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Dutch has three seem-type verbs (schijnen, lijken, blijken), which behave in clearly different ways, although they can all be regarded as epistemic-evidential markers in some of their uses. This paper addresses the semantic contribution of blijken, its morpho-syntactic variability and the possible link between both. The analysis is based on data taken from the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (CGN). One of the main findings of this paper pertains to the fact that blijken not only has (typically intersubjective) epistemic-evidential meaning, but also expresses mirativity, especially in those constructional patterns in which the qualification expressed by the verb is non-focal (and hence has only secondary information status). The corpus data show that such non-focal uses of blijken can occur in every construction type the verb occurs in, but clearly favour inherently non-focalizing syntactic patterns like the auxiliary use of blijken with a te-infinitive.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit Reflexivkonstruktionen, die als Entsprechungen der englischen way-Konstruktion wie in "Sam joked his way into the meeting" angesehen werden können. Insbesondere sind deutsche und zum Teil auch niederländische Konstruktionen von Interesse, die zwei formalen Mustern folgen: Einerseits Konstruktionen mit einem Reflexivpronomen und einer Präpositionalphrase wie z.B. Er wühlt sich durch den Schlamm und andererseits Konstruktionen mit einem Reflexivpronomen, einer Präpositionalphrase und dem Substantiv Weg wie z.B. Er pinkelt sich den Weg aus der Lawine. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern deutsche Konstruktionen Eigenschaften ihrer englischen und niederländischen Pendants teilen, und inwiefern es überhaupt möglich ist, sprachübergreifende Aussagen über Reflexivkonstruktionen zu machen. Anhand einer korpusbasierten Studie des Deutschen wird aufgezeigt, vor welche theoretischen und methodologischen Entscheidungen ein diachron und konstruktionsgrammatisch ausgerichtetes Forschungsvorhaben gestellt wird.

ispartof: pages:1-106 status: published

In this chapter, the main evidential markers in Dutch are presented. These include the modal verbs moeten ‘must’ and 'zou' 'should' in combination with a bare infinitive, various construction types involving the verbs of appearance schijnen, lijken and blijken, and a number of sentence adverbs, of which blijkbaar and kennelijk (both meaning ‘apparently, obviously, evidently’) are the most important ones. Most of these markers are associated with both inferential and hearsay values (whereby the hearsay value is to be considered an extension of the original inferential meaning). On top of that, Dutch has a number of dedicated reportive markers (het schijnt dat ‘it seems that’, naar verluidt ‘reportedly’, naar eigen zeggen ‘by one’s own account’). The zou + infinitive construction is highly polyfunctional, as it expresses - among other things - non-factuality (in unreal conditionals for instance) and functions as an evidential hearsay marker.

The German modals are extremely polyfunctional. They carry a wide array of meanings - objective (deontic) and subjective (epistemic) ones - and occur in a great variety of linguistic constructions: they mainly behave like auxiliaries (selecting a bare infinitive) but can also be used as main verbs. Moreover, they not only occur in the indicative, but also in the past subjunctive, whereby the latter combination gives rise to novel meanings that cannot be analysed fullly compositionally.

ispartof: Belgian Journal of Linguistics vol:34 pages:1-6 status: published

The German case system presents a real difficulty for students of German as a foreign language (DaF): many errors are made in student essays, which can be traced back to poor mastery of the case system. In first and second language acquisition too, case is one of the grammatical categories of the noun phrase that cause many mistakes. It is therefore not surprising that the case system is an important topic in second language acquisition and DaF research (Turgay 2011: 24f.). Supporting learners in case of problems is among the main tasks of a German teacher, but even better would be to prevent problems by raising language awareness. Hence, the question is whether case errors can be predicted so that learners have better self-control over their performance. This paper is limited to the study of case in prepositional phrases (PP) and explores the case problem in PP in Flemish learners of German, using a specially created corpus. The aim of this study is to confirm and clarify prevailing trends in the use of case in foreign language acquisition.

In this paper we address reflexive constructions in German that express resultative and intensifying meanings. We try to establish whether such constructions should be modelled within a constructional network rather than by means of projectionist, lexicon-based rules that generate new lexemes with their own valency patterns. On the basis of three corpus studies, we argue that a constructional model generally describes the formal and semantic properties of these constructions more adequately than a lexicon-based valency model. Another important claim this paper makes pertains to the status of the intensifying construction (Ich lache mich kaputt ‘I am laughing my head off’), which is argued to be a separate construction or node in the constructional network, as it clearly differs from the resultative reflexive construction, e.g. with respect to its Aktionsart properties. Finally, the paper also showcases the many idiosyncrasies and high degree of variation which is found in argument structure and as such corroborates earlier findings in this respect.

Welchen Anforderungen soll eine für den akademischen Unterricht gedachte Grammatik genügen? Es mag wohl unstrittig sein, dass sowohl didaktische als auch wissenschaftliche Erwägungen zu berücksichtigen sind, die in diesem Beitrag anhand eines konkreten Themenbereichs (der deutschen Modalverben) erörtert werden. Entsprechend der kontrastiven Methode, die im niederländischen Sprachgebiet für Deutsch vorherrschend ist, werden zunächst die auffallendsten Unterschiede zwischen den deutschen und den niederländischen Modalverben aufgezeigt. Anschließend wird die Darstellung der Modalverben in einigen deutschen Standardwerken (Helbig & Buscha (2001); Hentschel & Weydt (2003)) sowie in der kontrastiven (niederländisch-deutschen) Grammatik von ten Cate et al. (2004) einer kritischen Überprüfung unterzogen. Folgende Prinzipien werden dieser Überprüfung zugrunde gelegt: (a) Funktionale Überlegungen bzw. Erklärungen sollten eine vorrangige Rolle spielen; (b) die Auswahl von Verwendungsvarianten sollte aufgrund von Frequenzanalysen erfolgen; (c) der wohl sehr komplexe Bereich der Modalverben erfordert eine Darstellung, die unterschiedliche Varianten gesondert hervorhebt und mittels möglichst authentischen Materials veranschaulicht.