scholarly journals Unbestimmte Subjekte: zur problematischen Äquivalenz von deutschem man und italienischem si

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (6) ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Peter Paschke

German sentences with man and Italian sentences with si impersonale or si passivante are often presented as equivalent in contrastive grammars. However, this functional equation proves to be problematic when Italian students refer with man to their own role as authors, such as in: “Darauf wird man aber im folgenden Kapitel eingehen”. Evidently, man cannot refer to the speaker role, while in the same context the Italian si is well suitable. Starting from this interference error, the paper examines the possible range of reference of the two pronouns. It turns out that the most common reading of man and si in both languages is the generic one, which can be paraphrased as “everyone”. Systematic divergences, on the other hand, occur in the particular reading, i. e. when referring to single unspecified subjects. While the German man characterizes the subject as anonymous and does never include listeners or speakers (e. g: Gestern hat man bei uns eingebrochen; man ≈ ‘jemand’, ‘somebody’), the Italian si, according to the verb class (transitive, unergative, unaccusative, etc.), can or must be read as speaker-exclusive (Mi si è raccontato che ...; si ≈ ‘qualcuno’, ‘someone’) or as speaker-inclusive (Ieri si è andati al ristorante; si ≈ ‘noi’, ‘we’). The speaker-inclusive reading also occurs when si is used in academic texts as a substitute for the established form of speaker (author) reference by means of the 1st person plural (noi, ‘we’). In addition to man and si, other forms of indeterminate subjects are examined, namely the non-anaphoric uses of German “sie (pl.)” (Sie haben schon wieder die Preise erhöht.) and of the Italian 3rd person plural null subject (Ti hanno cercato.) as well as the so-called impersonal passive form in German (Es wird gemurmelt.).

1942 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
H. Barnett

Much has been written of William Duncan, "the Apostle of Alaska", who came to the coast of northern British Columbia in 1857 as a missionary to the Tsimshian Indians. Although he deplored it, in the course of his sixty years' residence in this area controversy raged around him as a result of his clashes with church and state, and his work has been the subject of numerous investigations, both public and private. His enemies have called him a tyrant and a ruthless exploiter of the Indians under his control; and there are men still living who find a disproportionate amount of evil in the good that he did, especially during the declining years of his long life. On the other hand, he has had ardent and articulate supporters who have written numerous articles and no less than three books in praise of his self-sacrificing ideals and the soundness of his program for civilizing the Indian.


1922 ◽  
Vol 26 (140) ◽  
pp. 325-330
Author(s):  
S. Heckstall Smith

If the thought of another war troubles you, then don't read this article. If you would rather say to yourself as the Secretary of State said to the Air Conference, “ There won't be another war for ten years, so why worry? ” then no doubt you will think with him that it is better to let other nations have alk the bother and expense of trying to advance; after all, we are jolly fine fellows and can soon pick up. If, on the other hand, you have imagination which gives you a nasty queasy sensation when you think of what might be, then perhaps the following notes, albeit disjointed and mostly stale, may at least conjure up in you thoughts of your own on the subject. This is all that is needed to help, our advancement in the air–the stimulation of spoken and written thoughts by the British nation, for if every taxpayer in the British Empire says “ Air Force,” then the Press and Parliament will say it too.


1880 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 202-209
Author(s):  
Cecil Smith

The vase which forms the subject of this memoir has been thought worthy of publication, both because it belongs to a type of which we have as yet but few examples, and also on account of the peculiar interest attaching to the design painted upon it. Its probable age can only be a matter of conjecture, as some of the vases of the class to which it belongs have been considered by archaeologists to be late imitations of the archaic, while on the other hand the internal evidence of the painting would seem to assign it to a place among the earliest class of Greek vases. It is figured on Plate VII.It is a circular dish with two handles, 3 inches high by 11¾ inches diameter, composed of a soft reddish clay of a yielding surface; the painting is laid on in a reddish brown, in some parts so thinly as to be transparent, and in other parts has rubbed away with the surface, so that it has acquired that patchy appearance generally characteristic of vase pictures of this type. The drawing, though crude and in parts almost grotesque, is executed with great spirit and freedom of style,—and thus could hardly have been the work of a late provincial artist—while in the shape of the column and of the wheel of the cart, in the prominent nose and chin which admit of no distinction between bearded and beardless faces, and in the angular contour of the human figures, we recognise features peculiar to an archaic period of art.


Author(s):  
Niek Van Wettere

Abstract This paper examines the productivity of the subject complement slot in a set of French and Dutch (semi-)copular micro-constructions. The presumed counterpart of productivity, conventionalization in the form of high token frequency, will also be taken into account in the analysis of the productivity complex. On the one hand, it will be shown that prototypical copulas generally have a higher productivity than semi-copulas, although there are some semi-copulas that can rival the productivity of prototypical copulas. On the other hand, it will be demonstrated that high token frequency is in general detrimental to productivity, on the level of the entire subject complement slot and on the level of the different semantic classes. However, the shape of the frequency distribution also seems to play a role: multiple highly frequent types are in my data more detrimental to productivity than one extremely frequent type, although the semantic connectedness of the types in the distribution might also be an explanatory factor.


Traditio ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Kurt Lewent

Cerveri was decidedly no poetical genius, and often enough he follows the trodden paths of troubadour poetry. However, there is no denying that again and again he tries to escape that poetical routine. In many cases these attempts result in odd and eccentric compositions, where the unusual is reached at the cost of good taste and poetical values. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Cerveri's efforts in this respect were not always futile. His is, e.g. an amusing satire upon bad women. One of his love songs, characteristically called libel by the MS (Sg), assumes the form of a complaint submitted to the king as the supreme earthly judge, in which the defendant is the lady whose charms torture the lover and have made him a prisoner. This poem combines the traditional praise of the beloved and a flattery addressed to the king. Its slightly humoristic tone is also found in a song entitled lo vers del vassayll leyal. Here Cerveri, basing himself on a certain legend connected with St. Mark, gives the king advice in his love affair. Again the poet kills two birds with one stone, flattering the sovereign and pointing, for obvious purposes, to his own poverty. The latter is the only topic of a remarkably personal poem in which the author complains bitterly that, while many of his playmates have become rich in later years, the only wealth he himself did amass were the chans gays and sonetz agradans which he composed for other people to enjoy. Cerveri even tries to renew the traditional genre of the chanson de la mal mariée by adding motifs of—presumably—his own invention. This tendency towards a more independent way of thinking and greater originality in its poetical presentation could not be better illustrated than by the two poems which the MS calls Lo vers de la terra de Preste Johan and Pistola The one puts the poet's moral argumentation against the background of the medieval legend of Prester John, the other, which forms the subject of the present study, sets its teachings in a still more solemn framework, the liturgy of the Mass.


1863 ◽  
Vol 8 (44) ◽  
pp. 465-482
Author(s):  
C. L. Robertson

The subject which I am permitted to-night to bring before this Society is one I have long had at heart, and one which the daily experience of my practice at Hayward's Heath prevents my passing by merely on account of the difficulties which evidently attend the realisation of my hopes, should such an issue be granted to them. I refer to the want in our county of an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane of the middle class–a class with which, while separated by education and calling, we, in our profession, are, on the other hand, too often linked by the cominoli bond of narrow means and pressing daily cares.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-257
Author(s):  
Robert Iljic

The sentences of the type above mentioned are characterized, on the one hand, by the cooccurrence of bă with an intransitive verb, on the other hand, by the classifier ge following bă and introducing a noun relative to a unique referent. This type of sentence, quoted by most major contemporary Chinese grammars, and to be traced in baihuà texts, doesn't seem, nowadays, to pertain any longer to a universally accepted standard. This paper demonstrates that in these sentences, as in all bă constructions, bă actually marks a patient (even if the latter may be the subject-of an intransitive verb); besides, given its position before bă, a certain agentivity is always conferred to a noun in topic position, even if this agentivity, taken to its far end, boils down to the only desire of having been able to do something to prevent a given event (a point in case: the death of a father); finally, the function of ge before a proper noun or a noun semantically determined as unique, which can be found in some other sentences, isn't to count, that is, to indicate a quantity. but to emphasize the qualitative value of the noun (the father insofar as he is a father), the effect being to underline the value (price) that the speaker attaches to a given person or thing, hence the modal connotation ascribed to such sentences.


1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 167-191
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naupal Naupal

Abu Zayd believes that understanding the Qur'an is not limited to explanations or comments. It involves an interpretation process for capturing the significance (maghza) from the literal text. Interpretation also requires a presupposition that the Qur'an itself does not produce literal absolutes and certainty. The presupposition needs an interpretation that illustrates the possibility of accepting the diversity of Qur'anic interpretations in the times. By using Abu Zayd's hermeneutics, the Qur'an is an icon of Islam and at the same time a representation of Arab culture itself which is not necessarily literally absolute, but is open to interpretation. Hans Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic circle that inspired Hermeneutics of Abu Zayd emphasized that in understanding and applying the meanings of the text, the subject played a role in the text rather than the other way around. This study aims to open opportunities that the Qur'an on the one hand is an objective thing seen from the content of its truth, that is seen from its universal message, but on the other hand it is subjective, because it is bound by the interpretation of the text. This research is also intended to avoid the sacredness of the ordination of a single interpretation of the Qur'an which has resulted in the emergence of fundamentalism which has recently become so prevalent in global Islamic societies, not least in Indonesia.


Author(s):  
Lars Albinus

The purpose of the article is to show how the negative dialectics of Adorno gets involved with a concept of myth that is questionable in several respects. First of all, Adorno tries to combine, but rather conflates, two understandings of myth. On the one hand, the concept of myth is defined as the ancient Greek mythos, in which the subject of man is projected on to nature; on the other hand, myth is defined as the backfire of enlightenment, in which self-reflection becomes the blind spot of instrumental reason. Along these lines of argument, Adorno’s interpretation of Homer, which, at any rate, is highly inspiring, attempts to demonstrate that Odysseus is already enlightened in that he keeps the myth at bay in order to gain his self. The point is, as a matter of dialectic necessity, that he just ends up in myth once again, albeit in the second sense, namely by being a victim of his own self-denial. A question that seems to remain unanswered, though, is how the two kinds of myth are related. Further, Adorno draws on a problematic distinction between myth and literature in order to claim that Homer separates himself from the realm of myth. By adopting Adorno’s own game of interpretation, however, it is possible to regard myth as such, including the Homeric one, as being contingently open-ended rather than just a matter of dialectic determination.


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