" by normal standards, there is an incompatibility or conflict between the facts described by p and q ") and describes the underlying negated implication similar to Heidolph et al. as "ifp, then not-g". Among many other similar definitions in various grammar books, Curme's definition of the concessive clause (Curme 1931: 332) deserves special attention since it views the concessive clause from a different angle. While recognizing the importance of a contrast between the main and the subordinate clause, he tries to define the meaning of the concessive clause with respect to the main clause: The concessive clause contains a conceded statement, which, though it is naturally in contrast or opposition to that of the principal proposition, is nevertheless unable to destroy the validity of the latter.

This definition provides the semantic link with hypothetical (even i f ) and disjunctive (whether or; -ever ) concessive clauses whose status in grammatical descriptions is quite uncertain and not unanimously agreed upon. Besides describing them as special subclasses of concessives (cf. e.g. Quirk et al. 1985: 1099-1102) quite a number of grammarians tend to describe them as special subclasses of conditional clauses (cf. e.g. Jespersen's "cases of indifference" (Jespersen 1940: 384) or König's "concessive conditionals" (König 1986)). Since such clauses represent insufficient conditions with respect to the main clause which is valid in all cases, their treatment as basically conditional seems rather contentious. Due to the strong influence of Latin grammar, the concessive relationship is frequently mentioned twice in English grammars: as a subtype of the adversative relationship being described under the heading of coordination, and as one type of adverbial clause under the heading of subordination (cf. e.g. Poutsma 2 1929 1/2 or Quirk et al. 1985). This separate treatment has a long tradition, founded in the differentiation between coordination and subordination. In Graustein et al. (1977) the description of clause complexes is based on 'meaning relations'. The 'meaning relations' between clauses are described in combination with the forms used to express these relations. With regard to the concessive relationship, both types of syntactic linking, coordination and subordination, are described (ibid.: 332):

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Even if/Although you dislike music, you would enjoy this conceit. (inadequate precondition, i.e. the cause/reason conceded is inadequate/insufficient, in that it does not rule out the statement , leaving it still valid) He has been in office for only a few months. Nevertheless he has/He has, however,/ achieved more than any of his predecessors. (unexpected consequence)

Graustein et al. (1977) thus distinguish two semantic types of a concessive relationship, depending on the type of linking: " a contrast [is expressed] by way of an inadequate precondition or an unexpected or surprising consequence (anti-cause) " (ibid.: 332). The approach in Graustein et al. overcomes the separate treatment of subordinating versus coordinating concessive realization forms (as it is, for instance, to be found in Quirk et al (1985)). Furthermore, it allows both hypothetical and disjunctive concessives to be included by stressing the feature that they have in common with although-claases, viz all of them are "insufficient preconditions" with respect to the main clause. These reasons make Graustein's definition of concessive sentences appear a sound starting point for further investigations.

2. Indicators of concessive but In cases where ¿«¿-complexes were interpreted concessively, we have noted a number of factors that contribute to or determine such an interpretation. i )May The modal may is normally described as having the meaning of permission or possibility. In the following examples (1-4), however, neither interpretation is feasible: (1) It may appear short-sighted for lawyers to try to clarify the present arrangements according to precedents. But it is a task which must be accomplished if the obligations and duties arising from those arrangements are to be clearly understood. (The Times 26 January 1993, 35 - Living in legal harmony; Prize winning essay)

(2) This sense of anomie may be more intense in Britain than elsewhere, because traditional values and standards have survived longer in this country than elsewhere^...> But the impact of the sexual revolution consequent on the development of reliable means of birth control is universal and is one of the most fun-

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Mechthild Reinhardt damental that has occurred in the history of mankind. (The Times 12 July 1993, 7 - Chill peace follows Cold War; The Times Essay)

(3) Indeed it may well be that, in spite of all that I said earlier, posterity will look back on the half-century between 1939 and 1989 as the golden age of capitalism. But it was possible to believe this only for those who lacked any sense of historical perspective . (The Times 12 July 1993, 7 - Chill peace follows Cold War; The Times Essay)

May in fact expresses a concession and could be paraphrased by '(the writer) admits that but '. Leech (1971: 67-69) refers briefly to the "colloquial concessive use" of may. This use of may does not, however, seem to be restricted to colloquial speech. Quirk et al. (1985: 224) mention concessive may in a footnote on the modal may/might: " there is a tendency for main clauses containing may to have a concessive force preceding but". In most of our examples concessive may collocates with one of the copular verbs be, appear or seem. A possible explanation for this might be provided by the relationship of these constructions to the use of may in rather formal postpositive concessive clauses with as or though (cf. (4)). (4) Undesirable and illogical as it may seem, then, the single market is currently under the aegis not only of Community law but, where that is deficient, of international law and of the various domestic systems as well. (The Times 26 January 1993, 35 - Living in legal harmony; Prize winning essay)

May has the effect of playing down the importance of the subclause and thus helps to suggest that conclusions in the matrix clause should not be based on it. ii) Adverbials of certainty Another means of conveying concessive implications is the use of adverbials of certainty, such as clearly, certainly, doubtless or obviously. This usage is already mentioned in Poutsma (1929 1,2: 596): In the first member of a compound with arrestive adversative co-ordination we often find certain modal adverbial adjuncts, such as certainly, indeed , it is true, all of them announcing some contrasting statement, like the conjunction though .

The function of these adverbials can be compared to that of concessive of course, which is mentioned in Quirk et al. (1985: 636). The emphasis on the

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truth value of the conceded statement is expressed either as a direct claim (e.g. certainly) or as an appeal to general perception (e.g. obviously): (5) Certainly, the number of people telling us how to deal with our problems is bound to make anyone who is less than totally secure wonder if they haven't missed something somewhere. But I'd like to suggest that, as far as most of us are concerned, we've had so much of this frank advice that if we haven't got it right by now, we never will. (Sunday Times 19 September 1993, 9/2 - The trouble with sex; Essay) (6) The arrival in the new year of Talking About Sex, a 'franker1 sex education series for teenagers on Channel 4, is obviously to be welcomed: teenagers can use all the advice they can get. But what are we to make of the plethora of advice available for adults, . (Sunday Times 19 September 1993, 9/2 - The trouble with sex; Essay) In our corpus the emphasis on the truth value of the conceded statement is mainly expressed by adverbs of certainty. Besides adverbs we found no/without doubt and true in a parallel function, the latter being illustrated in (7): (7) The ECJ is the instrument through which the single market will be enforced. True, its judgments in the past have tended to be constructively centripetal, but the ECJ, like our own courts, is not insensitive to the society in which it lives. We should support the ECJ . (The Times 21 June 1993, 8 - Tories must set agenda for tomorrow's Europe; The Times Essay) While stressing the truth value of the concessive clause which characteristically includes objections which might be advanced by the addressee against the main assertion, the expressions of certainty increase the reader's willingness to accept the following counter-assertion which dismisses the conceded point as irrelevant. Example (7) is different from all the examples cited so far. The concessive clause prefaced by parenthetical true is embedded in a more complex structure which Jordan (1985: 268) calls "thesis-concession-rebuttal". Jordan rightly emphasizes the difficulty in classifying such rebuttals as 'surprises': Although the rebuttals are surprising in concessive terms in that they can at least loosely be regarded as denying expected conclusions, they also very clearly contain predicted information, which is thus hardly surprising in view of what was said before. (Jordan 1985: 269)

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Such structures are presumably not restricted to concessive clauses prefaced by true, but, judging from our examples, they seem to be quite typical of concessive true.

iii) Intensifies Nearly no attention has been given up to now to the role of adverbial intensif i e s within concessive clauses preceding but. Intensifies are broadly concerned with the semantic category of degree. They indicate "a point on an abstractly conceived intensity scale; and the point indicated may be relatively low or relatively high" (Quirk et al. 1985: 589). Based on that difference Quirk et al. distinguish between 'amplifiers' and 'downtoners'. One intensifier with concessive force which occurred quite often within our corpus is enough: (8) The intention of the European Court of Justice in making this and similar pronouncements is clear enough. It is to impose on the EC a uniform legal system without which (one could be forgiven for thinking) no such organisation could operate. How, after all, could traders in a single market successfully compete under different conditions? But this attractive theory is not so simple in practice. (The Times 26 January 1993, 35 - Living in legal harmony. Prize winning essay) (9) Bulgaria seems to be doing well enough, but in general these countries are not producing flourishing democracies. The contrast with Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia (at least in this writer's opinion) and the Czechs (perhaps not the Slovaks) is plain: the once-Orthodox countries are making a far heavier job of parliamentary institutions than the Catholic countries. (The Times 27 December 1993, 6 - Orthodoxy proves a poor soil for the shoots of liberalism; The Times Essay)

To be precise, enough in our examples functions as a 'compromiser'. 'Compromisers' form one semantic subgroup of 'downtoners'. They have only a slight lowering effect and "tend to call in question the appropriateness of the verb concerned" (Quirk et al. 1985: 597). It should be noted that enough in our examples does not function as a wordmodifier but as a clause-modifier, referring to the meaning of the whole clause. Quirk et al. also seem to be aware of this difference when they note that compromisers "should be compared with disjuncts of metalinguistic comment" (Quirk et al. 1985: 597). It is the potential function of enough "to call sth into question" which facilitates its concessive usage. In (8) and (9) enough is used to reduce the force of the proposition of the concessive clause. The

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speaker/writer does not deny it, but he dissociates himself from it by depreciating its relevance in view of the following counterassertion. The OED describes this function of enough similarly: "B. adv. 2b. Implying disparagement of the importance or relevance of a conceded proposition (vol. Ill pt. 2, 196)". In grammars, however, this usage has not received attention. Another compromiser which may occur with concessive implications seems to be quite. Quirk et al. (1985: 598) give the following concessive sample sentence for the compromiser quite: "I quite enjoyed the party, but I've been to better ones". There were no further examples to be found within our corpus. The situation might be different, however, within other text sorts. We checked further, randomly selected gwzte-examples from the CD-ROM edition of The Times and did find concessive quite in reviews of cultural matters (cf. (10)). This seems to suggest that concessive quite is restricted to texts written in a less formal or even colloquial style where the writer engages himself more personally. It could be typical of spoken English. (10) Young Private Hopper (Ewan McGregor) looks at the clock and thinks, "Roll on, roll bloody on", and the viewer knows exactly how he feels. And then he escapes into a personal imaginative world in which (what else?) he lip-syncs "The Great Pretender", by the Platters ("They say I'm the great pretender/adrift in a world of my own"), and all the majors and colonels get up and dance while still in character, which is quite surprising but, then again, not as surprising as it was the first time. (The Times 27 February 1993, 3/22 - Pot shots and a shot at Potter; TV Review)

Due to quite the concessive clause in (10) also seems to convey a certain drift towards sarcasm and irony. In fact, if we ostentatiously emphasize the truth of a statement that predicates something favourable of the reviewed play, and at the same time characterize this statement as something surprising, the drift of the whole is far more akin to sarcasm than to praise. The corpus chosen could also be the reason for not finding 'amplifiers' with concessive implications. That they nevertheless do occur can only be illustrated here with the help of one example (cf. (11)). It is taken from the beginning of a personal letter, i.e. from conversational context. The 'amplifier' so seems to be used to make the negative reply more credible. (11) Your kind invitation to come and enjoy cooler climes is so tempting, but I have been waiting to leam the outcome of medical diagnosis and the next 3 months will be spent having the main thumb joints replaced with plastic ones. (cited in Thompson/Mann 1986: 439)

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iv) Emphatic do The function of emphatic do in (12) is to admit readily the truth of an objection which may be raised: (12) The interim constitution does provide for devolution of power to provincial governments in areas such as education, health, welfare and policing, but Pretoria will retain broad powers of intervention, to impose 'uniform national standards', and to protect national security or the national economy. (The Times 23 December 1993, 15 - The end of the beginning) The effect is comparable to the use of adverbials of certainty (cf. ii)). While stressing the truth value of potential objections which might be advanced by the addressee against the main assertion the speaker/writer increases the reader's willingness to accept the following counter-assertion which dismisses the conceded point as irrelevant. In this regard it is also interesting to notice the use of the emphasizer well in example (3): (3) Indeed it may well be that, in spite of all that I said earlier, posterity will look back on the half-century between 1939 and 1989 as the golden age of capitalism. But it was possible to believe this only for those who lacked any sense of historical perspective (The Times 12 July 1993, 7 - Chill peace follows Cold War; The Times Essay) The use of well has a reinforcing effect on the truth value of the concessive clause. This serves to emphasize superficial agreement while at the same time hinting at a more fundamental disagreement.

3. On the rhetorical function of concessively marked clauses preceding but The linguistic realization forms listed in the previous section are quite different, but all of them modify propositions as a whole, expressing the speaker's (writer's) attitude concerning a certain proposition and are thus basically epistemic expressions. In order to clarify how these clauses with epistemic expressions differ from other concessive clauses, we compared them to although-clauses. Examples (13) and (14) illustrate concessive althoughclauses from our corpus in final and initial position:

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(13) National communism seems to be the order of the day. There is Serbia, under Milosevic, who has just had another electoral victory although his country is near ruin. There is Romania, where Diescu slipped into Ceausescu's shoes. (The Times 27 December 1993, 6 - Orthodoxy proves a poor soil for the shoots of liberalism; The Times Essay) (14) Zola was born on April 2, 1840, the son of a distinguished army officer, later engineer, from Venice, who died when the boy was seven. Although they had to live in poverty after his mother, a Frenchwoman, was swindled out of the family money, he had an idyllic boyhood in Aix, with his friend, Paul . (Sunday Times 12 September 1993, 9/12 - The writer to reply; Essay) As all previous examples, (13) and (14) contain situations contrary to our justifiable expectation, and the although-clsases may be characterized as insufficient preconditions with respect to the content of their main clauses. Nevertheless, we do find a difference. All our clauses with epistemic expressions have a rhetorical function, which is fully lacking in the although-clsases of (13) and (14). They concede counterclaims in order to forestall possible objections or wrong interpretations, thus giving their actual points more prominence. We use the term 'rhetorical function' following Mann/Thompson (1986, 1988). Within the framework of the "Rhetorical Structure Theory" of Mann/Thompson, those relationships between parts of a text are described which, seen from an interactive perspective, are "essential to the functioning of the text as a means for a writer to accomplish certain goals" (Thompson/Mann 1986: 437). The goal to be accomplished with respect to the "concession relation" is to increase the reader's "positive regard" for the counter-toexpectation situation: The concession relation can be said to hold between two parts of a text, a and b (where b is the part doing the conceding), if it is plausible that the writer: 1. has positive regard for a and wants the reader to have positive regard for a too; 2. acknowledges a potential or apparent incompatibility between the situations presented in a and b; 3. regards the situations presented in a and b as compatible; 4. believes that the reader's recognizing this compatibility will increase the reader's positive regard for a, in that the reader will be less likely to discount a in the face of possible objections to it. (Thompson/Mann 1986: 438) The term "positive regard" is used to cover different notions, such as 'believe', 'approval' or 'desire', leaving the particular choice of notion to "the analyst's perception of the writer's intent" (ibid.).

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Examples (13) and (14) show that this rhetorical aspect may sometimes be fully lacking in otherwise concessive constructions. In contrast to Thompson/ Mann we will therefore, rather than reducing the notion of 'concession' to "a device a writer can use for influencing the development of readers' beliefs in a particular way" (ibid.: 441), distinguish between two types of concession: rhetorical concession and neutral concession. This allows to maintain the distinction between 'concession' and 'contrast', which is not the case if Thompson/Mann characterize the relationship between 4. and 5. in example (15) as "an instance of simple contrast, since nothing is being conceded, no potential objections are being answered, the development of no beliefs is being influenced" (ibid.: 443): (15) 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

They were undoubtedly an obliging people. The famous photograph of the pygmy 1)iidge' and the spectacular technique of crossing a river by swinging on a vine from one side to another was taught to the Mbuti 'not without difficulty by an enterprising moviemaker. The group were able to keep it up for some years and 'obligingly1 repeated the act for 'documentary1 film units although they preferred to cross the river by wading or by walking over a tree trunk, (ibid.: 442)

It seems very likely that it was this rhetorical function that played a decisive role in the process of naming and handing down concessive sentences as 'concessive' [L. con(cedere, -cess- yield)] and thus brought about a term which in contrast to other relational terms (e. g. 'conditional', 'final' or 'temporal') does not denote a two-part relationship but a possible use of such sentences (cf. also König/Eisenberg 1984: 313). Because of this unsatisfactory situation in studies of German grammar, terms other than 'concessive' have been proposed: e.g. "Nebensätze der unzureichenden Bedingung" (Schramm 1977) or "Inkonditionalsätze" (Hermodsson 1973, 1978). Both German and English grammars, however, stick to the traditional term 'concessive', be it because traditions die hard or be it perhaps because this term, although it does not reflect the essential feature of concessive sentences, nevertheless refers to one of their most typical pragmatic implications.

4. Conclusion Our examples have shown that besides numerous but-sentences in which the interpretation can indeed only be disambiguated by the context, there are also

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sentences in which lexical indicators help to disambiguate the polysemy of but. W e have identified several epistemic realization forms, such as may, certainly or enough which, w h e n they occur in combination with but, suggest or convey a concessive interpretation. Concessive clauses with epistemic expressions have a rhetorical function, which is lacking in neutral concessive clauses. It is thus suggested to distinguish between neutral concession and rhetorical concession.

References A new English dictionary on historical principles (1897). Oxford: Clarendon Press (= OED) Abraham, W. (1979): "But". In: Studio Linguistica XXXIH-II, 89-119 Anscombre, J.-C./Ducrot, O. (1977): "Deux mais en francais?". In: Lingua 43, 1-35 Asbach-Schnitker, B. (1978): Konnektoren und Partikeln. Eine Untersuchung zu syntaktischen, semantischen und pragmatischen Aspekten von deutsch aber und englisch but. Dissertation. Regensburg Brauße, U. (1983): "Bedeutung und Funktion einiger Konjunktionen und Konjunktionaladverbien: aber, nur, immerhin, allerdings, dafür, dagegen, jedoch". In: Linguistische Studien des Zentralinstituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR A 104, 1-40 Curme, G.O. (1931): A grammar of the English language. Vol. Ill Syntax. New York: D. C. Heath and Company Graustein, G. (1975): Die Beschreibung englischer komplexer Sätze als semantischsyntaktische Beziehungstypen. Dissertation B. Leipzig Graustein, G. et al. (1977): English Grammar. A University Handbook. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Graustein, G./Thiele, W. (1987): Properties of English texts. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Haiman, J. (1974): "Concessives, conditionals, and verbs of volition". In: Foundations of Language 11, 341-359 Harris, M. (1988): "Concessive clauses in English and Romance". In: Haiman, J./ Thompson, S.A. (eds.): Clause combining in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 71-99 Hermodsson, L. (1973): "Inkonditionalsätze. Zur Semantik der sogenannten 'konzessiven' Ausdrücke". In: Studio Neophilologica Vol. XLV, 298-305 Hermodsson, L. (1978): Semantische Strukturen des Satzgefüges im kausalen und konditionalen Bereich. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell Jespersen, O. (1940): A modern English grammar on historical principles. Part V. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard Jordan, M.P. (1985): "Some relations of surprise and expectation in English". In: Hall, J. A. (ed.): 1 Ith LACUSforum. Columbia, S. C.: Hornbeam Press, 263-273 König, E. (1986): "Conditionals, concessive conditionals and concessives: areas of contrast, overlap and neutralization". In: Traugott, E.C. et al. (eds.): On conditionals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 229-246

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König, E./Eisenberg, P. (1984): "Zur Pragmatik von Konzessivsätzen". In: Stickel, G. (Hg.): Pragmatik in der Grammatik. Jahrbuch 1983 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache. Düsseldorf 313-332 Lakofi) R (1971): "Ifs, and's and but's about conjunction". In: Fillmore, C.J./Langendoen, D.J. (eds.): Studies in linguistic semantics. New York: Holt, 114-149 Leech, G.N. (1971): Meaning and the English Verb. London: Longman Mann, W.C./Thompson, S.A. (1986): "Relational propositions in discourse". In: Discourse Processes 9 (1), 57-90 Mann, W.C./Thompson, S.A. (1988): "Rhetorical Structure Theory: Towards a functional theory of text organization". In: Text 8 (3), 243-281 Primatarova-Miltscheva, A. (1986): "Zwar aber - ein zweiteiliges Konnektiv?". In: Deutsche Sprache 2, 125-139 Quirk, R (1954): The Concessive Relation in Old English Poetry. Yale: Yale University Press Quirk, R et al. (1985): A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman Rudolph, E. (1996): Contrast: adversative and concessive relations and their expressions in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese on sentence and text level. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Schramm, W. (1977): Syntaktische Synonyme zur Bezeichnung der unzureichenden Bedingungfür die Änderung eines Geschehens. Dissertation. Greifswald Thompson, S.A./Mann, W.C. (1986): "A discourse view of concession in written English". In: DeLancey, S./Tomlin, R (eds.): Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Pacific Linguistics Conference, 435-447

Anita Steube (Leipzig) Textkohärenz auf semantisch-logischer Grundlage Psychologisch orientierte Untersuchungen zum Textverstehen und die Ergebnisse der Diskursanalyse haben den Umfang des Kontextbegriffes stark erweitert und deutlich gemacht, in welch starkem Maße in der Textproduktion wie beim Textverstehen sprachliches Wissen mit anderen kognitiven Systemen interagieren muß. In der Anaphernforschung ist das schon länger im Blick. Es hat aber auch dazu gefuhrt, daß die semantischen Theorien die konzeptuellen Strukturen, die im entsprechenden Text nicht versprachlicht werden, berücksichtigen. Weiterhin sind erste linguistische Arbeiten zu Operationen des Alltagsschließens in der Textproduktion/beim Textverstehen entstanden, und auch die KIForschung befaßt sich mit Verstehenssimulationen. Die uns bekannten Arbeiten aus all diesen Richtungen untersuchen allerdings die im versprachlichten Text enthaltenen Interpretationsauslöser noch zu wenig. Das von uns in Aussicht genommene Forschungsprojekt "Schlußoperationen als Bindeglied zwischen sprachlichem und nichtsprachlichem Wissen bei der Herstellung der Textkohärenz" soll daher zunächst in den semantischen Repräsentationen (einer Zweiebenensemantik) der Textsätze Auslöser für das Absuchen der Wissensspeicher nach Zusatzinformation (Kontext) finden, um weiterhin Auslöser für Schlußoperationen ermitteln zu können, für die die semantischen Repräsentationen wie der Kontext gleichermaßen als Prämissen dienen. Auf diese Weise bleibt der versprachlichte Text als Interpretationsbedingung erhalten, und spekulativem Interpretieren wird weitgehend die Grundlage entzogen. Dieses Forschungsprogramm kann allerdings jetzt weder eingelöst noch überhaupt in seinem Ausmaß überblickt werden. Der Jubilar ist bestimmt einverstanden, wenn in seinem Textmodell die Dimension des Impliziten in Form konzeptueller Repräsentationen sichtbar gemacht wird. Er möge es tolerieren, daß hier am Anfang nur skizzenhaft auf sie aufmerksam gemacht werden kann. Um die Textwelt geschlossen zu halten, sind einfache Sagentexte aus Sagen aus Hessen (Diederichs/Hinze 1995) ausgewählt worden. Die ausgewählten Beispiele verdeutlichen einmal die interpretative Vervollständigung der Berichtschronologie, zum anderen die Komplexität kognitiver Deutungsleistung. Viele Sagen der vorliegenden Sammlung folgen einem Textmuster bestehend aus einer kurzen Faktendarstellung von zwei, drei Sätzen und anschließender Explikation durch einen Bericht, der als Beispiel oder auch als Begründung/Folge interpretiert werden kann. Auf die Faktendarstellung kann am Ende der Sage rahmenbildend zurückgekommen werden. Die einrahmenden beschreibenden Text-

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teile sind jedoch fakultativ. Die Länge der Sagentexte beträgt zwischen einer halben Seite und drei Seiten. Die Berichtsteile stellen 'historische' Begebenheiten dar und folgen der Ereignischronologie. In der Vertextung finden sich Lücken, wenn diese durch dem Leser zugängliches Wissen interpretativ gefüllt werden können. Beispiel 1: "Tod des Erstgeborenen" (Diederichs/Hinze 1995: 45) 1 2 Die Magd konnte die Verdachtsgründe des Landgrafen nicht 3 widerlegen, und so wurde sie zum Tode verurteilt. Als sie nun auf der Richtstätte 4 anlangte und niederkniete, um den Todesstreich zu empfangen .

Die Ereignischronologie steht einem historisch einigermaßen gebildeten Leser in Form eines mittelalterlichen Gerichtsbarkeits-Szenarios zur Verfügung. Es wird durch expliziten Hinweis auf eine Mordanklage des Landgrafen gegen die Amme - "das jüngste Kind im Schlaf erdrückt zu haben" - eingeschaltet. Zwischen die Bedeutungsrepräsentationen der sprachlichen Strukturen in dem Satzgefüge von Zeilen 3-4 sind konzeptuelle Repräsentationen einzubringen, die die Existenz von Richtstätten und die öffentliche Verbringung der Verurteilten dorthin beinhalten. Maternas und Pokornys Aufsätze von 1978 und 1981 zeigen, daß Skript-, Frame-, und Szenario-Repräsentationen in propositionale Strukturen überführbar sind. Die Ausgangshypothese gemeinsamer konzeptueller Verarbeitung expliziter und impliziter Textinformation ist also formal modellierbar. Beispiel 2 ist schon komplexer. Die interpretativ offenen semantischen Repräsentationen können erst rückwirkend kohärent gemacht werden. In der Sage "Landgraf Moritz und der Soldat" geht es um einen Soldaten, von dem sich die Mitsoldaten nicht erklären können, wie er sich und seine Familie von dem geringen Sold so gut ernährt und kleidet. Der als Bettler verkleidete Herzog quartiert sich bei dem Soldaten ein, um das Geheimnis zu lüften. Beispiel 2: "Landgraf Moritz und der Soldat" (Diederichs/Hinze 1995: 45-48) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Nun legten sie sich nieder, bis Mitternacht kam; da weckte der Soldat den Armen und sprach: 'Steh auf zieh dich an und geh mit mir.' Das tat der Landgraf und sie gingen zusammen in Kassel herum. Der Soldat aber hatte ein Stück Springwurzel, wenn er das vor die Schlösser der Kaufinannsläden hielt, sprangen sie auf Nun gingen sie beide hinein; aber der Soldat nahm nur vom Überschuß etwas, vom Kapital griff er nichts an. Davon nun gab er dem Bettelmann auch etwas in seinen Ranzen. Als sie ganz in Kassel herum waren, sprach der Bettelmann: . (ibid.: 46)

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Denotat des Satzes "sie gingen zusammen in Kassel hemm" (Zeilen 3-4) ist eine gerichtete Bewegung auf einer Route, deren interne Struktur und Abschluß offen sind. Im Gegensatz zu umhergehen läßt "herumgehen" auch die Interpretation zu, daß auf der Route Zwischenstationen angelaufen werden. Der folgende Satz "Der Soldat aber hatte ein Stück Springwurzel" drückt einen Zustand aus, der gleichzeitig mit der gerichteten Bewegung gilt. Die Einbettung auch des we««-Satzes (Zeilen 4-5) in die figurenorientierte Prozeßdarstellung schließt seine Interpretation als konstatierende Autorenbeschreibung aus und fordert die durch den Plural gesteuerte Interpretation einer iterierten Aktion; da "herumgehen" aber die Zerlegung der gerichteten Bewegung in Teilstrecken zuläßt, können diese Aktionen als den Teilphasen der gerichteten Bewegung angefugt verstanden werden ('auf der Route die Springwurzel vor die Tür eines jeden relevanten Kaufmannsladens halten, wodurch jedesmal die Tür aufspringt'). Für die Aktionssätze (Zeilen 5-7) wäre in isolierter Stellung rein grammatisch von der Offenheit der Interpretation zwischen einmaliger Aktionssequenz oder iterierter Aktionssequenz auszugehen wohl aber mit der Defaultinterpretation der Einmaligkeit. Wenn jedoch im gegebenen Kontext schon die Interpretation einer iterierten Aktion erzielt wurde, wird diese neue Aktionensequenz der iterierten Aktion interpretatorisch jeweils angefugt. Es entsteht die längere iterierte Sequenz 'vor das Schloß halten, aufspringen, hineingehen, etwas nehmen, etwas davon abgeben'. "Nun" ist im vorliegenden Sagentext wie heutiges da, dann verwendet. Es ist offen für die iterative Interpretation der Aktionen. Mit "Als sie ganz in Kassel herum waren" kehrt der Text zu der - vermittels "ganz" allerdings nun terminierten - gerichteten Bewegung zurück, was für allen eingeschlossenen Text diesen thematischen und zeitlichen Interpretationszusammenhang bestätigt und die Zeit der terminierten gerichteten Bewegung schließlich durch die Zeit der Aktionensequenz ausfüllt. So haben wir es in diesem Textstück mit einer schrittweisen Spezifizierung des Ereignisverlaufs und seines parallelen Zeitverlaufs zu tun. Das Textstück ist also trotz vager semantischer Repräsentationen kohärent und paßt in das Textmuster von Sagen, das im Ereignisteil berichtstypische chronologische Sachverhaltsabläufe verlangt. Die Kenntnis der Klassen und Sequenzen von Sachverhalten und die Textmusterkenntnis tragen aber ihrerseits erst zu dieser Interpretation bei. In Beispiel 3 ist die Kohärenz erst über den kommunikativen Sinn der expliziten Information (das ist also bereits eine Deutung, eine konzeptuelle Struktur, keine semantische Struktur mehr) herstellbar. Die Sage erleichtert uns das Erschließen des kommunikativen Sinns insofern, als die Intention der kommunizierenden Personen auch rahmenartig in einer Art Faktendarstellung (vgl. Zeilen 4-6 von Beispiel 3) explizit gemacht wird. Die sich daran anschließende kommunikative Handlung (vgl. Zeilen 8-15) kann wieder als Explikation derselben gedeutet wer-

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den und muß demzufolge im kommunikativen Sinn mit dem Rahmentext übereinstimmen. Beispiel 3: "Die Esel" (Diederichs/Hinze 1995: 44-45) 1 2 Er war begleitet von seinen Hoijunkem. Wie er mit diesen so dahintrottet, sehen sie 3 den Pfarrer von Waldau daherkommen; der wollte nach Hettenhausen, das zu seinem 4 Kirchspiel gehörte. "Will mal mit dem Pfaffen anbinden und meinen Kurzweil mit ihm 5 haben', sagte da einer von dem Gefolge zu dem Fürsten. 'Nimm dich wohl in acht', 6 warnte dieser, 'der Mann läßt nicht mit sich spaßen.' 7 Allein als jetzt der Pfarrer nahe ist und seinen Landesherrn grüßt, ist mein Hofjunker 8 nicht feul und spricht: "Warum gehen Sie zu Fuße, Herr Pastor, und halten sich nicht 9 einen hübschen Rappen zum Reiten? - 'Mein Einkommen ist nicht von der Art, daß ich 10 mir so etwas erlauben könnte, und so muß ich mich mit Schusters Rappen behelfen', 11 lautet die bescheidene, doch bestimmte Antwort. Und wenn's kein Pferd wäre, das Sie 12 futtern könnten', Mut der Junker fort, 'so täte es schon ein EseL Hat sich doch der 13 Heiland selbst dieses Tieres zum Reiten bedient.' - 'Ach, einen Esel? spricht der 14 Pfarrer, Svo soll ich den hernehmen, da die kleinen Esel in der Mühle und die großen 15 am Hofe sind? 16 Außer dem einen lachten alle über diese Antwort, und der Landgraf am meisten . (ibid.: 44)

Die Sage "Die Esel" nutzt dieses Textmuster für Sagen gleich mehrfach: Der Text fahrt nach Zeile 16 so fort, daß der Landgraf dem Pfarrer die schriftliche Anweisung an die fürstliche Renterei diktiert, dem Pfarrer jährlich Hafer zum Halten eines Pferdes zu liefern. Die Sage hat in Zeile 1 mit der Feststellung begonnen, daß der Pfarrer von Waldau über hübsche Zusatzeinnahmen verfügt und daß sie beschreiben will, wie es dazu kam. Wir haben es also mit einem gerahmten Text zu tun, dessen Berichtsteil (die ausgewählten Zeilen 2-16) - wie oben schon erwähnt - wieder rahmenartig konstruiert ist. Die Textmusterkenntnis unterstützt die Deutung allerdings nur mittelbar; es muß erkannt werden, daß die Explikation ein konkreter, unter das einleitend mitgeteilte Faktum subsumierbarer Sachverhalt ist. Das erfolgt in unserem Textausschnitt über das Erschließen des kommunikativen Sinns des Dialogs (Zeilen 8-15), der - textmustergerecht - mit der semantischen Repräsentation der Faktendarstellung (Zeilen 4-6) kohärent sein muß. Zeilen 4-5 machen die Intention des Junkers explizit, mit dem Pfarrer in kommunikative Beziehung zu treten, um sich dabei über ihn lustig zu machen. Zeilen 5-6 machen ebenso explizit, daß der Pfarrer ganz sicher kontern wird, wovor gewarnt wird. In welchen kommunikativen Handlungen werden nun im Folgedialog diese Intentionen (sich lustig machen - kontern) 'verpackt'? Der Pfarrer kann die erste Frage des Junkers (Zeilen 8-9) als reine Informationsfrage deuten und antwortet auch metaphorisch darauf, daß ein Rappe als optimales Reisemittel aus

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Geldgründen für ihn nicht erreichbar ist und lediglich Schuhe als geringstes Reiseniittel möglich sind. Das impliziert, daß auch alle dazwischenliegenden Reisemittel ausfallen, und die Nachfrage des Junkers (Zeilen 11-12) ist überflüssig. Sie kann deshalb nicht die Informationsfrage eines höflichen normal gebildeten Menschen sein. Die Intention der Nachfrage nach dem Esel erschließt sich aus dem Wissen um die mindere Eignung und mindere gesellschaftliche Anerkennung des Esels als Reittier, wobei sich diese mindere Anerkennung auch auf den Eselsnutzer überträgt. Daß der Junker dieses Wissen und diese gesellschaftliche Norm teilt, läßt sich daraus ableiten, daß er das Reittier Esel verteidigen zu müssen glaubt. Mit der Anspielung auf Christus tut er es auf eine für den Pfarrer wenig angreifbare Art und Weise: Wenn Christus als spirituelles Oberhaupt der christlichen Kirchen der Überlieferung nach auf einem Esel geritten ist, ist der für einen Landpastor gut genug. Das weniger anerkannte Reittier wird dem Pfarrer also von einem zugeeignet, der auf einem Rappen sitzt. Diese paarweise Tier-MenschZuordnung stellt den Pfarrer implizit gesellschaftlich unter den Junker. Da das bereits ein Faktum der sozialen Hierarchie ist, brauchte es nicht ausgesprochen zu werden. Wenn es ausgesprochen wird, ist es ein Mittel des Junkers, sich über den Pfarrer lustig zu machen. Wie kontert der Pfarrer? "Wo soll ich den [Esel] hernehmen" (Zeile 14) ist isoliert zunächst eine Parallelisierung seiner ersten Antwort. Die explizite Begründung (Zeilen 14-15) geht allerdings vom Finanziellen ab und postuliert das ausschließliche Vorkommen von Eseln als Lastenträger in Mühlen und - metaphorisch - als törichte Menschen am Hof. Esel als Reittiere kommen demnach nicht in Frage. Der Gegensatz Weine' vs. 'große Esel' gelingt nur über die metaphorische Übertragung. Sie steigert die negative intellektuelle Einstufung des Hof-Esels und bescheinigt diesem einen noch höheren Anteil an Eselhaftigkeit (wörtlich und übertragen) als dem Mühlen-Esel. Dem Hof-Esel wird durch diese Parallele auch etwas von der Funktion des Lastträgers, die die Mühlen-Esel haben, ins Metaphorische übertragen, angeheftet. Der Pfarrer sagt explizit, daß er weder zu Mühlen- noch zu Hof-Eseln Zugang hat. Er kontert also, indem er eine Hierarchie des Intellekts und eventuell auch des Lasttragens errichtet, in der er nicht vorkommt und in der der Höfling weit unten steht, sogar noch unter dem Mühlen-Esel. Die Kommunikation endet, der Höfling kontert nicht zurück. Das übrige fürstliche Gefolge amüsiert sich über die vom Pfarrer vorgenommene Klassifikation. Trifft die Aussage des Pfarrers aber nicht auf sie alle zu? Nein. "Die großen [Esel] sind am Hofe" bedeutet nicht, daß am Hof nur große Esel sind. Es wird auch nicht nur auf einen (d.h. den naheliegenden) Hof referiert, sondern auf jeden möglichen. Zum anderen hat der Pfarrer nur einen Gesprächspartner gehabt, und auf ihn kann die metaphorische Prädikation, ein großer Esel zu sein, exemplarisch angewandt werden. Wer immer sich sonst betroffen fühlte, würde sich der Klasse der Hof-

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Esel subsumieren, was keiner ohne Not täte. Zum dritten hat der Fürst den Höfling davor gewarnt, sich mit dem Pfarrer einzulassen, und das Interpretationsergebnis bestätigt erneut das Textmuster: Die Warnung des Fürsten war berechtigt. Zuletzt hat man über den Höfling gelacht. Die Repräsentation der Textinterpretation, die übrigens je nach zugänglichem Kontext und Schlußvermögen bei anderen Lesern etwas anders ausfallen kann, muß alle Parallelen, Rahmungen, eingeschobenen Wissensrepräsentationen, Schlußoperationen etc. explizit und formal nachprüfbar darstellen. Die Feststellung Rickheits (1991), daß diese vervollständigte Textbasis viel unübersichtlicher ist als der versprachlichte Text, daß sie für die Kommunikationspartner Wichtiges von Unwichtigem nicht trennt, Vorausgesetztes wie Neuinformation behandelt, leuchtet ein. Gerade in der Lückenhaftigkeit versprachlichten Textes scheinen demnach Gliederungssignale und Strukturmerkmale zu stecken, die die Textbasis - das ist die vollständige konzeptuelle Repräsentation des Textes - nicht enthält, die aber erst noch zu beschreiben und auch zu beweisen sind. Das intendierte Forschungsprojekt soll schließlich auch dazu dienen, daß über das Verhältnis zur Hermeneutik als Methode neu nachgedacht wird.

Literatur Bellert, I. (1970): "On a Condition of the Coherence of Texts". In: Semiotica 2, 334-363 Bierwisch, M. (1983): "Semantische und konzeptuelle Repräsentationen lexikalischer Einheiten". In: Rùzicka, R/Motsch, W. (Hg.): Untersuchungen zur Semantik. Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 61-99 De Beaugrande, R/Dressler, W. (1981): Einfiihrungin die Textlinguistik. Tübingen: Niemeyer Diederichs, M./Hinze, C. (Hg.) (1995): Sagen aus Hessen Reinbek: Rohwok Fodor, J.D. (1983): The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge/Mass: MIT Press Henne, H / Rehbock, H. (1982): Einführung in die Gesprächsanalyse. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Jackendorf R (1992): Languages of the Mind. Cambridge/Mass: MIT Press Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1991): Deduction. Hove: Erlbaum Lascarides, AVAsher, N. (1993): "Temporal Interpretation and Commonsense Entailment." In: Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 437-493 Lascarides, A/Oberlander, J. (1993): "Temporal Coherence and Defeasible Knowledge." In: Theoretical Linguistics 19(1), 1-37 Leech, G. (1981): Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Levelt, W.J.M. (1989): Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge/Mass: MIT Press Materna, P. (1978): "Theory of Types and Data Description". In: Kybernetika 14 (5), 313-327 Materna, P./Pokomy, J. (1981): "Applying Simple Theory of Types to Data Bases". In: Information Systems 6, 283-300 Mayer, RE. (1991): Thinking, Problem solving, Cognition New York: W.F. Freeman & Co

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Reinhart, T. (1991): "Pronouns". In: v. Stechow, A./Wunderlich, D. (Hg.): Semantik, ein internationales Handbuch der Zeitgenössischen Forschung. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 535548 Rickheit, G. (1991): Kohärenzprozess: Modellierung von Sprachverarbeitung in Texten und Diskursen Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag Sperber, D./Wilson, D. (1986): Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Steube, A. (1991): "Eine linguistische Charakterisierung von Bericht, Beschreibung und Handlungsanweisung". In: Mackeldey, R (Hg.): Textsorten, Textmuster in der Sprech- und Schriftkommunikation. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie, 165-174 Steube, A. (1995a): "A Model for Temporal Reference in Texts". In: Geiger, R (ed.): Reference in Multidisciplinary Perspective. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms, 63-81 Steube, A. (1995b): "Sprache - Denken - Weh". In: Sitzungsberichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig 134, H. 4 Strohner, H. (1990): Textverstehen: Kommunikative und kognitive Grundlagen der Sprachverarbeitung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag van Dyk, T.A./Kintsch, W. (1983): Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press

Jarmila Tàrnyikovà (Olomouc)

Text parameters in fiction 1. Introduction In the phase of mapping various text types and their relevant parameters, typical of the pioneering period of text linguistics (cf. Graustein/Thiele 1987), the matrix of relevant features had to be based on language regularities in order to make prerequisites for grasping the field, for making some generalizations and inventing relevant mechanisms for an integrated text analysis. With many text types, however, it became quite evident that in shaping the texture into its final form, the regularity is purposefully accompanied by an irregularity variable which should also be taken into consideration. The present contribution is a modest attempt at applying the centre-periphery scale, as advocated by the Prague School scholars, to a restricted number of text samples with the aim of emphasizing the communicative values of seemingly peripheral features represented in the language of fiction by irregularities of five different kinds: referential distance, sentence ramification, structure-frame stereotypes, chopped sentences and violation of a triadic arrangement. All these irregularities are primarily associated with quantity, though consequently having impact on the resulting quality of the text. The corpus represents samples of mainstream texts. The hypothesis advocated here can be summarized as follows: text iiregularities resulting in introducing items, structures or scenarios that go against the grain of pragmatic users' expectations, can endow the text with a specific foregrounding (highlighting) effect and, under specific pragmatic conditions, can contribute to text uniqueness, understood here as language manifestations of langue in a special form of parole, 1.e. as unpredictable structures manifested by unpredictable linguistic means. Our approach is in harmony with Chapman's (1973: 114) conception, i.e. that irregularities (in his treatment referred to as deviations) should not be treated as pathological exceptions to the healthy rule but rather as entities being in paradigmatic relations to the regular ones.

2. Data For the purposes of the present analysis, a single book by a single author has been selected, i.e. A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion (1978). The author

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in a very significant way steps outside the predictable patterns of regularities and builds her communicative effect on both qualitative and quantitative deviations representing here a cline on which Langleberis (1990) triplet of 'standard structures', 'intermediate structures' and 'unique structures' can be located as relevant milestones. The analyzed samples are rich in 'local style markers' and 'prominent fragments' (Enkvist 1973, Langleben 1990), and the intricate devices inbuilt into the texture and affecting both the form and the content are a rich source of inspiration for text researchers. The dynamism achieved by the constant switches from a pattern built up and then violated unexpectedly gives rise to a special form of communicative tension and contributes to a creative collaboration with the reader: one gains the impression that some strange tricks are being played not so much with the words but rather with the processing strategies and the consequent structures. The high frequency of occurrence of prominent structural fragments contributes to their prototypical character, i.e. gives them the status of items of general validity. Emphasis should be put on the fact that by analyzing such parameters as indicated above, we leave the safe ground of the rule-governed nature of particular language phenomena and move to a principle-controlled domain.

3. Discussion of the data In terms of centre-periphery scale (rather than dichotomy), irregularity represents what Crystal (1989: 72) calls "the edge of language", but the features of unexpectedness - together with the violation of particular stereotypes - endow deviant structures with specific communicative values. The criteria on which to base our judgements of norm and its violation (for which I borrowed Chapman's term 'deviation') can be stated rather negatively: deviation cannot mean too far from a regular parole of a given speech community. In what follows I would like to demonstrate how deviation, if functionally used, can contribute to the uniqueness of a particular author's style, to a kind of 'logopoeia1 defined by Ezra Pound (1954: 25) as "the dance of the intellect among words". It should be pointed out that while uniqueness is understood here as a matrix of unpredictable features of various kinds, deviation is just one of them. The ability to disclose uniqueness is part of our literary competence and we always run the risk of passing on impressions. In the following section, attention will be paid to deviation based on quantity and five corpus-based subtypes will be discussed.

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3.1. Referential distance Referential distance can be characterized as a 'gap' which occurs between the new and the previous reference to a certain element in terms of the number of items (clauses) which intervene between them. Thus e.g. a NP whose referent is mentioned in the immediately preceding clause has a referential distance value of 'one'. For the illustration of a communicative tension caused by a knowledge deficit created by a long-distance cataphora, see example (1) below. Legend: Before "Charlotte" is introduced on the scene, there are as many as 15 referential pronouns preparing the reader for the coming on the scene, with two implicit elliptical omissions. The communicative tension is multiplied by the fact that the reference is cataphoric, with pronouns preceding the respective NP ("Charlotte"). Only the last pronoun ("her") is anaphoric. (1) I will be her (1) witness. That would translate sere su testiga, and will not appear in your travelers' phrasebook because it is not a useful phrase for the prudent traveller. Here is what happened: she (2) left one man, she (3) left a second man, she (4) traveled again with the first; she (5) let him die alone. She (6) lost one child to 'history' and another to 'complications' (I offer in each instance the evaluation of others), she (7) imagined herself (8) capable of shedding that baggage and (0) came to Boca Grande, (0) a tourist. Una turista. So she (9) said. In fact she (10) came here less a tourist than a sojourner but she (11) did not make that distinction. She (12) made not enough distinctions. She (13) dreamed her (14) life. She (15) died, hopeful. In summary. So you know the story. Of course the story had extenuating circumstances, weather, cracked sidewalks and paregorina, but only for living. Charlotte would call her (16) story one of passion. I believe I would call it one of delusion.

Compare the following scheme of a co-referential network in (1): "her" (1) - "she" (2-7) - "herself' (8) - 0 (2x) - "she" (9-13) - "her" (14) -"she" (15) - "she" (15) - "Charlotte" - "her" (16) 3.2. Ramified utterances Ramification (Tarnyikova 1993: 98) can be characterized as the interruption of a communicative line (usually the main one) by one or more (usually secondary) communicative lines which can have the character of additive attitudes (modal, evaluative, emotional), informal asides, afterthoughts, etc., and which find their structural manifestation in phrases, semi-clauses, clauses, and sequences of

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clauses (see examples below). Ramification is associated with the psycholinguistic "heaviness serialization principle', according to which there exists a preference for some background items to be distributed in between the elements of the main communicative line. I would like to illustrate now how ramification can contribute to a highlighting effect in a text by causing communicative tension between the interrupted parts of the same communicative line (i.e. either primary or secondary). The corpus-based examples (2-3) represent only random samples of the various possibilities open to language users in English. The accompanying effect of putting together the elements of the interrupted communicative line is that of highlighting them. (2) Marin was at that moment, even as the two FBI men occupied Leonard's Barcelona chairs, even as the fat FBI man toyed with one of Leonard's porcelain roses and even as the thin FBI man gazed over Charlotte's head at the '10 by 16' silk screen of Mao Tse-Tung given to Leonard by one of the Alameda Three, skiing at Squaw Valley.

Legend: In (2) the main communicative line, i.e. Marin was at that moment skiing at Squaw Valley is interrupted by a long sequence of secondary communicative lines, so that the main clause gives the whole text segment a sort of a frame (being at its beginning and end), while in (3) it is the multiple direct object that is separated from its governing verb by the extended insertion: (3) When I married Edgar I received, from an aunt in Devon who had been taken as a bride to a United Fruit Station in Cuba, twenty-four Haviland dessert plates in the •Windsor Rose' pattern and a letter of instructions for living in the tropics.

The communicative tension is less apparent when the interval between the separated parts is either short (4) or the ramification is realized on clause boundaries (5). (4) All right, he had made (and largely lost) a fortune out of it. (5) It was Kate - you know her - who I met there.

Consequently, the ramified structures in (4) and (5) do not remind us of deviant utterances at all.

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3.3. Structure frame stereotypes This type of deviation exploits the fact that a syntagmatic progression has no upper limit. The corpus-based examples from fiction reveal a kind of two-step procedure applied in order to achieve the effect of foregrounding through quantitydeviation: (a) a stereotype is built (b) the stereotype is violated at the moment the quantitative parameter applied might cause a boring effect This sensitiveness to the reader's patience is a skill found in renowned authors, i.e. the skills in empathy applied. Compare Joan Didion's way of building such a highlighting (foregrounding) effect in example (6): (6) When Warren came that day to the door of the house on California Street Charlotte did not answer. When Warren telephoned Charlotte hung up. When Warren stood on the sidewalk outside the house on California Street at two a.m. and threw stones at the windows Charlotte closed the shutters. When Warren left the note reading 'THIS IS THE WORST BEHAVIOR YET!' in the mailbox of the house on California Street Charlotte tore the note in half and avoided these rooms which fronted the street. When the two FBI men came to tell Charlotte that the boy with the harelip scar had been apprehended on an unrelated charge in Nogales, Arizona, and had hanged himself in his cell Charlotte left the room without speaking.

Legend: The whole text extract is based on the parallel composite-sentence structure consisting of two clauses with the first, having the function of an adverbial temporal clause (introduced by "when"), and the following main clause with the identical subject ("Charlotte"). The subject of the dependent adverbial clauses is also identical (i.e. "Warren") with the exception of the last composite-sentence structure, where the stereotyped introduction of identical subjects is violated by the introduction of a new agent on the scene, i.e. "the two FBI men". The effect of foregrounding in this particular text segment seems to be achieved by violating the rules of expectations and introducing a new agent on the scene ("the two FBI men"). Both these aspects contribute to the foregrounding of the position in which the stereotype is markedly violated. The following figure is illustrative of the stereotype built in (6) and its violation: When Warren came When Warren telephoned

Charlotte did not answer Charlotte hung up

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258 When Warren stood When Warren left the note When the two FBI men came

Charlotte closed the shutters Charlotte tore the note Charlotte left the room

3.4. Chopped sentences In our corpus, the presence of chopped sentences, i.e. of an interruption of the sentence complex by means of a full stop and creation of two separate communicative units, was accompanied by structural parallelism, cf.: (7) Sweet Marin. Who at sixteen had been photographed with her two best friends Soft Marin. Who at eighteen had been observed with her four best friends . Marin.

3.5. Violation of a triadic arrangement As Quirk (1987: 79) emphasized, triadic arrangement is typical of rhetorical tradition, and items in triads, though coordinate and structurally parallel, are felt to build up to a climax (cf. the principle of end-focus). In harmony with the endweight principle, the last element is usually the longest. In Didion's book, however, the triadic arrangement, as in (8) She talked constantly. She talked feverishly. She talked as if Victor had released her from vows of silence . quite often gives way to sequences of six or even more parallel structures of the type: (9) There was 'Leonard'. There was 'Warren'. There was 'Marin'. There was the house on California Street in San Francisco and there were meetings in Calcutta and La Paz and in limousines at Lod Airport. There were the hotel suites, always flooded with flowers. There was the missed plane and its happy ending . It is worth noting that in parallel sentence complexes, the recursiveness was mostly restricted to pairs, as in: (10) There was Leonard, standing with an actor at the party in Beverly Hills, standing with his head bent, listening to the actor but looking somewhere else. There was Charlotte, sitting with an actress at the party in Beverly Hills, Charlotte smiling, her eyes wide and glazed and in the end as impenetrable as Marin's.

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4. Conclusion Our experience with the language of fiction teaches us that it is likely to be our attitude to the way the authors code their message that influences our categorisation. Generally speaking, and there seems to be an unwritten consensus about it, creatively applied and unpredictable irregularities may be refreshing exactly because they do not conform to conventions. In any case, success in this special form of communication depends as much on the messenger as on the reader. We know that it is no novelty to study such features but some novelty may be found in this modest attempt to taxonomize them from a different perspective, i.e. from the point of view of their contribution to the grounding of the text. In this respect, the concept of deviation, though undoubtedly peripheral in terms of centre-periphery scale, should become an integral part of text analysis, since it proves to be both functional and systemic, reflecting the reality of language, which is not homogeneity but continuous diversity.

References Chapman, R. (1973): Linguistics and Literature. An Introduction to Literary Stylistics. London: Edward Arnold Crystal, D. (1989): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Didion, J. (1978): A Book of Common Prayer. New York: Pocket Books Enkvist, N.E. (1973): Linguistic Stylistics. Hie Hague: Mouton Graustein, G./Thiele, W. (1987): Properties of English Texts. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie Langleben, M. (1990): "Stylistic Hints". In: Hebrew Linguistics 28-30, XXIX-XLVm Langleben, M. (1994): "The Guilty House: A Textlinguistic Approach to the Shortest Prose by I.A. Bunin". In: Elementa: A Journal of Slavic Studies and Comparative Cultural Semiotics. VoL 1,3, 265-304 Pound, E. (1954): "How to read". In: Elliot, T.S. (ed.): Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. London: Faber & Faber, 15-40 Quirk, R. (1987): Words at Work. Lectures on Textual Structure. London: Longman Tärnyikovä, J. (1993): Chapters from Modem English Syntax (A Communicative Approach). Olomouc: Palackeho Univerzita

Wolfgang Thiele (.Leipzig) Was hat Tony Blair mit dem Gärtner zu tun? Im Prinzip - nichts. Bezieht man den Anglisten Gottfried Graustein in die Fragestellung ein, so läßt sich doch eine mögliche Antwort finden. Tony Blair spielt eine wesentliche Rolle in dem im Anhang abgedruckten schriftlichen Kommentar "Mr Blair returns to the real world" (= MB). Der Gärtner findet als Hauptperson in einem Mini-Dialog Erwähnung, den ich Halliday/Hasan (1976: 14) entnommen habe (= Beispieldiskurs GA im Anhang). Was beide Kommunikate (und damit indirekt Tony Blair und den Gärtner) vereint, ist die Tatsache, daß es sich um englische 'Texte' (oder 'Diskurse'; vgl. dazu unten) handelt, deren Untersuchung und Beschreibung wesentliches Anliegen der Forschungsarbeit von Gottfried Graustein war und ist. Da es sich hier um einen schriftlichen sogenannten 'Monolog' (vgl. auch dazu unten) und einen verschriftlichten (kurzen) mündlichen Dialog handelt, stellt sich - aus linguistischer Sicht - u.a. die Frage, wie beide Kommunikate als Ganzheiten und in ihrer inneren Strukturierung, einschließlich ihrer sprachlichen Merkmale, zu analysieren und beschreiben sind. Dabei kann man entweder davon ausgehen, daß es sich um grundsätzlich verschiedene (schriftlich vs. mündlich; monologisch vs. dialogisch) Kommunikate handelt, deren Analyse und Beschreibung unterschiedlicher Instrumentarien und Methoden bedarf, oder man stellt den Sachverhalt in den Vordergrund, daß es sich in beiden Fällen um die kommunikativ primäre Vorkommensweise der (englischen) Sprache handelt, die zunächst die Frage nach den gemeinsamen linguistischen Merkmalen und damit auch nach Analyse- und Beschreibungsmethoden aufwirft, die auf beide Kommunikate anwendbar sind. G. Graustein hat in seinen Arbeiten besonders den letzteren Gesichtspunkt im Auge. Damit wird die Frage nach einem in diesem Kontext verstandenen integrativen Beschreibungsmodell englischer Texte/Diskurse gestellt. Zu dessen Entwicklung will ich Ansätze vorstellen. Meine Überlegungen gehen von dem in Leipzig entwickelten relationalen Textmodell (Graustein/Thiele 1987) aus. Dieses Analysemodell englischer Texte postuliert und exemplifiziert an ausgewählten monologischen schriftlichen Texten Stufen der Textverarbeitung ("cognitive stage", "world stage", "text stage" (Graustein/Thiele 1987: 29-40) und impliziert somit eine prozedurale und prozessuale Sichtweise sprachlicher Kommunikation. Die Stufen der Textverarbeitung ermöglichen die Herstellung einer direkten Beziehung von textexternen Faktoren (wie Partnerbeziehung, Situierung, Handlungsziel) und den internen Merkmalen des Textes, d.h. seiner Inhalts-/Bedeutungs-

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struktur sowie der sprachlichen Mittel zum Ausdruck der Textextema und der Inhalts-/Bedeutungsstruktur. Diese Textstruktur wird konfigurational (d.h. als Elemente in Relation) analysiert und beschrieben. Die Elementbedeutung wird vorrangig durch die 'Topikalisierung', d.h. den "conventionalized, socially standardized or established part" der Bedeutung der Elemente des Textes und des Textes als Ganzem (Graustein/Thiele 1987: 54), und die 'Proposition1, die Aussagen über die spezifischen Referenz-bedeutungen der Textelemente und des Textes macht, dargestellt. Die Relationen zwischen den Elementen werden als 'meaning relations' (Beziehungsinhalte), die den Inhalt der Beziehung zwischen zwei oder mehr Elementen (Teiltexten) auf demselben 'level' (Stufe) der Bedeutungsstruktur des Textes erfassen, beschrieben (Graustein/Thiele 1987: 59-65). Unter den sprachlichen Mitteln (= 'Realisierungsformen') werden diskursive (d.h. auf Textebene wirksame) sowie vor allem syntaktisch-morphologische, lexikalische und graphemische/phonematische Mittel, die auf Teiltextkonfigurationsebene relevant sind, verstanden. Obwohl das Modell auf der Analyse und Beschreibung vorwiegend monologischer schriftlicher Texte aus den Bereichen der wissenschaftlichen und journalistischen Kommunikation basiert, erscheint es potentiell auch auf texttypologisch andere monologische Texte anwendbar. Das haben nicht nur eigene exemplarische Analysen von z.B. instruktiven Texten (Gebrauchsanweisungen usw.), didaktischen sowie fiktiven Kommunikaten (Kurzgeschichten) ergeben. Auch in Verbindung mit bzw. im Anschluß an das Modell entstandene Untersuchungen (vor allem Dissertationen) zeigen dies. Frommann (1996) beispielsweise demonstriert es an englischen Geschäftsbriefen, einschließlich von Briefwechseln. Die Übertragungsmöglichkeit des Modells auf monologische gesprochene englische Texte haben u.a. Munder (1984) und Fatunz (1986) illustriert. Darüber hinaus kann der Modellansatz im Zusammenhang mit der Ansetzung von Stufen der Textverarbeitung und der damit verbundenen prozessualen Sichtweise von Textproduktion und Textrezeption interaktionale Aspekte der Textbetrachtung implizieren, die eine Übertragung der Methoden und Instrumentarien der Textanalyse auf dialogische Texte untersuchenswert erscheinen lassen. Andeutungsweise erfolgte dies bereits in Graustein/Thiele (1987: 98-99, 130-131, 144-147, 166) bei der Analyse einer Fabel, die verschiedene dialogische Passagen enthält, sowie in der Arbeit von Brock (1989) zur Beschreibung von Radiotelefongesprächen. Diese erfolgversprechenden Versuche zur Anwendung des Modells auf ursprünglich nicht primär in Betracht gezogene Vorkommensweisen des Englischen machen die weitere Arbeit an der Vervollkommnung bzw. Weiterentwicklung der in Graustein/Thiele (1987) vorgestellten Textanalyse aus linguistischer Sicht lohnenswert. Ein solches Vorhaben involviert theoretische und

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methodologische Überlegungen sowie praktische Aufgabenstellungen. Es schließt eine verstärkte Untersuchung sprechsprachlicher, in erster Linie dialogischer Kommunikate, sowie die Herausarbeitung von Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschieden mit schriftlichen Kommunikaten ein. Die theoretischen und methodologischen Aspekte dieser Forschungsarbeit verlangen u.a. eine Prüfung von 'Text' und seiner Definition. In bezug auf das Textverständnis ist z.B. nach Konsequenzen zu fragen, die sich aus den prozessualen und interaktionalen Eigenschaften textueller Kommunikation ergeben. Eine dieser Konsequenzen ist die m.E. notwendige Aufhebung der Unterscheidung von 'Text' und 'Diskurs' als Vergegenständlichung der kommunikativ primären Organisationsform von Sprache. Eine solche Differenzierung ist jedoch häufig anzutreffen. So betrachtet Petöfi (1990: 209) den 'Text' als monologische Kommunikation, die eine "hand-written or printed physical manifestation" hat. Brinker/Sager (1989: 7, 18) nehmen eine ähnliche Gegenstandsbestimmung vor, indem sie zwischen der Beschreibung von Monologen als Objekt der Textlinguistik und der Beschreibung von Dialogen als 'Gesprächsanalyse' unterscheiden. Heinemann/Viehweger (1991: 176) gehen zwar von einer der Beschreibung sprachlicher Kommunikation übergeordneten 'Textlinguistik' aus, unterteilen diese aber ebenfalls in 'Textbeschreibung' und 'Gesprächsanalyse'. Eine theoretisch anders geartete Unterscheidung nimmt Jäger (1991: 24) vor. Er betrachtet Textanalyse als Formanalyse, die, "für sich allein betrachtet, kaum mehr als spekulativ-intellektuelle Spielerei ist". Verstehe man den Text dagegen "als Bestandteil eines gesellschaftlich und historisch verankerten Diskurses", so sei seine Analyse nicht Text-, sondern Diskursanalyse. Eine ähnliche Differenzierung findet sich bei Edmondson (1981: 4), der Textanalyse als Systemanalyse und Diskursanalyse als Sprachverwendungsanalyse betrachtet. Ich folge solchen und ähnlichen Differenzierungen nicht, weil das sprachliche Kommunikat als Prozeß und Resultat von Sprachhandlungen künstlichen bzw. hypertrophierten Unterscheidungen zwischen 'Monolog' und 'Dialog' oder 'System' und 'Verwendung' zuwiderläuft. Ich verwende generell den Terminus 'Diskurs' für die kommunikativ primäre Organisationsform der Sprache. Er bringt - im Unterschied zu 'Text' - den interaktiven Charakter jeglicher sprachlicher Kommunikation angemessener zum Ausdruck. Diese weite Interpretation von 'Diskurs' steht auch in der Tradition der britischen Diskursanalyse (McCarthy 1991; Lörscher/Schulze 1994; Watts 1994). Dabei ist allerdings zu berücksichtigen, daß britische Diskurslinguisten damit häufig eine terminologische Abhebung von einer "Entwicklung innerhalb der kontinentaleuropäischen linguistischen Theorie" (Watts 1994: 43-44) verbinden, die m.E. in dieser Verabsolutierung nicht gerechtfertigt ist. Watts (1994: 44) z.B. sieht in der kontinentaleuropäischen Textlinguistik eine zu einseitige

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Berücksichtigung des Systemaspekts der Sprache; in der britischen Diskursanalyse finde stattdesssen "die interpersonale, soziale Einbettung von Sprache in der kommunikativen Interaktion eine viel stärkere Beachtung". Als Gegenbeispiel seien hier nur die Arbeiten von Viehweger (z.B. 1987) sowie Heinemann/Viehweger (1991) genannt. Mit meiner Auffassung vom 'Diskurs' als stets interaktiver Kommunikationsweise ist im Grunde die Aufhebung der Dichotomie zwischen monologischer und dialogischer sprachlicher Kommunikation verbunden. Den interaktiven, prinzipiell ebenfalls dialogischen Charakter sogenannter monologischer Kommunikation heben aus der Sicht des Diskursproduzenten Widdowson (1979: 167) und aus der Sicht des Rezipienten McCarthy (1991: 27) hervor. Auch bei z.B. de Beaugrande/Dressler (1981) sowie in Arbeiten zur psycholinguistischen Textverstehensforschung (Rickheit et al. 1985) wird der prozeßhafte und interaktive Charakter des Diskurses betont bzw. zumindest berücksichtigt. Aus dieser Sicht des im Prinzip immer dialogisch zu verstehenden Diskurses ergibt sich die forschungsmethodologische Konsequenz, nach Methoden und Instrumentarien zu suchen, die - ohne Spezifika sprachlicher Kommunikation (z.B. englische mündliche vs. schriftliche Diskurse) vernachlässigen zu wollen - einheitlich und integrativ die Analyse und Beschreibung englischer Diskurse ermöglichen. Daraus ergibt sich die Forschungsaufgabe, ein Modell zu entwickeln, das den integrativen Zugriff zur Analyse und Beschreibung von mündlichen und schriftlichen bzw. sog. monologischen und dialogischen Diskursen im Englischen (in ausgewählten Diskurstypen) erlaubt. Ansätze zur Verwirklichung dieser Aufgabe sind dargestellt worden (Thiele 1992, 1995; Thiele/Sperber 1995). Die darin vorgenommene prinzipielle Ausweitung der Diskursanalyse auf mündliche englische argumentative Dialoge (Verhandlungsgespräche) erfolgte durch den Versuch der Verbindung der bei Graustein/Thiele (1987) vorgestellten Analysemethoden und -instrumentarien mit Elementen des interaktiven Beschreibungsverfahrens, das von Edmondson (1981) entwickelt worden ist. Zugleich wurde versucht - sozusagen in 'umgekehrter Richtung' die von Edmondson (1981) dargestellten interaktiven Merkmale des dialogischen Diskurses auf sog. monologische schriftliche argumentative Diskurse (politische Zeitungskommentare) in der Kombination mit dem Modell von Graustein/Thiele (1987) anzuwenden (Thiele 1996a). Dabei wurden neben dem Englischen auch Kommentare in deutscher und russischer Sprache einbezogen. Diese Versuche haben bereits gezeigt, daß die Kombination der beiden genannten Modelle nicht rein additiv erfolgen kann; vielmehr muß sie innovative Züge tragen. Dies ergibt sich z.B. nicht nur aus den noch zu lösenden Problemen bei der Vervollkommnung des von Graustein/Thiele (1987) vorgestellten

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Modells - etwa der weiteren Objektivierung, Standardisierung und Ausweitung der Topikalisierungskennzeichnungen auf Diskurs- und Konfigurationsebene oder der weiteren Klärung des Verhältnisses von Element- und relationaler Bedeutung. Auch im Modell von Edmondson (1981) sind eine Reihe von Fragen zu lösen. Sie betreffen beispielsweise eine m.E. notwendige Präzisierung der dem ganzen Diskurs {EXCHANGE) untergeordneten Struktur der Hauptphase des Dialogs (Edmondson 1981: 169), die mit den Stufen EXCHANGE, MO VE und ACT (dem minimalen Beitrag eines Sprechers) die Hierarchie noch nicht angemessen zum Ausdruck bringt, sowie das bei Edmondson (1981: 75152) bestehende Nebeneinander von Kennzeichnungen der 'illocution' und 'interaction', das nicht nur zu Überlappungen zwischen beiden führt, da auch interaktionale Charakterisierungen kommunikative Aspekte enthalten, sondern auch zu einer Überfrachtung des Modells durch eine zu große Zahl von Elementcharakterisierungen in der Interaktions-/Bedeutungscharakterisierung führt. Eine Überwindung dieses Defizits verlangt allerdings in der Analyse und Beschreibung eine durchgängige Berücksichtigung des kommunikativen Anteils des Diskurses und seiner Einheiten in den anderen Charakterisierungen der Diskursstruktur (d.h. den Interaktionskennzeichnungen, den Topikalisierungen und evtl. den Beziehungsinhalten). Im folgenden will ich einige der erwähnten und andere Probleme im Zusammenhang mit den beiden Beispieldiskursen GA und MB (vgl. Anhang) diskutieren. Daß es sich bei GA um einen künstlichen verschriftlichten mündlichen (sehr kurzen) Dialog handelt, der zudem keine prosodischen und nichtsprachlichen Kennzeichnungen enthält, ist für das hier zu verwirklichende Anliegen von geringerer Bedeutung, weil ich primär Fragen im Auge habe, die sich auch an dieser Form der Diskurswiedergabe erörtern lassen. In meinen folgenden Darlegungen behandele ich den Diskurs primär so, als handele es sich um einen gesprochenen Dialog. Auch die Kürze des Diskurses darf nicht überbewertet werden. Zum einen lassen sich einige grundlegende Aspekte des zu entwickelnden Beschreibungsverfahrens ebenso an einem Kurz-Dialog besprechen, zum anderen werde ich mich bei MB im wesentlichen auf einen kurzen Ausschnitt konzentrieren, so daß eine Vergleichbarkeit beider Beispiele für die Analyse gegeben ist. Bei der Ansetzung der externen Merkmale orientiere ich mich an der 'text stage'. Dies hat auf der einen Seite Umfangsgründe, auf der anderen Seite bildet sie auch "the backbone of text external characteristics allowing the explanation of text structuring" (Graustein/Thiele 1987: 48). Für GA ist dabei zu bemerken, daß es sich um einen Dialog zur Illustration eines linguistischen Problems ('cohesion') handelt. Als Teil des Buches Cohesion in English wäre dieser Dialog demzufolge ein Teildiskurs im Gesamtdiskurs. Da mich aber -

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wie oben bereits ausgeführt - der Dialog als solcher, also ohne seine Einbettung in die linguistischen Ausfuhrungen interessiert, behandle ich ihn bei meiner Analyse auch so, also als separaten Diskurs. Bei der Ansetzung der externen Merkmale ist allerdings im Unterschied zu MB (vgl. unten) eine Besonderheit zu beachten. Da die Partner im Dialog als Produzenten und Rezipienten auftreten, verfolgen sie eigentlich beide ihre eigenen Handlungsziele. Ich habe aber schon an anderer Stelle (Thiele 1995: 517) dafür plädiert, von einem beiden Partnern übergeordneten Handlungsziel auszugehen, da der Dialog eine kooperative Sprachhandlung ist. Dies würde selbst dann gelten, wenn sich beide Partner streiten wollten. In diesem Falle bestünde die Kooperation eben aus diesem gemeinsamen Willen. Auf dieser Grundlage ergeben sich für GA folgende externe Merkmale: partners:

A, who owns (?) a garden, and B

situationing: temporal: local: spatial relation: action goal:

1976 UK -separated

satisfy inquiry

Für MB setze ich an: partners:

commentator and politically interested reader of the Guardian

situationing: temporal: local: spatial relation: action goal:

September, 1994 London etc. +separated

accept assessment

In bezug auf die textinternen Merkmale will ich zunächst Fragen der 'interactional/meaning structure' diskutieren. Für GA ergibt sich folgendes Diagramm:

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ENCOUNTER

267

level 1 BUSINESS QUALITY CONTENTION watering the hydrangeas 1-2

EXCHANGE/ MOVE

2

OPENING INQUIRY—presentativedid the gardener

ANSWERING SATISFACTION yes 2

Die für den ganzen Diskurs gültige interaktionale Kennzeichnung ENCOUNTER (s. 'level 1'), fiir die Edmondson (1981: 169) keine näheren Spezifizierungen vorsieht, habe ich in der rechten Spalte mit BUSINESS präzisiert. BUSINESS, bei Edmondson (1981: 169) eine der PHASES (neben A VE, VALE und möglicherweise anderen), die ENCOUNTER konstituieren, ist der Kern des Diskurses, der durch Begrüßung und andere Phasen ergänzt werden kann. Mit meiner Ansetzung von BUSINESS wird die Deckungsgleichheit von Einheitenspezifik {ENCOUNTER als ganzheitlicher Diskurs) und spezifischer interaktionaler Ausprägung des individuellen Diskurses überwunden. In der Einheit mit der Topikalisierung QUALITY CONTENTION (zweite Zeile), verstanden als "an act/instance of contending, i.e. claiming or saying, with impetus in order to point out positive or negative attributes" (Graustein/Thiele 1987: 55), und der (auf der dritten Zeile gegebenen) Proposition (verkürzt "watering the hydrangeas") wird damit eine interaktionale und inhaltliche Charakterisierung des Gesamtdiskurses erreicht, die zum einen die Unikalität des Diskurses erfaßt, zum anderen aber auch durch die interaktionale und Topikalisierungskennzeichnung eine Übertragung auf andere (evtl. intertextuell verbundene) Diskurse ermöglicht. Auf Stufe 2 ('level 2'), die die PHASE als für diesen Diskurs irrelevant ausläßt, handelt es sich um einen EXCHANGE, da der Redewechsel zu einem (Zwischen-)Ergebnis ("outcome"; Edmondson 1981: 87) führt. Dieser EXCHANGE ist zugleich ein MOVE, die Kombination von zwei ACTS (hier 1 und 2), die jeweils einen Sprecherbeitrag kennzeichnen (Edmondson 1981: 84). Aus interaktionaler Sicht handelt es sich demzufolge um eine Erscheinung des 'telescoping'. Die innere Struktur des EXCHANGE wird durch die Merkmale der Konfiguration spezifiziert. Dabei synthetisieren die interaktionalen Merkmale OPENING und ANSWERING (zusammen mit den Topikalisierungen INQUIRY und SATISFACTION) sehr deutlich interaktionale und funktionale Anteile in der Diskursstruktur. Das Ensemble der

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Elementcharakterisierungen 1 und 2, zu denen in der jeweils dritten Zeile die verkürzt angegebenen Propositionen gehören, gibt effektiv Auskunft über die interaktionale und funktional-inhaltliche Strukturierung der Elemente. Darüber hinaus ist auch die 'meaning relation1 ('presentative') transparent nachvollziehbar. "ANSWERING/SAJlSFACYlOWyes" ist eine Präsentation der in "OPENINGftNQUIRY/did the gardener" 'angeforderten' Information. Eine z.B. alleinige interaktionale Kennzeichnung (OPENING und ANSWERING) oder nur die Kenntnis der Topikalisierungen (INQUIRY und SATISFACTION) ließe auch andere 'meaning relations' zu (z.B. 'explicative, consecutive, causal'). Natürlich zeigt diese Argumentation - wie oben bereits angedeutet - , daß über den Zusammenhang von Elementcharakterisierungen und Beziehungsinhalten weiter nachgedacht werden muß. Eine Ableitbarkeit der 'meaning relation' aus den Merkmalen der Elemente ist keineswegs immer gegeben, wie andere Diskursanalysen zeigen. Die vorgestellte Analyse hat auch einen Nebeneffekt für die Grammatikbeschreibung. Wenn wir in GA die Sprecherbeiträge mit Sätzen gleichsetzen (was bei anderen Dialogen nicht immer so ohne weiteres möglich ist), so könnte man für sie isoliert (d.h. ohne Einbettung in den Diskurs) die kommunikativen Funktionen 'request' ( = 1) und 'inform' ( = 2) ansetzen. In der interaktionalen und funktional-inhaltlichen Diskursstruktur erfahren diese Funktionen durch OPENINGIYNQUIRY und ANSWERING/S ATISFACTION eine Spezifizierung, die wesentlich mehr über die kommunikative Leistung der beiden Sätze aussagt. Nach denselben Prinzipien soll im folgenden die 'interactional/meaning structure' von MB dargestellt werden. Dabei will ich zunächst den ganzen Diskurs charakterisieren und mich dann - wie oben angekündigt - auf einen kleineren Ausschnitt konzentrieren. Eine globalere Analyse von MB habe ich in Thiele (1996b) vorgestellt. Interaktional wird der ganze Diskurs (ENCOUNTER) als PROFFERING spezifiziert, weil der Kommentar als Angebot an den Leser zu verstehen ist, sich der Meinung des Kommentators anzuschließen. Ich verwende im Unterschied zu Edmondson (1981: 87) nicht die Kennzeichnung PROFFER (die bei ihm allerdings auch nicht für den ganzen Diskurs stehen kann), sondern PROFFERING, um den prozessualen Charakter der Interaktion deutlicher zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Die - soweit möglich generelle Verwendung von wg-Termini für interaktionale Charakterisierungen auch auf niedrigeren Stufen der Diskurshierarchie (z.B. OPENING, ANSWERING, GROUNDING, EXPANDING, HEADING) hat zudem oftmals den Vorteil, auch den funktionalen Anteil in der interaktionalen Kennzeichnung zu akzentuieren. Die Topikalisierung des ganzen Diskurses wird mit QUALITY CONTENTION bezeichnet, weil hier die Zuweisung von Eigenschaften für

269

Was hat Tony Blair mit dem Gärtner zu tun?

Tony Blair bzw. Parteien (und sich daraus ergebende Schlußfolgerungen) im Vordergrund stehen. Die Proposition lautet verkürzt "current polls and Labour chances". Der kleinere Ausschnitt, der beleuchtet werden soll, sind die Zeilen 17-19. Die Konfiguration wird wie folgt beschrieben:

MOVE

MOVE

level 6 OPENING SITUATION 1—Labour's lead 17-19

1

GROUNDING FACT 1 —evaluative—strong position 17-18

EXPANDING FACT 2 confirmation by elections 18-19

Die interaktionalen Kennzeichnungen zeigen, daß die interaktionale Analyse eines schriftlichen sog. monologischen Diskurses nicht nur möglich, sondern auch notwendig ist. Der auch interaktive Charakter des Kommentars kann nur so erfaßt werden. Für den Diskurs als ganzen habe ich das oben bereits angedeutet. OPENING ('level 6') eines rechts daneben stehenden ANSWERING (hier nicht abgedruckt) zeigt dies ebenso, weil es das schrittweise Vorangehen des Dialogs mit dem Leser expliziert. Ahnlich verhält es sich mit Stufe 7, auf der die dialogische Schrittfolge durch GROUNDING und EXPANDING ebenfalls markiert ist. Die Stufenansetzung (hier 'level' 6 and 7) kann übrigens zumindest als provisorische Lösung des oben dargestellten Problems einer zu globalen Hierarchisierung der Interaktionseinheiten bei Edmondson (1981) angesehen werden. Daß auf den Stufen 6 und 7 in der linken Spalte jeweils MOVE angesetzt ist, illustriert den potentiell rekursiven Charakter vieler interaktionaler Einheiten. Die Topikalisierungen und Propositionen der dargestellten Konfiguration bedürfen sicher keiner weiteren Erläuterung. Ich will aber auf andere Parallelen zur Analyse von GA aufmerksam machen. Eine besteht darin, daß die 'meaning relation' wiederum durch das Zusammenspiel der Elementcharakterisierungen gestützt wird. Die Entscheidung für 'evaluative' wird durch das Paar "GROUNDING/FACT 1/strong position — EXPANDING/ FACT 2/confirmation by elections" nachvollziehbar. Nähme man nur jeweils eine Elementcharakterisierung, so wären auch andere Beziehungsinhalte vorstellbar (z.B. 'additive' oder 'causal'). Eine weitere Parallele zu GA liegt in der

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270

Spezifizierung der kommunikativen Leistung beider Sätze, die - betrachtete man sie isoliert - lediglich als 'inform/state' zu charakterisieren wären. Die komplexe Elementcharakterisierung der beiden Einheiten im Diskurs ist hier wesentlich aussagekräftiger. In bezug auf die 'Realisierungsformen' werden bei GA auf Diskursebene folgende Mermale angesetzt: discourse type: discourse form: levels:

description mini-dialogue 2

variety: regional: style: mode: medium:

English English neutral non-personal spoken (transcribed); (probably) +non-verbal

Die Charakterisierung von GA als 'description' ergibt sich aus dem Versuch, die Typologie von Werlich (1983) auf den gesprochenen Diskurs zu übertragen. Dies scheint bei GA möglich zu sein, weil hier 'objects/situations' im Vordergrund stehen. Ob die von mir so angestrebte Nutzung der Typologie von Werlich (1983) generell verwirklicht werden kann, ist allerdings offen. Probleme zeigen sich schon bei der Beschreibung der 'discourse form'. Der hier angegebene 'mini-dialogue' ist eher eine Notlösung, weil er ebenso in anderen von Werlich vorgeschlagenen Typen ('narration', 'argumentation' usw.) auftreten kann. Die Merkmale der 'variety' wiederum, lassen sich ohne Schwierigkeiten auf mündliche Texte übertragen. Die Ansetzung 'nonpersonal' ('mode') ergibt sich daraus, daß die persönliche Involviertheit des jeweiligen Sprechers in diesem Kurzdialog sprachlich nicht expliziert wird. Daß Spezifika von 'non-verbal' im Mündlichen beachtet werden müssen (z.B. Mimik, Gestik), sofern sie erkennbar sind, versteht sich von selbst. Für MB wurden die folgenden Merkmale auf Diskursebene ermittelt: discourse type: discourse form: levels:

argumentation comment 11

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variety: regional: style: mode: medium:

English English neutral non-personal written; -non-verbal

Unter 'argumentation' verstehe ich in Anlehnung an Werlich (1983: 40) einen Diskurstyp, in dem dominant oder typisch Sachverhalte, Überzeugungen, Annahmen, Pläne oder Ideen in bezug auf ihr Für und/oder Wider wertend diskutiert und in typischen Handlungs- und Bedeutungsstrukturen sowie mit typischen sprachlichen und nicht-verbalen Mitteln ausgedrückt werden. Die Subklassifizierung als 'comment' hebt den subjektiven/individuellen Charakter des Kommentars hervor, denn im "comment the encoder passes judgement by relating concepts of events, objects, and ideas to his private systems of thought, values and beliefs" (Werlich 1983: 107). Bei GA sind auf Konfigurationsebene ('level 2': OPENING/INQUtRY/did the gardener/1—presentative—ziAi5W/E,/i/ArG/SATISFACTION/yes/2) einige Spezifika zu bemerken, die wegen der Kürze und Künstlichkeit des Dialogs nicht überbewertet werden dürfen. Sie decken sich allerdings mit Merkmalen, die ich bei der Analyse längerer Dialoge beobachtet habe (Thiele 1992, 1995; Thiele/Sperber 1995). Sie betreifen z.B. den Komplexitätsgrad, d.h. den Anteil von Einbettungen und Verkürzungen pro Wort (Graustein/Thiele 1987: 72-78). Mit 0,55 liegt er wenig unter schriftlichen wissenschaftlich-technischen Diskursen. Auch die steigende Tendenz in der Diskurskonfiguration (der rechts stehende Teildiskurs hat eine höhere Komplexität als der links auftretende) entspricht den Ergebnissen bei der Analyse vieler schriftlicher Texte. Diese Erscheinung hängt mit den erweiterten Möglichkeiten der Verkürzung auf der Grundlage des vorher explizit Erwähnten zusammen. Allerdings ist die Verteilung der Verkürzungstypen im mündlichen Dialog anders als im schriftlichen Diskurs. Während im letzteren Proformen im Vergleich zu infiniten und verblosen Teilsätzen eine geringere Rolle spielen, sind sie in der 'face-to-face communication' gewichtiger. Sie liegen in GA bei über 50% des Komplexitätsgrades überhaupt ("my, he, so"). Die 'word systems' ('Textwortnetze'), d.h. Gruppen referenzidentischer Einheiten, die neben anderen sprachlichen Mitteln die Konfigurationsbedeutung ausdrücken (Graustein/ Thiele 1987: 86), Satztypen, Zeit- und Modalformen lassen wegen der Kürze des Dialogs kaum Verallgemeinerungen zu. GA zeigt aber wie andere Diskursanalysen von mir den engen Zusammenhang zwischen den sprachlichen Mitteln zum Ausdruck der 'meaning relation' und den 'turn-taking signals' zwischen den Gesprächsschritten. Die 'presentative meaning relation' wird grammatisch durch den

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Satztypwechsel von 'yes/no-questiori zu 'declarative' und die Zeitform sowie lexikalisch durch "said so" realisiert. Zugleich sind der Satztypwechsel und die lexikalische Verbindung "said so" den 'turn-taking signals' zuzuordnen. Insofern sind 'meaning relation1 und 'turn-taking' als sich ergänzend zu betrachten. Das Überlappen der sprachlichen Mittel zeigt aber auch, daß die spezifischen Beziehungen zwischen beiden Erscheinungen einer genaueren Untersuchung bedürfen. Auf Konfigurationsebene bei MB ('level 7': GROUNDING/FACT 1 /strong position/17-18—evaluative—EXPANDING/?ACT2/conRrmation by elections/ 18-19) fällt ein sehr hoher Komplexitätsgrad (0,81) auf, der allerdings auch durch das - in dieser Konfiguration zufällige - Auftreten des Akronyms "ERM" bedingt ist, da es als exophorische Proform und bei den verblosen Teilsätzen bzw. Wortbildungskonstruktionen wesentlich zum Komplexitätsgrad beiträgt. Diese Tatsache könnte auch erklären, warum der Komplexitätsgrad vom linken Teildiskurs, wo "ERM" auftritt, nach rechts fallend ist (0,86: 0,73). Erwähnenswert ist die Verteilung der Textwortnetze. ¡Labour! ist nur im ersten (linken) Teildiskurs vertreten (als "Labour", "its"), ¡election! nur im zweiten ("real elections of every kind", "local", "parliamentary", "European"); sie tragen sowohl zur Begrenzung der beiden Teildiskurse als auch zum Ausdruck der 'meaning relation' und des 'turn-taking' bei (vgl. unten). Das Textwortnetz ¡position! tritt in beiden Teilen auf ("strong position", "lead (stretching back)", "confirm the pattern"); dies gilt auch für das Wortnetz ¡attitude! (vgl. "undoubtedly", "enviably (strong)", "solidly (confirm)"). Beide Textwortnetze realisieren vorrangig den Zusammenhang zwischen den Teildiskursen sowie die 'meaning relation' und das 'turn-taking', ¡attitude! hat die besondere Funktion, die Position des Kommentators in beiden Teildiskursen zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Die 'evaluative meaning relation' wird ohne explizites Bindemittel realisiert. Aus grammatischer Sicht sind in diesem Rahmen der Satztyp (in beiden Fällen 'declarative') und 'present tense' hervorzuheben. Lexikalisch wird die 'evaluative relation' besonders durch "real elections" und "confirm (the pattern)" als Teil der Textwortnetze signalisiert, "real (elections)" ist vor dem Hintergrund von "Labour is undoubtedly in an enviably strong position" auch ein sprachliches Mittel, das 'turn-taking' in der Schrittfolge des Diskurses anzeigt. In der Argumentation wird eine neue Stufe angekündigt. Das zeigt, daß dieses ursprünglich für den mündlichen dialogischen Diskurs beschriebene Merkmal auf den schriftlichen Diskurs anwendbar ist und dessen sog. monologischen Charakter ebenfalls widerlegt. Die beiden hier vorgestellten Analysen konnten nur Teile der Probleme berühren, die bei der Entwicklung eines integrativen Beschreibungsverfahrens englischer Diskurse zu lösen sind. Andere (wie etwa die Behandlung sprech-

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sprachlicher Eigenschaften von Diskursen oder die Integration nicht-verbaler Mittel und weitere Fragestellungen) wurden hier nicht behandelt. Dennoch zeigen die diskutierten Lösungsansätze dem Diskurslinguisten, der sich der Arbeit und den Denkanstößen von Gottfried Graustein verpflichtet fühlt, eine optimistische Perspektive. In diesem Kontext hat Tony Blair doch mehr mit dem Gärtner zu tun, als man auf den ersten Blick vermuten könnte.

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Thiele, W. (1995): "An Approach to the Integrated Analysis of Argumentative English Discourses". In: Riehle, W./Keiper, H. (eds.): Anglistentag 1994 Graz. Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 513-529 Thiele, W. (1996a): "Communication Culture in Argumentation - Text Structures in English, German and Russian". In: Drescher, H.W./Hagemann, S. (eds.): Scotland to Slovenia: European Identities and Transcultural Communication. Proceedings of the Fourth International Scottish Studies Symposium. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 247-258 Thiele, W. (1996b): "Diskurseigenschaften geschriebener englischer Kommentare". In: Beier, R (ed.): Festschrift für Günter Weise. Frankfürt a.M.: Lang, 217-225 Thiele, W./Sperber, W. (1995): "A Linguistic Analysis of an English Business Negotiation". In: Salnikow, N. (ed.): Sprachtransfer - Kulturtransfer. Text, Kontext und Translation. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 147-167 Viehweger, D. (1987): Olokutionswissen und Illokutionsstrukturen". In: Rosengren, I. (ed.): Sprache und Pragmatik. Lunder Symposium 1986. Stockholm, 47-56 Watts, RJ. (1994): "Diskursanalyse in Großbritannien". In: Ehlich, K. (ed.): Diskursanalyse in Europa. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 41-61 Werlich, W. ( 2 1983): A Text Grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer Widdowson, H.G. (1979): Explorations in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Anhang: Beispieldiskurse 1.GA 1 2

A: Did the gardener water my hydrangeas? B: He said so. (Source: Halliday/Hasan 1976: 14)

2. MB

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Mr Blair returns to the real world Tony Blair ought to have mixed feelings about this morning's Guardinan/ICM polL The sobering news for the Labour leader is that the honeymoon may be over. His party's lead has fallen by a third on the adjusted figures which ICM uses to allow for the proven reluctance of voters to admit to supporting unpopular parties, in this case the Conservatives. Other unadjusted polls, notably the Daily Telegraph/Gallup surveys, have recently shown an astronomic 34.5 per cent Labour lead; our new poll puts the unadjusted figure at 24 per cent - and the adjusted at 12, the lowest level since John Smith's death. The good news - relatively - is that the figures powerfully support Mr Blair's own conviction that Labour has still much to do to win the next general election. No Labour politician may be more attractive to the voters, but none is less complacent about his party's task. Even before today's poll, Mr Blair had been planning to warn

Was hat Tony Blair mit dem Gärtner zu tun?

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the Shadow Cabinet today against complacency. These ICM findings make his case for him. Political professionals are deeply aware that the topline message of current polls may mask a more fluid state of public opinion. Labour is undoubtedly in an enviably strong position, its lead stretching back two years to the ERM crisis of autumn 1992. Real elections of every kind since then - local, parliamentary and European solidly confirm the pattern. Yet the results of more probing research show that the next election still rests on the decisions of uncommitted floating voters. Labour's private polls confirm that the party has not yet consolidated its grip here, in spite of massive Government unpopularity. Conservative private polls among "focus groups" of disaffected Tory voters show the same thing. Many of these voters remain committed to Conservative values, for instance on law and order and taxation, but are angry about the Government's poor performance in practice and are more impressed by results than rhetoric. Conservative strategists think these voters are "recoverable". This poll confirms that belief What explains the falling-off of the Labour support? Perhaps we are now embarked on a more serious phase of the political cycle all around. Perhaps people have begun to think more critically about Mr Blair as a possible prime minister. But don't underestimate the obvious - first that the economic indicators point inexorably, though with the occasional blip, towards a recovery in which people may now be starting to have confidence; second, that people may feel better disposed to John Major as a result of the IRA ceasefire; and, third, that a poll taken at the end of TUC week is still doomed to bring bad news of Labour. Whichever combination of reasons is ultimately the most convincing, the new poll is a sign that the political battle is on again for reaL Everyone's actions, not least Mr Ashdown's call this morning for progressive anti-Conservative thinking, have continuing relevance in this unfolding drama. (Source: The Guardian, 15th September, 1994)

Christian Todenhagen {Chicó) Reading a Disney comics story as suture Whoever is interested in language and meaning soon finds out that traditional semantics is built on too narrow a foundation. This is true, for example, when one wants to account for the construction expressed by a series of pictures (panels) making up a comics story. J. Lacan's interpretation and elaboration of the structuralist sign and his determination of its central role in human cognitive development and cognition provide the expanded basis on which such reading comprehension can be explained. It furnishes the concept of 'suture' as a cognitive strategy to create chains of signification and allows the panels of a comics story to be interpreted as signs which function within a narrative schema. Lacan (1978: 117-118) in his discussion of "What is a Picture?" used the term 'suture' twice to explain the relationship between a gesture and the moment of seeing it. He was most revealing in his second mention when he put the term in the context of the imaginary and symbolic. He states that the "moment of seeing can intervene only as a suture, a conjunction of the imaginary and the symbolic". The imaginary and the symbolic are two cognitive registers fundamental to human development and being. The imaginary is driven by the infant's desire to control her/his environment which at this stage of physiological prematuration s/he can only achieve through identification. At the point of transition to the symbolic the infant is able to pull together, stabilize fragmentary, fleeting impressions into a totality, in particular by seeing her/himself reflected as a totality in the mother. The infant thus becomes a subject as reflection, as a signifier. The totality which the reflection represents - the signified - stays behind, slides under the signifier. The subject's experience of the gap between the signified and the signifier and the desire to overcome, close it become the driving force of his or her cognitive development. The subject tries to satisfy this desire by using the symbolic power which s/he has gained with the signifier. Because the signifier can only represent, it can grant satisfaction only in an illusory way by substitution and displacement. The linguistic environment in which the notion 'suture' operates is thus marked by the key terms 'identification', 'totality', 'desire' and 'gap'. Subjects can only suture the gap between themselves and the other by separating themselves from the phenomenal world and entering the symbolic order of language. They can do this because the symbolic system they are born into contains a stand-in, the pronoun /. This pronoun has no stable referent and sense like the noun table, for example. Its signified is activated only in discourse and then only in relation to a

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specific subject. It is through this / that human subjects can build representations of themselves and for themselves. Further clarification of the term 'suture' is provided by Miller (1977: 25-24) for whom "Suture names the relation of the subject to the chain of discourse; it figures as the element which is lacking, in the form of a stand-in". This statement develops Lacan's conviction that human beings at a very early age find out that they cannot find their individual selves within their own organic beings. Parallel to the child's experience of oneness in his or her reflection in the mother, the child as individual - in Lacan's famous illustration - finds his or her identity in the reflection in (by) the mirror. The child rejoices at this specular object of coherence and originality but soon notices again that that object of identification is external to him/herself. Given the specular nature of their experience of their emerging identities, human beings will forever seek their images in the external images and the gaze of others. In the act of speaking the I of the utterance immediately splits up into the 'speaking subject', the I of the physical being, and the 'subject of speech' (Benveniste 1971: 218), the ideal image which speaking subjects regard as their own selves. The gap between the two subjects is sutured by the common signifier The human subjects so constituting themselves are forced into a totally different role when they read a comics story, for example. They no longer create the utterances which contain the pronoun I. Fictional characters speak and refer to themselves as fictionally constituted entities. As viewers and readers human subjects now occupy the position of'spoken subjects'. The problem confronting spoken subjects at this juncture is how they can gain access to the chain of signification no longer created by themselves and of which they are no longer a part. To close the gap, 'spoken subjects' have to suture the gap between themselves and the comics' characters. The success of this operation depends on the spoken subjects' willingness to let the fictional characters stand-in for themselves and their ability to identify with the gaze of the fictional characters letting these figures define what they themselves see. In this way 'spoken subjects' create for themselves the illusion that they act again as 'speaking subjects' engaged in different signifying representations of the subjects of speech. It is through this kind of change of gaze that the individual panels of a comics story will merge into signifier and signified and become signs for the reader. In the first of the following two panels (Cartoon 1), readers will identify with the nephews' gaze. This identification will bring them into the panel as the speaking subjects and subjects of speech. They are in control of everything there is to control. This impression is, however, quickly challenged as there are a number of clues that the picture is incomplete, that there is more to see. For example,

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the nephews are running towards a person or place to which their gaze is directed. They are calling for Uncle Donald and announce that a letter has arrived. The indefinite article "a" in "a letter" conspicuously contrasts with the definite article of "the War Surplus Department" signaling that more information on the letter will be forthcoming. Clearly, the reader wants to see Uncle Donald and hear more about the letter. Cartoon 1 :

This information is lacking from the first panel. To regain the lost sense of fullness the reader moves to the second panel and comes to identify with Donald Duck. The moment this is done, the first panel begins to function as a pointer to the missing information, the pointer to the missing complement that reconstructs the illusion of the whole. The second panel with Donald Duck supplies this missing information so that panel one and panel two are sutured for a brief moment into a sign, panel one being the signifier and panel two the signified. This new sign is comparable to other signs, for example a linguistic one, a word. The connection between signifier and signified here, too, is not totally arbitrary but rather based on some fundamental meaning relationship. Schwarz (1973: 426) used the sign fly to illustrate that the sequence of sounds of signifiers can express a certain 'AufschluBwert', a hint opening up their meaning. In particular, in the case of fly the signifier suggests that this sign refers to an animal which can fly. Its signified, however, is far more informative. The speaker or hearer knows much more about flies than that they can fly. Similarly the first panel of the comics strip as signifier is related meaningfully to the second one as signified. The first panel points to the second panel as the one from which the reader expects full information. The new information in panel two refers to the letter. Donald Duck's words are. "It must be to tell me ." He is not certain, and this panel in turn is revealed as a signifier for the next one whose signified will provide additional information on

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the letter. The sequence of panels in the comics story thus illustrates Peirce's concept of the endless commutability of signs. 'Spoken subjects' do not just have to recognize comics panels as signs. That is only the first step to making sense of them. They have to engage in a second one which is to determine their function in a sequence. Words in a sequence combine to form sentences and texts. Similarly signs of a comics story combine into larger units on the basis of specific roles they play, and the suturing operation must take place on different levels at once. Only after 'spoken subjects' have identified these units can they turn the original sequence of panels into a signifying totality. Two major questions pose themselves here: First, how does the 'spoken subject' determine the sequence of signs in their function? Secondly, what kind of knowledge does the 'spoken subject' depend on? One way to receive an answer may be to observe 'spoken subjects' in the process of creating meaning. If the verbal utterances in a comics episode are removed and the 'spoken subjects' are given the freedom to reconstruct the utterances as they see fit, then their suturing efforts will be reflected in the verbal code and reveal the spoken subject's technique for assigning roles and establishing relations. The author asked 100 students to be 'spoken subjects' in a modest experiment and read pages one and two of Donald Duck in Volcano Valley (Barks). All of them were then shown page three (shown p. 281 in full) with all of the bubbles whited out with these exceptions: One group of fifty students was given the first panel fully intact and another group of fifty students was provided with the first two panels of page three unaltered. In this way the first group of subjects knew what narrative task was involved. Donald Duck was not about to tell a joke or to promote a product but to engage in a dialogue. The second group received an additional second panel unchanged because domain specific knowledge might play a role in assigning functions to sequences of signs. Thus for the last group it was quite clear that they were moving cognitively in a buying and selling frame. The result of the experiment was the following: 49 of the 100 students constructed page three as a single, complete buying and selling episode in which Donald Duck refused the offer of a potential buyer. Here is a representative example: Panel 2: Senor Duck, I will buy the plane from you for $ 5.50. No? Panel 3: Wow! That is a $ 3 profit. Panel 4: You can't sell it! We've waited weeks for our plane! Panel 5: Uncle Donald, please don't sell our bomber to him! Panel 6: Senor, I just can't sell the plane for $ 5.50. Panel 7: Si, Senor Duck, I understand. No problem. Panel 8: You can't blame a guy for trying.

Reading a Disney comics story as suture

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