Кореферентные структуры, используемые для представления экономических субъектов в медийном дискурсе

The subject of study in the article is the discourse specifics of representation of economic entities in German newspaper and magazine texts of the last two decades. The purpose of the analysis is to elucidate the factors that stimulate univerbation in connection with the generation and textual integration of co-referential structures different in genesis, structural properties, semantic characteristics and stylistic potential. The study, conducted on the basis of a functional-communicative approach to language, relies on methods and results of studies on text linguistics considering text as a whole structural-semantic unit. Conclusions. 1) Mentioning of a company name is accompanied by integration of the univerb indicating the relevant industry into the text. Along with a two-member chain of co-referential nominations, a three-member chain is also possible (the location of a company is mentioned). 2) Co-referential pairs of the type “company name ‒ collective designation of employees according to headquarters location” (Siemens ‒ Münchener) are characteristic, which demonstrates the lability of univerb toponym semantics. 3) The integration of a proper name into the text requires the usage of characterizing common nouns in order to prepare the reader for the perception of unique names, which is a factor motivating univerbation. 4) Synthetic compounds of the nomina agentis type (Autobauer, Stromversorger) are widely used to describe the kind of activity of an enterprise. In such cases a lexeme with the expected semantics is eliminated (Unternehmen ‘company’, Konzern ‘concern’ etc.). The reduction of the base lexeme of a compound as well as representation of the verb lexeme in the form of nomen agentis has an impact on the semantics and stylistics of the univerb. The results of the study can be used both in research activities on problems of word-formation, semantics and in the training of business translators.

Disyllabic post-nominal locatives in Mandarin Chinese

In this paper, I focus on disyllabic post-nominal locatives in Mandarin Chinese. In the literature, disyllabic post-nominal locatives have traditionally been considered nouns. Recent proposals, however, have offered different analyses. In Wu (2015), the typical disyllabic post-nominal locative falls somewhere between an adposition and a noun. Djamouri/Paul/Whitman (2013) and Paul (2015) discuss some new disyllabic post-nominal locatives and propose that they are postpositions. In contrast to these analyses, I argue that the commonly analyzed disyllabic post-nominal locatives are indeed nouns, and that so too is one subtype of the locatives recently proposed to be postpositions. I further examine this subtype and discuss its unique behavior. Finally, a diachronic study of disyllabic post-nominal locatives indicates that they may not share the same analysis as mono-syllabic post-nominal locatives.

Mehrsprachigkeit in transmodaler Kommunikation

The paper is concerned with codeswitching in transmodal WhatsApp messenger chats. Based on a corpus of text and audio postings from a group of German-Lebanese cousins that is complemented by ethnographic interviews, the study shows that language alternations can be associated with particular metapragmatic or indexical functions in the different modalities. In audio postings, switching between German and Arabic contextualises varying discourse relations. Also, the cousins use Arabic discourse markers (such as ya'ne, ‘it means’) frequently to structure their talk. In contrast, when they switch to Arabic in their text-postings – using Arabizi, a CMC-register in the Arabic-speaking world – this recurrently establishes a playful or ironic frame for ritual teasings. The final section discusses these transmodal and multilingual practices as multi-layered identity positionings vis-à-vis a monolingual society, their multilingual family and networked communities.

Turn-taking in collaborative storytelling

This conversation-analytic paper investigates the multimodal design and interactional functions of the connective et puis après (‘and then after that’) in a French-language corpus of video-recorded collaborative storytellings. Two similar, yet different, sequential positions are investigated: the juncture between subsequent story episodes and the space between extended side sequences and the return to the story-in-progress. Such juncture positions constitute recognizable moments at which both members of the telling party, i. e., the current teller and the co-teller, must determine the topic of the next story episode as well as its delivery. Thus, juncture positions provide a perspicuous setting for the analysis of how tellership is negotiated and how topic progression is achieved. The connective et puis après appears to be a resource for current tellers to establish spaces for coparticipation at juncture positions, closing prior talk and projecting continuation. The multimodal analysis shows that both its prosodic design and co-occurring changes of the embodied participation framework contribute to opening interactive turn spaces and to making telling-specific next actions relevant.

Metaphors in Newspaper Reports on Nigeria 2005 Banks Recapitalisation

This article investigates metaphors in newspaper reports that border on mergers and acquisitions within the 2005 recapitalisation exercise in Nigeria. It considers conceptual metaphors used in depicting mergers and acquisitions among Nigerian banks and how they are deployed by journalists in shaping readers’ perception of the mergers and acquisitions activities. Data for the study comprise thirty purposively sampled articles on recapitalisation published between year 2004 and 2006, in three selected Nigerian newspapers: Business Day, The Punch and ThisDay, which had relevance, wide circulation and adequate reports on economic issues in Nigeria. Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory provides the theoretical perspective for the data analysis. The study reveals two conceptual metaphors: MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS AS WAR and MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS AS CONNUBIAL RELATIONS. The metaphors of war influence readers’ perception of the mergers and acquisitions exercise as a corporate management task that is highly indispensable, confrontational and susceptible to aggression considering the appalling state of the Nigeria banking sector and the huge recapitalisation funds required of individual banks. While the connubial metaphors offered readers a perception of an important exercise that entails due process, cooperation, and togetherness in achieving the stipulated recapitalisation funds. Metaphors perform multifarious functions in the construction and comprehension of financial issues. They are not the consequence of genus, but the sequence of motivated cognitive devices used by Nigerian journalists in rendering contemporary Nigerian issues.

Deutsches auch und italienisches anche im Vergleich

The focus of our contribution is the German particle auch ‘also’ and its Italian counterpart anche. From a semantic point of view, auch and anche convey the same additive meaning in both languages: through them an element, called ‘domain of association’, is added to a list of further elements for which the auch/anche phrase applies. From a syntactical point of view, auch and anche can occupy different positions in the sentence by modifying the type and the scope of the domain of association. This results in four basic usage patterns which are similar in both languages and correspond to just as many functions of auch/anche: (i) additivity, (ii) sentence connection, (iii) focus domain, and (iv) modality. Despite these common functions, auch and anche interact with the syntax and the information structure of the sentence in German and in Italian differently. Furthermore, they are used in conversation contexts, which are distinctive in both languages. By starting from the current description of auch and anche in the literature, the first aim of our contribution is to provide evidence for the above-mentioned four basic functions despite their language-specific usage contexts. As a second aim, we want to validate our systematization through the analysis of spoken data for German and Italian, explaining why some functions are more likely to be found in the former than in the latter.

Marker der Nachzeitigkeit im deutsch-italienischen Vergleich

The goal of this contribution is the analysis of selected expressions of immediate posteriority in German and Italian from a comparative and translation-related perspective. In the present study, which was carried out as part of a joint research project (Nachzeitigkeit in Sprachvergleich und Übersetzung i. e. ‘Expression of Posteriority in Language Comparison and Translation’) at Heidelberg University and the University of Jena, these linguistic expressions are analysed using manual annotations of abstract semantic and pragmatic features on authentic instances using various statistical methods. Occurrences of the adverbs gleich, sofort, immediatamente or subito in the Europarl and OpenSubtitles corpora, in original or translated text material, serve as a source for the analysis. Typical use contexts of the four adverbs will be identified on a language-specific basis, possible influences of the text types/corpus sources on the use of the adverbs will be determined. Moreover, the use contexts of the adverbs will be analysed cross-linguistically as to correspondences and differences between the two languages, and typical translation options for the individual adverbs will be investigated as a result of various influencing parameters. At a general methodological level, the study intends to test rich semantic and pragmatic annotations and their statistical evaluation as approaches to comparative linguistics and translation studies as far as onomasiologically and functionally defined phenomena are concerned.

Der Ausdruck von Aktionen im Deutschen und Italienischen

The article considers contrastive linguistics as a discipline that interacts closely with its intralinguistic and applied neighbouring disciplines. Within this framework, the online ontology IMAGACT presents an instrument that allows to contrast how languages lexicalize concrete actions (movements, modification of objects, setting relations among objects, etc.) in their verbs. German and Italian, the language pair considered here, differ typologically in their lexicalization strategies, which leads to difficulties in L2 acquisition, translation and lexicography. The article shows how the corpus-based IMAGACT database, which presents a set of 1010 actions in short films and links them to the appropriate verbs in 15 languages, provides help in these fields, and how it can at the same time empirically support contrastive-typological findings

Topiks im Deutschen und Italienischen

The aim of this paper is i) to investigate the distribution of different topic types in the highest portion (found above valutative adverbs such as glücklicherweise and leider, Cinque 1999) of the German Mittelfeld, i. e. the clause portion found between the finite and non-finite verb forms (Satzklammer), and ii) to compare it with the distribution of topics within the Italian left periphery, i. e. the area found above the finite verb where operators, focalised and topicalised constructions are hosted (Rizzi 1997; Benincà 1988, 2001). Based on a corpus of written and oral German data collected through the DeReKO and the FOLK Databases, we show that in German i) in both written and oral examples a single topic belonging to all topic classes can appear in the highest portion of the Mittelfeld (as proposed by Frascarelli/Hinterhölzl 2007), ii) and that multiple topics are restricted to written texts and appear with the fixed order “Aboutness Topic > Familiar Topic; Aboutness Topic > Contrast Topic”. We compare the distribution of topics above valutative adverbs in German with the distribution of topics in the Italian left periphery. We show that the two languages share the fact that multiple topics are possible, with the difference that i) three topics can appear in the Italian left periphery in the order Aboutness Topic > Contrast Topic > Familiar Topic whereas only sequences of two topics are attested in German; ii) the sentence-initial position functions as an “extra” position for topics in German but not in Italian due to the V2 nature of the former language; iii) the presence of multiple topics in the left periphery is restricted to oral or informal texts in Italian and it is a typical trait of colloquial/informal language, whereas the availability of multiple topics in the German Mittefeld is restricted to written/formal texts and can thus be seen as a written/formal trait.

Die Komparativ- und Superlativformen besser/am besten/das Beste als Varianten in modalen Vergleichskonstruktionen

It is well known that linguistic variants play a key role in the acquisition of language skills in the first, second or foreign language as well as in writing and translation processes and in general in communicative interactions. Thus, a major research goal is the systematic investigation of intra- and interlinguistic variation. Due to its complexity, its qualitative-quantitative analysis continues to be a challenging issue, but it seems to become more and more feasible thanks to both the possibility of compiling very large corpora and the availability of high-performing corpus-linguistic tools. The paper discusses a corpus-linguistic pilot study concerning the use of besser, am besten and das Beste as pragmatic markers in a cross-linguistic perspective. In particular, the analysis focusses on selected superlative and comparative constructions on the left periphery used for expressing advice. The data basis consists mainly of German and Italian comparable very large web corpora and, to a lesser extent, of bilingual sentence pairs drawn from parallel corpora. As will be shown, even restricting the analysis to a very small segment of microvariation, in both languages the modal constructions appear to be characterized by the combination of numerous overlapping and interplaying variants and by different tendencies in language use.