Linguistische Berichte Heft 253

This paper provides a synopsis of recent developments in dialect syntactic research. After motivating the importance of investigating dialect syntax both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view, several dialect syntactic projects and methods of data collection are presented. Here, special emphasis is given to the project Syntax of Hessian Dialects (SyHD, www.syhd.info, cf. Fleischer, Lenz & Weiß 2017), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) between 2010 and 2016. It will be argued for a multidimensional method combining indirect (questionnaires) and direct elicitation techniques (interviews). A second major goal of the present overview consists in showing the high potential of usage of dialect syntactic corpora, both when applying an inductive and a deductive approach. In this context, different possibilities of (i) obtaining new hypotheses on the basis of correlations discovered within the linguistic material on hand as well as (ii) verifying observed correlations and postulated research hypotheses are exemplified by the empirical domains of partitive/quantitative pronouns versus „inflected“ numerals (schwa) in the case of nominal ellipsis, five characteristics of the clausal left periphery, and, finally, some common assumptions about long wh-extraction in German e.g. with respect to subject-object and North-South asymmetries.

The present contribution concerns the German correlate es and its suppletive forms, in comparison with Russian to in various case forms, as they show up in temporal adverbial clauses. The morphosyntactic and semantic structures of temporal connectives and the relation of temporal clauses to prepositional phrases with proforms and to DPs with relative clauses will be considered. It is argued that temporal clauses are modifiers of type and that many of them contain a relative clause as modifier of a suitable head noun. The correlate functions as a cataphoric entity and is characterized as a definite non-deictic determiner with an additional position for an explicative modifier.

This paper deals with some theoretical aspects of how to write a contrastive grammar. Generally, non-diachronic comparative research on grammar can be divided into two subdisciplines: contrastive linguistics and general-comparative, i.e. typological linguistics. Although differing in perspective, method and research aims, both subdisciplines share the problem of how to define appropriate tertia comparationis. This paper discusses various angles from which a contrastive grammar can be organized and shows which tertia comparationis result from which of the different viewpoints. The specific effects on contrastive grammar writing are illustrated by contrasting some German and Estonian data. Finally, the paper argues for taking a functionalsemantic perspective for comparative grammar writing. One example of a functional-semantic oriented contrastive grammar is the project Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Vergleich based at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), Mannheim. In conclusion, the paper presents a short overview on the outline of this project.

The paper aims at describing forms and functions of metacommunicative acts which become relevant in an elicited conversation between five German students on their expectations about cultural differences they might face regarding their upcoming semester abroad. In order to initiate and maintain the conversation, stimulus cards inquired the students’ expectations regarding possible differences with respect to university, family, friendship, romantic relationships, communication, and society. The results revealed that metacommunicative acts were frequently employed as strategies to construct, reflect, and question cultural key concepts coming to the fore as a stock of knowledge at hand. By means of descriptions and classifications of metacommunicative acts originating from text linguistics as well as conversation analysis I will show that metacommunicative acts can by no means be simply reduced to their prototypical function of supporting comprehension or organizing discourse but often serve to calibrate evaluations, as well as to save face in multimodal ways. The German students show high preference for the use of explicit metacommunicative cues in order to immediately relativize utterances that could be interpreted as belonging to a cultural-essentialist view. Such multilayered reflexive processes (re-)entering the communication process itself also direct the attention to the bystander behind the camera.

Pamela Perniss: Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, Sedinha Teßendorf & Jana Bressem (eds.) (2014): Body – language – communication. An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction (vol 1 & 2). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ; Anton Näf: Hans Jürgen Heringer (2015): Linguistische Texttheorie. Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: utb.

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