Kategorien der Redewiedergabe im Deutschen: Konjunktiv I versus sollen

Abstract

In present-day German, the present subjunctive (Konjunktiv I) and the modal verb sollen 'shall' are used to mark reported discourse. In this paper, we aim at clarifying the semantic relationship between these two markers. We suggest that they basically pertain to two separate semantic-functional domains, viz. origoshifting versus evidentiality. While Konjunktiv I is an origo-shifting quotative marker, sollen is a reportive evidential marker. We argue that the proposed basic difference in semantics accounts for the different behavior of these elements in present-day German: e. g. with respect to their distribution over different contexts of use, to complementation patters, to combinatorial potential with certain prepositional phrases, etc. These theoretical observations are corroborated by the results of two small corpus studies: the one analyzing sollen that is embedded under a communicative matrix predicate, and the other focusing on combinatorial regularities with prepositional phrases with nach 'after', laut 'as per', and zufolge 'according to'.

Reportatives sollen in historischen deutschen Zeitungen (1660–1954)

“…In his investigation of the semantics of reportative sollen in complement clauses, Schenner (2008Schenner ( , 2010 identifies three readings that sollen can adopt in this syntactic context: Although Schenner (2008Schenner ( , 2010 adopts these categories to examine the semantics of sollen in complement clauses, I find it useful to extend them to the investigation of the readings of sollen in other syntactic contexts as well, including main, adverbial, and attributive clauses. My analysis of the corpus data suggests that the concord reading, in which sollen signifies 'p' rather than 'it is reported that p', can be triggered not only when sollen is embedded under a speech report predicate, as noted by Schenner (2008Schenner ( , 2010, Diewald/Smirnova (2013) and Socka (2013), but in all cases where another marker of reporting is present, confirming what was stated in Schenner (2007: 210). This element can be a superordinate reporting clause, a parenthetical reporting clause, or the mention of an information source in the form of a prepositional phrase.…”

“…The global reading in (10).b would be appropriate if the letters reported a fact. This ambiguity can be observed in the historical newspapers analyzed in this study and in contemporary ones (Schenner 2008(Schenner : 559-560, 2010Smirnova/Diewald 2013: 459, Socka 2013.…”

“…What is unequivocal is that reportative sollen was firmly established in various text genres in the 15 th and 16 th centuries (Gloning 2017: 128-132) and that it was frequent in newspapers from the early 17 th century (Fritz 1991: 36). After that, we have no information on the evolution of reportative sollen until contemporary German, for which we have some corpus-based analyses (e. g., Mortelmans 2001;Smirnova/Diewald 2013;Vanderbiesen 2018;Socka 2021).…”

L'usage des verbes modaux en français et en allemand: étude contrastive de la combinatoire adverbiale sous l'éclairage quantitatif

“…64 À ce propos, cf. aussi Smirnova & Diewald (2013). 65 De telles descriptions scalaires se trouvent dans Buscha (1984 : 215), Buscha et al (1985 : 21), Öhlschläger (1989 : 206), Raynaud (1975 : 87), Tarvainen (1976: 22), Vater (1975 ou encore Wunderlich (1981 : 39) ; similairement, Gerstenkorn (1976 : 354-355) s'interroge sur les degrés de probabilité pouvant être associés aux verbes modaux au moyen d'un questionnaire visant l'assimilation de ces formes avec des adverbes (modaux).…”