Open AccessDesintegration versus Parordination bei 'obwohl'- und 'weil'- Konstruktionen
Author(s) -
Werner Frey,
Federica Masiero
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.59.2018.436
Subject(s) - linguistics , dependent clause , verb , word order , german , dependency (uml) , mathematics , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , sentence
In the paper, German disintegrated verb-final 'obwohl' (‘although’) and 'weil' (‘because’) clauses are compared with constructions in which 'obwohl' and 'weil' precedes clauses with main clause word order. The former constructions constitute independent, yet subsidiary speech acts. Thus, the subordinating connectors and the positioning of the verb do not indicate syntactic but textual dependency. The latter constructions are of a very different kind. Here, 'obwohl' and 'weil' do not form a constituent with the following clause. Instead, they appear as syntactically independent discourse markers connecting two discourse units. As discourse markers, 'obwohl' and 'weil' obtain their special syntactic and semantic properties as elements of the derived, but independent module of Thetic Grammar.