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Spoken Language Pragmatics
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Also available from Continuum
Conversation in Context
Christoph Ruhlemann
Culturally Speaking: Second Edition
Edited by Helen Spencer-Oatey
How to Analyze Talk in Institutional Settings
Edited by Alec McHoul and Mark Rapley
Spoken Discourse
Helen de Silva Joyce and Diana Slade
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Spoken Language Pragmatics
An analysis of form–function relations
Edited by Regina Weinert
Language Pragmatics
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Continuum
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© Regina Weinert and Contributors 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
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In Erinnerung an meine Mutter, Gerda Weinert
B
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Contents
Preface
ix
Contributors
xi
Introduction
xiii
1 Demonstrative and personal pronouns in formal and
informal conversations
Regina Weinert
1
2 Grammatical past time reference in spontaneously produced
language
Torsten Müller
29
3 The structure and function of wenn-clauses and their role in
problem-solving discourse
Regina Weinert
60
4 The relationship between deixis and modality
Regina Weinert
5 Modal particles and emotion
Natalie Braber
94
128
6 Speech rate, time pressure and emotion in English and
German football commentary
Torsten Müller and Robert Mayr
160
7 Multivoicedness and artistic reformulations in directingconversations
Andrea Milde
182
8 Intercultural positioning: tandem conversations about
word meaning
Jane Woodin
208
Index
239
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Preface
The impetus for this volume has come from stimulating discussions with the
contributors which brought out the diversity of spoken language production as
well as our common understanding of the social significance of spoken communication and speakers’ linguistic achievements. The work presented here has
arisen out of individual and collaborative research in which the University of
Sheffield has played a central role. The completion of the manuscript has been
supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Award Number RB 111807. I would like
to thank Roel Vismans for providing valuable and incisive feedback on the
manuscript; Torsten Müller for giving generously of his time to comment on
and proof-read chapters 1, 3 and 4, and Jennifer Lovel and Anya Wilson of
Continuum for their encouragement and expert guidance which brought this
project to a successful conclusion.
Regina Weinert
Sheffield, December 2006
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Contributors
Natalie Braber is Lecturer in Linguistics at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her
main research interests are language and identity, emotion in language, language
acquisition, and psycholinguistics, particularly aphasia.
Robert Mayr is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Wales Institute,
Cardiff, UK. His main research interests are second-language speech, L2
phonology, and prosodic aspects of spoken-language processing.
Andrea Milde is Assistant Professor in German at Wenzao College of Languages,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her main research interests are discourse analysis, art and
language, directing, text production, especially of spoken language, and intercultural communication.
Torsten Müller is Lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield, UK. His main
research interests are the syntax of spoken German and English, psycholinguistic aspects of spoken discourse, and the influence of extra-linguistic events on
language production.
Regina Weinert is Senior Lecturer in Germanic Linguistics at the University of
Sheffield, UK. Her main research interests are syntax, discourse and pragmatics,
especially of spoken language, the nature of linguistic generalizations, and
language acquisition.
Jane Woodin is Senior Tutor in Languages and Intercultural Communication at
the University of Sheffield, UK. Her main research interests are language and
culture, analysis of intercultural encounters, language acquisition, and intercultural education.
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Introduction
The eight chapters in this volume provide fine-grained analyses of form–function
relations in spontaneous spoken language and are essentially discourse-pragmatic
investigations. Some studies focus on specific linguistic devices, others take as
their starting point informational levels or language-external events, and the final
two place speakers and their roles at the centre of the analysis. The data includes
everyday conversations, academic consultations, football commentaries, taskbased dialogues, interviews, radio play productions and intercultural conversations. The volume draws attention to the varied nature of spontaneous spoken
language, highlighting the need to develop data-sensitive methodology and
analysis which then nevertheless have implications for wider theoretical and
empirical issues.
Regina Weinert opens this volume with an account of pronoun use in German,
comparing third person demonstrative and personal pronouns in formal and
informal conversations. The role of demonstratives has hitherto been underestimated and they have often been considered as indicative of ‘colloquial’ speech.
The analysis of two sets of data reveals that both demonstrative and personal
pronouns are central to spoken language discourse cohesion and that, contrary
to expectations, demonstratives outnumber personal pronouns in formal
discourse. The chapter embeds the analysis of pronouns in a discussion of
wider theoretical concepts such as topicality, information status and salience, and
examines the potential social significance of pronoun use. Analysis of the distribution and functions of the two pronoun classes thus raises questions regarding
the nature of anaphora and topic development on an informational level, as well
as demonstrating the potential contribution of interpersonal factors to pronoun
choice.
The question at the heart of Torsten Müller’s study is: how do proximity to and
distance from the present moment influence the choice of grammatical past time
marking in spontaneously produced spoken language? He shows that in German
live radio football commentary the temporal distance between extra-linguistic
event and linguistic reference to it has a strong influence on whether a Präteritum
or Perfekt form is used. Furthermore, this time factor appears to allow ablauting
Präteritum forms which in everyday German are often considered unusual.
Temporal distance seems to have no effect on the choice of past tense vs present
perfect in English language commentaries. In addition, the present perfect seems
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to be surprisingly stative in this text type. The commentators’ choices therefore
call into question established views of what English and German time reference
forms express. The methodology adopted in this study and its results have
implications for our understanding of the functional distribution of various
means of past time reference.
Regina Weinert follows with an investigation of adverbial wenn-clauses – the
most frequent adverbial clause in spoken German – which takes a two-pronged
approach. It first presents an overview of wenn-clause constructions and their
semantic and discourse-pragmatic functions. Wenn-clauses fall into broad structural categories, including integrated, deictically linked, unintegrated and
independent clauses, the first two being associated with semantic relations, the
latter two with discourse-pragmatic functions. The second part of the chapter
then explores the use of wenn-clauses from the perspective of their larger
discourse roles in problem-solving tasks. The analysis shows that wenn-clauses
adhere to typical spoken language structure and complexity in that most are
syntactically relatively independent. Their success can be explained in terms of
structural and functional versatility, arising out of their potential to be used as
temporal, conditional and situational frames. The study also underlines that
discourse context contributes centrally to form–function relationships and that
certain tasks can result in a division of labour among structures.
The relationship between deixis and modality is the subject of Regina Weinert’s
next chapter. It examines the deictic, non-deictic and modal uses of the German
spatial deictic da. The study begins with a general discussion of subjectivity, deixis
and modality, outlines the functional and formal characteristics of German
modal particles and discusses evidence of non-deictic and modal uses of demonstratives and temporal deictics in German and other languages. It then provides
a comprehensive analysis of da, which includes comparison with alternative
linguistic sets in order to test if, in a particular context, it is aligned with
objective, referential expressions or with markers of subjectivity. In many cases
analysis of individual occurrences of da in isolation, even in their discourse
context, does not do justice to their role and the modal aspect is revealed on the
basis of extensive discourse sections. While da has important functions as a
deictic and is not (yet) a modal particle, there would appear to be evidence of
modal functions in terms of epistemic status, attitude and affect.
Natalie Braber continues this theme with an exploration of the relationship
between emotion and language with respect to the use of modal particles in
German. Eben, halt and eigentlich are examined in a corpus of conversations
with former East and West Berliners discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall and
German unification. These interviews show that the events were highly emotional
for one side, but much less so for the other. Rather than establishing a distinction
between these groups of speakers, however, the focus of interest is on whether
a particular function of speech can reflect a particular usage of modal particles.
The main question is whether there is a correlation between the increased use
of modal particles and the speakers’ emotional states. Eben/halt and eigentlich
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xv
both occur frequently in the spoken accounts, but rarely together or in the same
discourse sections. Eben/halt are associated with particularly emotional contexts,
whereas eigentlich appears to be used more as a narrative device and in more
distanced accounts. The use of eigentlich in particular goes beyond the functions
which have been observed in previous research.
The influence of informational levels and emotion on the prosodic structure of
utterances is investigated by Torsten Müller and Robert Mayr. Utterances
referring to events in English and German football games that take place at the
moment of speaking (i.e. on-line references), utterances that are less dependent
on the immediate deictic context (i.e. off-line references) and utterances which
do not directly refer to events in the game are compared in terms of speech rate
and fundamental frequency. The results show a complex relationship between
event type, speech rate and syntactic complexity, whereby the time pressure under
which on-line utterances are produced can be neutralized by use of simple
syntax which thus obviates the need for a high speech rate. Compared with utterances which do not report events of the game, on-line and off-line reference are
characterized by information that is conveyed at a high fundamental frequency.
This can cut across these two informational levels and is interpreted as being a
result of the commentators’ emotional involvement in, and the perceived significance of, the events described. The methodology used in this chapter can in
principle be adapted to study the role of time pressure, informational content
and emotion on prosody in other contexts.
The final two chapters place speakers and the roles they adopt in talk at the
centre of their analysis. Andrea Milde’s work deals with artistic task-oriented
spoken communication between directors and actors in radio play productions. The interactive situation of the directing-conversations (Regiegespräche
in German) makes the communication partners reveal multiple voices, as they
have to act, reformulate and repeat the text in a collaborative way, with the
director as the leading responsible person. The phenomenon of multivoicedness
occurs particularly in the speech of directors, as they often quickly shift back and
forth between their own voice, the actor’s or the character’s voice in order to
demonstrate what they want the actor to do with the text, as well as having to
deal with different members of the production team. While all forms of directing
conversations, including those in film, theatre or opera productions, involve
multivoicedness, radio play productions create a rich (possibly the richest)
ground for their manifestations since communication – mainly carried out in
separate rooms by using microphone – mostly takes place in an exclusively
spoken manner. The study demonstrates how the director reformulates the
acting versions carried out by the actors, how artistic spoken reformulations can
be characterized, and finally, how multivoicedness is revealed in his/her working
process.
In the final chapter Jane Woodin adds an intercultural dimension in her exploration of the positioning of participants in dyadic native–non-native speaker
conversations. Tandem learners – native speakers of Spanish and of English –
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discuss the meaning of a given word in a semi-structured conversation. Through
this discussion, interlocutors adopt a variety of positions. At some points they
make distinctions between their own and their partner’s meaning. These are
realized through the use of ‘I’, ‘you’ or indeed language/country distinction
(English/Spanish, UK/Spain). At other points personal or intercultural differences
are not highlighted and convergence of perspectives is evident. Still other points
reveal evidence of the adoption of one’s partner’s perspective by the other, as
opposed to a joint perspective of the meaning. Attention is drawn to the points
in the conversation where positioning, or movement between positions, is
evident and how these are marked linguistically and strategically (for example
through turn-taking, repetition etc.). The study examines the implications of its
findings for our understanding of intercultural encounters, especially with
regard to ownership of meaning by native/non-native speakers, and questions
the role of the native speaker as a model for intercultural competence.
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1 Demonstrative and personal pronouns in formal
and informal conversations
Regina Weinert
1 Introduction
Pronouns account for a large bulk of noun phrases in spontaneous spoken
language, at least in languages like German and English which have a lower rate
of zero NPs than Russian, for instance. Figures range from just below 40 per cent
to well over 50 per cent, including first and second person pronouns, compared
with under 5 per cent for certain newspaper texts, for instance (Miller and Weinert
1998). This chapter examines the distribution of third person demonstrative vs
personal pronouns in German. The standard forms are given in Tables 1.1 and 1.2.
Table 1.1 Personal pronouns in German
case
nom
gen
dat
acc
singular
masculine
er
seiner
ihm
ihn
feminine
sie
ihrer
ihr
sie
neuter
es
seiner
ihm
es
plural
m/f/n
sie
ihrer
ihnen
sie
Table 1.2 Demonstrative pronouns in German
case
nom
gen
dat
acc
singular
masculine
der
dessen
dem
den
feminine
die
deren
der
die
neuter
das
dessen
dem
das
plural
m/f/n
die
deren/derer
denen
die
The main focus is on the group of singular masculine, singular feminine and
plural pronouns which refer to noun phrases or entities. Neuter pronouns
frequently refer to clauses and discourse sections, commonly labelled discourse
deixis, and they will be treated separately. The literature on pronoun resolution
and anaphora has identified a wide range of factors affecting the nature of
referring expressions (e.g. Givón 1984; Fox 1987; Fox 1996), including
topicality, recency, salience, information structure, discourse structure, focus of
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attention, interactional dimensions and speaker attitude. These factors will be
invoked selectively in the analysis of demonstratives and personal pronouns in
German in order to show that in the spoken data they have complementary roles
and at least equal status. The role of demonstratives in particular has generally
been underestimated.
The relative distribution of the two classes of pronouns has to date not been
examined extensively. Grammars of German have suggested that demonstratives are more frequent in informal talk and are colloquial, stylistically marked
or indicate emphasis (Duden 2005). Weinrich (1993, 2003), in contrast to
Durrell (2002), does not consider demonstratives non-standard (or substandard
in Durrell’s terms), arguing that such a view does not reflect actual language
use where clear functional differences exist which would make personal
pronoun use ungrammatical in some cases. For instance, in the exophoric
context of having to decide which road to take, a speaker might say ich glaube
die muss ich jetzt nehmen (‘I think that’s the one I have to take’) where a
personal pronoun would not be appropriate. Weinrich suggests that personal
pronouns are used for thematic, known and unmarked referents whereas
demonstratives refer to rhematic, known, marked entities. He also notes that
in everyday conversations demonstratives are especially frequent in clause
initial position where the close proximity to the rhematic referent guarantees
that it remains the focus of attention. He states that in spoken language such
rhematic reference is more common than in other text types, but that generally
thematic reference predominates. He explains this in terms of the marked
status of rhematic demonstratives, i.e. highlighting devices need to be used more
sparingly to maintain their marked function. Similarly, Zifonun et al (1997)
suggest that the antecedent of a personal pronoun is an established topic and
that of a demonstrative pronoun part of the rheme or in contrast with other
topics. Empirical investigation of these claims and other factors which may
influence pronoun choices in German are relatively recent and infrequent.
Bosch et al (2003) found that fewer than 7 per cent of masculine pronouns in
a newspaper corpus were demonstratives compared with 80 per cent in a
spoken language corpus of appointment-scheduling dialogues. For the
newspaper texts Bosch et al (2003) and Bosch et al (in press) found a clear
complementary distribution in terms of clausal position/grammatical role in
main clauses and pronoun antecedent, discounting neuter pronouns. They
suggest that the typical demonstrative is a pre-verbal1 subject referring back to
an object NP in the preceding sentence, illustrated by (1). The typical personal
pronoun is a pre- or post-verbal subject referring back to a subject NP in the
preceding sentence, illustrated by (2) and (3) respectively. (DEM and PERS stand
for demonstrative and personal pronouns.)
(1) Helga hat den Apfelkuchen gemacht. Der ist immer ein Erfolg.
‘Helga has the applecake made. DEM-he is always a success.’
(2) Helga hat den Apfelkuchen gemacht. Sie hatte keine Kirschen.
‘Helga has the applecake made. PERS-she had no cherries.’
(3) Helga hat den Apfelkuchen gemacht. Kirschen hatte sie nicht.
‘Helga has the applecake made. Cherries had PERS-she not.’
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Bosch et al invoke Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) Accessibility Hierarchy, and
Givón’s Topicality Hierachy (1984) and Centering Theory (Grosz et al 1995).
They argue that demonstratives prefer non-topical referents, in line with these
frameworks which assume that topics are typically established by nominative
NPs. They add that the findings are consistent with the view that lower ranked
referring expressions refer to less salient entities, assuming that demonstratives
rank lower than personal pronouns and that objects are less salient than subjects.
Maslova and Bernini (in press) also argue that sentence topic remains a relevant
concept and note that there remains strong evidence for a relationship between
subjecthood and topicality. At the same time, Goldberg (2006) points out that
not only actors, which can be expressed as subjects, but also undergoers, and
hence certain objects [RW], are salient and that both occupy prominent syntactic
positions.
Kaiser and Truswell (2004) found a similar pattern for Dutch, where personal
pronouns prefer subject antecedents and where the association of object
antecedents with demonstratives is even stronger. They also found some evidence
against an exclusive role of salience since the reduced unstressed and the full,
mostly stressed personal pronouns both prefer subject antecedents. Bosch et al
(in press) comment that their findings cannot establish whether the grammatical
function of antecedents is primary or whether it is related to some other factor
correlated with it. They consider the preference for demonstratives in preverbal position as evidence against an exclusive explanation in terms of
grammatical function as there is no obvious reason why a pronoun which
prefers object antecedents should occur in pre-verbal position. Rather this
positional preference is likely to require an explanation in terms of information
structure. The analysis of the spoken data will reveal that the nature of the
pronouns and the nature of their antecedents can indeed be integrated into an
account of information structure. It will also question the non-salience of
demonstrative antecedents.
Bosch et al (in press) show very clear complementary patterns for their written
corpus. Yet in the newspaper texts which they examined demonstratives are
vastly outnumbered by personal pronouns (7 per cent vs 93 per cent). This raises
the questions as to whether an explanation in tems of global genre or possibly
textual dimensions (e.g. Biber 1990) needs to be incorporated into an account
of the distinction between demonstratives and personal pronouns. Bosch et al
(2003) comment, for instance, that newspaper texts are characterized by topic
continuity. In addition, what is also needed is an account of these two classes
of pronouns in corpora where demonstratives are much more frequent, e.g. in
spoken language. The appointment-scheduling dialogues in Bosch et al (in
press) not only showed an increased frequency in demonstratives but a nearreversal with 80 per cent of all masculine pronouns being demonstratives.
This chapter examines two sets of spontaneous spoken data, informal
conversations and formal academic consultations. It examines the following
questions:
1. How frequent are demonstratives compared with personal pronouns? Is there a difference
between masculine, feminine and plural pronouns vs neuter pronouns (section 3.1)? What
is the proportion of discourse deictic neuter pronouns (section 3.1.1)?
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2. Does formality affect the frequency of demonstrative pronouns, especially of masculine,
feminine and plural pronouns and in the case of human referents (sections 3.1, 3.1.2 and
3.1.3)?
3. To what extent does clausal position, i.e. pre-verbal vs post-verbal, affect pronoun
choice (section 3.2)?
4. Is there a relationship between clausal position and the grammatical function of pronouns
in pronoun choice (section 3.2)?
5. What are typical pronoun antecedents? Do topicality, givenness and salience of
antecedents play a role in pronoun choice (section 3.3)?
6. What is the nature of pronoun chains and what role do information structure, discoursestructure and involvement play (section 3.4)?
This chapter is not concerned with establishing statistically significant differences
between text types or pronoun classes but with demonstrating qualitative differences in pronoun use in spoken language, using frequencies as evidence. It
focuses on some strong tendencies in the distribution of the two sets of pronouns
and underlines the need for further analysis of topic development in more
extended discourse sections. The findings raise questions regarding the
grammatical status of certain pronoun choices, the discourse-pragmatic functions
of pronouns and their personal and social roles.
2 The data
Two data sets are used in this study: everyday conversations and academic
consultations, consisting of ca 32,000 words and 18 conversations each.2
Speakers represent north, east, central and south-west Germany. Speakers in the
conversations come from a variety of social backgrounds. The academic consultations involve students and lecturers. The informal vs formal distinction is clearcut along a number of dimensions. In the informal conversations speakers know
each other, they are friends or family, they address each other with informal
du/ihr and they talk as equals about everyday topics in familiar, informal
surroundings. In the formal academic consultations the speakers hardly know
each other or know each other only through the academic context. One is a
lecturer, the other a student, and they address each other with formal sie and talk
about the student’s work or general academic matters with the lecturer in a
position of authority in his or her university office.
Most of the informal and formal conversations involve two speakers, but some
of the conversational data includes three or four. Some informal telephone
conversations are also included, with two-thirds of the conversations and all the
academic consultations being face-to-face. The effect on pronoun choice of
number of speakers and conversational medium is not central but will be
discussed where relevant.
Excluded from the main analysis are constructions where demonstratives are
largely obligatory, such as intonationally and informationally integrated NP +
clause constructions, e.g. der wind der ist kalt (‘the wind it is cold’);3 demonstrative + NP, e.g. die vom markt (‘the ones from the market’) and verb-second
post-modifying clauses, e.g. ich kenn leute die machen das schon jahre (‘I know
people who have been doing it for years’).4 All variants of the pronouns were
included, such as regional forms (e.g. das, dat, det, dit, dis) as well as phonological reductions (e.g. es, s).
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5
The conversations contain ca 25 masculine, feminine and plural pronouns per
1,000 words, ca 800 overall, and 20 neuter pronouns per 1,000 words, ca 600
overall. The academic consultations contain just below 7 masculine, feminine
and plural pronouns per 1,000 words, 205 overall. They contain ca 28 neuter
pronouns per 1,000 words, ca 840 overall.5 In other words, neuter pronouns
are 40 per cent more frequent in the academic consultations than in the conversations, whereas non-neuter pronouns are about four times more frequent in the
conversations than in the academic consultations. This is maybe not surprising,
given the largely factual nature of the academic data which favours reference to
clauses and discourse sections. The figure for the conversations is in stark
contrast to the newspaper corpus examined by Bosch et al (2003), who found
only 4.5 masculine, feminine and plural pronouns per 1,000 words (1,436
personal pronouns and 180 demonstratives in 355,000 words), as opposed to
25 per 1,000 words in the conversations. With 7 per 1,000 words, even the
formal academic consultations contain above 50 per cent more. Only a small
proportion of pronouns are exophoric (12 in the conversations, 4 in the academic
consultations).
3 Results and analysis
3.1 Overall frequencies of demonstrative and personal pronouns
Tables 1.3 and 1.4 provide a breakdown of personal and demonstrative
pronouns for 500 pronoun occurrences in each data set, taken from a representative subset of the conversations and academic consultations. Apart from the
structures listed in section 2, all types of syntactic units were included here such
as main clauses, subordinate clauses and units below clause level. Singular
masculine (m), singular feminine (f) and plural (pl) pronouns are treated as a
group and the neuter pronouns das/es (‘that/it’) are counted as a separate group.
The percentages should be read horizontally.
Table 1.3 Conversations: demonstrative vs personal pronouns
m+f+pl
neuter das/es
Total
demonstrative personal
147 51.75% 137 48.25%
162 75%
54 25%
309 61.8%
191 38.2%
Total
284 100%
216 100%
500 100%
Table 1.4 Academic: demonstrative vs personal pronouns
m+f+pl
neuter das/es
Total
demonstrative personal
67 67%
33 33%
325 81.25%
75 18.75%
392 78.4%
108 21.6%
Total
100 100%
400 100%
500 100%
Overall, demonstratives far outnumber personal pronouns, with 61.8 per cent
in the conversations and 78.4 per cent in the academic consultations. However,
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neuter demonstratives make up the largest proportion of these. Das accounts
for 32.4 per cent of all pronouns in the conversations (162 out of 500) and an
astonishing 65 per cent of all pronouns in the academic consultations (325 out
of 500). In fact, 80 per cent of pronouns in the academic consultations are neuter
(400 out of 500), whereas in the conversations they reach 43.3 per cent (216
out of 500).
3.1.1 Neuter pronouns
Within the group of neuter pronouns, demonstratives account for 75 per cent and
81.25 per cent in the conversations and academic consultations respectively. Most
neuter pronouns do not refer to noun phrases but to clauses and discourse
sections, or they have vague6 referents or no antecedents. For task-oriented
dialogues Eckert (1998) found that ca 50 per cent of das cases were used as
discourse deictics, i.e. to refer to discourse sections. In a sample of 100 cases each
in the conversations and the academic consultations the proportion is even
higher, reaching 89 per cent and 70 per cent respectively. In addition, in the conversations and in the academic consultations 86 per cent and 91 per cent of das cases
occur in clause-initial position respectively. Das and es are less frequent clauseinternally, where they are distributed more evenly. Due to the different functions
which neuter pronouns cover, including the personal pronoun es, they require
separate treatment and the referents of neuter pronouns will not be examined
further. They are included here because they contribute to the overall picture of
discourse cohesion in German and I will return to this general point in 3.5. Their
use in the academic consultations will also be commented on in section 3.4.
3.1.2 Masculine, feminine and plural pronouns
The proportion of demonstrative vs personal pronoun in the group of masculine,
feminine and plural pronouns is more balanced, with 51.75 per cent vs 48.25
per cent in the conversations for the sample of 284 pronouns presented in
Table 1.1. The proportion for all 205 pronouns in the academic consultations
is 65 per cent vs 35 per cent (Table 1.2 only shows 100 cases due to the large
proportion of neuter pronouns). This is somewhat unexpected, i.e. this more
formal data set has a high level of demonstratives which refer to NPs/entities.
Overall, the use of demonstratives is therefore not an indication of ‘colloquial’
language use (Duden 2005; Durrell 2002). Nor is personal pronoun reference
the norm in either data set.
3.1.3 Human referents
Masculine, feminine and plural demonstratives occur in both the informal and
formal data, indeed in the academic consultations the proportion of demonstratives to personal pronouns is higher than in the conversations. The issue of
formality might arise more clearly with human referents, especially since some
grammars suggest that it is not considered polite to refer to people with demonstratives, at least not in their presence, and that they can be used pejoratively
(Durrell 2002; Weinrich 1993, 2003).
I therefore analysed a sub-set of human referents, i.e. 200 referents in the
conversations and all 85 referents in the academic data. The results for both data
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sets are very similar. Human referents are referred to with demonstratives in 56
per cent and 56.5 per cent of cases in the conversations and the academic
consultations. In both data sets demonstratives are used to refer to people who
are known or unknown to the speakers, and to refer to friends, relatives,
colleagues or socially distant acquaintances. In the academic data both lecturers
and students refer with demonstratives to other academics and authors unknown
to them, but also to the students’ lecturers who are known to both speakers,
despite the obvious social imbalance the student is faced with. There is little
association between pronoun use and negative evaluation of the people referred
to. Overall formality does not predict where demonstratives will occur.
It is likely that speakers operate at subtle levels when referring to people,
especially in their presence. Given that only a few conversations include more
than two speakers, such reference is naturally rare (eight cases in the conversations) and a separate study is needed here. Weinrich (1993, 2003) attests
examples where demonstratives convey impoliteness, e.g. was die schon wieder
von mir will (‘what does she want again’) uttered by a tour guide within earshot
of a tourist who has approached her for help once too often. But a negative
attititude can be conveyed with a personal pronoun, as shown in the following
example from the conversations: du bist son weichei er heult bis heute (‘you’re
such a wimp, he is still crying’), uttered in the presence of the ‘weichei’ and other
family members, said only half in jest. In many contexts demonstratives express
positive emotions evidenced by this informally collected example: wie nett die
hat immer ne überraschung parat (‘how nice, she always has a surprise up her
sleeve’). They are also used to refer to people in formal contexts: fragen sie lieber
meinen kollegen der kennt sich besser aus (‘you’d better ask my colleague, he
knows more about this’). Only direct reference – without a preceding NP – to
a person who is present with a demonstrative or indeed personal pronoun is
highly likely to be considered impolite, e.g. wo finde ich kalender – der zeigt
ihnen das (‘where do I find calendars – he will show you’). Otherwise demonstratives can be associated with attitude and involvement, but not formality per
se. The issue of involvement will be discussed again later in 3.4. First I will
consider syntactic and discourse-pragmatic factors.
3.2 Grammatical role and clausal position
The observation that demonstratives are likely to occur in clause-initial position
(Weinrich 1993, 2003) is corroborated by Bosch et al (in press) whose study of
newspaper texts examined pre-verbal and post-verbal position of pronouns in
simple main clauses in relation to their grammatical function. 93 per cent of
demonstratives occur pre-verbally, mostly as subjects but also as objects, while
personal pronoun subjects are equally frequent in pre- and post-verbal position.
Only 0.5 per cent of post-verbal personal pronouns are objects. Bosch et al (in
press) looked at the behaviour of demonstrative and personal pronouns
separately, i.e. they looked at the group of demonstrative pronouns and
examined how many occur in pre- or post-verbal position etc. In this section I
present the distributional figures both for all third person pronouns as well as
for each pronoun class. This brings out the qualitative and quantitative differences between demonstratives and personal pronouns more clearly.7
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As in Bosch et al, only declarative main clauses were included as the pre- vs
post-verbal slot is created by the verb-second position of such clauses, e.g.
examples 1–3 in section 1. Tables 1.5 and 1.6 show the relationship between
clausal position, grammatical function and pronoun choice in the conversations
and the academic consultations. The conversations yielded 500 pronouns in main
clauses, and the academic consultations contain 150. The first column following
the set of categories shows the number of occurrences; the second column
shows the percentage of the category in relation to the total of each pronoun
class separately, i.e. to all demonstratives or all personal pronouns; the third
column shows the percentage of the category in relation to all pronouns. In other
words, the tables show what a typical demonstrative and a typical personal
pronoun is as well as what a typical pronoun is. This is crucial as it shows the
relative importance of the two pronoun classes in the data.
Table 1.5 Conversations: clausal position and grammatical function of pronouns
demonstratives
n
% dem.
pre-verbal subject
pre-verbal object
subtotal
post-verbal subject
post-verbal object
subtotal
dem. total
215
35
250
29
14
43
293
73.4
11.9
85.3
9.9
4.8
14.7
100
% all
personal pronouns
pronouns
43
7
50
5.8
2.8
8.6
58.6
pre-verbal subject
pre-verbal object
subtotal
post-verbal subject
post-verbal object
subtotal
pers. total
n
% pers.
60
3
63
117
27
144
207
29
1.5
30.5
56.5
13
69.5
100
% all
pronouns
12
0.6
12.6
23.4
5.4
28.8
41.4
Table 1.6 Academic consultations: clausal position and grammatical function
of pronouns
demonstratives
n
pre-verbal subject
pre-verbal object
subtotal
post-verbal subject
post-verbal object
subtotal
dem. total
71
10
81
5
8
13
94
% dem.
75.53
10.64
86.17
5.32
8.51
13.83
100
% all
personal pronouns
pronouns
n
47.33
6.66
54
3.33
5.33
8.66
62.66
29
1
30
14
12
26
56
pre-verbal subject
pre-verbal object
subtotal
post-verbal subject
post-verbal object
subtotal
pers. total
% pers.
% all
pronouns
51.8
1.8
53.6
25
21.4
46.4
100
19.33
0.66
20
9.33
8
17.33
37.33
In order to provide an overview, I have entered all positional and grammatical
categories for both pronoun classes in one table for each data set. Subtotals
for pre- and post-verbal position are also given for each pronoun class. Not
all possible percentage comparisons are indicated as this would be confusing.
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The main trends which emerge from Tables 1.5 and 1.6 are summarized in
3.2.1 and 3.2.2 below, where in each cases the relevant figures are given. The
object pronouns are mostly accusatives with ca 6 per cent datives and genitives.
3.2.1 Conversations: clausal position and grammatical function of pronouns
The following strong tendencies emerge for informal, everyday conversations:
1. In main clauses 58.6 per cent (293) of all pronouns are demonstratives, 41.4 per cent
(207) are personal pronouns.
2. 62.6 per cent (313 of 500) of all pronouns in main clauses occur in pre-verbal position.
3. 84.2 per cent (421 of 500) of all pronouns in main clauses function as subjects.
4. 79.9 per cent (250 of 313) of pre-verbal pronouns are demonstratives.
5. 77 per cent (144 of 187) of post-verbal pronouns are personal.
The figures confirm that both pronoun classes are strongly represented in
conversations. They also show a strong complementary tendency in terms of
clausal position. Pre-verbal positions mostly attract demonstratives, postverbal positions mostly attract personal pronouns. Overall, the single most
frequent pronoun is a pre-verbal demonstrative subject with 43 per cent. In
second place are post-verbal personal pronoun subjects with 23.4 per cent. In
third place are pre-verbal personal pronoun subjects with 12 per cent. If we
now look at the two pronoun classes separately we find, not surprisingly, that
the typical demonstrative is also a pre-verbal subject, i.e. 73.4 per cent. The
typical personal pronoun is a post-verbal subject with 56.5 per cent but the
proportion of pre-verbal personal pronoun subjects is substantial with 29 per
cent. While personal pronoun subjects may appear to be at home in both preor post-verbal position, we have to bear in mind that overall pre-verbal
personal pronoun subjects are rare, reaching only 12 per cent. Finally, in line
with Bosch et al’s (in press) findings, pre-verbal pronoun objects are virtually
non-existent (0.6 per cent in the conversations vs 0.5 per cent in their
newspaper texts).
3.2.2 Academic consultations: clausal position and grammatical function of
pronouns
The picture for the academic data is in many ways similar to that of the conversations, but there are also some clear differences.
1. In main clauses 62.66 per cent (94) of all pronouns are demonstratives, 37.33 per cent
(56) are personal pronouns. The proportion of demonstratives is slightly higher than
in the conversations where it was 58.6 per cent.
2. 74 per cent (111 of 150) of all pronouns in main clauses occur in pre-verbal position
as opposed to 62.6 per cent in the conversations.
3. 79.33 per cent (119 of 150) of all pronouns in main clauses function as subjects,
compared with the slightly higher 84.2 per cent in the conversations.
4. 72.9 per cent (81 of 111) of pre-verbal pronouns are demonstratives, compared with
79.9 per cent in the conversations.
5. 66.66 per cent (26 of 39) of post-verbal pronouns are personal, compared with 77 per
cent in the conversations.
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The proportion of demonstratives and of pronouns in pre-verbal position is
even higher in the academic data than in the conversations. The single most
frequent pronoun is again a pre-verbal demonstrative subject, with 47.33 per
cent. However, post-verbal personal pronoun subjects are not in second place,
instead they account for only 9.33 per cent of pronouns (compared with
23.4 per cent in the conversations). Pre-verbal personal pronoun subjects
reach 19.33 per cent and are the second most common type of pronoun in this
data. This means that demonstratives are very similar in the two data sets, i.e.
73.4 per cent and 75.53 per cent are pre-verbal subjects. For personal
pronouns the picture is almost reversed with more than twice as many preverbal subjects than post-verbal subjects in the academic consultations.8 Preverbal pronoun objects are again virtually non-existent.
3.2.3 Summary: clausal position, grammatical function and pronoun choice
The typical pronoun in a main clause is a subject, whether this is a demonstrative or a personal pronoun. Overall in main clauses, demonstratives are
slightly more frequent than personal pronouns. In the academic consultations
a pronoun is almost three times more likely to be pre-verbal than post-verbal.
The single most frequent pronoun type in both the conversations and the
academic consultations is a pre-verbal demonstrative subject. Pronouns show
a strong complementary distribution in both data sets: demonstrative pronouns
dominate the pre-verbal position with 79.9 per cent/72.9 per cent and personal
pronouns dominate in post-verbal position with 77 per cent in the conversations but a less pronounced 66.66 per cent in the academic consultations. If
we only look at pre-verbal subjects, we find that 78.8 per cent (215 of 275)
in the conversations and 71 per cent (71 of 100) in the academic consultations
are demonstratives. If we look only at post-verbal-subjects, we find 80 per cent
(117 of 146) in the conversations and 73.8 per cent (14 of 19) in the academic
consultations are personal pronouns. A certain amount of overlap exists
among demonstratives and personal pronouns as post-verbal objects, but
personal pronouns dominate with 60 per cent/66 per cent (27 out of 41 and
12 out of 18). Pre-verbal personal pronoun objects are virtually absent.
The figures for demonstratives are remarkably uniform across the two data
sets, with 85.3 per cent/86.17 per cent being pre-verbal, 73.4 per cent/75.53
per cent being pre-verbal subjects and 43 per cent/47.33 per cent of all
pronouns being pre-verbal demonstrative subjects. The first two sets of figures
are also consistent with the newspaper data in Bosch et al (in press), who found
that 93 per cent of demonstratives are pre-verbal and 70 per cent are pre-verbal
subjects. Personal pronouns also show some clear tendencies but the picture
is more varied, and contrasts with Bosch et al (in press) who found an equal
distribution of pre- and post-verbal subjects. In the conversations the ratio is
close to 1:2, in the academic consultations 2:1.
A clear difference from the newspaper texts in Bosch et al (in press) can
therefore be observed, where personal pronouns dominate and pre-verbal
personal pronoun subjects are common. Broadly, in the spoken data demonstratives prefer a salient position, i.e. in terms of functional sentence perspective
they are the theme of a clause, and personal pronouns tend to prefer a less
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salient position. In the conversations the demonstrative is close to being the
default pronoun in pre-verbal position, reaching nearly 80 per cent. Weinrich
(1993, 2003) and Zifonun et al (1997) suggest that demonstratives are marked
topics whereas personal pronouns refer to established topics. Bosch et al (in
press) speculate that demonstratives might be used for topic change. If a
demonstrative pronoun refers to a non-salient or new topic, the pre-verbal,
thematic position close to the referent would seem to be ideal for making it
salient, which is indeed what Weinrich (1993, 2003) and Zifonun et al (1997)
suggest. It could well be then that spoken language, or at least the data
examined here, is organized in a way which favours this kind of topic shift.
The choice between demonstratives and personal pronouns may therefore be
related to the topicality, givenness and salience of their antecedents, and these
will now be examined in detail.
3.3 Pronoun antecedents: topicality, givenness and salience
3.3.1 Referents
Working with spoken data raises methodological questions regarding the
definition of domains for pronoun antecedents, given that much of the literature on pronoun resolution and anaphora relies on the distinction between
sentence-internal and cross-sentence anaphora (but see Eckert and Strube
1999). Spoken language has units below clause level and no conventionally
marked-off sentence boundaries. Antecedent domains therefore need to be
defined differently. In addition, conversations include two or more speakers
and decisions have to be made regarding cross-speaker antecedent domains,
which is far from straightforward. Two speakers may be discussing a topic
while two others are talking about something else and may throw in comments
or develop the topic partially independently. Even two speakers may pursue
their own separate chains of referring expressions.
The first task then is to establish what the typical pronoun antecedents are,
ignoring for the moment the domain of speaker. By antecedent I mean the last
mention of a referent. In other words, in the sequence ‘the actor forgot his
lines, he started to sing, then he left the stage’, the first ‘he’ has an NP
antecedent, the second ‘he’ has a pronoun antecedent. The second pronoun
antecedent does, however, have an NP in its discourse history. The reason for
this definition is that pronoun use and choices need to be examined both in
terms of NP antecedents as well as in relation to pronoun chains. This
approach will become clear in the analysis throughout this section. Table 1.7
shows the proportion of different types of antecedent separately for 300
pronouns in the conversations and for 200 pronouns in the academic consultations (the remaining five could not be categorized). The categories are ‘full
noun phrase in a preceding clause’, ‘long-distance full noun phrase’ which is
more than one clause away, ‘single full noun phrase’ (but not those listed in
section 2) and ‘pronoun’ (regardless of distance). The category ‘others’ includes
cases without an individual NP antecedent in their discourse history such as
vague referents and other cases with no antecedent, and exophoric referents.
As noted above, sentences are not ready-made units in spoken language in the
way they typically are in (formal) written texts. Clauses can be identified more
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easily on the basis of subjects, verbs and objects and I therefore decided to
examine antecedent full NPs in the preceding clause rather than sentence,
whether uttered by the same or a different speaker, and including all types of
clauses.
Table 1.7 Pronoun antecedents
NP in preceding clause
long-distance NP
single NP
subtotal NP
pronoun
other
total
Conversations
52
17.33%
16
5.33%
11
3.66%
79
26.33%
160
53.33%
61
20.33%
300
100%
Academic
79
39.5%
18
9%
8
4%
105
52.5%
74
37%
21
10.5%
200
100%
Most work on anaphora is based on full NP antecedents which reflects a bias
towards written texts. Since in spoken German the proportion of pronouns is
high, NP antecedents should not necessarily be the norm and pronoun
antecedents should be common.9 The way I use the term antecedent is meant
to reflect this. In the conversations only 26.33 per cent of antecedents are full
NPs, and more than twice as many are pronouns with 53.33 per cent. In the
academic data full NP antecedents reach a much higher 52.5 per cent, but
pronoun antecedents amount to a substantial 37 per cent. I will return to this
difference between the two data sets in section 3.4 where pronouns are examined
in their discourse context. Despite having ‘reduced’ the antecedent domain to
clauses, long-distance anaphora is not frequent, with 5.33 per cent of NPs in the
conversations and a higher 9 per cent in the academic consultations. In the
conversations most ‘other’ cases are vague referents. In the academic data vague
referents and no antecedents are equally frequent. The ‘other’ category will not
be discussed further here. In the following analysis I will concentrate on NP and
pronoun antecedents in terms of topicality, givenness and salience.
3.3.2 Grammatical function of NP antecedents
As noted in the introduction, the issue of topicality is examined by Bosch et al
(in press) in terms of the grammatical function of antecedents on the assumption
that subject antecedents are more topical than object antecedents. Bosch et al
(in press) examined the pronoun antecedents in the immediately preceding
sentence. They found that over 80 per cent of personal pronoun antecedents are
subject NPs whereas over 70 per cent of demonstrative pronoun antecedents are
object NPs. This preference for object antecedents of demonstratives was corroborated by their experimental study, including a referent completion test which
showed that despite an experimental bias towards subject pronouns via world
knowledge, participants selected object antecedents for demonstrative pronouns.
The tests involved single sentences or constructed contexts of a few lines rather
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than longer discourse sections, however. The examples given also suggest that
they may mirror written texts, i.e. the prior sentences with the antecedents
contain full noun phrases and virtually no (first/second) person pronouns. What
then is the picture in the spoken data? I used a larger version of the conversation
corpus in order to examine a sample of 100 NP antecedents in a preceding clause.
No additional academic consultations were available.
Table 1.8 Grammatical function of antecedent NP in preceding clause
dem. subject
dem. object
total dem.
pers. subject
pers. object
total pers.
total
Conversations
47
57.3%
35
42.7%
82
100%
12
66.66%
6
33.33%
18
100%
100
Academic
13
19.1%
55
80.9%
68
100%
3
27.3%
8
72.7%
11
100%
79
In the academic data, object NPs are indeed much more frequent for demonstratives, where the figure of 80.9 per cent is even higher than the 70 per cent
noted by Bosch et al (in press) for newspaper texts. But in the conversations the
figures are more balanced and subject NPs are more frequent with 57.3 per cent.
The figures for personal pronouns are so low that we cannot draw conclusions
as to grammatical function. Yet they certainly do not suggest a clear preference
for antecedent subject NPs since the conversations and the academic consultations differ, and this time it is the academic consultations which appear not to
follow the expected pattern. The grammatical function of pronoun antecedents
therefore does not clearly predict pronoun choice. This conclusion does not
necessarily mean, however, that topicality is not an issue. But it suggests that
sentence, or rather clausal topic defined in terms of nominative NP, is not
crucial. Instead, givenness and the structure of the preceding clauses provide vital
clues. Their analysis will allow us to integrate the preference for pre-verbal
demonstratives and the nature of their antecedents, including the strong
preference for object antecedents in the academic consultations, into an overall
picture of topic development as an aspect of information structure in the spoken
data.
3.3.3 Givenness, salience and topic development
Weinrich (1993, 2003) and Zifonun et al (1997) claim that demonstratives refer
to known, rhematic entities and personal pronouns refer to known, established
ones. Bosch et al (in press) suggest that they may mark topic shifts. There is
evidence in the spoken data for these claims, but how topics are established,
changed and maintained is different from what has been suggested for written
texts where pronouns are rare and personal pronoun anaphora dominates.
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What is striking in the spoken data is that demonstratives are much more likely
to have an NP antecedent in a preceding clause than personal pronouns. The
figures are close in both data sets, despite the differences in the grammatical role
of the antecedents: 82 per cent (82 of 100) in the conversations and 86 per cent
(68 of 79) in the academic consultations. Even when all NP antecedents are taken
into account, the figure is 80 per cent (160 out of 200) in the conversations and
78 per cent (82 out of 105) in the academic consultations. This means that if
an NP is pronominalized with a third person pronoun for the first time, a
demonstrative will typically be used. Once an NP has been pronominalized, it
can be referred to with a demonstrative or a personal pronoun. This then is some
evidence that personal pronouns refer to established topics, yet these topics have
been established by a demonstrative. This finding is crucial as it shows the central
role demonstratives play in the spoken data. Two further factors help to clarify
the nature of topic development and pronoun choice in the data: the givenness
of the NP antecedent, and the structure of the clause and discourse in which it
occurs, which indicates how salient the NP is.
In the analysis of givenness a simple discourse model brings out the status of
the NP referents in the spoken data: the distinction is between new NPs which
are introduced for the first time and given NPs which have already been introduced. Personal pronouns are not crucial here since they have few antecedent
NPs.10 Demonstratives have a high ratio of new antecedent NPs: 71 per cent in
a sample of 100 (from a total of ca 160) in the conversations and 69.75 per cent
(60 of all 86 cases) in the academic consultations. When only those NP antecedents are taken into account which occur in the preceding clause, the figure rises
to 81 per cent in both data sets. While this confirms that demonstratives refer
to rhematic topics, these topics are not necessarily non-subjects, as we saw above
in 3.3.2, nor are they necessarily non-salient. This applies particularly to the
conversations for two reasons.
Firstly, there is little competition for pronoun reference, i.e. the preceding
clauses which contain the NP antecedents typically only contain this one full NP.
If there is another referent, this is typically a first or second person pronoun, i.e.
a primary participant in conversation, or in some cases a co-referential noun or
pronoun in equational clauses. Only 7 per cent of preceding clauses have more
than one full NP and only half of those are matched for gender or number. In
other words, there is little ambiguity in NP reference. This in itself means that
demonstratives are not called upon to highlight one of two or more referents.
Secondly, the preceding clause regularly marks the introduction of the new NP
or topic: in over half of the cases we find existential constructions, clauses with
broadly existential verbs and evidential existentials (verbs like ‘see’ or ‘know’),
questions, and copular clauses where the NP antecedent is the subject or a
predicate complement. These antecedents are therefore already salient.
Demonstratives then establish and maintain their topic status. The various
typical NP antecedent–demonstrative relations in the conversations are illustrated
by (4–8).   indicates overlapping speech. [] fills in information from the
preceding discourse. The English versions are part translation, part gloss where
relevant. The relevant NPs and pronouns are presented in bold.
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A1: ist die tochter denn dabei oder die geht da nicht hin ne
‘will the daughter be there or she won’t go there TAG’
B: nur die katze
‘only the cat’
A2: seine tochter
‘his daughter’
C: nee
‘no’
A3: die hat ne eigene familie ne
‘DEM-she has a own family TAG’
In (4) A introduces the NP die tochter for the first time in a question in A1 and
then pronominalizes this new, salient referent with a demonstrative in die geht
da nicht hin ne. In A2 he partially repeats the referent, adding the possessive
pronoun for identification, and then pronominalizes this (partially) established
referent in A3.
(5)
ich hab doch meine alten die wolltn immer noch mal was mit mir unternehm
‘I have MODAL PARTICLE my old-ones DEM-they wanted always once more something with
me do’
(5) is part of a discussion in which the speaker and her friend arrange to meet
up. After the friend has indicated possible dates, the speaker mentions a potential
clash involving a get-together with meine alten (a group of older students). This
referent is introduced with the possessive-existential haben.
(6)
A:
B:
hm was machen deine kleinen
‘hm how are the little ones’
och der jehts janz jut die sind janz schön selbstständig schon muss ich sagen
‘och DEM-DATIVE-she is doing fine DEM-they are quite independent already I
must say’
In the turns before (6), A had asked B how she is and B had answered this
question. In (6) A switches to B’s children, who are introduced in a question.
(7)
A1: ich hab so einen hunger ich hab erst einen joghurt heut gegessen
‘I’m so hungry I’ve only eaten a yoghurt today’
B1: und dann ist das [zu weit]
‘and then it is [too far]’
A2: und drei schokoriegel aber gut
‘and three bars of chocolate but ok’
B2: na ja man muß gucken
‘well ok we’ll have to see’
C: ich ich hab äh vor drei tagen äh schnee geschippt und der ist unwahrscheinlich
schwer
‘I I eh three days ago eh I was clearing the snow away and DEM-he is incredibly
heavy’
In (7) the three speakers are all pursuing their own discourse topic: A is talking
about being hungry, B is finishing the topic of her forthcoming travel arrangements, and C introduces his snow clearing activities in which the snow, for
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obvious reasons, plays a central role. The clause itself does not have a topic-introducing structure, but a number of signals of a topic shift are present. A2 ends
on terminal intonation and the speakers are about to sit down for a meal, B2
signals the end of her topic and C uses repetition and hesitation. The fact that
four speakers are involved in the conversation may also create a background of
‘competition’ for topics.
Finally, (8) involves reference to an established NP which is specified further
in an equational clause. All four speakers have been complaining about the
earnings of some well-known German celebrities, listed in a magazine. Two
referents are topics here. Reference to the first, introduced by the NP den X, is
underlined, and the second topic, which is the focus of the analysis, is given in
bold.
(8)
B1: die hätten mal den X holen sollen der ist ja noch noch gieriger
A1:
die neue +
wasserwerbung
D1: ja eben das sag ich ja die wirklich gierigen die sind da nich drin
B2:
ja
A2: die neue Y-werbung von ihm was meinst du
was der verdient
B3: überall ist er da reise und dings
C1: oder becker boris becker
D2:  das ist vielleicht ne werbung
du die kannst du in ne tonne treten
‘DEM-they should have taken the X DEM-he is MODAL PARTICLE even even greedier
the new water advert
yes exactly that’s what I mean the really greedy ones DEM-they are not listed there
yes
the new Y-advert of PERS-him what do you bet what DEM-he earns
everwhere PERS-he is there travel and things
or becker boris becker
that is MODAL PARTICLE an advert
PERS-you-VOCATIVE DEM-she you can only kick into a rubbish bin’
The relevant utterance is D2 where the Y-werbung mentioned in A1 and A2
is partially repeated as ne werbung in a copular clause. This is a clear topic
change from A2 to D2, i.e. from the referent X (ihm and der in A2 and er in
B3) back to the Y-werbung in A2. This is achieved by the deictically linked
equational clause, i.e. das bridges the intervening clauses. This demonstrates
quite clearly spoken language information structure: while the celebrity X is
the main topic for a few turns, the Y-werbung is singled out in an NP + clause
structure in A2. In A1 the speaker simply mentiones the advert, in A2 she adds
a comment to the effect ‘you can bet X will be making a mint with this
advert’. In this discourse section, A2 die neue Y-werbung is one of the few
sequences without overlap and it is also loud and clear. It is followed by a
return to the topic X (pronominalized), followed by a topic change back to
the advert (boris becker does not become a topic). This change is signalled
in the copular clause, however, and the referent is already established and
salient.
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In the academic consultations most antecedent NPs are new, as in the conversations. Similarly to the conversations, these NPs occur in existential, question
or copular structures or with signals of a topic change (9–10). The proportion
is lower, however, around 25 per cent vs 50 per cent.
(9)
A:
B:
A:
und ehm ja wir hatten ja drüber gesprochen also ich würde sehr gerne bei ihnen
eine magisterarbeit schreiben
‘and ehm yes we’d mentioned this before well I would like you to supervise my
dissertation’
ja mhm
die is allerdings steht noch nich jetz an also im november sondern erst nächstes Jahr
‘DEM-she is not yet an issue in november but not until next year’
In (9) the dissertation had not been mentioned in the conversation. The lecturer
and student had been talking about the student’s essay. The student uses the
reference to a previous conversation to introduce the topic, possibly as a
mitigating alerter to the up-coming request.
(10) A:
B:
A:
da gibts übrigens ne neue billige ausgabe da sollten se sofort zugreifen und zwar
kenn sie den eh verlag 2001
‘by the way there is a new cheap edition you should get it FOCUS PARTICLE do you
know the publisher 2001’
ehm ich habe ma gehört aber je tzt
‘ehm I’ve heard of it but right now’
der hat en geschäft ehm am charlottenplatz
‘DEM-he has a branch ehm on charlotte square’
In (10) we observe a staging of information. The first clause introduces the topic
of the neue billige ausgabe, the second continues this topic which then leads to
the introduction of the new topic den verlag 2001 in a question which is itself
preceded by the focus particle und zwar.
As noted in section 3.3.2, the proportion of object antecedents is high in the
academic consultations. This in itself does not mean that they are less salient,
as the discussion of examples (7), (9) and (10) showed. Whether antecedent NPs
are subjects or objects depends partly on genre. In the conversations, referents
other than the speaker and hearer are often other people who are agents or
entities which are described as having certain attributes, and hence subject
antecedents occur. In the academic consultations, topics are examinations, the
student’s work, authors and academic papers etc. to be acted on, and if people
feature they are more often patients, which favours object antecedents. The
difference between the conversations and the academic consultations is that in
the latter 25 per cent of preceding clauses contain more than one full NP,
sometimes in addition to a first or second person pronoun. Only two cases are
ambiguous, therefore despite the more complex nature of the clauses, antecedents
are largely unique. To what extent they are salient is difficult to determine on
the basis of the criteria used so far, and would require more extensive analysis
of the discourse. The same applies to those antecedents – in both data sets –
where no topic-introducing clause is used, only here the NP may be salient since
there is only one. However, the purpose of this chapter is to show the differences
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between demonstrative and personal pronouns, not to provide a comprehensive
or predictive model of topic development and anaphora resolution in spoken
language.
The picture presented in this section on pronoun antecedents leads to a
specific view of what an established topic is and what a topic shift is in
relation to pronoun choice in the spoken data. It allows us to see demonstratives as referring to rhematic topics and personal pronouns as referring to
established topics, but in accordance with spoken language information
structure. A rhematic topic is mainly an unambiguous first-mentioned NP,
regardless of grammatical function, which, especially in conversation, often
occurs in a topic-introducing clause and/or in a context of topic-changing
signals. Many topics are therefore already salient. An established topic is
typically a demonstrative subject, so here we have the more typical association
of topicality with subjecthood. Pronominalization itself is associated with
subjecthood/topicality since the large majority of pronouns are subjects (see
section 3.2).
Most NP antecedents occur in the preceding clause and recency is therefore
a fall-out from the nature of topic development. This combines with the
preferred pre-verbal position of demonstratives, placing demonstratives and
new or established referents in close proximity. The observed patterns do not
determine which antecedents will become topics. But since spoken language
is fleeting and there may be ‘competition’ for topics, demonstratives may thus
signal which topics are to be promoted. Topic development and the nature of
pronoun antecedents can therefore be related to the clausal position of demonstratives. Subjecthood, theme and topic combine in demonstratives, making
them a powerful tool for discourse cohesion.11
The discourse model for reference used here is a very simple one in need of
further refinement, and the salience of topics for speakers and hearers has to be
corroborated. But it is not unreasonable to suggest, given that the first pronominalization of an NP is almost always demonstrative, that they play a crucial role
in disourse cohesion and are not simply marked highlighters. Weinrich (1993,
2003) argues that demonstrative, rhematic reference is more common in
everyday conversation where information with a high level of newsworthiness
is exchanged. In other words, he reconciles the notion of demonstratives as in
some way marked with their more frequent occurrence in spoken conversations.
The newsworthiness of new topics is not in doubt, but demonstratives lead,
personal pronouns may follow, not the other way round. Personal pronouns
have very few antecedent NPs and they are not even a viable alternative to
demonstrative anaphora in these contexts. It is difficult to still consider them as
unmarked anaphors overall.
In both data sets discourse topics change frequently and there are relatively
few long sections where one topic is consistently maintained. They can be
maintained over shorter sections, however. I will now examine such sections of
discourse in relation to pronoun chains. This will bring us back to the
relationship between pronoun choice and clausal position as well as to considerations of discourse structure and the issue of involvement.
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3.4 Pronouns in their discourse context
In the conversations well over 50 per cent of pronouns have a pronoun
antecedent (section 3.3.1, Table 1.7). Demonstratives and personal pronouns
have an almost equal share in pronoun antecedents, 48 per cent vs 52 per cent
in the conversations and 53 per cent vs 47 per cent in the academic consultations. While it is now clearer why demonstratives should prefer the pre-verbal
position as NP anaphors, it is not so obvious why we should commonly find
pronoun antecedents for demonstratives, given the association of personal
pronouns with established referents. Pronoun chains could potentially reveal
more about the role of topicality in pronoun choice in this data. While demonstratives do not specifically make non-subjects salient, they establish topics.
Could it be that personal pronouns then refer to such established topics? In this
case we would regularly expect to find sequences like the one in (11).
(11) der mann von meiner schwester war gerade da der wollte uns einladen er macht ne feier
‘the husband of my sister has just been here DEM-he wanted to invite us PERS-he is
having a party’
That this is not the norm is partly evident in the figures on clausal position
(Tables 1.5 and 1.6), i.e. position overrides topicality (12–13).
(12) A:
B:
guten tag hier ist A ist die X da
‘hello this is A is X there’
nee die is nich da die is im moment ich glaub in hilden oder so
‘no DEM-she is not here DEM-she is at the moment I think in hilden or somewhere’
In (12) a person subject referent is introduced by A who is then referred to with
a pre-verbal demonstrative subject pronoun in two consecutive clauses. The
demonstrative establishes and maintains the topic.
(13) A:
B:
und wie geht’s Y in ihrer ehe
‘and how is Y’s marriage’
och ja im augenblick ist sie mit ihrem mann im bayerischen wald die sind also ganz
lustig die zanken sich ununterbrochen die ham einen umgangston da denksde das
du wirst nich mehr
[A: hm] aber irgendwie vertragen se sich wohl trotzdem
‘ach well at the moment PERS-she is with her husband in the bavarian forest
DEM-they are quite funny DEM-they argue all the time DEM-they have a way of
talking to each other it’s quite shocking [A: hm] but somehow PERS-they still
seem to get on’
(13) clearly adheres to the preference for pre-verbal demonstratives and postverbal personal pronouns. There is also a (partial) topic change in B whereby
the clause which refers to Y introduces Y’s husband and both then inferentially
become the referent of the demonstrative pronoun in the next clause. Preverbal demonstratives maintain the topic for a further two clauses and a postverbal personal pronoun does so in the final clause in this extract. In (12) and
in (13) B in the pronoun chain die – die – se there is only ever one referent for
topic status and in each case it is a subject. The contexts of the second die in (12)
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and the second and third die in (13) would therefore seem ideal for ‘unmarked’
anaphora, but personal pronouns are not used.
Demonstratives are associated with topic change, but we do not typically find
personal pronoun anaphors followed by an NP which is then established as a
topic with a demonstrative, e.g. sie arbeitet bis vier, heute abend ist sie bei ihrer
schwester, die ist gerade umgezogen (‘PERS-she is working until four, this evening
PERS-she’ll be at her sister’s, DEM-she=her sister has just moved house’). The
change is often from a topic which has been referred to with a demonstrative.
In (14) the first topic is switched after only one pronominal reference.
(14) A:
B:
hab ich schon erzählt die aus sachsen die oma
‘did I mention the one from saxony the granny’
ja die ging mir ja auf die nerven der opa war ja ganz knutschig aber ich glaub der
hatte irgendwie angst vor ihr
‘yes DEM-she got on my nerves the granddad was rather cute but I think DEM-he
was a bit afraid of PERS-her’
(15) is a case of long-distance anaphora and shows that a referent which is
already part of the discourse can be re-established as a topic and then be
maintained with a demonstrative.
(15) ja den rosmarin der war ja für deinen großvater gedacht eigentlich aber der ist der wär
mir im keller kaputt gegangen weil da kein licht ist [B: ja] ne darum hab ich ihn erstmal
mitgenommen
‘yes the rosemary plant DEM-it was meant for your grandfather really but DEM-it would
have been damaged in the cellar because there is no light that’s why I’ve taken PERS-it’
(15) re-introduces the rosemary plant which had been mentioned eight turns
previously, here with a NP + clause construction. It remains the topic for a further
two clauses, and again clausal position seems crucial. Examples (12–15) show
that demonstratives can establish new topics, re-establish a previous one,
maintain topics over several clauses or change them after only one pronominal
reference, all of this in keeping with the preference for pre-verbal demonstratives
and post-verbal personal pronouns.
At this point we may ask what clausal position is aligned with in the case of
established pronominalized referents. It does not appear to be topicality of the
referent per se as (13) and (15) show, where the pronoun is the only referent in
each clause but a personal pronoun is not used. Given the salience of preverbal position, foregrounded vs backgrounded information is still likely to be
a factor, however. As noted earlier at the end of the previous section, Weinrich
(1993, 2003) argues that demonstrative, rhematic reference is more common in
everyday conversation where information with a high level of newsworthiness
is exchanged. The demonstratives in (13) could be seen to highlight the unusual
or shocking characteristics of the referents, whereas the first personal pronoun
in B referring to Y reports neutral information about where the referent is on
holiday. But then we might also expect the last pronoun to be demonstrative as
it is still part of the ‘strange couple’ description.
The alternative would be to take clausal position itself as indicating the subordinate nature of the information in terms of how the speaker presents it. This
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is not an uncommon approach to reference and information structure, e.g.
Halliday (1967). The fact that the couple basically get on may then be considered
a return to ‘normality’. In (15) the information der wär mir im keller kaputt
gegangen is more newsworthy than darum hab ich ihn erstmal mitgenommen,
which contains given information since the speaker has mentioned in the
preceding discourse that he gave the plant to his mother. Examples (13) and (15)
then provide some evidence for an alignment of pre-verbal position with
foregrounded or newsworthy information about a topic. (16–17) show that this
and additional factors can also lead to less typical pronoun choices.
(16) zwischendurch sind auch viele eh besatzungssoldaten jekommen noch amerikaner die
warn drüben einkaufen und die ham sich meistens drüben ehm wie ich gehört habe ham
die sich drüben a alte wart mal was warn dis was hab ich da ge/was ham die immer
erzählt die ham sich so holzschnitzereien solche sachen aus m erzgebirge und so ham die
drüben eingekauft dit war also für die sehr preisgünstig und da ham die diese sachen alle
rübergeschleppt und zwischendurch also zwischendurch eh kam dann wieder massen von
trabbis und die ham wir denn begrüßt
‘and there were a lot of soldiers americans they had been shopping over the border and
they bought a lot ehm so I heard over the border they bought old hang on what did they
say they bought wood carvings like things from the mountains and so on they bought
over the border it was all very cheap and so they brought over all this stuff and then then
masses of trabbies [car make] would come and we’d welcome them’
(16) is an extract from a conversation about the fall of the Berlin Wall. The
speaker is from former West Berlin. It features only demonstrative pronouns,
including some of the rarer post-verbal and object cases, i.e. dit war also für
die sehr preisgünstig (post-verbal object) and und da ham die diese sachen alle
rübergeschleppt (post-verbal subject). The first topic is amerikaner which is
maintained by seven demonstrative pronouns. A new NP is then introduced,
massen von trabbis, which is then also referred to with a demonstrative. In
other words, everything is newsworthy in this story and the demonstratives
become markers of the speaker’s involvement. A version with personal
pronouns may well seem more neutral or distanced. The shorter example (8)
also shows involvement. Topic development and involvement can go hand-inhand in conversations.
The previous discussion now bring us back to the question why, against the
general trend, some personal pronoun subjects appear in pre-verbal position.
Since personal pronouns have few recent NP antecedents, many follow demonstratives which have established a topic and personal pronouns could therefore
still be considered to refer to established topics. But pronoun choice also appears
to be related to other factors. (17) provides some evidence for a difference in
information status. [...] indicates some small overlap with another speaker
which is not crucial for the analysis.
(17) A1: meine schwester hatte nie [...] eine zwischenprüfung in der grundschule
‘my sister has never [...] had an interim exam in primary school’
B1: nee meine freundin auch nicht das stimmt
‘no my girlfriend hasn’t either that’s right’
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A2: hm hm
‘hm hm’
B2: die hatte nur ihr das [...] erste staatsexamen
‘DEM-she only had her the main exam’
[...]
C: und wo studiert deine freundin
‘and where is your girlfriend studying’
B3: hier in halle also sie ist jetzt fertig sie hat wirklich heute ihre letzte prüfung
gemacht
‘here in halle actually PERS-she is finished now PERS-she has just today had her last
exam’
All pronominal references to speaker B’s girlfriend are pre-verbal subjects. In B2
the speaker uses a demonstrative in a statement which confirms the information in A1, seen in contrast to other types of degree courses which require
interim exams. In B3 the information is descriptively more neutral. In other
words backgrounding and foregrounding may account for pronoun choice in
these contexts. Given that demonstratives are the norm in pre-verbal position,
this suggests that the backgrounding use of pre-verbal personal pronouns is
marked, in contrast to the common view that personal pronouns are the norm
and demonstratives are marked highlighters. It is not simply a question of the
referent in B3 having been established over a longer discourse section. The data
contains one example, for instance, where a referent is referred to over 20
times and where demonstratives and personal pronouns alternate for complex
reasons such as the introduction of a new discourse topic in relation to the
referent and the signalling of an explanation of the referent’s activities.
A further factor is indirect speech. 12 (20 per cent) of the 60 pre-verbal
subject personal pronouns in the conversations occur in the context of indirect
speech, which can report actual speech as well as the contents of letters or other
written texts (18).
(18) dann habe ich mit ihrer mutter gesprochen und da hat sie gesagt nee sie kommt nicht
mehr das ist dann für sie erledigt
‘then I talked to her mother and PERS-she [the mother] said no PERS-she [the daughter]
won’t come again that’s it finished for PERS-her [the daughter]’
(18) includes personal pronoun reference both to the person whose speech is
reported (the mother) as well as another female person (the daughter) who is
mentioned in the mother’s speech. A possible explanation might be that indirect
speech is distancing and personal pronouns may therefore be a better option than
demonstratives as these can signal involvement. This view is supported by cases
of direct quoted speech which is often acted out in the voice of the quoted
speaker and where demonstratives are used. In (19) the speaker quotes her
mother who tells the story of how the speaker’s sister became engaged.
(19) ja sacht se du weißt ja der onkel von ihm der is öh pastor und öh da sind die dahin
gefahren ham den besucht und da hat er das dann gemacht
‘yes PERS-she says you know her uncle DEM-he is eh a pastor and eh so DEM-they went
there visited DEM-him and so PERS-he did it there and then’
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In (19) the mother is referred to with a personal pronoun as part of the speaker’s
own speech. The mother’s quoted speech includes demonstratives (and not
only in the NP + clause structure der onkel von ihm der is öh pastor). The
daughter’s engagement in this case was unexpected.
While it is possible to use demonstratives in certain contexts to signal distance
to a referent, the data provides plenty of evidence that they are associated with
involvement. This can be alignment with or attitude towards the referents
themselves as suggested earlier in relation to exophoric reference, or it can be
involvement with the information or stories which are being told. This aspect
of demonstrative pronouns has been underestimated in previous accounts but
is not entirely surprising given the tendency for deictics and demonstratives to
assume interpersonal and interactional meaning (see Weinert, Chapter 4, this
volume). More work is clearly needed on the role of personal pronouns in spoken
language if we assume that involvement is a prominent feature in everyday
conversations. In other words, the use of personal pronouns could potentially
be distancing.
Finally, I will return briefly to the academic consultations. Here the frequency
of full NP antecedents is higher and pronoun antecedents are less frequent, i.e.
52.5 per cent full NPs vs 37 per cent pronouns. Some topics are simply shortlived, others are maintained by discourse-deictics or NPs, illustrated by (20).
(20) ich komm von MD1 und er1 hat mir die scheine2 anerkannt das heißt er1 machts noch
und ich hab hier aber einen2a da2a war er1 sich nich ganz sicher ob sie den2a mir als proseminar anerkennen oder ob das2a auch nur zu der einführung in die sprachwissenschaft
zählt und zwar ich hab noch ich hab noch einen2a gemacht das2a war eigentlich ein allgemeiner einführung in die sprachwissenschaft
‘I’ve just been to see MD and PERS-he accepted my certificates that is PERS-he will do and
I have one here DEICTIC-there he wasn’t sure if you’d accept DEM-it as an advanced course
or whether DEM-that only counts as an introduction to linguistics FOCUS PARTICLE I have
also I have also done another one DEM-that was MODAL PARTICLE a general one introduction to linguistics’
In (20) two main referents occur, MD, a lecturer, and a schein, which in the
German university context labels the certificate for a course, but also stands for
the course itself. These two referents are tracked as 1 and 2, 2a being one
particular schein. MD is referred to by personal pronouns, the schein by demonstratives and deictics. The speaker begins with the unproblematic information
about MD, who has accepted his courses as appropriate for the required
advanced level. MD is established as a referent with a personal pronoun and the
topic then changes to a problematic schein, referred to as einen. This is referred
to by deictic da, then by the masculine demonstrative den, followed by neuter
demonstrative das, and after the repeat of einen with another demonstrative das
(the following discourse makes clear that with the second einen the same
referent is meant). In other words, there is a pronoun/pro-form chain but it
includes only one third person pronoun which is congruent with the referent in
terms of number, gender and case. Da is unmarked with regard to these
categories, das is marked for number and case, but not gender. Generalized
reference with das is particular common in the academic data. It is useful to recall
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that das is highly frequent here. While it mostly occurs as a discourse deictic,
17 per cent of cases are generalized uses (of ca 840) which adds ca 140 to the
pronoun pool. This is a substantial amount, considering that there are only
205 masculine, feminine and plural pronouns.
In contrast, in the conversations 7 per cent of das cases are used for generalized reference, ca 40 (of ca 600) compared with ca 800 masculine, feminine
and plural pronouns. With regard to personal pronouns in (20), they appear
to be part of the scene-setting for the crucial topic – the problematic schein,
a preamble. It would not, however, seem appropriate to see this use as evidence
for the unmarked status of anaphoric personal pronouns per se. After all, 65
per cent of all masculine, feminine and plural pronouns in the academic
consultations are demonstratives. The nature of pronoun/pro-form chains
supports the view that demonstratives contribute centrally to discourse
cohesion in the academic consultations.
Two factors are therefore responsible for the role of demonstratives in the
two data sets: one informational, one interpersonal. Without attempting a
direct comparison with Biber (1990), we may borrow the labels for two
textual dimensions he identified: involvement and on-line informational elaboration. Biber found that these two textual factors have a strong weighting of
pronouns and demonstratives in English. On-line informational elaboration
is characteristic of spontaneous, unplanned informational discourse which
relies heavily on markers of discourse cohesion. Involvement means the interpersonal aspect of spoken language which demonstratives can serve to express.
Both dimensions are present in both data sets. The conversations have a
higher degree of involvement which is evident in the content, lexical choices
and high frequency of modal and discourse particles. The academic consultations have a higher level of on-line informational elaboration, reflected in
the higher frequency of demonstrative pronouns and discourse deictics.
3.5 Demonstratives and discourse cohesion
Demonstrative masculine, feminine and plural pronouns play a central role in
creating cohesive discourse and as such they fit into the larger picture of
deixis in spoken German. We saw in 3.1 that neuter demonstrative das is a
highly frequent discourse deictic occurring predominantly in clause-initial
position. Weinert (Chapter 4, this volume), shows the ubiquity of deictic da
(‘there’) as a cohesive device. Demonstrative pronouns and da are variously
associated with information packaging structures such as NP/PP + clause,
demonstrative + NP/PP and verb-second post-modifying clauses. They create
links in clause complexes involving complement and adverbial clauses (Weinert
2000, Weinert, Chapter 3, this volume). Clause-initial, pre-verbal or prephrasal position is a central feature of these devices. In other words, spoken
German has a propensity for making links explicit via demonstratives and
deictics. Apart from their use in some specific focusing constructions, they are
maybe best considered to have a heightened yet ‘medium alert’ status as
markers of discourse cohesion.
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3.6 Issues for further research
This study raises a number of questions regarding the grammatical status,
discourse-pragmatic functions and interpersonal role of third person pronouns.
To what extent certain pronoun choices are grammaticalized deserves further
study. An obvious candidate is the pre-verbal personal pronoun object since this
form is virtually absent not only in the spoken data but also in the newspaper
texts examined by Bosch et al (in press). Neuter personal pronoun objects
cannot be used referentially and anaphorically in pre-verbal position, e.g. Das
Buch ist gut. *Es habe ich schon oft gelesen (‘The book is good. *It have I already
often read.’). Some masculine, feminine and plural pronouns also appear
virtually ungrammatical in this context, e.g. ich nehme die Krabbensuppe – ?*sie
haben wir nicht mehr (‘I’ll have the prawn soup – it we no longer have’).
Factors such as stress, occurrence in a prepositional phrase and animacy may
play a role. But the pre-verbal demonstrative tendency may also show signs of
grammaticalization, even though it is still short of categorical. This applies, for
instance, to cases which are situated somewhere between anaphora and postmodification (Gärtner 2001; Weinert forthcoming). Compare the (restrictive)
verb-second modification ich kenn leute die machen das schon jahre (‘I know
people they/who have been doing it for years’) with the (non-restrictive/
anaphoric) das sind die ganz schlauen die/?sie fahren erst sonntag los (‘they are
the clever ones they/who don’t leave until sunday’). Similar intermediate cases
arise with NP + clause sequences which are not intonationally integrated and
can cross a speaker’s turn, as in example (14) where a personal pronoun could
not readily replace the first demonstrative in B’s utterance.
The relationship between clausal position, information structure and newsworthiness requires further more extensive study of longer discourse sections and
pronouns in their local context, especially with respect to post-verbal pronouns.
Additional analysis also needs to include other units such as verb-final clauses.
Interesting possibilities regarding personal, interpersonal and interactional
functions are also opened up by the two pronoun classes in German. For
instance, is personal pronoun use in certain involved contexts intended or
construed as distancing? Are pronoun choices involved in topic sharing and topic
control? Can personal pronouns express epistemic status, e.g. uncertainty about
the information given for a referent? Whatever the answers to these questions,
the relationship between third person personal pronouns and demonstratives is
a highly dynamic one. Finally, this study also has implications for accounts of
referential ambiguity. NP antecedents are largely uniquely identifiable in the two
data sets. Whether this also applies consistently to pronoun chains remains to
be investigated.12
4 Conclusion
Weinrich (1993, 2003) identifies many relevant aspects of the distribution of the
two pronoun classes and his view, which accords demonstratives an important
and significant status, turns out to be well justified. Demonstratives are certainly
not essentially indicative of informal, colloquial or impolite speech, which is
underlined by the higher proportion of demonstratives in the academic consultations. Yet even Weinrich may have underestimated the role of demonstratives.
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Demonstratives and personal pronouns are at least equally frequent and behave
in a complementary fashion in spoken language. Clausal position, while not
producing categorical results, clearly divides the two pronoun classes, with
demonstratives typically being pre-verbal and personal pronouns post-verbal.
What is particularly striking is that personal pronouns play such a small role
in NP anaphora. Instead, demonstratives establish new NPs as topics, many of
which are already salient, and these can then become the domain of personal
pronouns. Both demonstratives and personal pronouns can refer to established
topics and maintain them in pronoun chains. While demonstratives are
associated with foregrounding and personal pronouns with backgrounding, it
seems that spoken language has an equal need for both. This suggests a true
complementarity rather than a markedness relation. While markedness can be
defined in many ways and frequency is not a sophisticated criterion, our model
of pronoun choice at least needs to reflect frequency which can usefully be
integrated into a wider view of the role of demonstratives as cohesive devices
and markers of involvement in spoken German. The functions covered by
demonstratives are ‘normal’ for spoken language. This is not to deny that in other
(written) text types the use of demonstratives is indeed marked. But at the very
least, the analysis of spoken language challenges approaches which take the
behaviour of personal pronouns (in written language) as the starting point for
a model of pronominalization and anaphora. In the spoken German examined,
demonstratives have at least an equal stake in reference.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Since pronouns are not necessarily the first item in a clause as they can be part of
clause-initial prepositional phrases, for instance, Bosch et al (2003, in press) use the
terms pre-verbal and post-verbal position. I will follow their example. Most preverbal pronouns in the spoken data are indeed clause-initial.
The data includes conversations from Brons-Albert (1984) and Dittmar and Bredel
(1999). Conversations dating from 2006 were collected by Janine Soffner, Anna
Brown and the author. The academic consultations were collected by Andrea
Krengel (1997).
In some contexts personal pronouns also occur, e.g. zumindest der druck von hertha
bsc er wird immer stärker (‘the pressure of hertha bsc [football team] PERS-he is
getting stronger and stronger’), but such cases are absent in the two data sets.
See Gärtner (2001) and Weinert (forthcoming) for verb-second post-modifying
clauses.
The figures are based on five random samples of 1,000 words in each data set.
Because of their low numbers, all masculine, feminine and plural pronouns in the
academic data were counted.
An example of vague reference is die in da kann man nicht parken die bauen da (‘you
can’t park there they are building there’). In line with Kitagawa and Lehrer (1990)
I consider these uses of the plural pronoun vague rather than impersonal or generic
since they refer to specific referents which are not identified/identifiable. Unlike impersonal pronouns, they are not generally similar to universal quantifiers. This may not
apply to all vague plural pronouns, but the issue is not central to this chapter.
The demonstratives diese and jene and their various forms, which are regarded as
proximal and distal respectively (Weinrich 1993, 2003), are virtually absent as
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27
single pronouns. There are three endophoric and five exophoric cases of the former
and none of the latter. In exophoric reference a proximal/distal difference may be
signalled by dies/diese/dieser vs das/die/der. Dies etc. is frequent as a determiner in
NPs.
8 Chi-Square tests confirm that the conversations and the academic consultations do
not differ significantly with respect to demonstratives: x 2 (3) = 3.591, p = 0.309.
They do differ significantly with respect to personal pronouns: (x 2 (3) = 11.549, p
= 0.009. I would like to thank Robert Mayr and Darren Walker for carrying out these
tests.
9 Eckert and Strube (1999) report that NP antecedents constitute only 45.1 per cent
of all anaphoric antecedents in a corpus of English task-oriented and open-ended
dialogues. This includes demonstratives where in English the proportion of discourse
deictics is high, i.e. 22 per cent. In other words, antecedent NPs for individual
anaphora are in fact even less frequent.
10 When all personal pronoun antecedents are taken into account the numbers of new
vs given are 23 vs 17 in the conversations and 9 vs 14 in the academic consultations.
So while overall personal pronouns refer to established referents, when NP
antecedents are involved they can also refer to new ones.
11 Recency requires further study, but it seems to be somewhat more relevant for
demonstratives than for personal pronouns, at least in the academic data. In the case
of long-distance anaphora, personal pronoun antecedent NPs are all more than one
clause away and demonstrative antecedent NPs are all one clause away. Overall, longdistance anaphora is infrequent in both data sets, however (Table 1.7). If the
antecedent is another pronoun, it is typically either in the preceding clause or one
clause away in equal proportions for personal pronouns, but for demonstratives in
69 per cent of cases it is in the preceding clause. This is consistent with the topicestablishing/maintaining function of demonstratives in a context of frequent topic
shifts or topic competition.
12 There was no indication in the occurrences of demonstrative and personal pronouns
examined that the use of zero NPs in clause-initial position directly affects the
picture presented in this chapter. The interaction of pronouns with full and zero NPs
in reference and anaphora deserves further study and may be influenced by discourse
type.
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References
Biber, D. (1990), Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bosch, P., Rozario, T. and Zhao, Y. (2003), ‘Demonstrative and personal pronouns.
German der vs er’. Proceedings of the EACL2003. Budapest. Workshop on The
Computational Treatment of Anaphora.
Bosch, P., Katz, G. and Umbach, C. (in press), ‘The Non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns’, in M. Schwarz-Friesel, M. Consten and M. Knees (eds), Anaphors
in Texts. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Brons-Albert, R. (1984), Gesprochenes Standarddeutsch. Telefondialoge. Tübingen.
Dittmar, N. and Bredel, U. (1999), Die Sprachmauer. Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag.
Duden Volume 4 (2005), Die Grammatik. Seventh edition. Edited by Dudenredaktion.
Mannheim: Dudenverlag.
Durrell, M. (2002), Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage. Fourth edition. London:
Arnold.
Eckert, M. (1998), ‘Discourse deixis and anaphora resolution in German’. Working
Papers in Linguistics, Volume 5, Number 1, Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Penn
Linguistics Colloquium, 49–58.
Eckert, M. and Strube, M. (1999), ‘Dialogue acts, synchronizing units, and anaphora
resolution’. Journal of Semantics, 17, 51–89.
Fox, B. (1987), Discourse Structure and Anaphora. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Fox, B. (1996), Studies in Anaphora. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Gärtner, H.-M. (2001), ‘Are there V2 relative clauses in German?’ Journal of Comparative
Germanic Linguistics 3, 97–141.
Givón, T. (1984), Syntax. A Functional-Typological Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Goldberg, A.E. (2006), Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalizations in
Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grosz, B., Joshi, A. and Weinstein, S. (1995), ‘Centering: A framework for modeling the
local coherence of discourse’. Computational Linguistics, 21, 67–90.
Halliday, M. A. K., (1967), ‘Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 1’. Journal
of Linguistics, 3, 37–81.
Kaiser, E. and Truswell, J. (2004), ‘The referential properties of Dutch pronouns and
demonstratives: is salience enough?’ Proceedings of the Sinn und Bedeutung 8,
Arbeitspapier Nr. 1777, FB Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz.
Keenan, E. and Comrie, B. (1977), ‘Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar’.
Linguistic Inquiry, 8, 63–99.
Kitagawa, C. and Lehrer, A. (1990), ‘Impersonal uses of personal pronouns’. Journal of
Pragmatics, 14, 739–59.
Maslova, E. and Bernini, G. (in press), ‘Sentence topics in the languages of Europe and
beyond’, in G. Bernini and M. L. Schwarz (eds), Pragmatic Organization of Discourse
in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Miller, J. and Weinert, R. (1998), Spontaneous Spoken Language. Syntax and Discourse,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weinert, R. (2000), ‘Satzbegriff, Einheiten und Verknüpfung in gesprochener Sprache.
Syntax oder Diskurs?’, in L. Jäger and L. Springer (eds) Die Medialität der gesprochenen
Sprache. Sprache und Literatur [SuL] 84/31, 75–96.
Weinert, R. (forthcoming), ‘Postmodifying verb-second clauses in German’.
Weinrich, H. (1993, 2003), Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. First edition.
DudenVerlag. Second edition. Hildesheim/Zürich/ New York: Georg Olms Verlag.
Zifonun, G., Hoffman, L. and Strecker, B. (1997), Grammatik der Deutschen Sprache.
Berlin: de Gruyter.
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2 Grammatical past time reference in spontaneously
produced language
Torsten Müller
1 Introduction
The present study is concerned with past time marking in spontaneously
produced language. It intends to investigate the way speakers refer to past
time in actual language use, with respect to the moment this reference is
made in relation to the corresponding non-linguistic event it describes. The
spontaneously produced language which is analysed here is that of live radio
football commentary in conjunction with the corresponding TV footage.
This approach differs in methodology and in its data from views as they
are presented, for example, in grammars such as Huddleston and Pullum
(2002) for English or Duden (2005) for German. The terms past time
reference or past time marking also differ from terminology in grammar
books in that the latter will usually arrange their topics according to
grammatical categories such as tense or aspect, when in fact past time
marking may be achieved by various means, from tense and aspect
categories to lexical expressions. Hence traditional categories may hide
functional similarities.
The focus in this study will be on grammatical past time reference in
English and German. This covers three grammatical constructions each: for
English the past tense, the present perfect and the past perfect, for German
the Präteritum, the Perfekt and the Plusquamperfekt.1 Grammars and
other accounts usually attempt to provide an explanation of how these
constructions are used or what their functions are in, for example, crosslinguistic or language-specific tense or aspect systems. Such explanations
focus on the meaning or function of isolated examples, rarely on textual
functions (an exception being, in particular, Weinrich 2003). Concepts
such as ‘current relevance’ or ‘past event’ are employed without providing
any empirical evidence as to their validity. To be sure, it is not the aim of
this study to refute useful conceptual tools such as the ones just mentioned,
and admittedly it is not always possible to verify time reference systems
empirically in narrative text types, where reference is not to real-life events
which may be filmed and analysed, but to events which mainly exist in an
imaginary world of author/narrator/reader.
The aim of the current study is to present a new methodology of how to
provide an explanation of grammatical past time marking in actual
language use through a systematic integration of the extra-linguistic
situation. In this new methodology time is not an abstract concept
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employing a time axis where past is to the left and future to the right. Here
pastness can be measured in minutes, seconds or even split seconds. Hence
the question asked is how proximity to (or distance from) the present
moment influences first of all the choice of time reference (present vs past)
and more precisely, if past time reference is chosen, what type of reference
is used. In order to employ this methodology, a specific text type which
permits the use of video material in conjunction with spontaneously
produced language was chosen: the language of live radio football
commentary.
The focus on timing requires first of all a clear description of the methodological issues. It will then be feasible to define clearly what is meant by
past time marking, or more precisely by grammatical past time marking.
Functional aspects of past time marking options relevant to the present
study will be introduced afterwards. After presenting the results, the
discussion will then focus on how past time marking is employed in the text
type of live radio football commentary, and what influence timing has on
time choice (present vs past) and on the type of past time reference. These
results will then be compared with current functional explanations of the
various grammatical constructions in question.
2 The data
The present study is a corpus analysis of unplanned spoken English and
German, but not the conversational spoken language which is usually
chosen in discourse analysis. The text type analysed for this study was live
radio commentary of international football games. The rationale for
choosing this particular text type is:
• Football commentary on the radio represents spontaneously produced spoken language.
As much as a commentator may be able to prepare certain phrases beforehand, an
important function of their broadcast is to tell the listeners what is going on on the pitch,
and so although football consists of a number of stereotypical actions, the commentator
can never be sure what will happen next.
• There is often corresponding TV footage of a game broadcast live on radio. The TV
footage may hence provide a non-linguistic ‘control mechanism’, or at least a better
understanding of the communicative situation than text alone (see also Tomlin 1983),
which allows comparison between the spoken word and the visual world. Video material
was already used in Chafe’s Pear Film (Chafe 1980) and, for example, in Tomlin (1983).
Careful and exact editing of the radio sound and TV footage will also allow one to assess
the moment when an utterance was made, for example virtually coinciding with the corresponding event, a few moments after or perhaps even a few moments before the event.
• A third advantage is that radio commentary represents natural language rather than
artificial and isolated stretches of text produced in an experimental setting in the way it
has been used, for example, in Tomlin (1987 and 1995).
Table 2.1 provides an overview of the games analysed for this study.
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Table 2.1 The games used in the study and their commentators
Game
Manchester United v Juventus (Champions
League semi-final, 1st leg, 1999), 2nd half
Germany v Romania (Group game, Euro
2000), 1st half
England v Argentina (Group game, World Cup
2002), 1st half
Scotland v Germany (European Championships
qualifying match 2003), 2nd half
Radio commentators Radio station
Alan Parry
Talk Radio (today:
Talksport)
Armin Lehmann and ARD, HR1 plus
Kai Dittmann
(today: HR Info)2
Alan Green and Mike BBC Radio 5 Live
Ingham
Rolf Rainer Gecks
ARD, BR5 aktuell3
and Jens Jörg Rieck
3 Methodology
The existence of video material as a ‘control mechanism’ allows the assignment
of utterances from the radio commentary to individual events as they can be
identified in the video material. This allows identification and isolation of
events and event types independent of language. This identification further
enables us to determine the moment a linguistic reference to such an event is
made and to see:
•
•
•
whether the linguistic reference is made at the same time as the event is happening, henceforth
called on-line reference;
whether the linguistic reference is made after the event has happened, henceforth off-line
reference;
whether the linguistic reference is made before the event happens (rare but generally possible),
henceforth anticipation.
On-line and off-line reference and anticipation will be subsumed under the label
description.
While it may be intuitively plausible what describing events ‘happening at the
time of speaking’ means, there must be a clear definition of what precisely counts
as on-line reference. The definition of this term will then automatically identify
the terms off-line and anticipation as well. Note also that it is the beginning of
the utterance which is relevant here, not its end (a decision supported by Tomlin
1997: 172ff.).
Expressions such as ‘at the time of speaking’ hinge crucially on a proper editing
of the audio and video material. It was ensured that editing was as precise as
possible, and it is certain that at no point are audio and video material more than
nine frames (i.e. 360 milliseconds) adrift – in fact, it is very likely that at any point
the margin of error is well below that. Nevertheless, there still remains a slight
possibility of a certain margin of error. In addition, the time of about 150
milliseconds (see Tomlin 1997: 172ff.) which it takes humans to react to a
stimulus such as an event should also be taken into account.4
A reasonable definition must be found which accommodates these factors and
still deserves the terms on-line, off-line and anticipation. This is especially
important in the case of on-line reference: here the time frame should be as short
as possible to justify the label on-line, but long enough in duration to account
for reaction time and possible margins of error in the editing. Accordingly, it is
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best to decide on an a priori margin that defines the time frame within which
on-line description can occur. Although a decision like this may seem somewhat
arbitrary and may perhaps even yield some problematic cases, it is definitely
preferable to an impressionistic and therefore subjective technique which does
not rely on exact timing. Incorporating reaction time and possible margins of
error resulting from the editing process, a reasonable time frame for defining online utterances seems to be one second: by doubling the nine frames that sound
and pictures are maximally adrift, the cut-off point would still be well below one
second (720 milliseconds or 18 frames) and can easily accommodate reaction
time as well. The way the editing has been carried out means that in practice any
margin of error will have the sound lag behind the pictures. Theoretically, of
course, there may also be situations in which the sound may be slightly ahead.
To accommodate for these – unlikely – cases, on-line reference will be extended
also to include the seven frames (280 milliseconds) preceding the beginning of
an event. As one second of film contains 25 frames, this means that the complete
time span of what counts as an on-line reference finally ends up being exactly
the desired one second or 25 frames. The nominal on-line time span of one
second, which covers the seven frames preceding the beginning and eighteen
frames following the end of an event, is hence justifiable on the basis of the
editing process and the communicative setting of the commentary produced.
Above all, the cut-off points were decided upon before analysis. The procedure
is thus methodologically sound.
Hence on-line reference is defined as reference to events5 that are begun no
more than seven frames before the event and no more than 18 frames after its
end. All references that are begun more than 18 frames after the end of the corresponding non-linguistic event are labelled off-line. All references to corresponding events that are begun more than seven frames before the event begins
are called anticipation (see also Table 2.2 for an overview).
Table 2.2 Types of time-critical utterance and their definitions
Status of timecritical utterance
anticipation
on-line
off-line
Definition
Reference to a corresponding event which is begun more than
seven frames before the event begins.
Reference to a corresponding event which is begun no more
than seven frames before the beginning of the event and no
more than 18 frames after its end.
Reference to a corresponding event which is begun more than
18 frames after the end of the event.
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It should also be noted that the inherent duration of non-linguistic events may
differ. An offence such as handling (a player other than the goalkeeper touching
the ball with their hand or the goalkeeper handling the ball outside their own
penalty area), for instance, may not last longer than a split second if a player’s
hand just deflects the ball. An event with a much longer inherent duration is a
long pass upfield. Here the ball may travel through the air for several seconds.
As a consequence, on-line reference is more easily achieved when referring to
long passes than to offences such as handling. This should be borne in mind
when comparing the results for on-line and off-line reference.
A large part of radio football commentary is concerned with the description
of what is going on on the pitch while the ball is in play (on-line and off-line
reference as well as instances of anticipation). Anticipation is so rare, however,
that it is not feasible to include it in the analysis – particularly when considering
that the study is concerned with past time reference.
Other utterances, so called elaboration, may not refer to the individual events
of the game at all, but may consist of discussions of tactics, references to earlier
games or similar information. As these utterances do not relate to any individual
events of the game in question, their timing cannot be assessed and hence they
cannot be used in this study. Utterances which appear to refer to events on the
pitch while the ball is in play, but cannot be identified independently through
the video material, are labelled ‘Unclear’ and cannot be used either, simply
because again their timing in relation to the non-linguistic events cannot be
assessed properly.
It is assumed that the distinction between on-line and off-line reference will
manifest itself in a different preference for explicit time marking as well. On-line
reference will favour the use of present time marking whereas off-line reference
will lead to a considerable increase in grammatical expressions of past time
because the event in question will already be interpreted as lying in the past, and
hence the use of past time reference will be prompted more easily.
Three more terms need to be mentioned here whose importance will become
apparent presently. A description of a goal may be made by an utterance such
as:
here comes beckham and scores
This is called the first verbalization. Any further utterance which refers to
Beckham’s goal immediately afterwards will then be called a repeated verbalization. Reference to this event at a later point, for example at the end of the half
in which the goal was scored, will be labelled a verbal action replay.6
Finally, it has to be pointed out that the unit of analysis in this study does not
rest on the dependency relations as they exist in clauses or perhaps even
sentences, but rather on intonation units, in a similar way as they are used by
Chafe (1994) or Cruttenden (1997).7 Nevertheless, as the study is concerned with
grammatical time marking, only those intonation units can enter the analysis
which contain a finite verb.
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4 English and German grammatical past time marking
This study attempts to approach the following problem:
•
How does the moment an utterance is made, in relation to the moment the corresponding event
happened, affect the grammatical marking of time?
This intends to say that only time marking by a grammatical past time marker
is analysed. It also implies that certain forms do not enter the analysis which can
potentially also refer to past time: present tense forms with past time reference
(scenic present or historical present), units without verb but with time adverbials
indicating past time, time orientation through context (no explicit reference to
past time), or non-finite verb forms (resultative past participles). In order to
operationalize this study as clearly as possible it was decided to focus on a limited
aspect of the entire picture, i.e. those forms which have traditionally been
associated with past time marking, rather than opening up the additional issue
of deciding, for example, whether a present tense form is to be interpreted as
having past time reference. The issue of non-finite verb forms will, however, be
picked up again in section 7 because it will be relevant in the discussion of the
German Perfekt and Präteritum.
The new methodology used here to assess the conditions under which an event
is interpreted and – presumably – processed as past may serve as a basis for a
more inclusive study involving other expressions of time.
Time reference is typically associated with tense. English and German both
belong to the Germanic language family, a group which is often associated with
a two-tense system of past and non-past. A justification for this type of classification is usually founded on historical and morphological reasons. The
Germanic languages all developed a past tense (in German often called the
Präteritum) which is centred around a so-called dental suffix, the reflexes of
which show up in Modern English as -ed and in German as -te, -test, etc. Apart
from the present tense this remains, even today, the only tense form in both
German and English, or the only time reference option, as it were, which is
formed synthetically.
However, there are other grammatical options in both English and German
for marking past time. Both languages also possess analytic resources: the
present perfect and the past perfect in English and the Perfekt and
Plusquamperfekt forms in German. German grammars have long labelled the
Perfekt a tense. For English, Quirk et al (1985) treat the present perfect not as
a tense but as an aspect, as do Biber et al (1999). Huddleston (1995) and
Huddleston and Pullum (2002), however, analyse it as a secondary tense.
In principle, the past perfect and Plusquamperfekt forms simply involve the
past tense forms of have and haben and hence could be seen as only a variant
of the present perfect and Perfekt, respectively, but some researchers have
disputed this simplified picture (e.g. Hennig 2000 for German and Biber et al
1999: 463ff. for English). As there are no past perfect forms and only nine occurrences of the Plusquamperfekt in the corpus, this issue cannot be pursued here
and accordingly the use of past perfect and Plusquamperfekt will not be
discussed.
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35
The German Präteritum and the English past tense are typically seen as
narrative tense forms and as the main way of expressing past time reference in
the respective languages. The status of so-called perfect constructions is more
complicated. Perfects (in a cross-linguistic meaning) typically express anteriority
(Bybee et al 1994 use the term anterior instead of perfect), i.e. they express an
event which happened at some point before the present moment. This feature
clearly holds for both the present perfect as well as the Perfekt. The development
of perfect constructions may be illustrated by a three-step process, whose outline
here is based on Engel and Ritz (2000) and Elsness (1997).8 The origins of
perfects are usually seen in the expression of a state which implies an earlier
action describing how the current state came about (stage 1; we may label this
the statal use). Grammaticalization then shifts the focus towards past action
which brought about a resulting state (stage 2; resultative use). The final result
of the grammaticalization process is often (but not necessarily) the development
into a past tense form with the focus solely on the action (stage 3). With regard
to the position on this grammaticalization cline, the English present perfect is
usually seen as belonging to stage 2 and with its function often described as
denoting current relevance (see below; Leiss 1992: 279, labels it a resultative
perfect), whereas the German Perfekt is somewhere between stages 2 and 3 with
part of its function bordering on the use as a genuine past tense (see below).
Biber et al (1999: 463f.) show that the English present perfect has a high
preference for occurrence with some verbs (frequently used ones such as be, have,
go, do, make, etc.)9 but rarely occurs with certain others (including other
common verbs such as believe, thank or want). In German there are clear
restrictions on the set of verbs which are used with the Präteritum. Sieberg (1984:
90) sees the German tendency to form a Satzrahmen10 or verbal bracket (a term
used by Durrell 2002) as providing a favourable environment for the use of the
Perfekt because it is formed by using two verbs, whereas the Präteritum only
employs one. He lists 25 verbs which make up almost 90 per cent of all
Präteritum occurrences in the spoken German he analyses. By far the most
common verb is sein ‘be’, followed by kommen ‘come’ and haben ‘have’, sagen
‘say’ and werden ‘become’. The list also includes most modals. A similar list is
provided by Hennig (2000: 181), who reduces the number of verbs most
commonly occurring in the Präteritum to sein ‘be’, haben ‘have’, (some of) the
modals and the four verbs geben ‘give’, kommen ‘come’, stehen ‘stand’ and
wissen ‘know’.11 Sieberg’s list is based on conversational German12 whereas
Hennig bases hers on the spoken German used in TV chat shows.13
In fact, the German situation is even more complicated than that, as is
probably to be expected of a grammatical construction which seems to be
undergoing a major functional shift. In Upper German dialects, i.e. southern
Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Präteritum has largely been replaced by
the Perfekt as a general past tense marker (see Durrell 2002: 295ff.). This
phenomenon is frequently labelled the Oberdeutscher Präteritumschwund and
occurred in Upper German dialects around 1500–1530 (according to Lindgren
1957) although it is likely that the development did not affect the entire Upper
German area at the same time. For a more recent account of the
Präteritumschwund and its relation to similar phenomena in related and in neigh-
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SPOKEN LANGUAGE PRAGMATICS
bouring languages, see Abraham and Conradie (2001). According to Durrell,
the Präteritum is far more common in the north of Germany14 and occurs
particularly with frequently used verbs (i.e. the ones from Sieberg’s and Hennig’s
lists). Apart from its occurrence in certain clause types or constructions (such
as the passive, which of course involves the verbs sein and werden), Durrell
(2002: 297f.) notes its use to express a state, or habitual or repeated action.
The Perfekt is seen as a tense which indicates a past action whose effect is
relevant or apparent at the moment of speaking (Durrell 2002: 296). Similarly,
Weinrich (2003) emphasizes that the Perfekt enables a speaker/writer to include
the past in the current situation. He says the Perfekt is not normally used for
narratives, but if it is, the past which is retold always has a significance for the
present moment (Weinrich 2003: 224f.). According to Duden (2005: 519f.),
Präteritum and Perfekt are largely interchangeable in contexts in which time
adverbials or similar means are used to indicate that an event took place in the
past. If an event is located in time mainly through indicating that it took place
before the moment of speaking/writing (rather than giving an absolute indication
such as gestern ‘yesterday’), then the Perfekt has to be used and cannot be
replaced by the Präteritum. But, as Hennig (2000) points out, it is important to
be clear about the text type under investigation, as this is a vital influencing factor
in the distribution of Perfekt and Präteritum.
For English, Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 143) point out that the difference
between present perfect and past tense is that in the present perfect the primary
focus is on the present moment, whereas for past tense it is on the past. This
description bears some resemblance to the values put forward for the German
system, but the functional difference appears to be far more clear-cut. According
to Quirk et al (1985: 183), the past tense is used to relate events or states
which occurred in the past ‘with a gap between its completion and the present
moment’ where the speaker/writer ‘must have in mind a definite time at which
the event/state took place’. The past tense clearly has a narrative function. The
present perfect on the other hand is used to express ‘states leading up to the
present’, ‘indefinite events in a period leading up to the present’ or ‘recurring
events in a period leading up to the present’ (192). Quirk et al point out that
the label current relevance is indeed an adequate description for the present
perfect (or present perfective, as they call it) (192). This view is supported by Dahl
and Hedin (2000).
There appear to be signs that the present perfect is also now gradually
changing towards step 3 on the outlined grammaticalization cline. This development towards a general past tense may be said to be under way, or in fact to
have been under way for a while, in certain varieties of English, for example in
Scottish English, where the present perfect can occur in conjunction with definite
time adverbials such as yesterday or a week ago (see Miller 2003). In Australian
English the present perfect not only occurs with these time adverbials but is also
used as a narrative tense form which appears to be used for foregrounded
events (see Engel and Ritz 2000). Early reports on a similar use in English
varieties of English go back, for example, to Huddleston (1976: 342, note 8).
Quirk et al (1985: 195, note a) mention it briefly and explain some of the occurrences as ‘performance errors’. It is not mentioned in the more recent grammar
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37
of Biber et al (1999) although it explicitly focuses on spoken English. Miller
(2004) reminds us, though, that a development such as the one just outlined can
only be established for varieties of a language but not for a uniform language
per se, and that for some varieties of English at least, co-occurrence with definite
time adverbials can be traced back several hundred years.15
Despite talking about the relevance to the present or the gap between past
event and present moment, most of the studies reported above base their views
on a more isolated use of grammatical constructions and often look for a
language-internal and an absolute function or meaning of a grammatical
construction. The present study is different in that it is interested in the timing
when a specific time reference is used in relation to the moment the corresponding non-linguistic event occurred.
5 The basic time reference in football commentary
Fleischman (1990: esp. 56), who is concerned with tense usage in narrative
language, notes that in individual text types one tense is usually the basic (or in
her terms ‘unmarked’) one. According to her, this is either present tense or past
tense, and she goes on to claim that in ordinary speech (a term she does not
qualify) present tense is unmarked and past tense marked. In narratives,
according to her, past tense is unmarked and present tense marked, but in the
French chansons de geste, which are the main focus of her research, it is the
present tense again which is the unmarked form. While markedness theory, her
use of the term ordinary speech and also the claim that the main narrative tense
form is the past tense may be disputable, it is nevertheless useful to assume one
tense form to be more basic than another in any given text type. Hence we should
expect one tense, or for our purposes time reference form, to dominate against
any other in terms of frequency. In fact, Fleischman’s claims appear to hold not
only for narrative texts. Her views are supported for German football
commentary by Hennig (2000) (for TV) and Brandt (1983) (for radio), who both
found the present tense to be the most frequent tense form in their respective
corpora.
So for descriptive passages of radio football commentary we may expect
present time reference to be basic. After all, the events are unfolding in front of
the commentators’ eyes in real time. The occurrence of past time reference
would be favoured in descriptive passages which are related off-line, i.e.
occurring more than 18 frames (or 720 milliseconds) after the completion of the
corresponding non-linguistic event. This is precisely what happens, as can be seen
from the presentation of the results.
6 Results
It was predicted that on-line and off-line commentary should show a clear
difference in time reference: the basic time reference option in live radio football
commentary will be present time marking, but if past time marking is used it
will be more frequent in off-line commentary than on-line.
Tables 2.3 and 2.4 indicate that this is indeed borne out by the facts. Table 2.3
shows that for on-line commentary there are very few past time references at all,
in fact only between 4 per cent and 9.2 per cent of all cases for the individual
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commentators. If explicit past time reference is made, in German this is most
frequently done by using the Perfekt. For the three who have the highest share of
past time references on-line of all commentators, between 8 and just above 9 per
cent in the German commentaries of Dittmann, Rieck and Gecks, this is entirely
due to the Perfekt forms. This is not surprising given the fact that German
grammars point out that it relates past events with a link to the present moment.
Interestingly, the English16 results differ, despite very similar claims about the
present perfect. Although Alan Parry does use more present perfect forms than
past tense ones, Green and Ingham rarely use the present perfect at all (Ingham
twice, Green not at all). Green has the fewest examples of explicit past time
marking on-line of all commentators and Mike Ingham has the third lowest
percentage (after Green and Lehmann).
Table 2.3 Grammatical past time markers in on-line commentary
Alan
Green
on-line
past tense / Präteritum
3
0
present perfect / Perfekt
past perfect / Plusquamperfekt 0
total
3
total on-line
75
percentage of past time
references on-line
4.0
Mike Alan
Ingham Parry
Armin Kai
Leh- Dittmann mann
Jens
Jörg
Rieck
Rolf
Rainer
Gecks
5
2
0
7
135
2
7
0
9
152
1
3
0
4
96
1
10
0
11
122
0
6
0
6
65
2
6
0
8
100
5.2
5.9
4.2
9.0
9.2
8.0
Table 2.4 Grammatical past time markers in off-line commentary
off-line
past tense / Präteritum
present perfect / Perfekt
past perfect / Plusquamperfekt
total
total off-line
percentage of past time
references on-line
Alan
Green
Mike Alan
Ingham Parry
43
5
0
48
85
32
9
0
41
79
56.5
51.9
61
13
0
74
203
36.5
Armin Kai
Leh- Dittmann mann
Jens
Jörg
Rieck
Rolf
Rainer
Gecks
35
20
5
60
131
25
22
1
48
122
23
13
1
37
86
31
24
9
64
134
45.8
42.9
43.0
47.8
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Table 2.4 shows that the number of past time references does indeed increase
dramatically off-line and that this is mainly due to the past tense and Präteritum
forms, although the present perfect as well as the Perfekt forms are more
frequent too. What is noticeable is that the Perfekt in German is again more
frequent than the present perfect in English. Whereas the present perfect never
accounts for more than a fourth of all past time references off-line, the Perfekt
forms in German make up between a third and almost half of all past time references, depending on the commentator, although they are never more frequent
than the Präteritum. Overall, grammatical markers of past time account for more
than half of the off-line cases for Alan Green and Mike Ingham, and the German
commentators are astonishingly uniform in that they use grammatical past
time reference in over 40 per cent of all cases (between 42.9 and 47.8). Only Alan
Parry is different in that he marks comparatively few off-line references grammatically for past time (only 36.5 per cent).
However, an increase in past time reference for off-line forms may be obvious
when considering that off-line reference will also include all repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays. Especially verbal action replays often occur
several minutes after an event and hence will prompt explicit past time reference
more readily. It would be interesting to see whether timing also has an influence
on past time reference if the time span is much smaller. Table 2.5 presents the
commentators’ off-line references excluding repeated verbalizations and verbal
action replays. This reduces the probability of the reference being made a long
time after the event.
Table 2.5 Grammatical past time markers in first verbalization off-line
commentary
off-line (first verbalizations only)
past tense / Präteritum
present perfect / Perfekt
past perfect / Plusquamperfekt
total
total off-line
(first verbalizations only)
percentage of past time
references off-line (first
verbalizations only)
Alan
Green
Mike Alan
Ingham Parry
12
4
0
16
9
2
0
11
22
9
0
31
3
6
0
9
8
10
0
18
2
6
0
8
8
13
2
23
42
40
118
34
43
25
38
38.1
27.5
26.5
41.9
32.0
60.5
26.3
Armin Kai
Leh- Dittmann mann
Jens
Jörg
Rieck
Rolf
Rainer
Gecks
Table 2.5 shows that past time reference will also increase off-line, compared
with on-line reference, in cases where verbal action replays and repeated verbalizations are excluded. In other words, any off-line first verbalization of a past
event will already have a noticeable influence on the marking of time. While the
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share of past time reference on-line never crossed the 10 per cent mark (with
Rieck being highest at 9.2 per cent), the lowest mark for first verbalization offline reference is 26.3 per cent (for Alan Parry), thus showing a much higher figure
for all commentators. In fact, those who have a low rate of past time reference
on-line also stay below the 30 per cent mark for off-line first verbalizations (with
the exception of Alan Green) whereas those with a higher on-line percentage
(Dittmann, Rieck and Gecks) are also those who produce more past time forms
as off-line first verbalizations (all above the 30 per cent mark). In fact, in the case
of Rolf Rainer Gecks this results in an astonishingly high percentage of 60.5 past
time forms for off-line first verbalizations (compared with 47.8 per cent off-line
overall). For Kai Dittmann the figures are: 41.9 per cent for off-line first verbalizations only vs 42.9 per cent for off-line overall, i.e. almost identical. Alan Green
has the third-highest percentage in this category despite having the lowest mark
on-line. While again the past tense is far more frequent than the present perfect
in the English commentaries, the Perfekt occurs more often than the Präteritum
as a device for the grammatical expression of past time in off-line first verbalizations in the German ones.
While there is much variation, the share of off-line past time references when
verbal action replays and repeated verbalizations are excluded is in fact
remarkably high. What is more, there is a clear increase for all commentators
from on-line to first verbalization off-line references and a clear increase for five
out of seven commentators, from first verbalization off-line to off-line overall
(also for Dittmann, but only marginally). This underlines the claim that the type
of time-critical utterance (on-line or off-line) and the gap between event and event
reference has a crucial influence on the choice of time marking.
Table 2.6 Grammatical past time markers in repeated verbalization and verbal
action replay off-line commentary
off-line (repeated verbalizations
and verbal action replays only)
past tense / Präteritum
present perfect / Perfekt
past perfect / Plusquamperfekt
total
total off-line (repeated
verbalizations and verbal
action replays only)
percentage of past time
references off-line (repeated
verbalizations and verbal
action replays only)
Alan
Green
Mike Alan
Ingham Parry
Armin Kai
Leh- Dittmann mann
Jens
Jörg
Rieck
Rolf
Rainer
Gecks
31
1
0
32
23
7
0
30
39
4
0
43
32
14
5
51
17
12
1
30
21
7
1
29
23
11
7
41
43
39
85
97
69
61
96
74.4
76.9
50.6
52.6
43.5
47.5
42.7
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Table 2.6 presents the figures for repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays
in off-line commentary. With the exception of Gecks, whose past time reference
in off-line first verbalizations was extremely high (Table 2.5), the share of past time
forms in repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays is higher than in any
other category for all other commentators (only marginally for Dittmann, which
was to be expected from his first verbalization off-line figures). Mike Ingham and
Alan Green are of particular interest here: they employ grammatical past time
marking in around 75 per cent of all cases of repeated verbalization and verbal
action replay (Green at 74.4 and Ingham with the highest mark at 76.9). Table
2.6 also shows very clearly that repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays
favour the use of the Präteritum in the German commentaries. All German
commentators prefer it over the Perfekt in these contexts. The Perfekt is nevertheless again more frequent than the English present perfect.
Table 2.7 Verbs used in the Präteritum for on-line reference, off-line first verbalizations and off-line repeated verbalizations/verbal action replays
On-line
war ‘was’
konnte (past tense of modal kann ‘can’)
hatte ‘had’
kam ‘came’
musste (past tense of modal muss ‘must’)
wollte (past tense of modal wollen ‘want’)
wurde ‘became’
ging ‘went’
stand ‘stood’
bekam ‘received’
(es) gab ‘gave’, but here: ‘there was’
machte ‘made’
1
X
X
1
X
2
X
X
X
X
X
X
Off-line (first
verbalization
only)
7
1
1
X
X
2
3
1
X
2
1
1
Off-line (only
repeated verbalizations
and verbal action
replays)
38
8
4
4
4
4
4
3
3
X
2
1
The following verbs occurred only once each as off-line first verbalization: brachte ‘brought’,
führte ‘led’.
The following verbs occurred only once each as off-line repeated verbalization or verbal
action replay: ansetzte ‘here: be about to (take a shot)’, aussah ‘looked like’, drehte ‘turned’,
einstieg ‘went in’, glich aus ‘equalized’, heraus kam ‘resulted in’, passte ‘passed’, profitierte
‘benefited’, rannte ‘ran’, roch ‘smelled like’, rutschte ‘slipped’, schoss ‘shot’, sollte (should have;
i.e. past tense of modal soll ‘shall’), traf ‘hit’, verpasste ‘here: hit (the ball)’, zog ‘here: took a
shot’, zunichte brachte [sic!; T.M.] ‘here: wreck (the opponent’s chance)’, zurück kam ‘came
back’.
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In fact, there appears to be a general difference in past time marking between
the two languages. For English, in all four categories the past tense clearly
dominates and the present perfect is comparatively rare. This is not so for
German, where the Perfekt forms are more frequent on-line and for first verbalizations off-line, but the Präteritum is more frequent in off-line repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays and off-line overall. In section 5, I mentioned
that the use of Präteritum forms in spoken German is largely restricted to a set
of 25 verbs (the list from Sieberg 1984) or even fewer (that from Hennig 2000).
Table 2.7 lists all Präteritum verbs in on-line reference, first verbalization offline reference and repeated verbalization/verbal action replay off-line reference.
By far the most frequent verb across the three categories is war ‘was’, and all
verbs occurring more than once in any of the categories are on Sieberg’s list, with
the exception of bekam ‘received’ (which at least is similar in form to kam
‘came’). Only wurde ‘became’, ging ‘went’, bekam ‘received’ and machte ‘made’,
all appearing towards the bottom of Table 2.7, are not included in Hennig’s
reduced list. While all four on-line forms (war ‘was’, kam ‘came’ and two
instances of wollte ‘wanted’, i.e. past tense of modal wollen) are common
Präteritum verbs, there are three verbs in the off-line first verbalization category
which do not appear on either list: bekam ‘received’, brachte ‘brought’ and führte
‘led’. But these forms are by no means as unusual as some of the verbs in the
off-line list containing repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays. It is
notable that the only compound verbs occur here: ansetzte ‘here: be about (to
take a shot)’, aussah ‘looked like’, glich aus ‘equalized’, heraus kam ‘resulted in’,
zunichte brachte ‘here: wreck (the opponent’s chance)’ zurück kam ‘came back’.
In addition some unusual strong verbs appear. The appearance of glich aus
‘equalized’, schoss ‘shot’, traf ‘hit’ or zog (drauf) ‘here: took a shot’ may be less
astonishing, however, as they all clearly represent football terms, whereas roch
‘smelled like’ appears more unusual. The appearance of these rare strong verbs
will be discussed in section 7.
7 Analysis
7.1 Past time reference on-line
Three of the German commentators show a slightly higher share of on-line past
time reference than the English ones, with only Armin Lehmann being similar
to the English commentators in this respect.
By far the most common way of time marking on-line is by using the simple
present for English and the German Präsens, i.e. the present tense, as in examples
(1)–(3).
(1)
(2)
(3)
here the throw-in goes to heskey + (ON)17
samuel gets in the tackle again + (..) (ON)
flankt in die n mitte + (ON)
‘crosses into the penalty area’
The question may now be asked why past time reference on-line occurs at all
if on-line reference is tied to the present moment. Two categories can be
identified:
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1. Both German and English commentators describe an event with an inherently long
duration, typically a pass or even a long pass. The outcome of this pass can often be
evaluated while the ball is still on its way, hence the reference is on-line but reference is
to the failure of reaching the target, see (4)–(6).
(4) but that wasn’t a great ball + (..) (ON)
(5) wollte ziege finden + (ON)
‘wanted to find ziege’
(6) giggs’s given it away + (.) (ON)
2. Reference is made to an event with relatively short inherent duration which, however,
immediately follows an event with inherently long duration. In these cases the commentator has time to prepare themselves for the upcoming event and hence is still on-line
despite choosing a past time reference. It should be emphasized that in all cases the event
has already happened but is still within the 18-frame margin that was chosen for
defining on-line reference. In example (7) it is the header after a long pass into the
Argentine penalty area which is not cleared. In (8) the reference is to a throw-in by
Scottish player Naysmith when the game was interrupted, after the ball had gone out
of play and Naysmith could be seen collecting it before taking the throw.
(7) and (.) argentina haven’t cleared it + (ON)
(8) durch naysmith kam der + (..) (ON)
‘it (the throw-in) was taken by naysmith’
There are only two cases which do not fit these categories and hence they seem
negligible. Table 2.3 has already shown that for German: in terms of grammatical
past time marking, the Perfekt is preferred and the four Präteritum forms (war
‘was’, kam ‘came’ and two instances of wollte ‘wanted’, i.e. past tense of modal
wollen; see Table 2.7) all employ verbs which belong to the set of verbs which
typically attract the Präteritum.
More interesting for the moment may be the distinction between present
perfect and past tense in English. All present perfect forms used by Alan Parry,
with the exception of two examples, one of which is given here as (9), are used
when either possession changes or to locate the ball. They all belong either to
category 1 or 2.
(9) and he’s gone round the goalkeeper who blocked his run (ON)
(10) but has only ended up (..) losing the ball i’m afraid+ (..) (ON)
(11) [<cres> but a mistake here by stam has given possession to inzaghi+ (..)] (ON)
The two present perfects used by Mike Ingham are similar, but Ingham emphasizes that a change of possession has not taken place. His two examples are
almost identical (see 12 below and 7 above):
(12) england haven’t cleared it + (.) (ON)
The past tense forms on the other hand seem to refer to events rather indirectly
as all of them employ either some sort of evaluation or a modal or semi-modal
(or, in fact, both), see (13)–(15).
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(13) [<decres> tried to drag the ball back to scholes + (..)] (ON)
(14) but he (.) did well to try and find batistuta + (..) (ON)
(15) but that wasn’t a great ball + (..) (ON)
7.2 First verbalization off-line references
In comparison with on-line references, first verbalization off-line references are
characterized by an astonishing increase in past time reference. Admittedly,
(simple) present tense is in both cases the preferred way of time marking, yet it
is interesting to see that events to which reference is made for the first time, but
more than 0.72 seconds (720 milliseconds) after their occurrence, cause commentators to use explicit past time marking in at least a quarter of all cases, whereas
no commentator used past time marking on-line in more than a tenth of all
examples. This is even more striking when we look more closely at the timing
of first verbalizations. Although it is generally possible that they are made
several minutes after an event or event sequence, this is unlikely. If an event is
significant enough to be verbalized at all, it will be verbalized when it occurs or
immediately afterwards, resulting in on-line reference or off-line first verbalizations, respectively. In practice, then, an off-line first verbalization will be made
more than 0.72 seconds after a corresponding event but, unlike verbal action
replays, within seconds of its end. It is this short margin which is responsible for
a considerable increase in past time marking.
What is equally important is to consider the type of time marking which is
chosen. For German, the Perfekt is again more frequent than the Präteritum, but
more strikingly, the interpretation of an event as ‘past’ is made through an
increased use of past tense forms in English. The present perfect does not gain
ground, despite its classical interpretation as expressing current relevance and
thus potentially having a stronger showing in utterances often begun just a few
(split) seconds after the occurrence of a corresponding event. This precisely does
not happen. On the contrary, although past tense verbs still occur in some
evaluative statements, in (16) for example, past tense forms are now also used
to report events in a far more direct way, see (17)–(19):
(16)
(17)
(18)
(19)
[<decres> the pass wasn’t just hit (..) hard enough though + (..)] (OFF)
[<excited> brought down was he in the area + (..) ] (OFF)
danny mills was caught + (OFF)
and the ball (.) rebounded off the shins of er juan veron + (..) (OFF)
The present perfect, on the other hand, is still largely used for the same reasons
as on-line: Alan Parry uses it almost exclusively to signal explicitly the end of
possession or of a longer sequence of events, as in (20)–(22). Only one new use
has been added, which, strictly speaking, also belongs to this group, as it also
results in the end of a longer sequence and results in a change of possession: Parry
uses a present perfect to announce that a goal has been scored, see (23).
(20)
(21)
(22)
(23)
has given (.) manchester united possession + (..)(OFF)
[<cres> an it’s been given away to zidane + (..)] (OFF)
an juventus (..) have er knocked the ball out of play there + (OFF)
giggs (..) has scored + (..) (OFF)
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Similar examples are found in Mike Ingham’s commentary: he uses the present
perfect to refer to cases where the game is – or at least should be – interrupted,
as in the case of (25) where no free kick is awarded.
(24) and it’s been (..) a bit of pushing i think (..) collinja has spotted + (..) (OFF)
(25) and now david beckham (..) has been fouled on the edge of the penalty area + (..) (OFF)
Alan Green has three cases of the present perfect involving modals. However,
they cannot be analysed as true present perfect forms, as for modals this is
frequently the only way of referring to past time because the original past tense
of some of them is now used to express modality. Green only uses one ‘true’
present perfect, presented here as (26).
(26) [<excited> he’s chested on into the penalty area+ (.)] (OFF)
This example, and probably also (23), are the only present perfects used in the
first verbalization off-line category which lend immediacy to a sequence of
events, and (26) is the only example which is dynamic in that it mainly focuses
on the completion of an action (in that the chesting on into the penalty area has
successfully been carried out and results in a good opportunity for Argentina)
and not on a new state resulting from earlier action, for example in (24), where
a free kick is awarded as a result of a foul, but where the kick has not been taken.
Similarly (20) and (21) indicate a change of possession resulting from mistimed
passes, but this change has not led to any dangerous action because the counterattack is only being built up.
Note also that the use of a past tense in (26), with the entire sequence provided
in (27), would be inappropriate as it could not lend the same immediacy to the
sequence as the present perfect. A present tense form would signal this but could
not indicate that the ball has already reached the penalty area. Accordingly, the
present perfect is the best choice and it is precisely this form which sets up the
dramatic sequence of events.
(27) [<excited> he’s chested on into the penalty area + (.) (OFF)
danger here for england + (.) (ON)
ball played low into the six yard box +] (ON)
[<decres> and (..) david seaman got there before batistuta +] (..) (OFF)
In all, however, the present perfect is astonishingly ‘undynamic’ and statal as it
is mainly used in examples such as has given juventus possession. In terms of
the three-step grammaticalization cline, as it was outlined in section 4, it is
somewhere between stages 1 and 2, in fact probably closer to stage 1 than 2.
The German forms are used in an entirely different way. With the exception
of a single form, all German Perfekt examples off-line as first verbalization are
clearly used to signal the completion of an individual event, as in (28) and (29).
What is important to note is that it is the completion of an individual event which
is expressed, not just the explicit verbalization of the end of possession or the
location of the ball.
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(28) sondern hat auf die linke seite gespielt + (.) (OFF)
‘played the ball to the left instead’
(29) hat rausgepasst + (OFF)
‘passed wide’
Note that while the term result (or resultative) may well serve as a cover term,
in this particular context the term completion is probably better suited.
Haspelmath’s definition of resultative participles as referring ‘to the state of the
verb’s patient that results from its undergoing the complete verbal action’
(Haspelmath 1990: 40) in fact includes both the terms complete and result. In
the present context, though, the latter term is unsatisfactory because it implies
the result of an action leading to a state. But this idea is unfeasible when entire
event sequences, such as the passing around of the ball, are concerned. In such
contexts it is clearly the completion of the event, i.e. one pass that has just been
played or has even found its target, that is focused on. Note also that in
Haspelmath’s definition the term complete is used in conjunction with the
expression ‘(verbal) action’. This underlines the dynamic character of the
Perfekt, particularly in comparison with the English present perfect as it is used
in radio football commentary.
The Präteritum forms also exhibit some interesting characteristics. Almost a
third of all Präteritum occurrences are due to a form of sein (seven out of 22).
And while in fact most of the other Präteritum verbs also belong to the set that
typically attracts the Präteritum, there are some examples of verbs which do not.
One of them is the verb brachte ‘brought’ in (30). It is important to note that
this example is interspersed by several pauses before it is signalled that German
defender Linke’s ball went out of play. The focus is not on a completed pass (or
here on its failure), but it appears to be on the action itself. This interpretation
is underlined by the fact that the commentators Dittmann and Lehmann keep
focusing on Linke’s actions and keep discussing his insecurity on the pitch
throughout the entire half after a mistake by him led to the Germans conceding
a goal. This suggests that in (30) they interpret Linke’s pass not as just one event
from an entire sequence of passing the ball, but as a special case of scrutinizing
a player’s actions.
(30) der brachte den ball + (.) (OFF)
[<cres> völlig unbedrängt + (.)](OFF)
in die neutrale zone + (.) (OFF)
über die torauslinie + (OFF)
‘he played the ball
completely unchallenged
into the neutral zone
and over the touchline’
Similarly in (31) the focus is on the Romanian player Hagi who has just received
a yellow card. The example relates an event in the past with no clear focus on
the successful or unsuccessful completion of an individual event as part of an
entire event sequence. This interpretation receives some support from the fact
that this off-line reference, despite being a first verbalization, occurred some 30
seconds after the event itself.
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(31) [<cres> auch der bekam die gelbe karte +] (OFF)
‘he was also shown the yellow card’
In all, however, it is striking that most of the Präteritum verbs are on Sieberg’s
and Hennig’s lists, although the studies which produced them were concerned
with entirely different text types. This may suggest that, at least to a certain
extent, the use of the Präteritum is not so much conditioned by a functional
difference from the Perfekt, but by the lexical verb which is used (but see below
under ‘Off-line references including repeated verbalization and verbal action
replays’). Note, however, that the most frequent verb, sein, is also a verb
expressing a state, and so it does not lend itself easily to the expression of a result
or the completion of an action.
Perfekt forms are typically used to signal individual events as part of a
sequence of events such as passing the ball around. They seem to represent more
of a routine description of stereotypical events, and as the Perfekt signals
completion, it is the appropriate form to indicate a successful pass. Präteritum
forms would be inappropriate in this context for precisely the reason that focus
would then be on an action in the past whose relevance to the present moment
(the fact that the action was – successfully – completed) would be unclear. This
use of the Perfekt sets it apart very clearly from the way the present perfect is
used by the English commentators, but it is a typical feature of German radio
commentary and accounts for the dominance of Perfekt forms in this type of
off-line reference.
7.3 Off-line references including repeated verbalization and verbal action replays
Table 2.6 indicates that, with the exception of German commentator Rolf
Rainer Gecks, off-line reference in repeated verbalizations and verbal action
replays displays the highest use of explicit past time marking in comparison with
on-line and first verbalization off-line reference. In fact, for repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays Alan Green and Mike Ingham use grammatical
past tense marking in around 75 per cent of all cases; an exceptionally high
figure. When all off-line references are considered (section 6, Table 2.4), their
percentage drops to just over 50 (Green at 56.5 per cent and Ingham at 51.9 per
cent). While for the German commentators the use of explicit past time marking
for all off-line references is between 42.9 and 47.8 per cent, Alan Parry only has
a percentage of 36.5. This underlines Fleischman’s assumption that in any given
text or text type one tense or time marking option is more basic. In the case of
football commentary, this is the present tense. Furthermore, the figures for first
verbalization off-line references have already shown that while the probability
of past time marking increases, proximity to the present moment is nevertheless a favourable environment for present time marking (see Table 2.5 in
section 6).18 Finally, the possibility of present tense use for past time reference
has already been mentioned in section 4. A case in point is, for example, peak
marking through present tense in narratives which are told in the past tense, as
in (32), which is a verbal action replay providing the details of a rather severe
foul on German player Rau by Scottish player Maurice Ross.
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(32) ich muss mich immer noch aufregen über den gestreckten fuß mit dem maurice ross (.)
da einstieg + (OFF)
der ball war ja für ross überhaupt nicht mehr (.) zu erreichen + (OFF)
und dann geht rau da rein und bekommt diesen schlag + (.) (OFF)
diesen kräftigen schlag gegen den unterschenkel + (OFF)
‘i’m still furious about the outstretched foot with which ross went in there
the ball wasn’t even there to be won for ross
and then rau goes in there and is hit
is hit so strongly on his lower leg’
After introducing the narrative (ich muss mich immer noch aufregen ‘I’m still
furious’), Rolf Rainer Gecks begins by relating events in the Präteritum (einstieg
in mit dem maurice ross da einstieg ‘with which Ross went in there’, and war
in der ball war ja für ross überhaupt nicht mehr zu erreichen ‘the ball wasn’t even
there to be won for Ross’), before switching to the present tense when talking
about Rau’s involvement and the injury he picked up (geht and bekommt in und
dann geht rau da rein und bekommt diesen schlag+ (.) diesen kräftigen schlag
gegen den unterschenkel+ ‘and then Rau goes in there and is hit is hit so strongly
on his lower leg’).
All this, however, does not invalidate the conclusion that past time reference
is indeed higher off-line than on-line. Repeated verbalizations and verbal action
replays, which by definition occur with a longer temporal distance between event
and event reference, lead to a further increase in past time reference forms
from off-line first verbalizations. Proximity to the present moment is hence not
only an abstract concept used by grammarians but in fact crucially influences
the choice of grammatical time marking. More importantly, this proximity is
usually given a role in the description of the Perfekt and, in particular, the present
perfect. As the results show, however, the present perfect and its relation to the
present moment does not seem to influence the time marking choice of the
English speakers, whereas there does appear to be an influence on time marking
in German.
The pattern in which repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays, or in
fact off-line references overall, are used does not change very much in
comparison with off-line first verbalizations only – as far as the English commentators are concerned. The overwhelming majority of past time reference is
through the past tense. Most of the present perfect forms occur off-line as a first
verbalization, only a few instances being repeated verbalizations or verbal
action replays (with the exception of Mike Ingham, but see below). In Alan
Parry’s case, they either refer to examples of the type it’s been given away (end
of a sequence), or to the goal scored by Giggs (ryan giggs has equalized, which
is uttered just after the initial giggs has scored). Parry’s words when a Manchester
United goal is disallowed represent a similar case: an equalizing goal has been
chalked off. Only in Mike Ingham’s commentary is the present perfect used more
frequently for repeated verbalizations or verbal action replays. This is caused by
the events in the game: during Ingham’s commentary Owen almost scores a goal,
a penalty is given to England and Beckham converts it. This gives Ingham a
number of opportunities in which he can refer back to these events. To do that,
he uses the present perfect, see (33) and (34).
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(33) england have hit the post (.) through michael owen + (..) (OFF)
(34) pier luigi collinja + (..) (OFF)
probably the best referee in the world + (OFF)
has given england a penalty + (..) (OFF)
In German, however, repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays present
a very different picture from the first verbalization pattern. In off-line repeated
verbalizations and verbal action replays the Präteritum forms are more frequent
than the Perfekt ones (see Table 2.6; this is also true of off-line overall, see Table
2.4 again). Hence it appears that a longer gap between event and verbalization
favours the use of the Präteritum. Verbal action replays also seem to provide the
context in which rather unusual ablauting Präteritum forms occur. These issues
will be discussed presently.
But even the use of the Perfekt appears to change slightly: a number of
examples occur which should be interpreted as the expression of a past action
without the focus on completion or result. Of course, completion or result may
still be expressed, as in (35).
(35) aber (..) der zittert sich zwar zu diesem pass + (..) (ON)
in richtung eigenen schlussmann + (ON)
letzten endes hat er ihn aber dahin gebracht + (OFF)
‘but he’s very shaky when he plays the pass
towards his own goalkeeper
but in the end he gets the ball to him’
Here the last intonation unit (letzten endes hat er ihn aber dahin gebracht ‘but
in the end he gets the ball to him’) refers to the successful completion of a pass
and is a repeated verbalization which refers back to the preceding intonation
units aber der zittert sich zwar zu diesem pass+ in richtung eigenen schlussmann+
(‘but he’s very shaky when he plays the pass towards his own goalkeeper’).
But the explicit focus on the aspect of completion or result seems to be lost
in a number of other examples and reference simply seems to be to a past action.
Again it is proximity and distance between event and event reference which play
a crucial role. The Perfekt as a means of focusing only on past action is not used
on-line and there is only a single example in off-line first verbalizations (with
an unusually long gap of 12 seconds between event and first verbalization). In
off-line repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays this use occurs five
times. In (36), for example, reference is made to a foul on German defender Rau
(the same foul which is referred to in example 32), who is carried off the pitch
(not shown on TV and accordingly labelled ‘Unclear’). Commentator Rolf
Rainer Gecks then elaborates on how unnecessary the foul was (aber das musste
wirklich nicht sein ‘but that (the foul) was unnecessary’) and makes a relatively
vague reference to the event (so wie die szene sich entwickelt hat), more than
two minutes after it occurred and after it was first verbalized. What is vital is
that in this last intonation unit, Gecks’ utterance can only be taken as a reference
to the way the scene, i.e. the foul challenge, was developing. The use of so wie
especially, i.e. the way or how the sequence of events unfolded, focuses on the
action itself rather than its result, and so a resultative interpretation is excluded.
In this case, then, the Perfekt is solely used to refer to a past action.
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(36) und sie bringen ihn erst einmal über die seitenlinie hinweg + (UNCLEAR)
aber das musste wirklich nicht sein + (ELAB)
so wie die szene sich da entwickelt hat + (OFF)
‘and they’re carrying him over the touchline first of all
but that (the foul) was unnecessary
the way the scene was developing there’
The verb sein is responsible for most uses of the Präteritum off-line overall (see Table
2.4) but is particularly frequent in repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays
(see Tables 2.6 and 2.7). Nevertheless it is interesting that not only a number of the
frequently occurring Präteritum verbs appear in the latter two contexts, such as
modals kam ‘came’, ging ‘went’ etc. (although the latter only appears on Sieberg’s
list), but also verbs whose occurrence in the Präteritum may be seen as more
unusual. This is even more remarkable because a number of them are telic verbs
(e.g. einstieg ‘went in’, glich aus ‘equalized’, schoss ‘shot’, traf ‘scored’), which should
lend themselves particularly well to use with the Perfekt and whose ablauting
Präteritum forms may even sound somewhat old-fashioned, e.g. glich aus
‘equalized’. These unusual Präteritum forms all occur in one specific context: they
are always used as part of an entire sequence of a verbal action replay of an
important situation. This may be a disputed appeal for a penalty, as in (37), a goal,
as in (38), or a foul, as in example (32) above. In all cases, the Präteritum is used,
employing on the one hand the usual set of Präteritum verbs (for example ging hin
‘went in’ in 37), but also using more unusual forms, such as roch ‘smelled like’ (in
37), glich aus ‘equalized’ (in 38) or einstieg ‘went in’ (in 32 above). Sieberg’s (1984)
claim that the tendency to form a verbal bracket should favour the use of the Perfekt,
particularly with items which do not belong to the set of verbs which frequently
appear in the Präteritum, seems to be invalid here.
(37) das roch nach elfmeter + (.) (OFF)
das muss man ganz klar sagen für die rumänen + (.) (OFF)
da ging der nowotny doch recht derbe hin + (OFF)
‘this smelled of a penalty
you have to say for the romanians
nowotny did go in there very roughly’
(38) die deutsche führung durch fredi bobic + (.) (OFF)
in der dreiundzwanzigsten minute + (.) (OFF)
glich kenny miller + (.) (OFF)
in der neunundsechzigsten aus + (.) (OFF)
‘the german lead through fredi bobic
in the twenty-third minute
was equalized by kenny miller
in the sixty-ninth’
The examples in (32) and (38) are both from Rolf Rainer Gecks’ commentary. He
is different from the other German commentators in that all uses of compound
verbs, which are all telic and could hence be expected to attract the Perfekt, appear
in his commentary. The fact that they appear in the Präteritum underlines again that
a functional distinction between Perfekt and Präteritum is still maintained and that
the temporal distance between event and description favours the use of the
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Präteritum, even for verbs whose occurrence in this tense form may seem ‘unusual’.
Finally, in this context it is important to note that the cases of verbal action replays
and repeated verbalizations show a particularly frequent use of the verb sein (see
Table 2.7), but it should not be overlooked that sein does not lend itself easily to
the expression of completion or result, precisely because of its statal and atelic
quality. So although sein is a verb which typically attracts the Präteritum, this is also
due to the fact that its inherent semantics (or Aktionsart, as it is sometimes called)
clearly favours its use in conjunction with it.19 It is telling that the only time in which
sein appears in a Perfekt is as part of the – actional – expression zur stelle sein ‘here:
intervene at the right moment’ where again it is clearly the expression of completion
which is focused on.
(39) dann sind aber mit linke + (.) (OFF)
und dann auch (.) mit christian ziege gleich zwei deutsche zur stelle gewesen + (.) (OFF)
‘then through linke
and then also through christian ziege two germans intervened at the right moment’
7.4 Past participles in German and their relation to the Perfekt
Although they have been excluded from the analysis proper, at this point it is useful
to have a brief look at the non-finite use of (past) participles, which constitute an
important element in football commentary. They occur in the same contexts as the
German Perfekt forms and seemingly also with a function of signalling completion.
Their use is also noted by Hennig (2000), who correctly points out that they are
frequently ambiguous as to whether they should be interpreted as active or passive
participles. As the participles used in this way are telic or resultative, they will,
however, always signal completion, independent of them expressing activity or
passivity. In fact, I would claim, the question of what voice these participles express
is at the very best a secondary issue and it is precisely this versatility which makes
their use so frequent. The German commentators can introduce a referent and then
expand on it without having to introduce a new element with the same reference.
In (40), der (‘here: he’, but in fact a demonstrative pronoun) refers to the German
player Bobic, who is characterized as having scored a goal and as hard-working,
before Bobic’s pass to Schneider is described in the fourth intonation unit (angepasst
Schneider ‘passed to Schneider’). In this unit, however, reference to Bobic is not
repeated, not even by using a pronoun such as der. Note also that angepasst is
generally ambiguous, as it could either have an active reading (Bobic hat Schneider
angepasst ‘Bobic (has) passed to Schneider’) or a passive one (Schneider wurde/wird
von Bobic angepasst ‘Schneider was/is passed the ball by Bobic’).
(40) auch der + (.) (ON)
der mann der das tor schoss für unsere mannschaft + (.) (OFF)
der ackert + (.) (UNCLEAR)
[<cres> angepasst schneider + (OFF)
an den strafraum + (.)] (OFF)
‘he as well
the man who scored the goal for our team
he is working hard
passed to schneider
edge of the penalty area’
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In a very similar vein, the unit abgespielt auf galca ‘passed to Galca’ in (41) does
not specify who played the pass to Galca, neither by repeating general sie ‘they’
(i.e. the Romanian team), nor by introducing a player’s name. Again, the unit
is ambiguous with respect to an active or passive reading (sie haben/der Spieler
hat abgespielt auf Galca ‘they (have) passed/the player (has) passed the ball to
Galca’ or der Ball wurde/wird abgespielt auf Galca ‘the ball was/is passed to
Galca’).
(41) das machen sie momentan ausgezeichnet wie sie da den ball abschirmen + (ON)
abgespielt auf galca + (OFF)
‘they’re doing an excellent job in shielding the ball
passed to galca’
A similar use of participles is generally possible in English too, but various
reasons make it unlikely. In fact, none of the commentators uses past participles
as a single item in an intonation unit, unlike the German commentators; see (42).
(42) zurückgepasst + (..) (OFF)
‘passed back’
One important reason for this appears to be that an activity/passivity interpretation in English is crucial. Ambiguity like in the German examples cannot be
achieved because an active/passive interpretation in English depends on further
elements being present or not. Passivity can only be expressed if a transitive verb
lacks the explicit expression of a direct object: hence ball played into the six yard
box or just played into the six yard box will always have a passive reading. A
further restriction applies to regular verbs and other verbs whose past tense and
past participle are identical: played the ball into the six yard box (where the direct
object is expressed) will always be interpreted as a simple past tense without
subject, never as a non-finite verb expressing completion. As a consequence, nonfinite forms of this sort are rare in English commentaries and are almost always
used to express passivity.
The different interpretation of the German examples and the similarities
between this use and the Perfekt suggest that the Perfekt still serves functions
which cannot be expressed in the same way by the Präteritum.
8 Implications of the present study and its methodology for current theories on
past time marking
8.1 The importance of a new methodology
It needs to be emphasized again that the majority of verbs, even when considering all off-line cases, will still receive other time marking than past. When
considering repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays only, three
commentators stay below the 50 per cent mark, and two others are just above
it. So there remains a large residue where present time marking is used instead.
What could be the reasons for this?
First of all, this is mainly because commentators are required to describe what
they see ideally at the moment when an event happens, and then they will
certainly opt for present tense descriptions as the basic form of time marking.
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Secondly, for events occurring in quick succession, even if they are only just offline, there may still be a tendency to describe these events as if they were on-line,
i.e. by opting for the present tense. Thirdly, peak marking in past time reference
may be made through the use of present time morphology. This feature is very
common in spoken language and shows that certain textual functions, even if
they refer to past time, may be fulfilled by grammatical expressions other than
past time markers.
In fact, the claim that present time marking is basic and that time marking will
occur through tense and aspect morphology is in any case a gross oversimplification (for a similar view, see again Hennig 2000). So it would be an important
research topic for the future to provide a study of all types of past time reference,
not only those which involve grammatical constructions and whose label
suggests the notion of pastness (as in terms such as past tense or Perfekt). In order
to do this, language studies should consider moving away from taking languageinternal grammatical constructions as their point of departure towards providing
an extra-linguistic definition of pastness against which language use can then be
compared. An approach like the present one would form a good basis on which
to develop a theoretical foundation which could gradually integrate further text
types.
Methodologically, the present approach may be further improved. As the cutoff point for on-line reference at 0.72 seconds (720 milliseconds) after the
corresponding event was set a priori and owes much to potential error margins
in the editing process of the audio and video material, varying this cut-off point
might produce even better results which would then permit the prediction of
when speakers generally interpret an event as ‘past’. Nevertheless, even with a
cut-off point at 0.72 seconds, off-line first verbalizations have an effect as
marked as producing between 25 per cent and just over 40 per cent of verbs
marked for past time (with Gecks being exceptional in marking over 60 per cent
for past time). This underlines that only a very short delay in utterance formulation will prompt a high number of grammatical past time references, and it
suggests that in relation to past time, the present moment may indeed be nothing
but a very brief moment, seemingly not even exceeding one second.
8.2 The present perfect and the Perfekt: what are their functions?
A further important aspect of the present study is how the possibilities of
grammatical past time marking are used and what their relation is to the present
moment. The slightly higher share of on-line past time references occurs for
German and this is mainly due to the use of Perfekt forms. This tendency
towards a more pronounced use of the Perfekt in comparison with the present
perfect is then underlined for off-line first verbalizations, where the overall
share of past time references seems to be similar for both English and German,
with the exception of German commentator Rolf Rainer Gecks. For English, past
tense forms dominate for all off-line contexts, whereas in German the Präteritum
dominates for off-line repeated verbalizations/verbal action replays, with the
Perfekt forms being more frequent in off-line first verbalizations. This appears
to suggest a closer link of the German Perfekt forms to the present moment than
of the English present perfect. This is a surprising result, particularly considering
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that the Perfekt is generally seen as being on its way towards becoming an
analytic equivalent to the Präteritum (see, for example, Leiss 1992), whereas it
is the present perfect which is characterized as being linked more closely to the
present moment through its description as signalling current relevance. In any
case, the gap between present moment and past event (see Quirk et al 1985) is
an influencing factor in the German commentaries, but not in the English ones.
One of the reasons why the English present perfect is so rare is the fact that
its main function in descriptive passages of radio football commentary is to sum
up or conclude an entire sequence of events, in which it typically has more of a
statal quality. Its occasional use of lending immediacy to a situation is extremely
rare and its inability to function as a narrative time reference form makes it
virtually impossible to be used more than once for each sequence of events. An
exception is if the reference is not only to the same event but if it highlights two
different consequences this same event has, as in (43).
(43) giggs (..) has scored + (..) (OFF)
ryan giggs has equalized + (..) (OFF)
For German, the situation is entirely different. The Perfekt appears to have a
closer proximity to the present moment in that it is not used to refer to states
resulting from a longer stretch of events but more to the completion of a single
event. This also entails that the meaning of the German Perfekt is much more
actional than the English equivalent. In these cases the German Perfekt and
Präteritum are definitely not interchangeable.
The vast majority of the Präteritum forms in the present study belong to the
same small set of verbs identified by Sieberg (1984) or Hennig (2000). This, it
would appear, might suggest that the choice of grammatical marker is governed
to a large extent by the lexical verb employed. But the use of more unusual
Präteritum forms in verbal action replays and the dominance of statal, non-resultative sein forms in the Präteritum might suggest that a functional difference is
still maintained.
So not only does the on-line/off-line distinction have an important influence
on past time marking, but proximity to the present moment, i.e. marking
completion rather than straightforward past time, is an influencing factor in the
choice of past time marker in German. A similar influence cannot be established
for English where the choice between present perfect and past tense appears to
be governed more by a statal vs actional interpretation. In other words, in terms
of their level of grammaticalization, the classic view can be supported which
states that the present perfect in English is by no means as grammaticalized as
the German Perfekt. The use of the Perfekt as an event completion marker and
its traces of marking simple pastness may suggest that this form is indeed on its
way towards becoming a general past tense. The English present perfect, on the
other hand, does not appear to be as far developed. It is neither as frequent as
the Perfekt, nor by any means equipped with a similar actional quality.20
Coming back to the three-stage grammaticalization cline as outlined in section
4 (stage 1: statal use; stage 2: resultative use; stage 3: general past tense) and
despite signs in some varieties of English that the present perfect is pushing
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towards stage 3, it is interesting to note that in football commentary it is the least
grammaticalized stage which represents the most frequent use. If similar results
can be established for other text types, grammars would have to revise their views
and theories about the use and function of the present perfect. At the very least,
the importance of text types in the use and function of grammatical past time
marking should be recognized (see also Hennig 2000 for a similar view).
9 Conclusion
The prediction that explicit past time marking will increase considerably for offline reference holds convincingly for both English and German. This increase
is already strongly noticeable in first verbalization off-line references and even
more so for all off-line references and for off-line repeated verbalizations and
verbal action replays only. For repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays,
two of the English commentators use grammatical past time marking in around
75 per cent of all cases, and for off-line overall they both stay above the 50 per
cent mark, with the German commentators very consistently in the low or
high 40 per cent region. Only Alan Parry has a very low percentage of past time
references off-line overall.
The main grammatical construction for the expression of past time in English
is the past tense. In the English commentaries, few present perfect forms occur,
their use being largely restricted to the explicit indication of a change in
possession, the position of the ball or an interruption of the game. In the English
commentaries, the present perfect is astonishingly statal and only shows a low
degree of grammaticalization, probably closer to stage 1 than to stage 2. While
concepts such as ‘current relevance’ may well apply in all uses of the present
perfect in the present corpus, it remains unclear whether this concept really
governs its use. Proximity to the present moment is certainly no factor which
has an influence on the choice of past time marking.
For German, the picture is different. Generally, the choice of past time marking
may be seen to be influenced by the lexical verb chosen: certain common verbs
(especially sein ‘be’, haben ‘have’, werden ‘become’ and the modals) tend to
attract the Präteritum while less common ones appear in the Perfekt, but it seems
that this is not the entire picture. By far the most frequent verb appearing in the
Präteritum is sein, whose atelicity attracts the Präteritum more readily. The main
function of the Perfekt appears to be the signalling of completion, particularly
the completion of an individual event within an entire event sequence. The
expression of completion – rather than the more general expression of pastness
– seems to be connected with proximity to the present moment. This is underlined by the fact that in on-line and in first verbalization off-line references the
Perfekt is more frequent than the Präteritum, whereas the Präteritum is more
frequent if all occurrences of off-line reference are counted and also if only
repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays are considered (in other words
in those cases where reference to a corresponding event is furthest from the event
itself).
The results from this study challenge certain assumptions that have been
held about the grammatical constructions under investigation. In particular, it
appears that the present perfect may to a large extent be a far more statal
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construction than assumed. While the concept of ‘current relevance’ must not
be equated with ‘proximity to the present moment’ as it was defined here, it is
still astonishing to see that temporal proximity does not seem to have any
influence on the choice of past time marker in the English texts at all. The
German commentaries display precisely this influence. At least football commentators do seem to maintain a functional distinction of Perfekt and Präteritum,
and even use unusual and rare ablauting Präteritum forms if the context requires
it.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
I will continue to use the German terms in order to distinguish the German language
forms more easily from the corresponding English language ones.
Broadcast nationwide on ARD radio stations, e.g. HR Info or BR5 aktuell.
See note 2.
For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Müller (2006), Chapter 3.1.
In fact, Müller (2006) distinguishes between events and situations. This distinction
is not crucial in the present context.
For a more detailed definition of these concepts, see Müller (2006).
For a fuller discussion, see again Müller (2006).
Note that cross-linguistically this is not the only possible grammaticalization path
of perfects, but that the development as it is outlined here for English and German
is very common indeed.
Biber et al (1999: 463) note that ‘has/have got in BrE [British English; TM] conversation is the single most common present perfect verb in any one register’. It is
problematic to analyse has/have got as a present perfect, as in British English
conversation the meaning of this form has usually been lexicalized as ‘have’ and
hence, strictly speaking, has ceased to be a present perfect although formally it may
still look like one.
The Satzrahmen is formed by separating, for example, auxiliary (e.g. habe ‘have’)
and main verb (e.g. erzählt ‘told’) and thereby ‘framing’ an utterance as in Ich habe
die Geschichte doch schon so oft erzählt (‘But I have told this story many times
before’, where English – normally – does not separate the two verbs).
Although sein is also the second most frequent verb occurring in the Perfekt in
Sieberg’s corpus (Sieberg 1984: 91), the Perfekt-Präteritum ratio is in fact in the
region of 1:12. In the chat shows Hennig (2000) analyses, there are only five Perfekt
forms employing sein but 306 Präteritum forms (179ff.). In the descriptive passages
of live radio football commentary analysed in the present study, only a single Perfekt
form employing sein occurs.
Based on 22 face-to-face conversations on everyday topics (Sieberg 1984: 21ff.).
Hennig (2000: 185) also produces a similar list for the written German of private
letters.
Durrell does not specify what kind of data this claim is based on.
The occurrence of definite time adverbials with the present perfect is attested in texts
from, for example, Shakespeare and Pepys (Elsness 1997) and seems to have
persisted in non-standard varieties of English to this day (Miller 2000 and 2004).
In this context, English is used to refer collectively to the English language commentaries, in contrast to the German language ones, not as a term to denote the country
of origin, as Alan Green is from Northern Ireland.
+ signals the end of an intonation unit. (ON) and (OFF) mark on-line and off-line
commentary, respectively. The label (UNCLEAR) is used for references whose on-
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line or off-line status is unclear, (ELAB) identifies elaboration passages. ‘Stage directions’, such as <excited>, mark deviations in pitch or loudness from the speakers’
normal register. The meaning of <excited> is obvious, <cres> indicates a more
gradual increase in loudness, pitch, tempo or a combination of two or all three of
the features. A following <decres> indicates a gradual decrease of the same features.
Square brackets […] indicate beginning and end of such a special speech style. (.)
represents a micropause whereas (..) is used for pauses with a duration of up to 0.8
seconds. The duration of longer pauses is given in seconds, e.g. (1.3) indicates a pause
of 1.3 seconds. Where possible, each intonation unit was translated separately (i.e.
line-by-line translation). Only in very few cases where this practice would have made
the translation difficult to understand, it was decided to combine two intonation units
in the English translation. In order to underline that the translations reflect spoken
language, no punctuation or capitalization was used.
18 Note that ‘proximity to the present moment’ should not be equated with the concept
of ‘current relevance’.
19 This, of course, also applies to other verbs on Sieberg’s and Hennig’s lists and to other
more frequently occurring Präteritum verbs from Table 2.7. Examples are haben
‘have’ or stehen ‘stand’.
20 But note again that there are varieties of English where the present perfect is or can
be used differently, for example Australian English and Scottish English (see section
4 and also note 15), and in fact also in the language of football co-commentators,
i.e. the so-called expert summarizers.
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References
Abraham, W. and C. J. Conradie (2001), Präteritumschwund und Diskursgrammatik.
Präteritumschwund in gesamteuropäischen Bezügen: areale Ausbreitung, heterogene
Entstehung, Parsing sowie Diskursgrammatische Grundlagen und Zusammenhänge.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan (1999), Longman Grammar
of Spoken and Written English. Foreword by Randolph Quirk. Harlow: Longman.
Brandt, W. (1983), Zeitstruktur und Tempusgebrauch in Fußballreportagen des Hörfunks.
Mit einem Beitrag von Regina Quentin. Marburg: N. G. Elwert. (Marburger Studien
zur Germanistik, 4.)
Bybee, J. L., R. Perkins and W. Pagliuca (1994), The Evolution of Grammar. Tense,
Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago/London: University of
Chicago Press.
Chafe, W. (ed.) (1980), The Pear Stories. Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of
Narrative Production. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
(Advances in Discourse Processes, III.)
Chafe, W. (1994), Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: the Flow and Displacement of
Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cruttenden, A. (1997), Intonation. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.)
Dahl, Ö. and E. Hedin (2000), ‘Current relevance and event reference’, in Ö. Dahl (ed.),
Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter 2000, pp.
385–401. (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 20–6.)
Duden Volume 4 (2005), Die Grammatik. Unentbehrlich für richtiges Deutsch. Seventh
edition. Edited by Dudenredaktion. Mannheim: Dudenverlag 2005.
Durrell, M. (2002), Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage. Fourth edition. London:
Arnold.
Elsness, J. (1997), The Perfect and the Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English.
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (Topics in English Linguistics, 21.)
Engel, D. M. and M. A. Ritz (2000), ‘The use of the present perfect in Australian
English’. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 20, 119–40.
Fleischman, S. (1990), Tense and Narrativity. From Medieval Performance to Modern
Fiction. Austin: University of Texas Press. (Texas Linguistics Series.)
Haspelmath, M. (1990), ‘The grammaticalization of passive morphology’. Studies in
Language, 14, 25–72.
Hennig, M. (2000), Tempus und Temporalität in geschriebenen und gesprochenen
deutschen Texten. Tübingen: Niemeyer. (Linguistische Arbeiten, 421.)
Huddleston, R. (1976), ‘Some theoretical issues in the description of the English verb’.
Lingua, 40, 331–83.
Huddleston, R. (1995), ‘The English perfect as a secondary past tense’, in B. Aarts and
C. F. Meyer (eds), The Verb in Contemporary English. Theory and Description.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102–22.
Huddleston R. and G. K. Pullum (2002), The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leiss, E. (1992), Die Verbalkategorien des Deutschen. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der
sprachlichen Kategorisierung. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. (Studia Linguistica
Germanica, 31.)
Lindgren, K. B. (1957), Über den oberdeutschen Präteritumschwund. Helsinki:
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. (Annales Academiae Scientarum Fennicae, B 112.1.)
Miller, J. (2000), ‘The perfect in spoken and written English’. Transactions of the
Philological Society, 98, 323–52.
Miller, J. (2003), ‘Syntax and discourse in Modern Scots’, in J. Corbett, J. D. McClure
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and J. Stuart-Smith (eds), The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, pp. 72–109.
Miller, J. (2004), ‘Perfect and resultative constructions in spoken and non-standard
English’, in O. Fischer, M. Norde and H. Perridon (eds), Up and down the Cline – the
Nature of Grammaticalization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 229–46.
(Typological Studies in Language, 59.)
Müller, T. (2006), ‘Time-critical utterances in live radio football commentary: their
structure and their relation to non-linguistic situations and events’ (unpublished
doctoral dissertation). Sheffield: University of Sheffield.
Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (1985), A Comprehensive Grammar
of the English Language. London: Longman.
Sieberg, B. (1984), Perfekt und Imperfekt in der gesprochenen Sprache. Bonn: Universität
Bonn.
Tomlin, R. S. (1983), ‘On the interaction of syntactic subject, thematic information, and
agent in English’. Journal of Pragmatics, 7, 411–32.
Tomlin, R. S. (1987), ‘Linguistic reflections of cognitive events’, in R. S. Tomlin (ed.),
Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Outcome of a Symposium, Eugene, Oregon,
June 1984. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 455–80. (Typological
Studies in Language, 11.)
Tomlin, R. S. (1995), ‘Focal attention, voice, and word order: an experimental, crosslinguistic study’, in P. Downing and M. Noonan (ed.), Word Order in Discourse.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 521–58. (Typological Studies in Language, 30.)
Weinrich, H. (2003), Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. Second edition.
Hildesheim/Zürich/ New York: Georg Olms Verlag.
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3 The structure and function of wenn-clauses and
their role in problem-solving discourse
Regina Weinert
1 Introduction
Informal spoken language is typically characterized by paratactic or loosely
integrated syntax and the level of subordination is low compared with more
formal written language. Wenn-clauses in German, which are structurally
marked as dependent by verb-final word order as opposed to main clause verbsecond order, are nevertheless relatively frequent and this begs the question as
to how some level of complexity is accommodated in spoken language.
This chapter takes a two-pronged approach to this question, providing an
overview of the structures and associated functions of spoken wenn-clauses and
then examining their discourse role in problem-solving dialogues in particular.
Wenn-clause constructions will be shown to exhibit limited syntactic complexity
typical of spoken language while at the same time being structurally and
functionally highly versatile. Studies have shown that adverbial clauses in
spoken language adhere to preferred spoken language syntax, i.e. they include
a substantial proportion of loosely integrated or unintegrated cases and more
integrated examples have relatively simple clause-internal syntax (Miller and
Weinert 1998). The difference in the order of adverbial clause + main clause and
main clause + adverbial clause reflects different discourse functions, but the
clauses themselves are in any case structurally not exact mirror images. For
instance, Chafe (1984) and Miller and Weinert (1998) show that English
because-clauses preceding a main clause have a fairly rigid constituent order as
opposed to the more flexible word order of because-clauses which follow a main
clause. The un-subordinate nature of such syntactically flexible because-clauses
is accompanied by semantic flexibility.
This type of structural asymmetry is also evident in German adverbial clauses,
including wenn-clause constructions, albeit in a more complex way due to the
specifics of finite verb positioning. It has furthermore been noted that wennclauses and if-clauses most frequently occur before the main clause to which they
relate (Ford and Thompson 1986; Ford 1993; Auer 2000). This has been interpreted in terms of cognitive naturalness as the grounding is placed before any
elements to be grounded and, as with topics, sets up the following discourse. The
occurrence of structurally unintegrated wenn-clauses in German has been linked
to certain syntactic restrictions and to semantic factors and, more importantly,
has been shown to have a range of discourse-pragmatic reasons (Köpcke and
Panther 1989; Günthner 1999; Auer 2000). In other words, in line with observations for causal clauses above, looser and more flexible syntax is associated
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with functional flexibility. In addition, many languages, including German,
have structurally independent and pragmatically conventionalized conditional
clauses which occur on their own and serve, for instance, as polite requests and
directives (the equivalent of clauses such as ‘if you would like to come through’,
uttered in a waiting room).
This chapter establishes a set of broad categories of wenn-clauses which
represent points on a structural continuum from integrated to deictically linked,
to unintegrated and finally to single clauses, and examines the function and information structure associated with each set. This then serves as a background
against which the use of wenn-clauses in one particular text type, i.e. problemsolving discourse, is investigated. In such task-based conversation German
wenn-clauses assume a central role in helping partners to orient themselves in
complex instructions. Virtually all wenn-clauses in this data precede the main
clauses or the discourse to which they relate, and thus the problem-solving
context highlights their grounding role. This often combines with a directive
function, setting up a frame of action for the task participants. The formfunction relationships of wenn-clause constructions are explored in relation to
other linking devices in the task-based data and their larger discourse-roles. The
approach adopted in this chapter is consistent with a usage-based view of
syntax which is not only interested in how speakers use the potential of a
language system, but also considers the implications of this usage for the nature
of the system. Spoken wenn-clauses form a carefully calibrated set of structures
which balance complexity and functionality, reflecting preferred spoken language
structure. They are associated more with topic-comment structure than with
hypotaxis, yet informationally they are relatively self-contained and can be an
independent topic or comment. They are not only useful because speakers
regularly talk about hypothetical, possible or desirable situations, but also
because of their structural and functional versatility as semantic and discoursepragmatic frames.
2 The structure and function of spoken wenn-clauses
2.1 Structure
I distinguish six structural categories of wenn-clauses for the purpose of a
broad overview. They are illustrated below and will be discussed in detail in
2.4–2.8. At times I use the term construction to label sequences of wenn-clause
plus main clause(s) and/or other syntactic units (regardless of the order of this
sequence) in order to discuss the relationships between wenn-clauses and the
surrounding discourse. While the approach to form-function relations adopted
here is compatible with a cognitive or construction grammar framework, my use
of the term construction is not aligned with any one particular theory. The six
broad structural categories of wenn-clauses are:
Embedded
wenn-clause inside main clause
ich geh wenn er kommt nicht ins kino
‘I go when/if he comes not to-the cinema’
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Post-positioned integrated
main clause + wenn-clause, adjacent, intonationally integrated
ich geh wenn er kommt
‘I go when/if he comes’
Pre-positioned integrated
wenn-clause + main clause with subject-verb inversion, adjacent, intonationally integrated
wenn er kommt geh ich
‘when/if he comes go I’
Pre-positioned deictically linked
wenn-clause + deictic main clause, often adjacent and intonationally integrated
wenn er kommt dann geh ich
‘when/if he comes then go I’
Unintegrated
wenn-clause + main clause, no subject-verb inversion, often loosely attached and intonationally
unintegrated
wenn er kommt ich geh
‘when/if he comes I go’
main clause + wenn-clause, adjacency variable, intonationally unintegrated
ich geh (terminal intonation) wenn das ok ist
‘I go when/if that ok is’
Single pragmatic
wenn-clause, isolated speech-act
wenn sie da bitte unterschreiben
‘if you there please sign’
Structural criteria are straightforward since they relate to positions which can
be identified such as order of clauses, verb position and adjacency. Intonational
integration typically means a rise on the final element(s) of the first clause or level
intonation, followed by falling intonation on the second clause. Intonational
criteria do not always apply consistently, however. This can be an issue in
distinguishing between integrated post-positioned and unintegrated postpositioned clauses so that semantic content, which needs to be considered in any
case, becomes central in the analysis of some clausal relations.
Embedded clauses, which are syntactically the most complex, are marginal in
the spoken German data and will not be discussed further. Since pre- and postpositioned clauses are not exact structural mirror images and post-positioned
clauses are much less frequent than pre-positioned clauses, the categories are not
entirely symmetrical.1 But, as will be shown in the detailed discussion, the
categories can be seen as a continuum, especially the three types of pre-positioned
clauses. Ultimately even individual wenn-clauses may be arranged on a cline
within these categories, e.g. depending on how conventionalized their functions
are and which lexical items they contain. The categories mark off the extreme
points of this continuum. At one end we have integrated post-positioned and
integrated pre-positioned wenn-clauses which are attached to a main clause
(integrated pre-positioned wenn-clauses are syntactically more closely integrated
than integrated post-positioned clauses, the latter being potentially cognitively
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more taxing due to the ‘grounded element-ground’ sequence). At the other end
we have single pragmatic clauses which have conventionalized pragmatic
functions and are structurally and informationally independent in the sense that
they can occur as isolated speech acts. In between are pre-positioned deictically
linked wenn-clauses, and then unintegrated wenn-clauses which can relate to
preceding or following discourse or indeed to both. Wenn-clauses can also
relate to units below clause level, preceding or following these units, with or
without deictic links, but since numbers are low, they will not be discussed
separately.2 Table 3.1 shows the distribution of the six categories in three types
of data.3 The map task data will be examined in detail in sections 3 and 4.
Table 3.1 Distribution of wenn-clauses
Structure
Telephone
Face-to-face
conversations conversations
5%
(5)
2%
(1)
14% (14)
18%
(9)
16% (16)
12%
(6)
Embedded
Pre-position Integrated
Post-position Integrated
Pre-position
Deictic link
27% (27)
Unintegrated
30% (30)
Single pragmatic
3%
(3)
Units below clause
5%
(5)
Total
100% (100)
16%
42%
4%
6%
100%
(8)
(21)
(2)
(3)
(50)
Map Task
Total
4.3% (3)
24.3% (17)
2.9% (2)
4.1% (9)
18.2% (40)
10.9% (24)
31.4% (22)
14.3% (10)
17.1% (12)
5.7% (4)
100% (70)
26% (57)
27.7% (61)
7.7% (17)
5.4% (12)
100% (220)
The integrated structures of standard written German are not typical of spoken
language. Overall only just over 18 per cent of spoken pre-positioned wennclauses are syntactically integrated, with even lower figures in telephone conversations. This is consistent with Auer (2000) who reports ca 25 per cent for his
data, which includes more formal settings. Not only is structural integration rare
in spoken German, but the cognitively potentially more taxing order of grounded
element followed by ground which integrated post-positioned clauses present
is even rarer, reaching only just under 11 per cent. For written language Auer
(2000) reports that over 65 per cent of pre-positioned clauses are integrated, less
than 10 per cent are unintegrated and over 50 per cent of all wenn-clauses are
post-positioned. Even without considering clause-internal syntax, it is clear
that structurally spoken and written wenn-clauses are very different. The
different distributions within the spoken data will be commented on at various
points in 2.4–2.8.
2.2 Function
I use the term wenn-clause and refer to the parts of discourse which relate to the
wenn-clause with general labels such as following utterance or discourse section,
as well as specific labels such as main clause or those used for smaller units, e.g.
phrase.4 Depending on whether the relationship of wenn-clauses to the
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surrounding discourse is located on the semantic or discourse-pragmatic level,
they can be divided into content and speech-act related clauses (cf Köpcke and
Panther 1989 and Günthner 1999 on conditionals). This distinction has been
shown to apply to a range of adverbial clauses and connectors in spoken
language. Broadly, it accounts for adverbial clauses which relate directly to the
content of a main clause or the surrounding discourse (e.g. I’m not buying the
cheap tickets cause there’s a queue; I will give you the money if you sign the
contract) vs the discourse-pragmatic use of adverbial clauses, including single
speech-act uses (e.g. they have cheap tickets – cause there’s a queue; if you’d like
to sign here – I’ll come back later to give you the money). The speech-act
related, discourse-pragmatic clauses do not conform to the truth-conditions
observed for content clauses, and the assertions in the adverbial clauses and
related main clauses are independent (König and Van de Auwera 1988).
The analysis in 2.4–2.8 will show that there is a strong tendency for integrated
post-positioned clauses and for integrated and deictically linked pre-positioned
clauses to be associated with semantic relations on the content level and for lack
of integration to lead to weaker semantic links and discourse-pragmatic
functions.5 While many wenn-clauses can be categorized as conditional or
temporal, this distinction can often not be drawn. Nor can content and speechact related clauses always be clearly separated. It is, however, possible to see an
overarching function of wenn-clauses which can be captured by the label ‘frame’
or ‘framing clause’.6 This takes into account both structural and functional
aspects and reflects what makes these clauses so versatile, at times showing a
clearly identifiable function and link to the surrounding discourse, at others being
ambiguous or weakly linked. Due to the variety of structural and functional
relationships between the wenn-clause and the surrounding discourse units, it
is difficult to find a general label for them, counterpart being a possible neutral
alternative. In the case of single pragmatic clauses, the frame has conventionally
incorporated any potential consequent or counterpart (see 2.7).
2.3 Wenn and other temporal and conditional connectors
Wenn-clauses are generally the most frequent subordinate, i.e. verb-final,
adverbial clauses in spoken German.7 The Dialogstrukturenkorpus (DS) of the
Institut für deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, which includes dialogues in largely
semi-formal settings, contains 791 wenn-clauses in ca 225,000 words, ca one
per 280 words. This is somewhat lower than in the conversational data and
academic consultations I examined (ca one per 200/220 words), but overall it
seems that wenn-clauses are more frequent than in formal written language, e.g.
Auer (2000) reports one per ca 300 words. (The map task data is different in this
respect with one wenn-clause per 430 words, but they are nevertheless employed
strategically – see sections 3 and 4). Apart from the structural differences noted
above, we also have to bear in mind that in spoken language other adverbial clause
connectors are much less frequent. There are ca 30 cases of als (‘when/as’), which
is restricted to clauses in past tenses. There are ca 40 examples of bis (‘until’), 28
während (‘while’), 14 nachdem (‘after’), seven seit/seitdem (temporal ‘since’),
eight bevor (‘before’), two sobald (‘as soon as’), and 14 solange (‘as long as’).
Solange and bevor can also be conditional. Alternative subordinating conditional
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connectors are also rare, i.e. ten cases of falls (‘in case’). Instead of using more specific
adverbial connectors, speakers use wenn-clauses to cover a range of temporal and
conditional functions (but wenn cannot directly replace als, bis, seit/seitdem and
bevor). While in written language the more specific connectors are also not as
frequent as wenn, the difference is more striking in spoken language.8
The following sections 2.4–2.8 examine in detail the six structural categories
introduced in 2.1. In the numbered examples I use both English glosses and translations depending on the focus of analysis. Glosses are indicated by quotation
marks, translations by a change in font. The German tag is represented as ‘ne’
which is also used for the phonologically reduced indefinite feminine article. Due
to their respective distributions this should generally not cause confusion.
Intonation and pausing is indicated where relevant: ➚ rising intonation; ➘
falling intonation; ➙ level intonation; + short pause; ++ medium pause.
2.4 Post-position, pre-position and integration
Wenn can be a temporal (1) or conditional (2) connector, but disambiguation
is not always possible.9 Wenn-clauses can be post-positioned (1a, 2a) or prepositioned (1b, 2b). Wenn-clauses in written and spoken German have verb-final
order. In standard written German, subject-verb inversion is required when a
subordinate clause appears before the main clause (1b, 2b), making this a
syntactically integrated structure. Despite the fact that this construction adheres
to the verb-second structure of main clauses with the wenn-clause filling the first
position, the inclusion of this full clause with verb-final order results in complex
syntax. Post-positioned wenn-clauses are syntactically not mirror images of prepositioned clauses, i.e. they are not integrated in the same way. The main clause
is structurally independent and the only structural marker of dependency is verbfinal order in the wenn-clause.10
Temporal
(1a) ich geh wenn er angekommen ist
‘I go when he arrived is’
(1b) wenn er angekommen ist geh ich
‘when he arrived is go I’
Conditional
(2a) ich fahr nicht wenn es schneit
‘I drive not if it snows’
(2b) wenn es schneit fahr ich nicht
‘if it snows drive I not’
In contrast to subordinate clauses in general, it seems that wenn-clauses more
frequently occur before the main clause to which they relate (see also Auer 2000).
A general explanation for this order in conditional clauses is its cognitive
naturalness as the grounding is placed first, as with topics (Fauconnier 1985;
Ford and Thompson 1986). It has also been observed that conditional clauses
which precede main clauses in English relate to entities that are topical or given
(Miller and Weinert 1998). In the case of consecutive events, the temporal
order is maintained if wenn-clauses are pre-positioned. Post-positioned wennclauses are hence less frequent in spoken German, but why are they used at all?