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Spoken Language Pragmatics

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Conversation in ContextChristoph Ruhlemann

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Spoken DiscourseHelen de Silva Joyce and Diana Slade

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Spoken Language Pragmatics

An analysis of form–function relations

Edited by Regina Weinert

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ContinuumThe Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 70411 York Road New YorkLondon SE1 7NX NY 10038

© Regina Weinert and Contributors 2007

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In Erinnerung an meine Mutter, Gerda Weinert

B

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Contents

Preface ix

Contributors xi

Introduction xiii

1 Demonstrative and personal pronouns in formal and informal conversations 1Regina Weinert

2 Grammatical past time reference in spontaneously produced language 29Torsten Müller

3 The structure and function of wenn-clauses and their role in problem-solving discourse 60Regina Weinert

4 The relationship between deixis and modality 94Regina Weinert

5 Modal particles and emotion 128Natalie Braber

6 Speech rate, time pressure and emotion in English and German football commentary 160Torsten Müller and Robert Mayr

7 Multivoicedness and artistic reformulations in directing-conversations 182Andrea Milde

8 Intercultural positioning: tandem conversations about word meaning 208Jane Woodin

Index 239

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Preface

The impetus for this volume has come from stimulating discussions with thecontributors which brought out the diversity of spoken language production aswell as our common understanding of the social significance of spoken commu-nication and speakers’ linguistic achievements. The work presented here hasarisen out of individual and collaborative research in which the University ofSheffield has played a central role. The completion of the manuscript has beensupported by the Leverhulme Trust, Award Number RB 111807. I would liketo thank Roel Vismans for providing valuable and incisive feedback on themanuscript; Torsten Müller for giving generously of his time to comment onand proof-read chapters 1, 3 and 4, and Jennifer Lovel and Anya Wilson ofContinuum for their encouragement and expert guidance which brought thisproject to a successful conclusion.

Regina WeinertSheffield, December 2006

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Contributors

Natalie Braber is Lecturer in Linguistics at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Hermain research interests are language and identity, emotion in language, languageacquisition, and psycholinguistics, particularly aphasia.

Robert Mayr is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Wales Institute,Cardiff, UK. His main research interests are second-language speech, L2phonology, and prosodic aspects of spoken-language processing.

Andrea Milde is Assistant Professor in German at Wenzao College of Languages,Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her main research interests are discourse analysis, art andlanguage, directing, text production, especially of spoken language, and intercul-tural communication.

Torsten Müller is Lecturer in German at the University of Sheffield, UK. His mainresearch interests are the syntax of spoken German and English, psycholin-guistic aspects of spoken discourse, and the influence of extra-linguistic events onlanguage production.

Regina Weinert is Senior Lecturer in Germanic Linguistics at the University ofSheffield, UK. Her main research interests are syntax, discourse and pragmatics,especially of spoken language, the nature of linguistic generalizations, andlanguage acquisition.

Jane Woodin is Senior Tutor in Languages and Intercultural Communication atthe University of Sheffield, UK. Her main research interests are language andculture, analysis of intercultural encounters, language acquisition, and intercul-tural education.

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Introduction

The eight chapters in this volume provide fine-grained analyses of form–functionrelations in spontaneous spoken language and are essentially discourse-pragmaticinvestigations. Some studies focus on specific linguistic devices, others take astheir starting point informational levels or language-external events, and the finaltwo place speakers and their roles at the centre of the analysis. The data includeseveryday conversations, academic consultations, football commentaries, task-based dialogues, interviews, radio play productions and intercultural conversa-tions. The volume draws attention to the varied nature of spontaneous spokenlanguage, highlighting the need to develop data-sensitive methodology andanalysis which then nevertheless have implications for wider theoretical andempirical issues.

Regina Weinert opens this volume with an account of pronoun use in German,comparing third person demonstrative and personal pronouns in formal andinformal conversations. The role of demonstratives has hitherto been underes-timated and they have often been considered as indicative of ‘colloquial’ speech.The analysis of two sets of data reveals that both demonstrative and personalpronouns are central to spoken language discourse cohesion and that, contraryto expectations, demonstratives outnumber personal pronouns in formaldiscourse. The chapter embeds the analysis of pronouns in a discussion ofwider theoretical concepts such as topicality, information status and salience, andexamines the potential social significance of pronoun use. Analysis of the distri-bution and functions of the two pronoun classes thus raises questions regardingthe nature of anaphora and topic development on an informational level, as wellas demonstrating the potential contribution of interpersonal factors to pronounchoice.

The question at the heart of Torsten Müller’s study is: how do proximity to anddistance from the present moment influence the choice of grammatical past timemarking in spontaneously produced spoken language? He shows that in Germanlive radio football commentary the temporal distance between extra-linguisticevent and linguistic reference to it has a strong influence on whether a Präteritumor Perfekt form is used. Furthermore, this time factor appears to allow ablautingPräteritum forms which in everyday German are often considered unusual.Temporal distance seems to have no effect on the choice of past tense vs presentperfect in English language commentaries. In addition, the present perfect seems

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to be surprisingly stative in this text type. The commentators’ choices thereforecall into question established views of what English and German time referenceforms express. The methodology adopted in this study and its results haveimplications for our understanding of the functional distribution of variousmeans of past time reference.

Regina Weinert follows with an investigation of adverbial wenn-clauses – themost frequent adverbial clause in spoken German – which takes a two-prongedapproach. It first presents an overview of wenn-clause constructions and theirsemantic and discourse-pragmatic functions. Wenn-clauses fall into broad struc-tural categories, including integrated, deictically linked, unintegrated andindependent clauses, the first two being associated with semantic relations, thelatter two with discourse-pragmatic functions. The second part of the chapterthen explores the use of wenn-clauses from the perspective of their largerdiscourse roles in problem-solving tasks. The analysis shows that wenn-clausesadhere to typical spoken language structure and complexity in that most aresyntactically relatively independent. Their success can be explained in terms ofstructural and functional versatility, arising out of their potential to be used astemporal, conditional and situational frames. The study also underlines thatdiscourse context contributes centrally to form–function relationships and thatcertain tasks can result in a division of labour among structures.

The relationship between deixis and modality is the subject of Regina Weinert’snext chapter. It examines the deictic, non-deictic and modal uses of the Germanspatial deictic da. The study begins with a general discussion of subjectivity, deixisand modality, outlines the functional and formal characteristics of Germanmodal particles and discusses evidence of non-deictic and modal uses of demon-stratives and temporal deictics in German and other languages. It then providesa comprehensive analysis of da, which includes comparison with alternativelinguistic sets in order to test if, in a particular context, it is aligned withobjective, referential expressions or with markers of subjectivity. In many casesanalysis of individual occurrences of da in isolation, even in their discoursecontext, does not do justice to their role and the modal aspect is revealed on thebasis of extensive discourse sections. While da has important functions as adeictic and is not (yet) a modal particle, there would appear to be evidence ofmodal functions in terms of epistemic status, attitude and affect.

Natalie Braber continues this theme with an exploration of the relationshipbetween emotion and language with respect to the use of modal particles inGerman. Eben, halt and eigentlich are examined in a corpus of conversationswith former East and West Berliners discussing the fall of the Berlin Wall andGerman unification. These interviews show that the events were highly emotionalfor one side, but much less so for the other. Rather than establishing a distinctionbetween these groups of speakers, however, the focus of interest is on whethera particular function of speech can reflect a particular usage of modal particles.The main question is whether there is a correlation between the increased useof modal particles and the speakers’ emotional states. Eben/halt and eigentlich

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both occur frequently in the spoken accounts, but rarely together or in the samediscourse sections. Eben/halt are associated with particularly emotional contexts,whereas eigentlich appears to be used more as a narrative device and in moredistanced accounts. The use of eigentlich in particular goes beyond the functionswhich have been observed in previous research.

The influence of informational levels and emotion on the prosodic structure ofutterances is investigated by Torsten Müller and Robert Mayr. Utterancesreferring to events in English and German football games that take place at themoment of speaking (i.e. on-line references), utterances that are less dependenton the immediate deictic context (i.e. off-line references) and utterances whichdo not directly refer to events in the game are compared in terms of speech rateand fundamental frequency. The results show a complex relationship betweenevent type, speech rate and syntactic complexity, whereby the time pressure underwhich on-line utterances are produced can be neutralized by use of simplesyntax which thus obviates the need for a high speech rate. Compared with utter-ances which do not report events of the game, on-line and off-line reference arecharacterized by information that is conveyed at a high fundamental frequency.This can cut across these two informational levels and is interpreted as being aresult of the commentators’ emotional involvement in, and the perceived signif-icance of, the events described. The methodology used in this chapter can inprinciple be adapted to study the role of time pressure, informational contentand emotion on prosody in other contexts.

The final two chapters place speakers and the roles they adopt in talk at thecentre of their analysis. Andrea Milde’s work deals with artistic task-orientedspoken communication between directors and actors in radio play produc-tions. The interactive situation of the directing-conversations (Regiegesprächein German) makes the communication partners reveal multiple voices, as theyhave to act, reformulate and repeat the text in a collaborative way, with thedirector as the leading responsible person. The phenomenon of multivoicednessoccurs particularly in the speech of directors, as they often quickly shift back andforth between their own voice, the actor’s or the character’s voice in order todemonstrate what they want the actor to do with the text, as well as having todeal with different members of the production team. While all forms of directingconversations, including those in film, theatre or opera productions, involvemultivoicedness, radio play productions create a rich (possibly the richest)ground for their manifestations since communication – mainly carried out inseparate rooms by using microphone – mostly takes place in an exclusivelyspoken manner. The study demonstrates how the director reformulates theacting versions carried out by the actors, how artistic spoken reformulations canbe characterized, and finally, how multivoicedness is revealed in his/her workingprocess.

In the final chapter Jane Woodin adds an intercultural dimension in her explo-ration of the positioning of participants in dyadic native–non-native speakerconversations. Tandem learners – native speakers of Spanish and of English –

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discuss the meaning of a given word in a semi-structured conversation. Throughthis discussion, interlocutors adopt a variety of positions. At some points theymake distinctions between their own and their partner’s meaning. These arerealized through the use of ‘I’, ‘you’ or indeed language/country distinction(English/Spanish, UK/Spain). At other points personal or intercultural differencesare not highlighted and convergence of perspectives is evident. Still other pointsreveal evidence of the adoption of one’s partner’s perspective by the other, asopposed to a joint perspective of the meaning. Attention is drawn to the pointsin the conversation where positioning, or movement between positions, isevident and how these are marked linguistically and strategically (for examplethrough turn-taking, repetition etc.). The study examines the implications of itsfindings for our understanding of intercultural encounters, especially withregard to ownership of meaning by native/non-native speakers, and questionsthe role of the native speaker as a model for intercultural competence.

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1 Demonstrative and personal pronouns in formaland informal conversationsRegina Weinert

1 IntroductionPronouns account for a large bulk of noun phrases in spontaneous spokenlanguage, at least in languages like German and English which have a lower rateof zero NPs than Russian, for instance. Figures range from just below 40 per centto well over 50 per cent, including first and second person pronouns, comparedwith under 5 per cent for certain newspaper texts, for instance (Miller and Weinert1998). This chapter examines the distribution of third person demonstrative vspersonal pronouns in German. The standard forms are given in Tables 1.1 and 1.2.

Table 1.1 Personal pronouns in German

Table 1.2 Demonstrative pronouns in German

The main focus is on the group of singular masculine, singular feminine andplural pronouns which refer to noun phrases or entities. Neuter pronounsfrequently refer to clauses and discourse sections, commonly labelled discoursedeixis, and they will be treated separately. The literature on pronoun resolutionand anaphora has identified a wide range of factors affecting the nature ofreferring expressions (e.g. Givón 1984; Fox 1987; Fox 1996), includingtopicality, recency, salience, information structure, discourse structure, focus of

singular pluralcase masculine feminine neuter m/f/nnom er sie es sie gen seiner ihrer seiner ihrerdat ihm ihr ihm ihnenacc ihn sie es sie

singular pluralcase masculine feminine neuter m/f/nnom der die das diegen dessen deren dessen deren/dererdat dem der dem denenacc den die das die

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attention, interactional dimensions and speaker attitude. These factors will beinvoked selectively in the analysis of demonstratives and personal pronouns inGerman in order to show that in the spoken data they have complementary rolesand at least equal status. The role of demonstratives in particular has generallybeen underestimated.

The relative distribution of the two classes of pronouns has to date not beenexamined extensively. Grammars of German have suggested that demonstra-tives are more frequent in informal talk and are colloquial, stylistically markedor indicate emphasis (Duden 2005). Weinrich (1993, 2003), in contrast toDurrell (2002), does not consider demonstratives non-standard (or substandardin Durrell’s terms), arguing that such a view does not reflect actual languageuse where clear functional differences exist which would make personalpronoun use ungrammatical in some cases. For instance, in the exophoriccontext of having to decide which road to take, a speaker might say ich glaubedie muss ich jetzt nehmen (‘I think that’s the one I have to take’) where apersonal pronoun would not be appropriate. Weinrich suggests that personalpronouns are used for thematic, known and unmarked referents whereasdemonstratives refer to rhematic, known, marked entities. He also notes thatin everyday conversations demonstratives are especially frequent in clauseinitial position where the close proximity to the rhematic referent guaranteesthat it remains the focus of attention. He states that in spoken language suchrhematic reference is more common than in other text types, but that generallythematic reference predominates. He explains this in terms of the markedstatus of rhematic demonstratives, i.e. highlighting devices need to be used moresparingly to maintain their marked function. Similarly, Zifonun et al (1997)suggest that the antecedent of a personal pronoun is an established topic andthat of a demonstrative pronoun part of the rheme or in contrast with othertopics. Empirical investigation of these claims and other factors which mayinfluence pronoun choices in German are relatively recent and infrequent.Bosch et al (2003) found that fewer than 7 per cent of masculine pronouns ina newspaper corpus were demonstratives compared with 80 per cent in aspoken language corpus of appointment-scheduling dialogues. For thenewspaper texts Bosch et al (2003) and Bosch et al (in press) found a clearcomplementary distribution in terms of clausal position/grammatical role inmain clauses and pronoun antecedent, discounting neuter pronouns. Theysuggest that the typical demonstrative is a pre-verbal1 subject referring back toan object NP in the preceding sentence, illustrated by (1). The typical personalpronoun is a pre- or post-verbal subject referring back to a subject NP in thepreceding sentence, illustrated by (2) and (3) respectively. (DEM and PERS standfor demonstrative and personal pronouns.)

(1) Helga hat den Apfelkuchen gemacht. Der ist immer ein Erfolg.‘Helga has the applecake made. DEM-he is always a success.’

(2) Helga hat den Apfelkuchen gemacht. Sie hatte keine Kirschen.‘Helga has the applecake made. PERS-she had no cherries.’

(3) Helga hat den Apfelkuchen gemacht. Kirschen hatte sie nicht.‘Helga has the applecake made. Cherries had PERS-she not.’

SPOKEN LANGUAGE PRAGMATICS2


Bosch et al invoke Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) Accessibility Hierarchy, andGivón’s Topicality Hierachy (1984) and Centering Theory (Grosz et al 1995).They argue that demonstratives prefer non-topical referents, in line with theseframeworks which assume that topics are typically established by nominativeNPs. They add that the findings are consistent with the view that lower rankedreferring expressions refer to less salient entities, assuming that demonstrativesrank lower than personal pronouns and that objects are less salient than subjects.Maslova and Bernini (in press) also argue that sentence topic remains a relevantconcept and note that there remains strong evidence for a relationship betweensubjecthood and topicality. At the same time, Goldberg (2006) points out thatnot only actors, which can be expressed as subjects, but also undergoers, andhence certain objects [RW], are salient and that both occupy prominent syntacticpositions.

Kaiser and Truswell (2004) found a similar pattern for Dutch, where personalpronouns prefer subject antecedents and where the association of objectantecedents with demonstratives is even stronger. They also found some evidenceagainst an exclusive role of salience since the reduced unstressed and the full,mostly stressed personal pronouns both prefer subject antecedents. Bosch et al(in press) comment that their findings cannot establish whether the grammaticalfunction of antecedents is primary or whether it is related to some other factorcorrelated with it. They consider the preference for demonstratives in pre-verbal position as evidence against an exclusive explanation in terms ofgrammatical function as there is no obvious reason why a pronoun whichprefers object antecedents should occur in pre-verbal position. Rather thispositional preference is likely to require an explanation in terms of informationstructure. The analysis of the spoken data will reveal that the nature of thepronouns and the nature of their antecedents can indeed be integrated into anaccount of information structure. It will also question the non-salience ofdemonstrative antecedents.

Bosch et al (in press) show very clear complementary patterns for their writtencorpus. Yet in the newspaper texts which they examined demonstratives arevastly outnumbered by personal pronouns (7 per cent vs 93 per cent). This raisesthe questions as to whether an explanation in tems of global genre or possiblytextual dimensions (e.g. Biber 1990) needs to be incorporated into an accountof the distinction between demonstratives and personal pronouns. Bosch et al(2003) comment, for instance, that newspaper texts are characterized by topiccontinuity. In addition, what is also needed is an account of these two classesof pronouns in corpora where demonstratives are much more frequent, e.g. inspoken language. The appointment-scheduling dialogues in Bosch et al (inpress) not only showed an increased frequency in demonstratives but a near-reversal with 80 per cent of all masculine pronouns being demonstratives.

This chapter examines two sets of spontaneous spoken data, informalconversations and formal academic consultations. It examines the followingquestions:

1. How frequent are demonstratives compared with personal pronouns? Is there a differencebetween masculine, feminine and plural pronouns vs neuter pronouns (section 3.1)? Whatis the proportion of discourse deictic neuter pronouns (section 3.1.1)?

PRONOUNS IN FORMAL & INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS WEINERT 3


2. Does formality affect the frequency of demonstrative pronouns, especially of masculine,feminine and plural pronouns and in the case of human referents (sections 3.1, 3.1.2 and3.1.3)?

3. To what extent does clausal position, i.e. pre-verbal vs post-verbal, affect pronounchoice (section 3.2)?

4. Is there a relationship between clausal position and the grammatical function of pronounsin pronoun choice (section 3.2)?

5. What are typical pronoun antecedents? Do topicality, givenness and salience ofantecedents play a role in pronoun choice (section 3.3)?

6. What is the nature of pronoun chains and what role do information structure, discourse-structure and involvement play (section 3.4)?

This chapter is not concerned with establishing statistically significant differencesbetween text types or pronoun classes but with demonstrating qualitative differ-ences in pronoun use in spoken language, using frequencies as evidence. Itfocuses on some strong tendencies in the distribution of the two sets of pronounsand underlines the need for further analysis of topic development in moreextended discourse sections. The findings raise questions regarding thegrammatical status of certain pronoun choices, the discourse-pragmatic functionsof pronouns and their personal and social roles.

2 The dataTwo data sets are used in this study: everyday conversations and academicconsultations, consisting of ca 32,000 words and 18 conversations each.2

Speakers represent north, east, central and south-west Germany. Speakers in theconversations come from a variety of social backgrounds. The academic consul-tations involve students and lecturers. The informal vs formal distinction is clear-cut along a number of dimensions. In the informal conversations speakers knoweach other, they are friends or family, they address each other with informaldu/ihr and they talk as equals about everyday topics in familiar, informalsurroundings. In the formal academic consultations the speakers hardly knoweach other or know each other only through the academic context. One is alecturer, the other a student, and they address each other with formal sie and talkabout the student’s work or general academic matters with the lecturer in aposition of authority in his or her university office.

Most of the informal and formal conversations involve two speakers, but someof the conversational data includes three or four. Some informal telephoneconversations are also included, with two-thirds of the conversations and all theacademic consultations being face-to-face. The effect on pronoun choice ofnumber of speakers and conversational medium is not central but will bediscussed where relevant.

Excluded from the main analysis are constructions where demonstratives arelargely obligatory, such as intonationally and informationally integrated NP +clause constructions, e.g. der wind der ist kalt (‘the wind it is cold’);3 demon-strative + NP, e.g. die vom markt (‘the ones from the market’) and verb-secondpost-modifying clauses, e.g. ich kenn leute die machen das schon jahre (‘I knowpeople who have been doing it for years’).4 All variants of the pronouns wereincluded, such as regional forms (e.g. das, dat, det, dit, dis) as well as phono-logical reductions (e.g. es, s).



The conversations contain ca 25 masculine, feminine and plural pronouns per1,000 words, ca 800 overall, and 20 neuter pronouns per 1,000 words, ca 600overall. The academic consultations contain just below 7 masculine, feminineand plural pronouns per 1,000 words, 205 overall. They contain ca 28 neuterpronouns per 1,000 words, ca 840 overall.5 In other words, neuter pronounsare 40 per cent more frequent in the academic consultations than in the conver-sations, whereas non-neuter pronouns are about four times more frequent in theconversations than in the academic consultations. This is maybe not surprising,given the largely factual nature of the academic data which favours reference toclauses and discourse sections. The figure for the conversations is in starkcontrast to the newspaper corpus examined by Bosch et al (2003), who foundonly 4.5 masculine, feminine and plural pronouns per 1,000 words (1,436personal pronouns and 180 demonstratives in 355,000 words), as opposed to25 per 1,000 words in the conversations. With 7 per 1,000 words, even theformal academic consultations contain above 50 per cent more. Only a smallproportion of pronouns are exophoric (12 in the conversations, 4 in the academicconsultations).

3 Results and analysis3.1 Overall frequencies of demonstrative and personal pronounsTables 1.3 and 1.4 provide a breakdown of personal and demonstrativepronouns for 500 pronoun occurrences in each data set, taken from a represen-tative subset of the conversations and academic consultations. Apart from thestructures listed in section 2, all types of syntactic units were included here suchas main clauses, subordinate clauses and units below clause level. Singularmasculine (m), singular feminine (f) and plural (pl) pronouns are treated as agroup and the neuter pronouns das/es (‘that/it’) are counted as a separate group.The percentages should be read horizontally.

Table 1.3 Conversations: demonstrative vs personal pronouns

Table 1.4 Academic: demonstrative vs personal pronouns

Overall, demonstratives far outnumber personal pronouns, with 61.8 per centin the conversations and 78.4 per cent in the academic consultations. However,


demonstrative personal Totalm+f+pl 147 51.75% 137 48.25% 284 100%neuter das/es 162 75% 54 25% 216 100%Total 309 61.8% 191 38.2% 500 100%

demonstrative personal Totalm+f+pl 67 67% 33 33% 100 100%neuter das/es 325 81.25% 75 18.75% 400 100%Total 392 78.4% 108 21.6% 500 100%


neuter demonstratives make up the largest proportion of these. Das accountsfor 32.4 per cent of all pronouns in the conversations (162 out of 500) and anastonishing 65 per cent of all pronouns in the academic consultations (325 outof 500). In fact, 80 per cent of pronouns in the academic consultations are neuter(400 out of 500), whereas in the conversations they reach 43.3 per cent (216out of 500).

3.1.1 Neuter pronounsWithin the group of neuter pronouns, demonstratives account for 75 per cent and81.25 per cent in the conversations and academic consultations respectively. Mostneuter pronouns do not refer to noun phrases but to clauses and discoursesections, or they have vague6 referents or no antecedents. For task-orienteddialogues Eckert (1998) found that ca 50 per cent of das cases were used asdiscourse deictics, i.e. to refer to discourse sections. In a sample of 100 cases eachin the conversations and the academic consultations the proportion is evenhigher, reaching 89 per cent and 70 per cent respectively. In addition, in the conver-sations and in the academic consultations 86 per cent and 91 per cent of das casesoccur in clause-initial position respectively. Das and es are less frequent clause-internally, where they are distributed more evenly. Due to the different functionswhich neuter pronouns cover, including the personal pronoun es, they requireseparate treatment and the referents of neuter pronouns will not be examinedfurther. They are included here because they contribute to the overall picture ofdiscourse cohesion in German and I will return to this general point in 3.5. Theiruse in the academic consultations will also be commented on in section 3.4.

3.1.2 Masculine, feminine and plural pronounsThe proportion of demonstrative vs personal pronoun in the group of masculine,feminine and plural pronouns is more balanced, with 51.75 per cent vs 48.25per cent in the conversations for the sample of 284 pronouns presented inTable 1.1. The proportion for all 205 pronouns in the academic consultationsis 65 per cent vs 35 per cent (Table 1.2 only shows 100 cases due to the largeproportion of neuter pronouns). This is somewhat unexpected, i.e. this moreformal data set has a high level of demonstratives which refer to NPs/entities.Overall, the use of demonstratives is therefore not an indication of ‘colloquial’language use (Duden 2005; Durrell 2002). Nor is personal pronoun referencethe norm in either data set.

3.1.3 Human referentsMasculine, feminine and plural demonstratives occur in both the informal andformal data, indeed in the academic consultations the proportion of demonstra-tives to personal pronouns is higher than in the conversations. The issue offormality might arise more clearly with human referents, especially since somegrammars suggest that it is not considered polite to refer to people with demon-stratives, at least not in their presence, and that they can be used pejoratively(Durrell 2002; Weinrich 1993, 2003).

I therefore analysed a sub-set of human referents, i.e. 200 referents in theconversations and all 85 referents in the academic data. The results for both data



sets are very similar. Human referents are referred to with demonstratives in 56per cent and 56.5 per cent of cases in the conversations and the academicconsultations. In both data sets demonstratives are used to refer to people whoare known or unknown to the speakers, and to refer to friends, relatives,colleagues or socially distant acquaintances. In the academic data both lecturersand students refer with demonstratives to other academics and authors unknownto them, but also to the students’ lecturers who are known to both speakers,despite the obvious social imbalance the student is faced with. There is littleassociation between pronoun use and negative evaluation of the people referredto. Overall formality does not predict where demonstratives will occur.

It is likely that speakers operate at subtle levels when referring to people,especially in their presence. Given that only a few conversations include morethan two speakers, such reference is naturally rare (eight cases in the conversa-tions) and a separate study is needed here. Weinrich (1993, 2003) attestsexamples where demonstratives convey impoliteness, e.g. was die schon wiedervon mir will (‘what does she want again’) uttered by a tour guide within earshotof a tourist who has approached her for help once too often. But a negativeattititude can be conveyed with a personal pronoun, as shown in the followingexample from the conversations: du bist son weichei er heult bis heute (‘you’resuch a wimp, he is still crying’), uttered in the presence of the ‘weichei’ and otherfamily members, said only half in jest. In many contexts demonstratives expresspositive emotions evidenced by this informally collected example: wie nett diehat immer ne überraschung parat (‘how nice, she always has a surprise up hersleeve’). They are also used to refer to people in formal contexts: fragen sie liebermeinen kollegen der kennt sich besser aus (‘you’d better ask my colleague, heknows more about this’). Only direct reference – without a preceding NP – toa person who is present with a demonstrative or indeed personal pronoun ishighly likely to be considered impolite, e.g. wo finde ich kalender – der zeigtihnen das (‘where do I find calendars – he will show you’). Otherwise demon-stratives can be associated with attitude and involvement, but not formality perse. The issue of involvement will be discussed again later in 3.4. First I willconsider syntactic and discourse-pragmatic factors.

3.2 Grammatical role and clausal position The observation that demonstratives are likely to occur in clause-initial position(Weinrich 1993, 2003) is corroborated by Bosch et al (in press) whose study ofnewspaper texts examined pre-verbal and post-verbal position of pronouns insimple main clauses in relation to their grammatical function. 93 per cent ofdemonstratives occur pre-verbally, mostly as subjects but also as objects, whilepersonal pronoun subjects are equally frequent in pre- and post-verbal position.Only 0.5 per cent of post-verbal personal pronouns are objects. Bosch et al (inpress) looked at the behaviour of demonstrative and personal pronounsseparately, i.e. they looked at the group of demonstrative pronouns andexamined how many occur in pre- or post-verbal position etc. In this section Ipresent the distributional figures both for all third person pronouns as well asfor each pronoun class. This brings out the qualitative and quantitative differ-ences between demonstratives and personal pronouns more clearly.7



As in Bosch et al, only declarative main clauses were included as the pre- vspost-verbal slot is created by the verb-second position of such clauses, e.g.examples 1–3 in section 1. Tables 1.5 and 1.6 show the relationship betweenclausal position, grammatical function and pronoun choice in the conversationsand the academic consultations. The conversations yielded 500 pronouns in mainclauses, and the academic consultations contain 150. The first column followingthe set of categories shows the number of occurrences; the second columnshows the percentage of the category in relation to the total of each pronounclass separately, i.e. to all demonstratives or all personal pronouns; the thirdcolumn shows the percentage of the category in relation to all pronouns. In otherwords, the tables show what a typical demonstrative and a typical personalpronoun is as well as what a typical pronoun is. This is crucial as it shows therelative importance of the two pronoun classes in the data.

Table 1.5 Conversations: clausal position and grammatical function of pronouns

Table 1.6 Academic consultations: clausal position and grammatical functionof pronouns

In order to provide an overview, I have entered all positional and grammaticalcategories for both pronoun classes in one table for each data set. Subtotalsfor pre- and post-verbal position are also given for each pronoun class. Notall possible percentage comparisons are indicated as this would be confusing.


demonstratives n % dem. % all personal pronouns n % pers. % all pronouns pronouns

pre-verbal subject 215 73.4 43 pre-verbal subject 60 29 12pre-verbal object 35 11.9 7 pre-verbal object 3 1.5 0.6subtotal 250 85.3 50 subtotal 63 30.5 12.6post-verbal subject 29 9.9 5.8 post-verbal subject 117 56.5 23.4post-verbal object 14 4.8 2.8 post-verbal object 27 13 5.4subtotal 43 14.7 8.6 subtotal 144 69.5 28.8dem. total 293 100 58.6 pers. total 207 100 41.4

demonstratives n % dem. % all personal pronouns n % pers. % all pronouns pronouns

pre-verbal subject 71 75.53 47.33 pre-verbal subject 29 51.8 19.33pre-verbal object 10 10.64 6.66 pre-verbal object 1 1.8 0.66subtotal 81 86.17 54 subtotal 30 53.6 20post-verbal subject 5 5.32 3.33 post-verbal subject 14 25 9.33post-verbal object 8 8.51 5.33 post-verbal object 12 21.4 8subtotal 13 13.83 8.66 subtotal 26 46.4 17.33dem. total 94 100 62.66 pers. total 56 100 37.33


The main trends which emerge from Tables 1.5 and 1.6 are summarized in3.2.1 and 3.2.2 below, where in each cases the relevant figures are given. Theobject pronouns are mostly accusatives with ca 6 per cent datives and genitives.

3.2.1 Conversations: clausal position and grammatical function of pronounsThe following strong tendencies emerge for informal, everyday conversa-tions:

1. In main clauses 58.6 per cent (293) of all pronouns are demonstratives, 41.4 per cent(207) are personal pronouns.

2. 62.6 per cent (313 of 500) of all pronouns in main clauses occur in pre-verbal position.3. 84.2 per cent (421 of 500) of all pronouns in main clauses function as subjects.4. 79.9 per cent (250 of 313) of pre-verbal pronouns are demonstratives.5. 77 per cent (144 of 187) of post-verbal pronouns are personal.

The figures confirm that both pronoun classes are strongly represented inconversations. They also show a strong complementary tendency in terms ofclausal position. Pre-verbal positions mostly attract demonstratives, post-verbal positions mostly attract personal pronouns. Overall, the single mostfrequent pronoun is a pre-verbal demonstrative subject with 43 per cent. Insecond place are post-verbal personal pronoun subjects with 23.4 per cent. Inthird place are pre-verbal personal pronoun subjects with 12 per cent. If wenow look at the two pronoun classes separately we find, not surprisingly, thatthe typical demonstrative is also a pre-verbal subject, i.e. 73.4 per cent. Thetypical personal pronoun is a post-verbal subject with 56.5 per cent but theproportion of pre-verbal personal pronoun subjects is substantial with 29 percent. While personal pronoun subjects may appear to be at home in both pre-or post-verbal position, we have to bear in mind that overall pre-verbalpersonal pronoun subjects are rare, reaching only 12 per cent. Finally, in linewith Bosch et al’s (in press) findings, pre-verbal pronoun objects are virtuallynon-existent (0.6 per cent in the conversations vs 0.5 per cent in theirnewspaper texts).

3.2.2 Academic consultations: clausal position and grammatical function ofpronounsThe picture for the academic data is in many ways similar to that of the conver-sations, but there are also some clear differences.

1. In main clauses 62.66 per cent (94) of all pronouns are demonstratives, 37.33 per cent(56) are personal pronouns. The proportion of demonstratives is slightly higher thanin the conversations where it was 58.6 per cent.

2. 74 per cent (111 of 150) of all pronouns in main clauses occur in pre-verbal positionas opposed to 62.6 per cent in the conversations.

3. 79.33 per cent (119 of 150) of all pronouns in main clauses function as subjects,compared with the slightly higher 84.2 per cent in the conversations.

4. 72.9 per cent (81 of 111) of pre-verbal pronouns are demonstratives, compared with79.9 per cent in the conversations.

5. 66.66 per cent (26 of 39) of post-verbal pronouns are personal, compared with 77 percent in the conversations.



The proportion of demonstratives and of pronouns in pre-verbal position iseven higher in the academic data than in the conversations. The single mostfrequent pronoun is again a pre-verbal demonstrative subject, with 47.33 percent. However, post-verbal personal pronoun subjects are not in second place,instead they account for only 9.33 per cent of pronouns (compared with23.4 per cent in the conversations). Pre-verbal personal pronoun subjectsreach 19.33 per cent and are the second most common type of pronoun in thisdata. This means that demonstratives are very similar in the two data sets, i.e.73.4 per cent and 75.53 per cent are pre-verbal subjects. For personalpronouns the picture is almost reversed with more than twice as many pre-verbal subjects than post-verbal subjects in the academic consultations.8 Pre-verbal pronoun objects are again virtually non-existent.

3.2.3 Summary: clausal position, grammatical function and pronoun choiceThe typical pronoun in a main clause is a subject, whether this is a demon-strative or a personal pronoun. Overall in main clauses, demonstratives areslightly more frequent than personal pronouns. In the academic consultationsa pronoun is almost three times more likely to be pre-verbal than post-verbal.The single most frequent pronoun type in both the conversations and theacademic consultations is a pre-verbal demonstrative subject. Pronouns showa strong complementary distribution in both data sets: demonstrative pronounsdominate the pre-verbal position with 79.9 per cent/72.9 per cent and personalpronouns dominate in post-verbal position with 77 per cent in the conversa-tions but a less pronounced 66.66 per cent in the academic consultations. Ifwe only look at pre-verbal subjects, we find that 78.8 per cent (215 of 275)in the conversations and 71 per cent (71 of 100) in the academic consultationsare demonstratives. If we look only at post-verbal-subjects, we find 80 per cent(117 of 146) in the conversations and 73.8 per cent (14 of 19) in the academicconsultations are personal pronouns. A certain amount of overlap existsamong demonstratives and personal pronouns as post-verbal objects, butpersonal pronouns dominate with 60 per cent/66 per cent (27 out of 41 and12 out of 18). Pre-verbal personal pronoun objects are virtually absent.

The figures for demonstratives are remarkably uniform across the two datasets, with 85.3 per cent/86.17 per cent being pre-verbal, 73.4 per cent/75.53per cent being pre-verbal subjects and 43 per cent/47.33 per cent of allpronouns being pre-verbal demonstrative subjects. The first two sets of figuresare also consistent with the newspaper data in Bosch et al (in press), who foundthat 93 per cent of demonstratives are pre-verbal and 70 per cent are pre-verbalsubjects. Personal pronouns also show some clear tendencies but the pictureis more varied, and contrasts with Bosch et al (in press) who found an equaldistribution of pre- and post-verbal subjects. In the conversations the ratio isclose to 1:2, in the academic consultations 2:1.

A clear difference from the newspaper texts in Bosch et al (in press) cantherefore be observed, where personal pronouns dominate and pre-verbalpersonal pronoun subjects are common. Broadly, in the spoken data demon-stratives prefer a salient position, i.e. in terms of functional sentence perspectivethey are the theme of a clause, and personal pronouns tend to prefer a less



salient position. In the conversations the demonstrative is close to being thedefault pronoun in pre-verbal position, reaching nearly 80 per cent. Weinrich(1993, 2003) and Zifonun et al (1997) suggest that demonstratives are markedtopics whereas personal pronouns refer to established topics. Bosch et al (inpress) speculate that demonstratives might be used for topic change. If ademonstrative pronoun refers to a non-salient or new topic, the pre-verbal,thematic position close to the referent would seem to be ideal for making itsalient, which is indeed what Weinrich (1993, 2003) and Zifonun et al (1997)suggest. It could well be then that spoken language, or at least the dataexamined here, is organized in a way which favours this kind of topic shift.The choice between demonstratives and personal pronouns may therefore berelated to the topicality, givenness and salience of their antecedents, and thesewill now be examined in detail.

3.3 Pronoun antecedents: topicality, givenness and salience3.3.1 ReferentsWorking with spoken data raises methodological questions regarding thedefinition of domains for pronoun antecedents, given that much of the liter-ature on pronoun resolution and anaphora relies on the distinction betweensentence-internal and cross-sentence anaphora (but see Eckert and Strube1999). Spoken language has units below clause level and no conventionallymarked-off sentence boundaries. Antecedent domains therefore need to bedefined differently. In addition, conversations include two or more speakersand decisions have to be made regarding cross-speaker antecedent domains,which is far from straightforward. Two speakers may be discussing a topicwhile two others are talking about something else and may throw in commentsor develop the topic partially independently. Even two speakers may pursuetheir own separate chains of referring expressions.

The first task then is to establish what the typical pronoun antecedents are,ignoring for the moment the domain of speaker. By antecedent I mean the lastmention of a referent. In other words, in the sequence ‘the actor forgot hislines, he started to sing, then he left the stage’, the first ‘he’ has an NPantecedent, the second ‘he’ has a pronoun antecedent. The second pronounantecedent does, however, have an NP in its discourse history. The reason forthis definition is that pronoun use and choices need to be examined both interms of NP antecedents as well as in relation to pronoun chains. Thisapproach will become clear in the analysis throughout this section. Table 1.7shows the proportion of different types of antecedent separately for 300pronouns in the conversations and for 200 pronouns in the academic consul-tations (the remaining five could not be categorized). The categories are ‘fullnoun phrase in a preceding clause’, ‘long-distance full noun phrase’ which ismore than one clause away, ‘single full noun phrase’ (but not those listed insection 2) and ‘pronoun’ (regardless of distance). The category ‘others’ includescases without an individual NP antecedent in their discourse history such asvague referents and other cases with no antecedent, and exophoric referents.As noted above, sentences are not ready-made units in spoken language in theway they typically are in (formal) written texts. Clauses can be identified more



easily on the basis of subjects, verbs and objects and I therefore decided toexamine antecedent full NPs in the preceding clause rather than sentence,whether uttered by the same or a different speaker, and including all types ofclauses.

Table 1.7 Pronoun antecedents

Most work on anaphora is based on full NP antecedents which reflects a biastowards written texts. Since in spoken German the proportion of pronouns ishigh, NP antecedents should not necessarily be the norm and pronounantecedents should be common.9 The way I use the term antecedent is meantto reflect this. In the conversations only 26.33 per cent of antecedents are fullNPs, and more than twice as many are pronouns with 53.33 per cent. In theacademic data full NP antecedents reach a much higher 52.5 per cent, butpronoun antecedents amount to a substantial 37 per cent. I will return to thisdifference between the two data sets in section 3.4 where pronouns are examinedin their discourse context. Despite having ‘reduced’ the antecedent domain toclauses, long-distance anaphora is not frequent, with 5.33 per cent of NPs in theconversations and a higher 9 per cent in the academic consultations. In theconversations most ‘other’ cases are vague referents. In the academic data vaguereferents and no antecedents are equally frequent. The ‘other’ category will notbe discussed further here. In the following analysis I will concentrate on NP andpronoun antecedents in terms of topicality, givenness and salience.

3.3.2 Grammatical function of NP antecedentsAs noted in the introduction, the issue of topicality is examined by Bosch et al(in press) in terms of the grammatical function of antecedents on the assumptionthat subject antecedents are more topical than object antecedents. Bosch et al(in press) examined the pronoun antecedents in the immediately precedingsentence. They found that over 80 per cent of personal pronoun antecedents aresubject NPs whereas over 70 per cent of demonstrative pronoun antecedents areobject NPs. This preference for object antecedents of demonstratives was corrob-orated by their experimental study, including a referent completion test whichshowed that despite an experimental bias towards subject pronouns via worldknowledge, participants selected object antecedents for demonstrative pronouns.The tests involved single sentences or constructed contexts of a few lines rather


Conversations Academic NP in preceding clause 52 17.33% 79 39.5%long-distance NP 16 5.33% 18 9%single NP 11 3.66% 8 4%subtotal NP 79 26.33% 105 52.5%pronoun 160 53.33% 74 37%other 61 20.33% 21 10.5%total 300 100% 200 100%


than longer discourse sections, however. The examples given also suggest thatthey may mirror written texts, i.e. the prior sentences with the antecedentscontain full noun phrases and virtually no (first/second) person pronouns. Whatthen is the picture in the spoken data? I used a larger version of the conversationcorpus in order to examine a sample of 100 NP antecedents in a preceding clause.No additional academic consultations were available.

Table 1.8 Grammatical function of antecedent NP in preceding clause

In the academic data, object NPs are indeed much more frequent for demon-stratives, where the figure of 80.9 per cent is even higher than the 70 per centnoted by Bosch et al (in press) for newspaper texts. But in the conversations thefigures are more balanced and subject NPs are more frequent with 57.3 per cent.The figures for personal pronouns are so low that we cannot draw conclusionsas to grammatical function. Yet they certainly do not suggest a clear preferencefor antecedent subject NPs since the conversations and the academic consulta-tions differ, and this time it is the academic consultations which appear not tofollow the expected pattern. The grammatical function of pronoun antecedentstherefore does not clearly predict pronoun choice. This conclusion does notnecessarily mean, however, that topicality is not an issue. But it suggests thatsentence, or rather clausal topic defined in terms of nominative NP, is notcrucial. Instead, givenness and the structure of the preceding clauses provide vitalclues. Their analysis will allow us to integrate the preference for pre-verbaldemonstratives and the nature of their antecedents, including the strongpreference for object antecedents in the academic consultations, into an overallpicture of topic development as an aspect of information structure in the spokendata.

3.3.3 Givenness, salience and topic developmentWeinrich (1993, 2003) and Zifonun et al (1997) claim that demonstratives referto known, rhematic entities and personal pronouns refer to known, establishedones. Bosch et al (in press) suggest that they may mark topic shifts. There isevidence in the spoken data for these claims, but how topics are established,changed and maintained is different from what has been suggested for writtentexts where pronouns are rare and personal pronoun anaphora dominates.

Conversations Academicdem. subject 47 57.3% 13 19.1%dem. object 35 42.7% 55 80.9%total dem. 82 100% 68 100%pers. subject 12 66.66% 3 27.3%pers. object 6 33.33% 8 72.7%total pers. 18 100% 11 100%total 100 79



What is striking in the spoken data is that demonstratives are much more likelyto have an NP antecedent in a preceding clause than personal pronouns. Thefigures are close in both data sets, despite the differences in the grammatical roleof the antecedents: 82 per cent (82 of 100) in the conversations and 86 per cent(68 of 79) in the academic consultations. Even when all NP antecedents are takeninto account, the figure is 80 per cent (160 out of 200) in the conversations and78 per cent (82 out of 105) in the academic consultations. This means that ifan NP is pronominalized with a third person pronoun for the first time, ademonstrative will typically be used. Once an NP has been pronominalized, itcan be referred to with a demonstrative or a personal pronoun. This then is someevidence that personal pronouns refer to established topics, yet these topics havebeen established by a demonstrative. This finding is crucial as it shows the centralrole demonstratives play in the spoken data. Two further factors help to clarifythe nature of topic development and pronoun choice in the data: the givennessof the NP antecedent, and the structure of the clause and discourse in which itoccurs, which indicates how salient the NP is.

In the analysis of givenness a simple discourse model brings out the status ofthe NP referents in the spoken data: the distinction is between new NPs whichare introduced for the first time and given NPs which have already been intro-duced. Personal pronouns are not crucial here since they have few antecedentNPs.10 Demonstratives have a high ratio of new antecedent NPs: 71 per cent ina sample of 100 (from a total of ca 160) in the conversations and 69.75 per cent(60 of all 86 cases) in the academic consultations. When only those NP antece-dents are taken into account which occur in the preceding clause, the figure risesto 81 per cent in both data sets. While this confirms that demonstratives referto rhematic topics, these topics are not necessarily non-subjects, as we saw abovein 3.3.2, nor are they necessarily non-salient. This applies particularly to theconversations for two reasons.

Firstly, there is little competition for pronoun reference, i.e. the precedingclauses which contain the NP antecedents typically only contain this one full NP.If there is another referent, this is typically a first or second person pronoun, i.e.a primary participant in conversation, or in some cases a co-referential noun orpronoun in equational clauses. Only 7 per cent of preceding clauses have morethan one full NP and only half of those are matched for gender or number. Inother words, there is little ambiguity in NP reference. This in itself means thatdemonstratives are not called upon to highlight one of two or more referents.

Secondly, the preceding clause regularly marks the introduction of the new NPor topic: in over half of the cases we find existential constructions, clauses withbroadly existential verbs and evidential existentials (verbs like ‘see’ or ‘know’),questions, and copular clauses where the NP antecedent is the subject or apredicate complement. These antecedents are therefore already salient.Demonstratives then establish and maintain their topic status. The varioustypical NP antecedent–demonstrative relations in the conversations are illustratedby (4–8). indicates overlapping speech. [] fills in information from thepreceding discourse. The English versions are part translation, part gloss whererelevant. The relevant NPs and pronouns are presented in bold.



(4) A1: ist die tochter denn dabei oder die geht da nicht hin ne‘will the daughter be there or she won’t go there TAG’

B: nur die katze‘only the cat’

A2: seine tochter‘his daughter’

C: nee ‘no’

A3: die hat ne eigene familie ne‘DEM-she has a own family TAG’

In (4) A introduces the NP die tochter for the first time in a question in A1 andthen pronominalizes this new, salient referent with a demonstrative in die gehtda nicht hin ne. In A2 he partially repeats the referent, adding the possessivepronoun for identification, and then pronominalizes this (partially) establishedreferent in A3.

(5) ich hab doch meine alten die wolltn immer noch mal was mit mir unternehm‘I have MODAL PARTICLE my old-ones DEM-they wanted always once more something withme do’

(5) is part of a discussion in which the speaker and her friend arrange to meetup. After the friend has indicated possible dates, the speaker mentions a potentialclash involving a get-together with meine alten (a group of older students). Thisreferent is introduced with the possessive-existential haben.

(6) A: hm was machen deine kleinen‘hm how are the little ones’

B: och der jehts janz jut die sind janz schön selbstständig schon muss ich sagen‘och DEM-DATIVE-she is doing fine DEM-they are quite independent already I must say’

In the turns before (6), A had asked B how she is and B had answered thisquestion. In (6) A switches to B’s children, who are introduced in a question.

(7) A1: ich hab so einen hunger ich hab erst einen joghurt heut gegessen ‘I’m so hungry I’ve only eaten a yoghurt today’

B1: und dann ist das [zu weit]‘and then it is [too far]’

A2: und drei schokoriegel aber gut‘and three bars of chocolate but ok’

B2: na ja man muß gucken ‘well ok we’ll have to see’

C: ich ich hab äh vor drei tagen äh schnee geschippt und der ist unwahrscheinlich schwer‘I I eh three days ago eh I was clearing the snow away and DEM-he is incredibly heavy’

In (7) the three speakers are all pursuing their own discourse topic: A is talkingabout being hungry, B is finishing the topic of her forthcoming travel arrange-ments, and C introduces his snow clearing activities in which the snow, for



obvious reasons, plays a central role. The clause itself does not have a topic-intro-ducing structure, but a number of signals of a topic shift are present. A2 endson terminal intonation and the speakers are about to sit down for a meal, B2signals the end of her topic and C uses repetition and hesitation. The fact thatfour speakers are involved in the conversation may also create a background of‘competition’ for topics.

Finally, (8) involves reference to an established NP which is specified furtherin an equational clause. All four speakers have been complaining about theearnings of some well-known German celebrities, listed in a magazine. Tworeferents are topics here. Reference to the first, introduced by the NP den X, isunderlined, and the second topic, which is the focus of the analysis, is given inbold.

(8) B1: die hätten mal den X holen sollen der ist ja noch noch gierigerA1: die neue +

wasserwerbungD1: ja eben das sag ich ja die wirklich gierigen die sind da nich drinB2: jaA2: die neue Y-werbung von ihm was meinst du

was der verdientB3: überall ist er da reise und dingsC1: oder becker boris beckerD2: das ist vielleicht ne werbung

du die kannst du in ne tonne treten

‘DEM-they should have taken the X DEM-he is MODAL PARTICLE even even greedierthe new water advertyes exactly that’s what I mean the really greedy ones DEM-they are not listed thereyesthe new Y-advert of PERS-him what do you bet what DEM-he earnseverwhere PERS-he is there travel and thingsor becker boris beckerthat is MODAL PARTICLE an advertPERS-you-VOCATIVE DEM-she you can only kick into a rubbish bin’

The relevant utterance is D2 where the Y-werbung mentioned in A1 and A2is partially repeated as ne werbung in a copular clause. This is a clear topicchange from A2 to D2, i.e. from the referent X (ihm and der in A2 and er inB3) back to the Y-werbung in A2. This is achieved by the deictically linkedequational clause, i.e. das bridges the intervening clauses. This demonstratesquite clearly spoken language information structure: while the celebrity X isthe main topic for a few turns, the Y-werbung is singled out in an NP + clausestructure in A2. In A1 the speaker simply mentiones the advert, in A2 she addsa comment to the effect ‘you can bet X will be making a mint with thisadvert’. In this discourse section, A2 die neue Y-werbung is one of the fewsequences without overlap and it is also loud and clear. It is followed by areturn to the topic X (pronominalized), followed by a topic change back tothe advert (boris becker does not become a topic). This change is signalledin the copular clause, however, and the referent is already established andsalient.



In the academic consultations most antecedent NPs are new, as in the conver-sations. Similarly to the conversations, these NPs occur in existential, questionor copular structures or with signals of a topic change (9–10). The proportionis lower, however, around 25 per cent vs 50 per cent.

(9) A: und ehm ja wir hatten ja drüber gesprochen also ich würde sehr gerne bei ihnen eine magisterarbeit schreiben‘and ehm yes we’d mentioned this before well I would like you to supervise mydissertation’

B: ja mhmA: die is allerdings steht noch nich jetz an also im november sondern erst nächstes Jahr

‘DEM-she is not yet an issue in november but not until next year’

In (9) the dissertation had not been mentioned in the conversation. The lecturerand student had been talking about the student’s essay. The student uses thereference to a previous conversation to introduce the topic, possibly as amitigating alerter to the up-coming request.

(10) A: da gibts übrigens ne neue billige ausgabe da sollten se sofort zugreifen und zwar kenn sie den eh verlag 2001 ‘by the way there is a new cheap edition you should get it FOCUS PARTICLE do you know the publisher 2001’

B: ehm ich habe ma gehört aber je tzt‘ehm I’ve heard of it but right now’

A: der hat en geschäft ehm am charlottenplatz‘DEM-he has a branch ehm on charlotte square’

In (10) we observe a staging of information. The first clause introduces the topicof the neue billige ausgabe, the second continues this topic which then leads tothe introduction of the new topic den verlag 2001 in a question which is itselfpreceded by the focus particle und zwar.

As noted in section 3.3.2, the proportion of object antecedents is high in theacademic consultations. This in itself does not mean that they are less salient,as the discussion of examples (7), (9) and (10) showed. Whether antecedent NPsare subjects or objects depends partly on genre. In the conversations, referentsother than the speaker and hearer are often other people who are agents orentities which are described as having certain attributes, and hence subjectantecedents occur. In the academic consultations, topics are examinations, thestudent’s work, authors and academic papers etc. to be acted on, and if peoplefeature they are more often patients, which favours object antecedents. Thedifference between the conversations and the academic consultations is that inthe latter 25 per cent of preceding clauses contain more than one full NP,sometimes in addition to a first or second person pronoun. Only two cases areambiguous, therefore despite the more complex nature of the clauses, antecedentsare largely unique. To what extent they are salient is difficult to determine onthe basis of the criteria used so far, and would require more extensive analysisof the discourse. The same applies to those antecedents – in both data sets –where no topic-introducing clause is used, only here the NP may be salient sincethere is only one. However, the purpose of this chapter is to show the differences



between demonstrative and personal pronouns, not to provide a comprehensiveor predictive model of topic development and anaphora resolution in spokenlanguage.

The picture presented in this section on pronoun antecedents leads to aspecific view of what an established topic is and what a topic shift is inrelation to pronoun choice in the spoken data. It allows us to see demonstra-tives as referring to rhematic topics and personal pronouns as referring toestablished topics, but in accordance with spoken language informationstructure. A rhematic topic is mainly an unambiguous first-mentioned NP,regardless of grammatical function, which, especially in conversation, oftenoccurs in a topic-introducing clause and/or in a context of topic-changingsignals. Many topics are therefore already salient. An established topic istypically a demonstrative subject, so here we have the more typical associationof topicality with subjecthood. Pronominalization itself is associated withsubjecthood/topicality since the large majority of pronouns are subjects (seesection 3.2).

Most NP antecedents occur in the preceding clause and recency is thereforea fall-out from the nature of topic development. This combines with thepreferred pre-verbal position of demonstratives, placing demonstratives andnew or established referents in close proximity. The observed patterns do notdetermine which antecedents will become topics. But since spoken languageis fleeting and there may be ‘competition’ for topics, demonstratives may thussignal which topics are to be promoted. Topic development and the nature ofpronoun antecedents can therefore be related to the clausal position of demon-stratives. Subjecthood, theme and topic combine in demonstratives, makingthem a powerful tool for discourse cohesion.11

The discourse model for reference used here is a very simple one in need offurther refinement, and the salience of topics for speakers and hearers has to becorroborated. But it is not unreasonable to suggest, given that the first pronom-inalization of an NP is almost always demonstrative, that they play a crucial rolein disourse cohesion and are not simply marked highlighters. Weinrich (1993,2003) argues that demonstrative, rhematic reference is more common ineveryday conversation where information with a high level of newsworthinessis exchanged. In other words, he reconciles the notion of demonstratives as insome way marked with their more frequent occurrence in spoken conversations.The newsworthiness of new topics is not in doubt, but demonstratives lead,personal pronouns may follow, not the other way round. Personal pronounshave very few antecedent NPs and they are not even a viable alternative todemonstrative anaphora in these contexts. It is difficult to still consider them asunmarked anaphors overall.

In both data sets discourse topics change frequently and there are relativelyfew long sections where one topic is consistently maintained. They can bemaintained over shorter sections, however. I will now examine such sections ofdiscourse in relation to pronoun chains. This will bring us back to therelationship between pronoun choice and clausal position as well as to consid-erations of discourse structure and the issue of involvement.



3.4 Pronouns in their discourse contextIn the conversations well over 50 per cent of pronouns have a pronounantecedent (section 3.3.1, Table 1.7). Demonstratives and personal pronounshave an almost equal share in pronoun antecedents, 48 per cent vs 52 per centin the conversations and 53 per cent vs 47 per cent in the academic consulta-tions. While it is now clearer why demonstratives should prefer the pre-verbalposition as NP anaphors, it is not so obvious why we should commonly findpronoun antecedents for demonstratives, given the association of personalpronouns with established referents. Pronoun chains could potentially revealmore about the role of topicality in pronoun choice in this data. While demon-stratives do not specifically make non-subjects salient, they establish topics.Could it be that personal pronouns then refer to such established topics? In thiscase we would regularly expect to find sequences like the one in (11).

(11) der mann von meiner schwester war gerade da der wollte uns einladen er macht ne feier‘the husband of my sister has just been here DEM-he wanted to invite us PERS-he is having a party’

That this is not the norm is partly evident in the figures on clausal position(Tables 1.5 and 1.6), i.e. position overrides topicality (12–13).

(12) A: guten tag hier ist A ist die X da‘hello this is A is X there’

B: nee die is nich da die is im moment ich glaub in hilden oder so‘no DEM-she is not here DEM-she is at the moment I think in hilden or somewhere’

In (12) a person subject referent is introduced by A who is then referred to witha pre-verbal demonstrative subject pronoun in two consecutive clauses. Thedemonstrative establishes and maintains the topic.

(13) A: und wie geht’s Y in ihrer ehe‘and how is Y’s marriage’

B: och ja im augenblick ist sie mit ihrem mann im bayerischen wald die sind also ganz lustig die zanken sich ununterbrochen die ham einen umgangston da denksde das du wirst nich mehr [A: hm] aber irgendwie vertragen se sich wohl trotzdem‘ach well at the moment PERS-she is with her husband in the bavarian forest DEM-they are quite funny DEM-they argue all the time DEM-they have a way of talking to each other it’s quite shocking [A: hm] but somehow PERS-they still seem to get on’

(13) clearly adheres to the preference for pre-verbal demonstratives and post-verbal personal pronouns. There is also a (partial) topic change in B wherebythe clause which refers to Y introduces Y’s husband and both then inferentiallybecome the referent of the demonstrative pronoun in the next clause. Pre-verbal demonstratives maintain the topic for a further two clauses and a post-verbal personal pronoun does so in the final clause in this extract. In (12) andin (13) B in the pronoun chain die – die – se there is only ever one referent fortopic status and in each case it is a subject. The contexts of the second die in (12)



and the second and third die in (13) would therefore seem ideal for ‘unmarked’anaphora, but personal pronouns are not used.

Demonstratives are associated with topic change, but we do not typically findpersonal pronoun anaphors followed by an NP which is then established as atopic with a demonstrative, e.g. sie arbeitet bis vier, heute abend ist sie bei ihrerschwester, die ist gerade umgezogen (‘PERS-she is working until four, this eveningPERS-she’ll be at her sister’s, DEM-she=her sister has just moved house’). Thechange is often from a topic which has been referred to with a demonstrative.In (14) the first topic is switched after only one pronominal reference.

(14) A: hab ich schon erzählt die aus sachsen die oma‘did I mention the one from saxony the granny’

B: ja die ging mir ja auf die nerven der opa war ja ganz knutschig aber ich glaub derhatte irgendwie angst vor ihr ‘yes DEM-she got on my nerves the granddad was rather cute but I think DEM-he was a bit afraid of PERS-her’

(15) is a case of long-distance anaphora and shows that a referent which isalready part of the discourse can be re-established as a topic and then bemaintained with a demonstrative.

(15) ja den rosmarin der war ja für deinen großvater gedacht eigentlich aber der ist der wär mir im keller kaputt gegangen weil da kein licht ist [B: ja] ne darum hab ich ihn erstmal mitgenommen‘yes the rosemary plant DEM-it was meant for your grandfather really but DEM-it wouldhave been damaged in the cellar because there is no light that’s why I’ve taken PERS-it’

(15) re-introduces the rosemary plant which had been mentioned eight turnspreviously, here with a NP + clause construction. It remains the topic for a furthertwo clauses, and again clausal position seems crucial. Examples (12–15) showthat demonstratives can establish new topics, re-establish a previous one,maintain topics over several clauses or change them after only one pronominalreference, all of this in keeping with the preference for pre-verbal demonstrativesand post-verbal personal pronouns.

At this point we may ask what clausal position is aligned with in the case ofestablished pronominalized referents. It does not appear to be topicality of thereferent per se as (13) and (15) show, where the pronoun is the only referent ineach clause but a personal pronoun is not used. Given the salience of pre-verbal position, foregrounded vs backgrounded information is still likely to bea factor, however. As noted earlier at the end of the previous section, Weinrich(1993, 2003) argues that demonstrative, rhematic reference is more common ineveryday conversation where information with a high level of newsworthinessis exchanged. The demonstratives in (13) could be seen to highlight the unusualor shocking characteristics of the referents, whereas the first personal pronounin B referring to Y reports neutral information about where the referent is onholiday. But then we might also expect the last pronoun to be demonstrative asit is still part of the ‘strange couple’ description.

The alternative would be to take clausal position itself as indicating the subor-dinate nature of the information in terms of how the speaker presents it. This



is not an uncommon approach to reference and information structure, e.g.Halliday (1967). The fact that the couple basically get on may then be considereda return to ‘normality’. In (15) the information der wär mir im keller kaputtgegangen is more newsworthy than darum hab ich ihn erstmal mitgenommen,which contains given information since the speaker has mentioned in thepreceding discourse that he gave the plant to his mother. Examples (13) and (15)then provide some evidence for an alignment of pre-verbal position withforegrounded or newsworthy information about a topic. (16–17) show that thisand additional factors can also lead to less typical pronoun choices.

(16) zwischendurch sind auch viele eh besatzungssoldaten jekommen noch amerikaner diewarn drüben einkaufen und die ham sich meistens drüben ehm wie ich gehört habe hamdie sich drüben a alte wart mal was warn dis was hab ich da ge/was ham die immererzählt die ham sich so holzschnitzereien solche sachen aus m erzgebirge und so ham diedrüben eingekauft dit war also für die sehr preisgünstig und da ham die diese sachen allerübergeschleppt und zwischendurch also zwischendurch eh kam dann wieder massen vontrabbis und die ham wir denn begrüßt

‘and there were a lot of soldiers americans they had been shopping over the border andthey bought a lot ehm so I heard over the border they bought old hang on what did theysay they bought wood carvings like things from the mountains and so on they boughtover the border it was all very cheap and so they brought over all this stuff and then thenmasses of trabbies [car make] would come and we’d welcome them’

(16) is an extract from a conversation about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thespeaker is from former West Berlin. It features only demonstrative pronouns,including some of the rarer post-verbal and object cases, i.e. dit war also fürdie sehr preisgünstig (post-verbal object) and und da ham die diese sachen allerübergeschleppt (post-verbal subject). The first topic is amerikaner which ismaintained by seven demonstrative pronouns. A new NP is then introduced,massen von trabbis, which is then also referred to with a demonstrative. Inother words, everything is newsworthy in this story and the demonstrativesbecome markers of the speaker’s involvement. A version with personalpronouns may well seem more neutral or distanced. The shorter example (8)also shows involvement. Topic development and involvement can go hand-in-hand in conversations.

The previous discussion now bring us back to the question why, against thegeneral trend, some personal pronoun subjects appear in pre-verbal position.Since personal pronouns have few recent NP antecedents, many follow demon-stratives which have established a topic and personal pronouns could thereforestill be considered to refer to established topics. But pronoun choice also appearsto be related to other factors. (17) provides some evidence for a difference ininformation status. [...] indicates some small overlap with another speakerwhich is not crucial for the analysis.

(17) A1: meine schwester hatte nie [...] eine zwischenprüfung in der grundschule‘my sister has never [...] had an interim exam in primary school’

B1: nee meine freundin auch nicht das stimmt‘no my girlfriend hasn’t either that’s right’



A2: hm hm‘hm hm’

B2: die hatte nur ihr das [...] erste staatsexamen‘DEM-she only had her the main exam’ [...]

C: und wo studiert deine freundin‘and where is your girlfriend studying’

B3: hier in halle also sie ist jetzt fertig sie hat wirklich heute ihre letzte prüfunggemacht‘here in halle actually PERS-she is finished now PERS-she has just today had her last exam’

All pronominal references to speaker B’s girlfriend are pre-verbal subjects. In B2the speaker uses a demonstrative in a statement which confirms the infor-mation in A1, seen in contrast to other types of degree courses which requireinterim exams. In B3 the information is descriptively more neutral. In otherwords backgrounding and foregrounding may account for pronoun choice inthese contexts. Given that demonstratives are the norm in pre-verbal position,this suggests that the backgrounding use of pre-verbal personal pronouns ismarked, in contrast to the common view that personal pronouns are the normand demonstratives are marked highlighters. It is not simply a question of thereferent in B3 having been established over a longer discourse section. The datacontains one example, for instance, where a referent is referred to over 20times and where demonstratives and personal pronouns alternate for complexreasons such as the introduction of a new discourse topic in relation to thereferent and the signalling of an explanation of the referent’s activities.

A further factor is indirect speech. 12 (20 per cent) of the 60 pre-verbalsubject personal pronouns in the conversations occur in the context of indirectspeech, which can report actual speech as well as the contents of letters or otherwritten texts (18).

(18) dann habe ich mit ihrer mutter gesprochen und da hat sie gesagt nee sie kommt nicht mehr das ist dann für sie erledigt‘then I talked to her mother and PERS-she [the mother] said no PERS-she [the daughter] won’t come again that’s it finished for PERS-her [the daughter]’

(18) includes personal pronoun reference both to the person whose speech isreported (the mother) as well as another female person (the daughter) who ismentioned in the mother’s speech. A possible explanation might be that indirectspeech is distancing and personal pronouns may therefore be a better option thandemonstratives as these can signal involvement. This view is supported by casesof direct quoted speech which is often acted out in the voice of the quotedspeaker and where demonstratives are used. In (19) the speaker quotes hermother who tells the story of how the speaker’s sister became engaged.

(19) ja sacht se du weißt ja der onkel von ihm der is öh pastor und öh da sind die dahin gefahren ham den besucht und da hat er das dann gemacht‘yes PERS-she says you know her uncle DEM-he is eh a pastor and eh so DEM-they went there visited DEM-him and so PERS-he did it there and then’



In (19) the mother is referred to with a personal pronoun as part of the speaker’sown speech. The mother’s quoted speech includes demonstratives (and notonly in the NP + clause structure der onkel von ihm der is öh pastor). Thedaughter’s engagement in this case was unexpected.

While it is possible to use demonstratives in certain contexts to signal distanceto a referent, the data provides plenty of evidence that they are associated withinvolvement. This can be alignment with or attitude towards the referentsthemselves as suggested earlier in relation to exophoric reference, or it can beinvolvement with the information or stories which are being told. This aspectof demonstrative pronouns has been underestimated in previous accounts butis not entirely surprising given the tendency for deictics and demonstratives toassume interpersonal and interactional meaning (see Weinert, Chapter 4, thisvolume). More work is clearly needed on the role of personal pronouns in spokenlanguage if we assume that involvement is a prominent feature in everydayconversations. In other words, the use of personal pronouns could potentiallybe distancing.

Finally, I will return briefly to the academic consultations. Here the frequencyof full NP antecedents is higher and pronoun antecedents are less frequent, i.e.52.5 per cent full NPs vs 37 per cent pronouns. Some topics are simply short-lived, others are maintained by discourse-deictics or NPs, illustrated by (20).

(20) ich komm von MD1 und er1 hat mir die scheine2 anerkannt das heißt er1 machts noch und ich hab hier aber einen2a da2a war er1 sich nich ganz sicher ob sie den2a mir als prose-minar anerkennen oder ob das2a auch nur zu der einführung in die sprachwissenschaftzählt und zwar ich hab noch ich hab noch einen2a gemacht das2a war eigentlich ein allge-meiner einführung in die sprachwissenschaft

‘I’ve just been to see MD and PERS-he accepted my certificates that is PERS-he will do and I have one here DEICTIC-there he wasn’t sure if you’d accept DEM-it as an advanced courseor whether DEM-that only counts as an introduction to linguistics FOCUS PARTICLE I havealso I have also done another one DEM-that was MODAL PARTICLE a general one intro-duction to linguistics’

In (20) two main referents occur, MD, a lecturer, and a schein, which in theGerman university context labels the certificate for a course, but also stands forthe course itself. These two referents are tracked as 1 and 2, 2a being oneparticular schein. MD is referred to by personal pronouns, the schein by demon-stratives and deictics. The speaker begins with the unproblematic informationabout MD, who has accepted his courses as appropriate for the requiredadvanced level. MD is established as a referent with a personal pronoun and thetopic then changes to a problematic schein, referred to as einen. This is referredto by deictic da, then by the masculine demonstrative den, followed by neuterdemonstrative das, and after the repeat of einen with another demonstrative das(the following discourse makes clear that with the second einen the samereferent is meant). In other words, there is a pronoun/pro-form chain but itincludes only one third person pronoun which is congruent with the referent interms of number, gender and case. Da is unmarked with regard to thesecategories, das is marked for number and case, but not gender. Generalizedreference with das is particular common in the academic data. It is useful to recall



that das is highly frequent here. While it mostly occurs as a discourse deictic,17 per cent of cases are generalized uses (of ca 840) which adds ca 140 to thepronoun pool. This is a substantial amount, considering that there are only205 masculine, feminine and plural pronouns.

In contrast, in the conversations 7 per cent of das cases are used for gener-alized reference, ca 40 (of ca 600) compared with ca 800 masculine, feminineand plural pronouns. With regard to personal pronouns in (20), they appearto be part of the scene-setting for the crucial topic – the problematic schein,a preamble. It would not, however, seem appropriate to see this use as evidencefor the unmarked status of anaphoric personal pronouns per se. After all, 65per cent of all masculine, feminine and plural pronouns in the academicconsultations are demonstratives. The nature of pronoun/pro-form chainssupports the view that demonstratives contribute centrally to discoursecohesion in the academic consultations.

Two factors are therefore responsible for the role of demonstratives in thetwo data sets: one informational, one interpersonal. Without attempting adirect comparison with Biber (1990), we may borrow the labels for twotextual dimensions he identified: involvement and on-line informational elabo-ration. Biber found that these two textual factors have a strong weighting ofpronouns and demonstratives in English. On-line informational elaborationis characteristic of spontaneous, unplanned informational discourse whichrelies heavily on markers of discourse cohesion. Involvement means the inter-personal aspect of spoken language which demonstratives can serve to express.Both dimensions are present in both data sets. The conversations have ahigher degree of involvement which is evident in the content, lexical choicesand high frequency of modal and discourse particles. The academic consul-tations have a higher level of on-line informational elaboration, reflected inthe higher frequency of demonstrative pronouns and discourse deictics.

3.5 Demonstratives and discourse cohesionDemonstrative masculine, feminine and plural pronouns play a central role increating cohesive discourse and as such they fit into the larger picture ofdeixis in spoken German. We saw in 3.1 that neuter demonstrative das is ahighly frequent discourse deictic occurring predominantly in clause-initialposition. Weinert (Chapter 4, this volume), shows the ubiquity of deictic da(‘there’) as a cohesive device. Demonstrative pronouns and da are variouslyassociated with information packaging structures such as NP/PP + clause,demonstrative + NP/PP and verb-second post-modifying clauses. They createlinks in clause complexes involving complement and adverbial clauses (Weinert2000, Weinert, Chapter 3, this volume). Clause-initial, pre-verbal or pre-phrasal position is a central feature of these devices. In other words, spokenGerman has a propensity for making links explicit via demonstratives anddeictics. Apart from their use in some specific focusing constructions, they aremaybe best considered to have a heightened yet ‘medium alert’ status asmarkers of discourse cohesion.



3.6 Issues for further researchThis study raises a number of questions regarding the grammatical status,discourse-pragmatic functions and interpersonal role of third person pronouns.To what extent certain pronoun choices are grammaticalized deserves furtherstudy. An obvious candidate is the pre-verbal personal pronoun object since thisform is virtually absent not only in the spoken data but also in the newspapertexts examined by Bosch et al (in press). Neuter personal pronoun objectscannot be used referentially and anaphorically in pre-verbal position, e.g. DasBuch ist gut. *Es habe ich schon oft gelesen (‘The book is good. *It have I alreadyoften read.’). Some masculine, feminine and plural pronouns also appearvirtually ungrammatical in this context, e.g. ich nehme die Krabbensuppe – ?*siehaben wir nicht mehr (‘I’ll have the prawn soup – it we no longer have’).Factors such as stress, occurrence in a prepositional phrase and animacy mayplay a role. But the pre-verbal demonstrative tendency may also show signs ofgrammaticalization, even though it is still short of categorical. This applies, forinstance, to cases which are situated somewhere between anaphora and post-modification (Gärtner 2001; Weinert forthcoming). Compare the (restrictive)verb-second modification ich kenn leute die machen das schon jahre (‘I knowpeople they/who have been doing it for years’) with the (non-restrictive/anaphoric) das sind die ganz schlauen die/?sie fahren erst sonntag los (‘they arethe clever ones they/who don’t leave until sunday’). Similar intermediate casesarise with NP + clause sequences which are not intonationally integrated andcan cross a speaker’s turn, as in example (14) where a personal pronoun couldnot readily replace the first demonstrative in B’s utterance.

The relationship between clausal position, information structure and newswor-thiness requires further more extensive study of longer discourse sections andpronouns in their local context, especially with respect to post-verbal pronouns.Additional analysis also needs to include other units such as verb-final clauses.Interesting possibilities regarding personal, interpersonal and interactionalfunctions are also opened up by the two pronoun classes in German. Forinstance, is personal pronoun use in certain involved contexts intended orconstrued as distancing? Are pronoun choices involved in topic sharing and topiccontrol? Can personal pronouns express epistemic status, e.g. uncertainty aboutthe information given for a referent? Whatever the answers to these questions,the relationship between third person personal pronouns and demonstratives isa highly dynamic one. Finally, this study also has implications for accounts ofreferential ambiguity. NP antecedents are largely uniquely identifiable in the twodata sets. Whether this also applies consistently to pronoun chains remains tobe investigated.12

4 ConclusionWeinrich (1993, 2003) identifies many relevant aspects of the distribution of thetwo pronoun classes and his view, which accords demonstratives an importantand significant status, turns out to be well justified. Demonstratives are certainlynot essentially indicative of informal, colloquial or impolite speech, which isunderlined by the higher proportion of demonstratives in the academic consul-tations. Yet even Weinrich may have underestimated the role of demonstratives.



Demonstratives and personal pronouns are at least equally frequent and behavein a complementary fashion in spoken language. Clausal position, while notproducing categorical results, clearly divides the two pronoun classes, withdemonstratives typically being pre-verbal and personal pronouns post-verbal.

What is particularly striking is that personal pronouns play such a small rolein NP anaphora. Instead, demonstratives establish new NPs as topics, many ofwhich are already salient, and these can then become the domain of personalpronouns. Both demonstratives and personal pronouns can refer to establishedtopics and maintain them in pronoun chains. While demonstratives areassociated with foregrounding and personal pronouns with backgrounding, itseems that spoken language has an equal need for both. This suggests a truecomplementarity rather than a markedness relation. While markedness can bedefined in many ways and frequency is not a sophisticated criterion, our modelof pronoun choice at least needs to reflect frequency which can usefully beintegrated into a wider view of the role of demonstratives as cohesive devicesand markers of involvement in spoken German. The functions covered bydemonstratives are ‘normal’ for spoken language. This is not to deny that in other(written) text types the use of demonstratives is indeed marked. But at the veryleast, the analysis of spoken language challenges approaches which take thebehaviour of personal pronouns (in written language) as the starting point fora model of pronominalization and anaphora. In the spoken German examined,demonstratives have at least an equal stake in reference.

Notes1 Since pronouns are not necessarily the first item in a clause as they can be part of

clause-initial prepositional phrases, for instance, Bosch et al (2003, in press) use theterms pre-verbal and post-verbal position. I will follow their example. Most pre-verbal pronouns in the spoken data are indeed clause-initial.

2 The data includes conversations from Brons-Albert (1984) and Dittmar and Bredel(1999). Conversations dating from 2006 were collected by Janine Soffner, AnnaBrown and the author. The academic consultations were collected by AndreaKrengel (1997).

3 In some contexts personal pronouns also occur, e.g. zumindest der druck von herthabsc er wird immer stärker (‘the pressure of hertha bsc [football team] PERS-he isgetting stronger and stronger’), but such cases are absent in the two data sets.

4 See Gärtner (2001) and Weinert (forthcoming) for verb-second post-modifyingclauses.

5 The figures are based on five random samples of 1,000 words in each data set.Because of their low numbers, all masculine, feminine and plural pronouns in theacademic data were counted.

6 An example of vague reference is die in da kann man nicht parken die bauen da (‘youcan’t park there they are building there’). In line with Kitagawa and Lehrer (1990)I consider these uses of the plural pronoun vague rather than impersonal or genericsince they refer to specific referents which are not identified/identifiable. Unlike imper-sonal pronouns, they are not generally similar to universal quantifiers. This may notapply to all vague plural pronouns, but the issue is not central to this chapter.

7 The demonstratives diese and jene and their various forms, which are regarded asproximal and distal respectively (Weinrich 1993, 2003), are virtually absent as



single pronouns. There are three endophoric and five exophoric cases of the formerand none of the latter. In exophoric reference a proximal/distal difference may besignalled by dies/diese/dieser vs das/die/der. Dies etc. is frequent as a determiner inNPs.

8 Chi-Square tests confirm that the conversations and the academic consultations donot differ significantly with respect to demonstratives: x 2 (3) = 3.591, p = 0.309.They do differ significantly with respect to personal pronouns: (x 2 (3) = 11.549, p= 0.009. I would like to thank Robert Mayr and Darren Walker for carrying out thesetests.

9 Eckert and Strube (1999) report that NP antecedents constitute only 45.1 per centof all anaphoric antecedents in a corpus of English task-oriented and open-endeddialogues. This includes demonstratives where in English the proportion of discoursedeictics is high, i.e. 22 per cent. In other words, antecedent NPs for individualanaphora are in fact even less frequent.

10 When all personal pronoun antecedents are taken into account the numbers of newvs given are 23 vs 17 in the conversations and 9 vs 14 in the academic consultations.So while overall personal pronouns refer to established referents, when NPantecedents are involved they can also refer to new ones.

11 Recency requires further study, but it seems to be somewhat more relevant fordemonstratives than for personal pronouns, at least in the academic data. In the caseof long-distance anaphora, personal pronoun antecedent NPs are all more than oneclause away and demonstrative antecedent NPs are all one clause away. Overall, long-distance anaphora is infrequent in both data sets, however (Table 1.7). If theantecedent is another pronoun, it is typically either in the preceding clause or oneclause away in equal proportions for personal pronouns, but for demonstratives in69 per cent of cases it is in the preceding clause. This is consistent with the topic-establishing/maintaining function of demonstratives in a context of frequent topicshifts or topic competition.

12 There was no indication in the occurrences of demonstrative and personal pronounsexamined that the use of zero NPs in clause-initial position directly affects thepicture presented in this chapter. The interaction of pronouns with full and zero NPsin reference and anaphora deserves further study and may be influenced by discoursetype.



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Weinert, R. (2000), ‘Satzbegriff, Einheiten und Verknüpfung in gesprochener Sprache.Syntax oder Diskurs?’, in L. Jäger and L. Springer (eds) Die Medialität der gesprochenenSprache. Sprache und Literatur [SuL] 84/31, 75–96.

Weinert, R. (forthcoming), ‘Postmodifying verb-second clauses in German’. Weinrich, H. (1993, 2003), Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. First edition.

DudenVerlag. Second edition. Hildesheim/Zürich/ New York: Georg Olms Verlag.Zifonun, G., Hoffman, L. and Strecker, B. (1997), Grammatik der Deutschen Sprache.

Berlin: de Gruyter.



2 Grammatical past time reference in spontaneouslyproduced language

Torsten Müller

1 IntroductionThe present study is concerned with past time marking in spontaneouslyproduced language. It intends to investigate the way speakers refer to pasttime in actual language use, with respect to the moment this reference ismade in relation to the corresponding non-linguistic event it describes. Thespontaneously produced language which is analysed here is that of live radiofootball commentary in conjunction with the corresponding TV footage.This approach differs in methodology and in its data from views as theyare presented, for example, in grammars such as Huddleston and Pullum(2002) for English or Duden (2005) for German. The terms past timereference or past time marking also differ from terminology in grammarbooks in that the latter will usually arrange their topics according togrammatical categories such as tense or aspect, when in fact past timemarking may be achieved by various means, from tense and aspectcategories to lexical expressions. Hence traditional categories may hidefunctional similarities.

The focus in this study will be on grammatical past time reference inEnglish and German. This covers three grammatical constructions each: forEnglish the past tense, the present perfect and the past perfect, for Germanthe Präteritum, the Perfekt and the Plusquamperfekt.1 Grammars andother accounts usually attempt to provide an explanation of how theseconstructions are used or what their functions are in, for example, cross-linguistic or language-specific tense or aspect systems. Such explanationsfocus on the meaning or function of isolated examples, rarely on textualfunctions (an exception being, in particular, Weinrich 2003). Conceptssuch as ‘current relevance’ or ‘past event’ are employed without providingany empirical evidence as to their validity. To be sure, it is not the aim ofthis study to refute useful conceptual tools such as the ones just mentioned,and admittedly it is not always possible to verify time reference systemsempirically in narrative text types, where reference is not to real-life eventswhich may be filmed and analysed, but to events which mainly exist in animaginary world of author/narrator/reader.

The aim of the current study is to present a new methodology of how toprovide an explanation of grammatical past time marking in actuallanguage use through a systematic integration of the extra-linguisticsituation. In this new methodology time is not an abstract concept


employing a time axis where past is to the left and future to the right. Herepastness can be measured in minutes, seconds or even split seconds. Hencethe question asked is how proximity to (or distance from) the presentmoment influences first of all the choice of time reference (present vs past)and more precisely, if past time reference is chosen, what type of referenceis used. In order to employ this methodology, a specific text type whichpermits the use of video material in conjunction with spontaneouslyproduced language was chosen: the language of live radio footballcommentary.

The focus on timing requires first of all a clear description of the method-ological issues. It will then be feasible to define clearly what is meant bypast time marking, or more precisely by grammatical past time marking.Functional aspects of past time marking options relevant to the presentstudy will be introduced afterwards. After presenting the results, thediscussion will then focus on how past time marking is employed in the texttype of live radio football commentary, and what influence timing has ontime choice (present vs past) and on the type of past time reference. Theseresults will then be compared with current functional explanations of thevarious grammatical constructions in question.

2 The dataThe present study is a corpus analysis of unplanned spoken English andGerman, but not the conversational spoken language which is usuallychosen in discourse analysis. The text type analysed for this study was liveradio commentary of international football games. The rationale forchoosing this particular text type is:

• Football commentary on the radio represents spontaneously produced spoken language.As much as a commentator may be able to prepare certain phrases beforehand, animportant function of their broadcast is to tell the listeners what is going on on the pitch,and so although football consists of a number of stereotypical actions, the commentatorcan never be sure what will happen next.

• There is often corresponding TV footage of a game broadcast live on radio. The TVfootage may hence provide a non-linguistic ‘control mechanism’, or at least a betterunderstanding of the communicative situation than text alone (see also Tomlin 1983),which allows comparison between the spoken word and the visual world. Video materialwas already used in Chafe’s Pear Film (Chafe 1980) and, for example, in Tomlin (1983).Careful and exact editing of the radio sound and TV footage will also allow one to assessthe moment when an utterance was made, for example virtually coinciding with the corre-sponding event, a few moments after or perhaps even a few moments before the event.

• A third advantage is that radio commentary represents natural language rather thanartificial and isolated stretches of text produced in an experimental setting in the way ithas been used, for example, in Tomlin (1987 and 1995).

Table 2.1 provides an overview of the games analysed for this study.



Table 2.1 The games used in the study and their commentators

3 MethodologyThe existence of video material as a ‘control mechanism’ allows the assignmentof utterances from the radio commentary to individual events as they can beidentified in the video material. This allows identification and isolation ofevents and event types independent of language. This identification furtherenables us to determine the moment a linguistic reference to such an event ismade and to see:

• whether the linguistic reference is made at the same time as the event is happening, henceforthcalled on-line reference;

• whether the linguistic reference is made after the event has happened, henceforth off-linereference;

• whether the linguistic reference is made before the event happens (rare but generally possible),henceforth anticipation.

On-line and off-line reference and anticipation will be subsumed under the labeldescription.

While it may be intuitively plausible what describing events ‘happening at thetime of speaking’ means, there must be a clear definition of what precisely countsas on-line reference. The definition of this term will then automatically identifythe terms off-line and anticipation as well. Note also that it is the beginning ofthe utterance which is relevant here, not its end (a decision supported by Tomlin1997: 172ff.).

Expressions such as ‘at the time of speaking’ hinge crucially on a proper editingof the audio and video material. It was ensured that editing was as precise aspossible, and it is certain that at no point are audio and video material more thannine frames (i.e. 360 milliseconds) adrift – in fact, it is very likely that at any pointthe margin of error is well below that. Nevertheless, there still remains a slightpossibility of a certain margin of error. In addition, the time of about 150milliseconds (see Tomlin 1997: 172ff.) which it takes humans to react to astimulus such as an event should also be taken into account.4

A reasonable definition must be found which accommodates these factors andstill deserves the terms on-line, off-line and anticipation. This is especiallyimportant in the case of on-line reference: here the time frame should be as shortas possible to justify the label on-line, but long enough in duration to accountfor reaction time and possible margins of error in the editing. Accordingly, it is

Game Radio commentators Radio stationManchester United v Juventus (Champions Alan Parry Talk Radio (today:League semi-final, 1st leg, 1999), 2nd half Talksport)Germany v Romania (Group game, Euro Armin Lehmann and ARD, HR1 plus 2000), 1st half Kai Dittmann (today: HR Info)2

England v Argentina (Group game, World Cup Alan Green and Mike BBC Radio 5 Live2002), 1st half Ingham Scotland v Germany (European Championships Rolf Rainer Gecks ARD, BR5 aktuell3

qualifying match 2003), 2nd half and Jens Jörg Rieck

PAST TIME REFERENCE IN SPONTANEOUS LANGUAGE MÜLLER 31


best to decide on an a priori margin that defines the time frame within whichon-line description can occur. Although a decision like this may seem somewhatarbitrary and may perhaps even yield some problematic cases, it is definitelypreferable to an impressionistic and therefore subjective technique which doesnot rely on exact timing. Incorporating reaction time and possible margins oferror resulting from the editing process, a reasonable time frame for defining on-line utterances seems to be one second: by doubling the nine frames that soundand pictures are maximally adrift, the cut-off point would still be well below onesecond (720 milliseconds or 18 frames) and can easily accommodate reactiontime as well. The way the editing has been carried out means that in practice anymargin of error will have the sound lag behind the pictures. Theoretically, ofcourse, there may also be situations in which the sound may be slightly ahead.To accommodate for these – unlikely – cases, on-line reference will be extendedalso to include the seven frames (280 milliseconds) preceding the beginning ofan event. As one second of film contains 25 frames, this means that the completetime span of what counts as an on-line reference finally ends up being exactlythe desired one second or 25 frames. The nominal on-line time span of onesecond, which covers the seven frames preceding the beginning and eighteenframes following the end of an event, is hence justifiable on the basis of theediting process and the communicative setting of the commentary produced.Above all, the cut-off points were decided upon before analysis. The procedureis thus methodologically sound.

Hence on-line reference is defined as reference to events5 that are begun nomore than seven frames before the event and no more than 18 frames after itsend. All references that are begun more than 18 frames after the end of the corre-sponding non-linguistic event are labelled off-line. All references to corre-sponding events that are begun more than seven frames before the event beginsare called anticipation (see also Table 2.2 for an overview).

Table 2.2 Types of time-critical utterance and their definitions


Status of time- Definition critical utteranceanticipation Reference to a corresponding event which is begun more than

seven frames before the event begins.on-line Reference to a corresponding event which is begun no more

than seven frames before the beginning of the event and no more than 18 frames after its end.

off-line Reference to a corresponding event which is begun more than 18 frames after the end of the event.


It should also be noted that the inherent duration of non-linguistic events maydiffer. An offence such as handling (a player other than the goalkeeper touchingthe ball with their hand or the goalkeeper handling the ball outside their ownpenalty area), for instance, may not last longer than a split second if a player’shand just deflects the ball. An event with a much longer inherent duration is along pass upfield. Here the ball may travel through the air for several seconds.As a consequence, on-line reference is more easily achieved when referring tolong passes than to offences such as handling. This should be borne in mindwhen comparing the results for on-line and off-line reference.

A large part of radio football commentary is concerned with the descriptionof what is going on on the pitch while the ball is in play (on-line and off-linereference as well as instances of anticipation). Anticipation is so rare, however,that it is not feasible to include it in the analysis – particularly when consideringthat the study is concerned with past time reference.

Other utterances, so called elaboration, may not refer to the individual eventsof the game at all, but may consist of discussions of tactics, references to earliergames or similar information. As these utterances do not relate to any individualevents of the game in question, their timing cannot be assessed and hence theycannot be used in this study. Utterances which appear to refer to events on thepitch while the ball is in play, but cannot be identified independently throughthe video material, are labelled ‘Unclear’ and cannot be used either, simplybecause again their timing in relation to the non-linguistic events cannot beassessed properly.

It is assumed that the distinction between on-line and off-line reference willmanifest itself in a different preference for explicit time marking as well. On-linereference will favour the use of present time marking whereas off-line referencewill lead to a considerable increase in grammatical expressions of past timebecause the event in question will already be interpreted as lying in the past, andhence the use of past time reference will be prompted more easily.

Three more terms need to be mentioned here whose importance will becomeapparent presently. A description of a goal may be made by an utterance suchas:

here comes beckham and scores

This is called the first verbalization. Any further utterance which refers toBeckham’s goal immediately afterwards will then be called a repeated verbal-ization. Reference to this event at a later point, for example at the end of the halfin which the goal was scored, will be labelled a verbal action replay.6

Finally, it has to be pointed out that the unit of analysis in this study does notrest on the dependency relations as they exist in clauses or perhaps evensentences, but rather on intonation units, in a similar way as they are used byChafe (1994) or Cruttenden (1997).7 Nevertheless, as the study is concerned withgrammatical time marking, only those intonation units can enter the analysiswhich contain a finite verb.



4 English and German grammatical past time markingThis study attempts to approach the following problem:

• How does the moment an utterance is made, in relation to the moment the corresponding eventhappened, affect the grammatical marking of time?

This intends to say that only time marking by a grammatical past time markeris analysed. It also implies that certain forms do not enter the analysis which canpotentially also refer to past time: present tense forms with past time reference(scenic present or historical present), units without verb but with time adverbialsindicating past time, time orientation through context (no explicit reference topast time), or non-finite verb forms (resultative past participles). In order tooperationalize this study as clearly as possible it was decided to focus on a limitedaspect of the entire picture, i.e. those forms which have traditionally beenassociated with past time marking, rather than opening up the additional issueof deciding, for example, whether a present tense form is to be interpreted ashaving past time reference. The issue of non-finite verb forms will, however, bepicked up again in section 7 because it will be relevant in the discussion of theGerman Perfekt and Präteritum.

The new methodology used here to assess the conditions under which an eventis interpreted and – presumably – processed as past may serve as a basis for amore inclusive study involving other expressions of time.

Time reference is typically associated with tense. English and German bothbelong to the Germanic language family, a group which is often associated witha two-tense system of past and non-past. A justification for this type of classi-fication is usually founded on historical and morphological reasons. TheGermanic languages all developed a past tense (in German often called thePräteritum) which is centred around a so-called dental suffix, the reflexes ofwhich show up in Modern English as -ed and in German as -te, -test, etc. Apartfrom the present tense this remains, even today, the only tense form in bothGerman and English, or the only time reference option, as it were, which isformed synthetically.

However, there are other grammatical options in both English and Germanfor marking past time. Both languages also possess analytic resources: thepresent perfect and the past perfect in English and the Perfekt andPlusquamperfekt forms in German. German grammars have long labelled thePerfekt a tense. For English, Quirk et al (1985) treat the present perfect not asa tense but as an aspect, as do Biber et al (1999). Huddleston (1995) andHuddleston and Pullum (2002), however, analyse it as a secondary tense.

In principle, the past perfect and Plusquamperfekt forms simply involve thepast tense forms of have and haben and hence could be seen as only a variantof the present perfect and Perfekt, respectively, but some researchers havedisputed this simplified picture (e.g. Hennig 2000 for German and Biber et al1999: 463ff. for English). As there are no past perfect forms and only nine occur-rences of the Plusquamperfekt in the corpus, this issue cannot be pursued hereand accordingly the use of past perfect and Plusquamperfekt will not bediscussed.



The German Präteritum and the English past tense are typically seen asnarrative tense forms and as the main way of expressing past time reference inthe respective languages. The status of so-called perfect constructions is morecomplicated. Perfects (in a cross-linguistic meaning) typically express anteriority(Bybee et al 1994 use the term anterior instead of perfect), i.e. they express anevent which happened at some point before the present moment. This featureclearly holds for both the present perfect as well as the Perfekt. The developmentof perfect constructions may be illustrated by a three-step process, whose outlinehere is based on Engel and Ritz (2000) and Elsness (1997).8 The origins ofperfects are usually seen in the expression of a state which implies an earlieraction describing how the current state came about (stage 1; we may label thisthe statal use). Grammaticalization then shifts the focus towards past actionwhich brought about a resulting state (stage 2; resultative use). The final resultof the grammaticalization process is often (but not necessarily) the developmentinto a past tense form with the focus solely on the action (stage 3). With regardto the position on this grammaticalization cline, the English present perfect isusually seen as belonging to stage 2 and with its function often described asdenoting current relevance (see below; Leiss 1992: 279, labels it a resultativeperfect), whereas the German Perfekt is somewhere between stages 2 and 3 withpart of its function bordering on the use as a genuine past tense (see below).

Biber et al (1999: 463f.) show that the English present perfect has a highpreference for occurrence with some verbs (frequently used ones such as be, have,go, do, make, etc.)9 but rarely occurs with certain others (including othercommon verbs such as believe, thank or want). In German there are clearrestrictions on the set of verbs which are used with the Präteritum. Sieberg (1984:90) sees the German tendency to form a Satzrahmen10 or verbal bracket (a termused by Durrell 2002) as providing a favourable environment for the use of thePerfekt because it is formed by using two verbs, whereas the Präteritum onlyemploys one. He lists 25 verbs which make up almost 90 per cent of allPräteritum occurrences in the spoken German he analyses. By far the mostcommon verb is sein ‘be’, followed by kommen ‘come’ and haben ‘have’, sagen‘say’ and werden ‘become’. The list also includes most modals. A similar list isprovided by Hennig (2000: 181), who reduces the number of verbs mostcommonly occurring in the Präteritum to sein ‘be’, haben ‘have’, (some of) themodals and the four verbs geben ‘give’, kommen ‘come’, stehen ‘stand’ andwissen ‘know’.11 Sieberg’s list is based on conversational German12 whereasHennig bases hers on the spoken German used in TV chat shows.13

In fact, the German situation is even more complicated than that, as isprobably to be expected of a grammatical construction which seems to beundergoing a major functional shift. In Upper German dialects, i.e. southernGermany, Austria and Switzerland, the Präteritum has largely been replaced bythe Perfekt as a general past tense marker (see Durrell 2002: 295ff.). Thisphenomenon is frequently labelled the Oberdeutscher Präteritumschwund andoccurred in Upper German dialects around 1500–1530 (according to Lindgren1957) although it is likely that the development did not affect the entire UpperGerman area at the same time. For a more recent account of thePräteritumschwund and its relation to similar phenomena in related and in neigh-



bouring languages, see Abraham and Conradie (2001). According to Durrell,the Präteritum is far more common in the north of Germany14 and occursparticularly with frequently used verbs (i.e. the ones from Sieberg’s and Hennig’slists). Apart from its occurrence in certain clause types or constructions (suchas the passive, which of course involves the verbs sein and werden), Durrell(2002: 297f.) notes its use to express a state, or habitual or repeated action.

The Perfekt is seen as a tense which indicates a past action whose effect isrelevant or apparent at the moment of speaking (Durrell 2002: 296). Similarly,Weinrich (2003) emphasizes that the Perfekt enables a speaker/writer to includethe past in the current situation. He says the Perfekt is not normally used fornarratives, but if it is, the past which is retold always has a significance for thepresent moment (Weinrich 2003: 224f.). According to Duden (2005: 519f.),Präteritum and Perfekt are largely interchangeable in contexts in which timeadverbials or similar means are used to indicate that an event took place in thepast. If an event is located in time mainly through indicating that it took placebefore the moment of speaking/writing (rather than giving an absolute indicationsuch as gestern ‘yesterday’), then the Perfekt has to be used and cannot bereplaced by the Präteritum. But, as Hennig (2000) points out, it is important tobe clear about the text type under investigation, as this is a vital influencing factorin the distribution of Perfekt and Präteritum.

For English, Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 143) point out that the differencebetween present perfect and past tense is that in the present perfect the primaryfocus is on the present moment, whereas for past tense it is on the past. Thisdescription bears some resemblance to the values put forward for the Germansystem, but the functional difference appears to be far more clear-cut. Accordingto Quirk et al (1985: 183), the past tense is used to relate events or stateswhich occurred in the past ‘with a gap between its completion and the presentmoment’ where the speaker/writer ‘must have in mind a definite time at whichthe event/state took place’. The past tense clearly has a narrative function. Thepresent perfect on the other hand is used to express ‘states leading up to thepresent’, ‘indefinite events in a period leading up to the present’ or ‘recurringevents in a period leading up to the present’ (192). Quirk et al point out thatthe label current relevance is indeed an adequate description for the presentperfect (or present perfective, as they call it) (192). This view is supported by Dahland Hedin (2000).

There appear to be signs that the present perfect is also now graduallychanging towards step 3 on the outlined grammaticalization cline. This devel-opment towards a general past tense may be said to be under way, or in fact tohave been under way for a while, in certain varieties of English, for example inScottish English, where the present perfect can occur in conjunction with definitetime adverbials such as yesterday or a week ago (see Miller 2003). In AustralianEnglish the present perfect not only occurs with these time adverbials but is alsoused as a narrative tense form which appears to be used for foregroundedevents (see Engel and Ritz 2000). Early reports on a similar use in Englishvarieties of English go back, for example, to Huddleston (1976: 342, note 8).Quirk et al (1985: 195, note a) mention it briefly and explain some of the occur-rences as ‘performance errors’. It is not mentioned in the more recent grammar



of Biber et al (1999) although it explicitly focuses on spoken English. Miller(2004) reminds us, though, that a development such as the one just outlined canonly be established for varieties of a language but not for a uniform languageper se, and that for some varieties of English at least, co-occurrence with definitetime adverbials can be traced back several hundred years.15

Despite talking about the relevance to the present or the gap between pastevent and present moment, most of the studies reported above base their viewson a more isolated use of grammatical constructions and often look for alanguage-internal and an absolute function or meaning of a grammaticalconstruction. The present study is different in that it is interested in the timingwhen a specific time reference is used in relation to the moment the corre-sponding non-linguistic event occurred.

5 The basic time reference in football commentaryFleischman (1990: esp. 56), who is concerned with tense usage in narrativelanguage, notes that in individual text types one tense is usually the basic (or inher terms ‘unmarked’) one. According to her, this is either present tense or pasttense, and she goes on to claim that in ordinary speech (a term she does notqualify) present tense is unmarked and past tense marked. In narratives,according to her, past tense is unmarked and present tense marked, but in theFrench chansons de geste, which are the main focus of her research, it is thepresent tense again which is the unmarked form. While markedness theory, heruse of the term ordinary speech and also the claim that the main narrative tenseform is the past tense may be disputable, it is nevertheless useful to assume onetense form to be more basic than another in any given text type. Hence we shouldexpect one tense, or for our purposes time reference form, to dominate againstany other in terms of frequency. In fact, Fleischman’s claims appear to hold notonly for narrative texts. Her views are supported for German footballcommentary by Hennig (2000) (for TV) and Brandt (1983) (for radio), who bothfound the present tense to be the most frequent tense form in their respectivecorpora.

So for descriptive passages of radio football commentary we may expectpresent time reference to be basic. After all, the events are unfolding in front ofthe commentators’ eyes in real time. The occurrence of past time referencewould be favoured in descriptive passages which are related off-line, i.e.occurring more than 18 frames (or 720 milliseconds) after the completion of thecorresponding non-linguistic event. This is precisely what happens, as can be seenfrom the presentation of the results.

6 ResultsIt was predicted that on-line and off-line commentary should show a cleardifference in time reference: the basic time reference option in live radio footballcommentary will be present time marking, but if past time marking is used itwill be more frequent in off-line commentary than on-line.

Tables 2.3 and 2.4 indicate that this is indeed borne out by the facts. Table 2.3shows that for on-line commentary there are very few past time references at all,in fact only between 4 per cent and 9.2 per cent of all cases for the individual



commentators. If explicit past time reference is made, in German this is mostfrequently done by using the Perfekt. For the three who have the highest share ofpast time references on-line of all commentators, between 8 and just above 9 percent in the German commentaries of Dittmann, Rieck and Gecks, this is entirelydue to the Perfekt forms. This is not surprising given the fact that Germangrammars point out that it relates past events with a link to the present moment.

Interestingly, the English16 results differ, despite very similar claims about thepresent perfect. Although Alan Parry does use more present perfect forms thanpast tense ones, Green and Ingham rarely use the present perfect at all (Inghamtwice, Green not at all). Green has the fewest examples of explicit past timemarking on-line of all commentators and Mike Ingham has the third lowestpercentage (after Green and Lehmann).

Table 2.3 Grammatical past time markers in on-line commentary

Table 2.4 Grammatical past time markers in off-line commentary


Alan Mike Alan Armin Kai Jens Rolf Green Ingham Parry Leh- Ditt- Jörg Rainer

mann mann Rieck Geckson-linepast tense / Präteritum 3 5 2 1 1 0 2present perfect / Perfekt 0 2 7 3 10 6 6past perfect / Plusquamperfekt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0total 3 7 9 4 11 6 8total on-line 75 135 152 96 122 65 100percentage of past time references on-line 4.0 5.2 5.9 4.2 9.0 9.2 8.0


mann mann Rieck Gecksoff-linepast tense / Präteritum 43 32 61 35 25 23 31present perfect / Perfekt 5 9 13 20 22 13 24past perfect / Plusquamperfekt 0 0 0 5 1 1 9total 48 41 74 60 48 37 64total off-line 85 79 203 131 122 86 134percentage of past time references on-line 56.5 51.9 36.5 45.8 42.9 43.0 47.8


Table 2.4 shows that the number of past time references does indeed increasedramatically off-line and that this is mainly due to the past tense and Präteritumforms, although the present perfect as well as the Perfekt forms are morefrequent too. What is noticeable is that the Perfekt in German is again morefrequent than the present perfect in English. Whereas the present perfect neveraccounts for more than a fourth of all past time references off-line, the Perfektforms in German make up between a third and almost half of all past time refer-ences, depending on the commentator, although they are never more frequentthan the Präteritum. Overall, grammatical markers of past time account for morethan half of the off-line cases for Alan Green and Mike Ingham, and the Germancommentators are astonishingly uniform in that they use grammatical pasttime reference in over 40 per cent of all cases (between 42.9 and 47.8). Only AlanParry is different in that he marks comparatively few off-line references grammat-ically for past time (only 36.5 per cent).

However, an increase in past time reference for off-line forms may be obviouswhen considering that off-line reference will also include all repeated verbaliza-tions and verbal action replays. Especially verbal action replays often occurseveral minutes after an event and hence will prompt explicit past time referencemore readily. It would be interesting to see whether timing also has an influenceon past time reference if the time span is much smaller. Table 2.5 presents thecommentators’ off-line references excluding repeated verbalizations and verbalaction replays. This reduces the probability of the reference being made a longtime after the event.

Table 2.5 Grammatical past time markers in first verbalization off-linecommentary

Table 2.5 shows that past time reference will also increase off-line, comparedwith on-line reference, in cases where verbal action replays and repeated verbal-izations are excluded. In other words, any off-line first verbalization of a pastevent will already have a noticeable influence on the marking of time. While the


mann mann Rieck Gecksoff-line (first verbalizations only)past tense / Präteritum 12 9 22 3 8 2 8present perfect / Perfekt 4 2 9 6 10 6 13past perfect / Plusquamperfekt 0 0 0 0 0 0 2total 16 11 31 9 18 8 23total off-line (first verbalizations only) 42 40 118 34 43 25 38percentage of past time references off-line (firstverbalizations only) 38.1 27.5 26.3 26.5 41.9 32.0 60.5



share of past time reference on-line never crossed the 10 per cent mark (withRieck being highest at 9.2 per cent), the lowest mark for first verbalization off-line reference is 26.3 per cent (for Alan Parry), thus showing a much higher figurefor all commentators. In fact, those who have a low rate of past time referenceon-line also stay below the 30 per cent mark for off-line first verbalizations (withthe exception of Alan Green) whereas those with a higher on-line percentage(Dittmann, Rieck and Gecks) are also those who produce more past time formsas off-line first verbalizations (all above the 30 per cent mark). In fact, in the caseof Rolf Rainer Gecks this results in an astonishingly high percentage of 60.5 pasttime forms for off-line first verbalizations (compared with 47.8 per cent off-lineoverall). For Kai Dittmann the figures are: 41.9 per cent for off-line first verbal-izations only vs 42.9 per cent for off-line overall, i.e. almost identical. Alan Greenhas the third-highest percentage in this category despite having the lowest markon-line. While again the past tense is far more frequent than the present perfectin the English commentaries, the Perfekt occurs more often than the Präteritumas a device for the grammatical expression of past time in off-line first verbal-izations in the German ones.

While there is much variation, the share of off-line past time references whenverbal action replays and repeated verbalizations are excluded is in factremarkably high. What is more, there is a clear increase for all commentatorsfrom on-line to first verbalization off-line references and a clear increase for fiveout of seven commentators, from first verbalization off-line to off-line overall(also for Dittmann, but only marginally). This underlines the claim that the typeof time-critical utterance (on-line or off-line) and the gap between event and eventreference has a crucial influence on the choice of time marking.

Table 2.6 Grammatical past time markers in repeated verbalization and verbalaction replay off-line commentary



mann mann Rieck Gecksoff-line (repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays only)past tense / Präteritum 31 23 39 32 17 21 23present perfect / Perfekt 1 7 4 14 12 7 11past perfect / Plusquamperfekt 0 0 0 5 1 1 7total 32 30 43 51 30 29 41total off-line (repeatedverbalizations and verbalaction replays only) 43 39 85 97 69 61 96percentage of past time references off-line (repeatedverbalizations and verbalaction replays only) 74.4 76.9 50.6 52.6 43.5 47.5 42.7


Table 2.6 presents the figures for repeated verbalizations and verbal action replaysin off-line commentary. With the exception of Gecks, whose past time referencein off-line first verbalizations was extremely high (Table 2.5), the share of past timeforms in repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays is higher than in anyother category for all other commentators (only marginally for Dittmann, whichwas to be expected from his first verbalization off-line figures). Mike Ingham andAlan Green are of particular interest here: they employ grammatical past timemarking in around 75 per cent of all cases of repeated verbalization and verbalaction replay (Green at 74.4 and Ingham with the highest mark at 76.9). Table2.6 also shows very clearly that repeated verbalizations and verbal action replaysfavour the use of the Präteritum in the German commentaries. All Germancommentators prefer it over the Perfekt in these contexts. The Perfekt is never-theless again more frequent than the English present perfect.

Table 2.7 Verbs used in the Präteritum for on-line reference, off-line first verbal-izations and off-line repeated verbalizations/verbal action replays

The following verbs occurred only once each as off-line first verbalization: brachte ‘brought’,führte ‘led’. The following verbs occurred only once each as off-line repeated verbalization or verbalaction replay: ansetzte ‘here: be about to (take a shot)’, aussah ‘looked like’, drehte ‘turned’,einstieg ‘went in’, glich aus ‘equalized’, heraus kam ‘resulted in’, passte ‘passed’, profitierte‘benefited’, rannte ‘ran’, roch ‘smelled like’, rutschte ‘slipped’, schoss ‘shot’, sollte (should have;i.e. past tense of modal soll ‘shall’), traf ‘hit’, verpasste ‘here: hit (the ball)’, zog ‘here: took ashot’, zunichte brachte [sic!; T.M.] ‘here: wreck (the opponent’s chance)’, zurück kam ‘cameback’.

On-line Off-line (first Off-line (onlyverbalization repeated verbalizations only) and verbal action

replays)war ‘was’ 1 7 38konnte (past tense of modal kann ‘can’) X 1 8hatte ‘had’ X 1 4kam ‘came’ 1 X 4musste (past tense of modal muss ‘must’) X X 4wollte (past tense of modal wollen ‘want’) 2 2 4wurde ‘became’ X 3 4ging ‘went’ X 1 3stand ‘stood’ X X 3bekam ‘received’ X 2 X(es) gab ‘gave’, but here: ‘there was’ X 1 2machte ‘made’ X 1 1



In fact, there appears to be a general difference in past time marking betweenthe two languages. For English, in all four categories the past tense clearlydominates and the present perfect is comparatively rare. This is not so forGerman, where the Perfekt forms are more frequent on-line and for first verbal-izations off-line, but the Präteritum is more frequent in off-line repeated verbal-izations and verbal action replays and off-line overall. In section 5, I mentionedthat the use of Präteritum forms in spoken German is largely restricted to a setof 25 verbs (the list from Sieberg 1984) or even fewer (that from Hennig 2000).Table 2.7 lists all Präteritum verbs in on-line reference, first verbalization off-line reference and repeated verbalization/verbal action replay off-line reference.

By far the most frequent verb across the three categories is war ‘was’, and allverbs occurring more than once in any of the categories are on Sieberg’s list, withthe exception of bekam ‘received’ (which at least is similar in form to kam‘came’). Only wurde ‘became’, ging ‘went’, bekam ‘received’ and machte ‘made’,all appearing towards the bottom of Table 2.7, are not included in Hennig’sreduced list. While all four on-line forms (war ‘was’, kam ‘came’ and twoinstances of wollte ‘wanted’, i.e. past tense of modal wollen) are commonPräteritum verbs, there are three verbs in the off-line first verbalization categorywhich do not appear on either list: bekam ‘received’, brachte ‘brought’ and führte‘led’. But these forms are by no means as unusual as some of the verbs in theoff-line list containing repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays. It isnotable that the only compound verbs occur here: ansetzte ‘here: be about (totake a shot)’, aussah ‘looked like’, glich aus ‘equalized’, heraus kam ‘resulted in’,zunichte brachte ‘here: wreck (the opponent’s chance)’ zurück kam ‘came back’.In addition some unusual strong verbs appear. The appearance of glich aus‘equalized’, schoss ‘shot’, traf ‘hit’ or zog (drauf) ‘here: took a shot’ may be lessastonishing, however, as they all clearly represent football terms, whereas roch‘smelled like’ appears more unusual. The appearance of these rare strong verbswill be discussed in section 7.

7 Analysis7.1 Past time reference on-lineThree of the German commentators show a slightly higher share of on-line pasttime reference than the English ones, with only Armin Lehmann being similarto the English commentators in this respect.

By far the most common way of time marking on-line is by using the simplepresent for English and the German Präsens, i.e. the present tense, as in examples(1)–(3).

(1) here the throw-in goes to heskey + (ON)17

(2) samuel gets in the tackle again + (..) (ON)(3) flankt in die n mitte + (ON)

‘crosses into the penalty area’

The question may now be asked why past time reference on-line occurs at allif on-line reference is tied to the present moment. Two categories can beidentified:



1. Both German and English commentators describe an event with an inherently longduration, typically a pass or even a long pass. The outcome of this pass can often beevaluated while the ball is still on its way, hence the reference is on-line but reference isto the failure of reaching the target, see (4)–(6).

(4) but that wasn’t a great ball + (..) (ON) (5) wollte ziege finden + (ON)

‘wanted to find ziege’(6) giggs’s given it away + (.) (ON)

2. Reference is made to an event with relatively short inherent duration which, however,immediately follows an event with inherently long duration. In these cases the commen-tator has time to prepare themselves for the upcoming event and hence is still on-linedespite choosing a past time reference. It should be emphasized that in all cases the eventhas already happened but is still within the 18-frame margin that was chosen fordefining on-line reference. In example (7) it is the header after a long pass into theArgentine penalty area which is not cleared. In (8) the reference is to a throw-in byScottish player Naysmith when the game was interrupted, after the ball had gone outof play and Naysmith could be seen collecting it before taking the throw.

(7) and (.) argentina haven’t cleared it + (ON) (8) durch naysmith kam der + (..) (ON)

‘it (the throw-in) was taken by naysmith’

There are only two cases which do not fit these categories and hence they seemnegligible. Table 2.3 has already shown that for German: in terms of grammaticalpast time marking, the Perfekt is preferred and the four Präteritum forms (war‘was’, kam ‘came’ and two instances of wollte ‘wanted’, i.e. past tense of modalwollen; see Table 2.7) all employ verbs which belong to the set of verbs whichtypically attract the Präteritum.

More interesting for the moment may be the distinction between presentperfect and past tense in English. All present perfect forms used by Alan Parry,with the exception of two examples, one of which is given here as (9), are usedwhen either possession changes or to locate the ball. They all belong either tocategory 1 or 2.

(9) and he’s gone round the goalkeeper who blocked his run (ON) (10) but has only ended up (..) losing the ball i’m afraid+ (..) (ON) (11) [<cres> but a mistake here by stam has given possession to inzaghi+ (..)] (ON)

The two present perfects used by Mike Ingham are similar, but Ingham empha-sizes that a change of possession has not taken place. His two examples arealmost identical (see 12 below and 7 above):

(12) england haven’t cleared it + (.) (ON)

The past tense forms on the other hand seem to refer to events rather indirectlyas all of them employ either some sort of evaluation or a modal or semi-modal(or, in fact, both), see (13)–(15).



(13) [<decres> tried to drag the ball back to scholes + (..)] (ON)(14) but he (.) did well to try and find batistuta + (..) (ON)(15) but that wasn’t a great ball + (..) (ON)

7.2 First verbalization off-line referencesIn comparison with on-line references, first verbalization off-line references arecharacterized by an astonishing increase in past time reference. Admittedly,(simple) present tense is in both cases the preferred way of time marking, yet itis interesting to see that events to which reference is made for the first time, butmore than 0.72 seconds (720 milliseconds) after their occurrence, cause commen-tators to use explicit past time marking in at least a quarter of all cases, whereasno commentator used past time marking on-line in more than a tenth of allexamples. This is even more striking when we look more closely at the timingof first verbalizations. Although it is generally possible that they are madeseveral minutes after an event or event sequence, this is unlikely. If an event issignificant enough to be verbalized at all, it will be verbalized when it occurs orimmediately afterwards, resulting in on-line reference or off-line first verbaliza-tions, respectively. In practice, then, an off-line first verbalization will be mademore than 0.72 seconds after a corresponding event but, unlike verbal actionreplays, within seconds of its end. It is this short margin which is responsible fora considerable increase in past time marking.

What is equally important is to consider the type of time marking which ischosen. For German, the Perfekt is again more frequent than the Präteritum, butmore strikingly, the interpretation of an event as ‘past’ is made through anincreased use of past tense forms in English. The present perfect does not gainground, despite its classical interpretation as expressing current relevance andthus potentially having a stronger showing in utterances often begun just a few(split) seconds after the occurrence of a corresponding event. This precisely doesnot happen. On the contrary, although past tense verbs still occur in someevaluative statements, in (16) for example, past tense forms are now also usedto report events in a far more direct way, see (17)–(19):

(16) [<decres> the pass wasn’t just hit (..) hard enough though + (..)] (OFF)(17) [<excited> brought down was he in the area + (..) ] (OFF)(18) danny mills was caught + (OFF)(19) and the ball (.) rebounded off the shins of er juan veron + (..) (OFF)

The present perfect, on the other hand, is still largely used for the same reasonsas on-line: Alan Parry uses it almost exclusively to signal explicitly the end ofpossession or of a longer sequence of events, as in (20)–(22). Only one new usehas been added, which, strictly speaking, also belongs to this group, as it alsoresults in the end of a longer sequence and results in a change of possession: Parryuses a present perfect to announce that a goal has been scored, see (23).

(20) has given (.) manchester united possession + (..)(OFF)(21) [<cres> an it’s been given away to zidane + (..)] (OFF)(22) an juventus (..) have er knocked the ball out of play there + (OFF)(23) giggs (..) has scored + (..) (OFF)



Similar examples are found in Mike Ingham’s commentary: he uses the presentperfect to refer to cases where the game is – or at least should be – interrupted,as in the case of (25) where no free kick is awarded.

(24) and it’s been (..) a bit of pushing i think (..) collinja has spotted + (..) (OFF)(25) and now david beckham (..) has been fouled on the edge of the penalty area + (..) (OFF)

Alan Green has three cases of the present perfect involving modals. However,they cannot be analysed as true present perfect forms, as for modals this isfrequently the only way of referring to past time because the original past tenseof some of them is now used to express modality. Green only uses one ‘true’present perfect, presented here as (26).

(26) [<excited> he’s chested on into the penalty area+ (.)] (OFF)

This example, and probably also (23), are the only present perfects used in thefirst verbalization off-line category which lend immediacy to a sequence ofevents, and (26) is the only example which is dynamic in that it mainly focuseson the completion of an action (in that the chesting on into the penalty area hassuccessfully been carried out and results in a good opportunity for Argentina)and not on a new state resulting from earlier action, for example in (24), wherea free kick is awarded as a result of a foul, but where the kick has not been taken.Similarly (20) and (21) indicate a change of possession resulting from mistimedpasses, but this change has not led to any dangerous action because the counter-attack is only being built up.

Note also that the use of a past tense in (26), with the entire sequence providedin (27), would be inappropriate as it could not lend the same immediacy to thesequence as the present perfect. A present tense form would signal this but couldnot indicate that the ball has already reached the penalty area. Accordingly, thepresent perfect is the best choice and it is precisely this form which sets up thedramatic sequence of events.

(27) [<excited> he’s chested on into the penalty area + (.) (OFF)danger here for england + (.) (ON)ball played low into the six yard box +] (ON)[<decres> and (..) david seaman got there before batistuta +] (..) (OFF)

In all, however, the present perfect is astonishingly ‘undynamic’ and statal as itis mainly used in examples such as has given juventus possession. In terms ofthe three-step grammaticalization cline, as it was outlined in section 4, it issomewhere between stages 1 and 2, in fact probably closer to stage 1 than 2.

The German forms are used in an entirely different way. With the exceptionof a single form, all German Perfekt examples off-line as first verbalization areclearly used to signal the completion of an individual event, as in (28) and (29).What is important to note is that it is the completion of an individual event whichis expressed, not just the explicit verbalization of the end of possession or thelocation of the ball.



(28) sondern hat auf die linke seite gespielt + (.) (OFF) ‘played the ball to the left instead’

(29) hat rausgepasst + (OFF) ‘passed wide’

Note that while the term result (or resultative) may well serve as a cover term,in this particular context the term completion is probably better suited.Haspelmath’s definition of resultative participles as referring ‘to the state of theverb’s patient that results from its undergoing the complete verbal action’(Haspelmath 1990: 40) in fact includes both the terms complete and result. Inthe present context, though, the latter term is unsatisfactory because it impliesthe result of an action leading to a state. But this idea is unfeasible when entireevent sequences, such as the passing around of the ball, are concerned. In suchcontexts it is clearly the completion of the event, i.e. one pass that has just beenplayed or has even found its target, that is focused on. Note also that inHaspelmath’s definition the term complete is used in conjunction with theexpression ‘(verbal) action’. This underlines the dynamic character of thePerfekt, particularly in comparison with the English present perfect as it is usedin radio football commentary.

The Präteritum forms also exhibit some interesting characteristics. Almost athird of all Präteritum occurrences are due to a form of sein (seven out of 22).And while in fact most of the other Präteritum verbs also belong to the set thattypically attracts the Präteritum, there are some examples of verbs which do not.One of them is the verb brachte ‘brought’ in (30). It is important to note thatthis example is interspersed by several pauses before it is signalled that Germandefender Linke’s ball went out of play. The focus is not on a completed pass (orhere on its failure), but it appears to be on the action itself. This interpretationis underlined by the fact that the commentators Dittmann and Lehmann keepfocusing on Linke’s actions and keep discussing his insecurity on the pitchthroughout the entire half after a mistake by him led to the Germans concedinga goal. This suggests that in (30) they interpret Linke’s pass not as just one eventfrom an entire sequence of passing the ball, but as a special case of scrutinizinga player’s actions.

(30) der brachte den ball + (.) (OFF)[<cres> völlig unbedrängt + (.)](OFF)in die neutrale zone + (.) (OFF)über die torauslinie + (OFF) ‘he played the ballcompletely unchallengedinto the neutral zoneand over the touchline’

Similarly in (31) the focus is on the Romanian player Hagi who has just receiveda yellow card. The example relates an event in the past with no clear focus onthe successful or unsuccessful completion of an individual event as part of anentire event sequence. This interpretation receives some support from the factthat this off-line reference, despite being a first verbalization, occurred some 30seconds after the event itself.



(31) [<cres> auch der bekam die gelbe karte +] (OFF)‘he was also shown the yellow card’

In all, however, it is striking that most of the Präteritum verbs are on Sieberg’sand Hennig’s lists, although the studies which produced them were concernedwith entirely different text types. This may suggest that, at least to a certainextent, the use of the Präteritum is not so much conditioned by a functionaldifference from the Perfekt, but by the lexical verb which is used (but see belowunder ‘Off-line references including repeated verbalization and verbal actionreplays’). Note, however, that the most frequent verb, sein, is also a verbexpressing a state, and so it does not lend itself easily to the expression of a resultor the completion of an action.

Perfekt forms are typically used to signal individual events as part of asequence of events such as passing the ball around. They seem to represent moreof a routine description of stereotypical events, and as the Perfekt signalscompletion, it is the appropriate form to indicate a successful pass. Präteritumforms would be inappropriate in this context for precisely the reason that focuswould then be on an action in the past whose relevance to the present moment(the fact that the action was – successfully – completed) would be unclear. Thisuse of the Perfekt sets it apart very clearly from the way the present perfect isused by the English commentators, but it is a typical feature of German radiocommentary and accounts for the dominance of Perfekt forms in this type ofoff-line reference.

7.3 Off-line references including repeated verbalization and verbal action replaysTable 2.6 indicates that, with the exception of German commentator RolfRainer Gecks, off-line reference in repeated verbalizations and verbal actionreplays displays the highest use of explicit past time marking in comparison withon-line and first verbalization off-line reference. In fact, for repeated verbaliza-tions and verbal action replays Alan Green and Mike Ingham use grammaticalpast tense marking in around 75 per cent of all cases; an exceptionally highfigure. When all off-line references are considered (section 6, Table 2.4), theirpercentage drops to just over 50 (Green at 56.5 per cent and Ingham at 51.9 percent). While for the German commentators the use of explicit past time markingfor all off-line references is between 42.9 and 47.8 per cent, Alan Parry only hasa percentage of 36.5. This underlines Fleischman’s assumption that in any giventext or text type one tense or time marking option is more basic. In the case offootball commentary, this is the present tense. Furthermore, the figures for firstverbalization off-line references have already shown that while the probabilityof past time marking increases, proximity to the present moment is never-theless a favourable environment for present time marking (see Table 2.5 insection 6).18 Finally, the possibility of present tense use for past time referencehas already been mentioned in section 4. A case in point is, for example, peakmarking through present tense in narratives which are told in the past tense, asin (32), which is a verbal action replay providing the details of a rather severefoul on German player Rau by Scottish player Maurice Ross.



(32) ich muss mich immer noch aufregen über den gestreckten fuß mit dem maurice ross (.) da einstieg + (OFF)der ball war ja für ross überhaupt nicht mehr (.) zu erreichen + (OFF)und dann geht rau da rein und bekommt diesen schlag + (.) (OFF)diesen kräftigen schlag gegen den unterschenkel + (OFF) ‘i’m still furious about the outstretched foot with which ross went in therethe ball wasn’t even there to be won for rossand then rau goes in there and is hitis hit so strongly on his lower leg’

After introducing the narrative (ich muss mich immer noch aufregen ‘I’m stillfurious’), Rolf Rainer Gecks begins by relating events in the Präteritum (einstiegin mit dem maurice ross da einstieg ‘with which Ross went in there’, and warin der ball war ja für ross überhaupt nicht mehr zu erreichen ‘the ball wasn’t eventhere to be won for Ross’), before switching to the present tense when talkingabout Rau’s involvement and the injury he picked up (geht and bekommt in unddann geht rau da rein und bekommt diesen schlag+ (.) diesen kräftigen schlaggegen den unterschenkel+ ‘and then Rau goes in there and is hit is hit so stronglyon his lower leg’).

All this, however, does not invalidate the conclusion that past time referenceis indeed higher off-line than on-line. Repeated verbalizations and verbal actionreplays, which by definition occur with a longer temporal distance between eventand event reference, lead to a further increase in past time reference formsfrom off-line first verbalizations. Proximity to the present moment is hence notonly an abstract concept used by grammarians but in fact crucially influencesthe choice of grammatical time marking. More importantly, this proximity isusually given a role in the description of the Perfekt and, in particular, the presentperfect. As the results show, however, the present perfect and its relation to thepresent moment does not seem to influence the time marking choice of theEnglish speakers, whereas there does appear to be an influence on time markingin German.

The pattern in which repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays, or infact off-line references overall, are used does not change very much incomparison with off-line first verbalizations only – as far as the English commen-tators are concerned. The overwhelming majority of past time reference isthrough the past tense. Most of the present perfect forms occur off-line as a firstverbalization, only a few instances being repeated verbalizations or verbalaction replays (with the exception of Mike Ingham, but see below). In AlanParry’s case, they either refer to examples of the type it’s been given away (endof a sequence), or to the goal scored by Giggs (ryan giggs has equalized, whichis uttered just after the initial giggs has scored). Parry’s words when a ManchesterUnited goal is disallowed represent a similar case: an equalizing goal has beenchalked off. Only in Mike Ingham’s commentary is the present perfect used morefrequently for repeated verbalizations or verbal action replays. This is caused bythe events in the game: during Ingham’s commentary Owen almost scores a goal,a penalty is given to England and Beckham converts it. This gives Ingham anumber of opportunities in which he can refer back to these events. To do that,he uses the present perfect, see (33) and (34).



(33) england have hit the post (.) through michael owen + (..) (OFF) (34) pier luigi collinja + (..) (OFF)

probably the best referee in the world + (OFF)has given england a penalty + (..) (OFF)

In German, however, repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays presenta very different picture from the first verbalization pattern. In off-line repeatedverbalizations and verbal action replays the Präteritum forms are more frequentthan the Perfekt ones (see Table 2.6; this is also true of off-line overall, see Table2.4 again). Hence it appears that a longer gap between event and verbalizationfavours the use of the Präteritum. Verbal action replays also seem to provide thecontext in which rather unusual ablauting Präteritum forms occur. These issueswill be discussed presently.

But even the use of the Perfekt appears to change slightly: a number ofexamples occur which should be interpreted as the expression of a past actionwithout the focus on completion or result. Of course, completion or result maystill be expressed, as in (35).

(35) aber (..) der zittert sich zwar zu diesem pass + (..) (ON)in richtung eigenen schlussmann + (ON)letzten endes hat er ihn aber dahin gebracht + (OFF)‘but he’s very shaky when he plays the passtowards his own goalkeeperbut in the end he gets the ball to him’

Here the last intonation unit (letzten endes hat er ihn aber dahin gebracht ‘butin the end he gets the ball to him’) refers to the successful completion of a passand is a repeated verbalization which refers back to the preceding intonationunits aber der zittert sich zwar zu diesem pass+ in richtung eigenen schlussmann+(‘but he’s very shaky when he plays the pass towards his own goalkeeper’).

But the explicit focus on the aspect of completion or result seems to be lostin a number of other examples and reference simply seems to be to a past action.Again it is proximity and distance between event and event reference which playa crucial role. The Perfekt as a means of focusing only on past action is not usedon-line and there is only a single example in off-line first verbalizations (withan unusually long gap of 12 seconds between event and first verbalization). Inoff-line repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays this use occurs fivetimes. In (36), for example, reference is made to a foul on German defender Rau(the same foul which is referred to in example 32), who is carried off the pitch(not shown on TV and accordingly labelled ‘Unclear’). Commentator RolfRainer Gecks then elaborates on how unnecessary the foul was (aber das musstewirklich nicht sein ‘but that (the foul) was unnecessary’) and makes a relativelyvague reference to the event (so wie die szene sich entwickelt hat), more thantwo minutes after it occurred and after it was first verbalized. What is vital isthat in this last intonation unit, Gecks’ utterance can only be taken as a referenceto the way the scene, i.e. the foul challenge, was developing. The use of so wieespecially, i.e. the way or how the sequence of events unfolded, focuses on theaction itself rather than its result, and so a resultative interpretation is excluded.In this case, then, the Perfekt is solely used to refer to a past action.



(36) und sie bringen ihn erst einmal über die seitenlinie hinweg + (UNCLEAR)aber das musste wirklich nicht sein + (ELAB) so wie die szene sich da entwickelt hat + (OFF)‘and they’re carrying him over the touchline first of allbut that (the foul) was unnecessarythe way the scene was developing there’

The verb sein is responsible for most uses of the Präteritum off-line overall (see Table2.4) but is particularly frequent in repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays(see Tables 2.6 and 2.7). Nevertheless it is interesting that not only a number of thefrequently occurring Präteritum verbs appear in the latter two contexts, such asmodals kam ‘came’, ging ‘went’ etc. (although the latter only appears on Sieberg’slist), but also verbs whose occurrence in the Präteritum may be seen as moreunusual. This is even more remarkable because a number of them are telic verbs(e.g. einstieg ‘went in’, glich aus ‘equalized’, schoss ‘shot’, traf ‘scored’), which shouldlend themselves particularly well to use with the Perfekt and whose ablautingPräteritum forms may even sound somewhat old-fashioned, e.g. glich aus‘equalized’. These unusual Präteritum forms all occur in one specific context: theyare always used as part of an entire sequence of a verbal action replay of animportant situation. This may be a disputed appeal for a penalty, as in (37), a goal,as in (38), or a foul, as in example (32) above. In all cases, the Präteritum is used,employing on the one hand the usual set of Präteritum verbs (for example ging hin‘went in’ in 37), but also using more unusual forms, such as roch ‘smelled like’ (in37), glich aus ‘equalized’ (in 38) or einstieg ‘went in’ (in 32 above). Sieberg’s (1984)claim that the tendency to form a verbal bracket should favour the use of the Perfekt,particularly with items which do not belong to the set of verbs which frequentlyappear in the Präteritum, seems to be invalid here.

(37) das roch nach elfmeter + (.) (OFF)das muss man ganz klar sagen für die rumänen + (.) (OFF)da ging der nowotny doch recht derbe hin + (OFF) ‘this smelled of a penaltyyou have to say for the romaniansnowotny did go in there very roughly’

(38) die deutsche führung durch fredi bobic + (.) (OFF)in der dreiundzwanzigsten minute + (.) (OFF)glich kenny miller + (.) (OFF)in der neunundsechzigsten aus + (.) (OFF) ‘the german lead through fredi bobicin the twenty-third minutewas equalized by kenny millerin the sixty-ninth’

The examples in (32) and (38) are both from Rolf Rainer Gecks’ commentary. Heis different from the other German commentators in that all uses of compoundverbs, which are all telic and could hence be expected to attract the Perfekt, appearin his commentary. The fact that they appear in the Präteritum underlines again thata functional distinction between Perfekt and Präteritum is still maintained and thatthe temporal distance between event and description favours the use of the



Präteritum, even for verbs whose occurrence in this tense form may seem ‘unusual’. Finally, in this context it is important to note that the cases of verbal action replays

and repeated verbalizations show a particularly frequent use of the verb sein (seeTable 2.7), but it should not be overlooked that sein does not lend itself easily tothe expression of completion or result, precisely because of its statal and atelicquality. So although sein is a verb which typically attracts the Präteritum, this is alsodue to the fact that its inherent semantics (or Aktionsart, as it is sometimes called)clearly favours its use in conjunction with it.19 It is telling that the only time in whichsein appears in a Perfekt is as part of the – actional – expression zur stelle sein ‘here:intervene at the right moment’ where again it is clearly the expression of completionwhich is focused on.

(39) dann sind aber mit linke + (.) (OFF)und dann auch (.) mit christian ziege gleich zwei deutsche zur stelle gewesen + (.) (OFF)‘then through linke and then also through christian ziege two germans intervened at the right moment’

7.4 Past participles in German and their relation to the PerfektAlthough they have been excluded from the analysis proper, at this point it is usefulto have a brief look at the non-finite use of (past) participles, which constitute animportant element in football commentary. They occur in the same contexts as theGerman Perfekt forms and seemingly also with a function of signalling completion.Their use is also noted by Hennig (2000), who correctly points out that they arefrequently ambiguous as to whether they should be interpreted as active or passiveparticiples. As the participles used in this way are telic or resultative, they will,however, always signal completion, independent of them expressing activity orpassivity. In fact, I would claim, the question of what voice these participles expressis at the very best a secondary issue and it is precisely this versatility which makestheir use so frequent. The German commentators can introduce a referent and thenexpand on it without having to introduce a new element with the same reference.In (40), der (‘here: he’, but in fact a demonstrative pronoun) refers to the Germanplayer Bobic, who is characterized as having scored a goal and as hard-working,before Bobic’s pass to Schneider is described in the fourth intonation unit (angepasstSchneider ‘passed to Schneider’). In this unit, however, reference to Bobic is notrepeated, not even by using a pronoun such as der. Note also that angepasst isgenerally ambiguous, as it could either have an active reading (Bobic hat Schneiderangepasst ‘Bobic (has) passed to Schneider’) or a passive one (Schneider wurde/wirdvon Bobic angepasst ‘Schneider was/is passed the ball by Bobic’).

(40) auch der + (.) (ON)der mann der das tor schoss für unsere mannschaft + (.) (OFF)der ackert + (.) (UNCLEAR)[<cres> angepasst schneider + (OFF)an den strafraum + (.)] (OFF) ‘he as wellthe man who scored the goal for our teamhe is working hardpassed to schneideredge of the penalty area’



In a very similar vein, the unit abgespielt auf galca ‘passed to Galca’ in (41) doesnot specify who played the pass to Galca, neither by repeating general sie ‘they’(i.e. the Romanian team), nor by introducing a player’s name. Again, the unitis ambiguous with respect to an active or passive reading (sie haben/der Spielerhat abgespielt auf Galca ‘they (have) passed/the player (has) passed the ball toGalca’ or der Ball wurde/wird abgespielt auf Galca ‘the ball was/is passed toGalca’).

(41) das machen sie momentan ausgezeichnet wie sie da den ball abschirmen + (ON)abgespielt auf galca + (OFF)‘they’re doing an excellent job in shielding the ballpassed to galca’

A similar use of participles is generally possible in English too, but variousreasons make it unlikely. In fact, none of the commentators uses past participlesas a single item in an intonation unit, unlike the German commentators; see (42).

(42) zurückgepasst + (..) (OFF)‘passed back’

One important reason for this appears to be that an activity/passivity interpre-tation in English is crucial. Ambiguity like in the German examples cannot beachieved because an active/passive interpretation in English depends on furtherelements being present or not. Passivity can only be expressed if a transitive verblacks the explicit expression of a direct object: hence ball played into the six yardbox or just played into the six yard box will always have a passive reading. Afurther restriction applies to regular verbs and other verbs whose past tense andpast participle are identical: played the ball into the six yard box (where the directobject is expressed) will always be interpreted as a simple past tense withoutsubject, never as a non-finite verb expressing completion. As a consequence, non-finite forms of this sort are rare in English commentaries and are almost alwaysused to express passivity.

The different interpretation of the German examples and the similaritiesbetween this use and the Perfekt suggest that the Perfekt still serves functionswhich cannot be expressed in the same way by the Präteritum.

8 Implications of the present study and its methodology for current theories onpast time marking8.1 The importance of a new methodologyIt needs to be emphasized again that the majority of verbs, even when consid-ering all off-line cases, will still receive other time marking than past. Whenconsidering repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays only, threecommentators stay below the 50 per cent mark, and two others are just aboveit. So there remains a large residue where present time marking is used instead.What could be the reasons for this?

First of all, this is mainly because commentators are required to describe whatthey see ideally at the moment when an event happens, and then they willcertainly opt for present tense descriptions as the basic form of time marking.



Secondly, for events occurring in quick succession, even if they are only just off-line, there may still be a tendency to describe these events as if they were on-line,i.e. by opting for the present tense. Thirdly, peak marking in past time referencemay be made through the use of present time morphology. This feature is verycommon in spoken language and shows that certain textual functions, even ifthey refer to past time, may be fulfilled by grammatical expressions other thanpast time markers.

In fact, the claim that present time marking is basic and that time marking willoccur through tense and aspect morphology is in any case a gross oversimplifi-cation (for a similar view, see again Hennig 2000). So it would be an importantresearch topic for the future to provide a study of all types of past time reference,not only those which involve grammatical constructions and whose labelsuggests the notion of pastness (as in terms such as past tense or Perfekt). In orderto do this, language studies should consider moving away from taking language-internal grammatical constructions as their point of departure towards providingan extra-linguistic definition of pastness against which language use can then becompared. An approach like the present one would form a good basis on whichto develop a theoretical foundation which could gradually integrate further texttypes.

Methodologically, the present approach may be further improved. As the cut-off point for on-line reference at 0.72 seconds (720 milliseconds) after thecorresponding event was set a priori and owes much to potential error marginsin the editing process of the audio and video material, varying this cut-off pointmight produce even better results which would then permit the prediction ofwhen speakers generally interpret an event as ‘past’. Nevertheless, even with acut-off point at 0.72 seconds, off-line first verbalizations have an effect asmarked as producing between 25 per cent and just over 40 per cent of verbsmarked for past time (with Gecks being exceptional in marking over 60 per centfor past time). This underlines that only a very short delay in utterance formu-lation will prompt a high number of grammatical past time references, and itsuggests that in relation to past time, the present moment may indeed be nothingbut a very brief moment, seemingly not even exceeding one second.

8.2 The present perfect and the Perfekt: what are their functions? A further important aspect of the present study is how the possibilities ofgrammatical past time marking are used and what their relation is to the presentmoment. The slightly higher share of on-line past time references occurs forGerman and this is mainly due to the use of Perfekt forms. This tendencytowards a more pronounced use of the Perfekt in comparison with the presentperfect is then underlined for off-line first verbalizations, where the overallshare of past time references seems to be similar for both English and German,with the exception of German commentator Rolf Rainer Gecks. For English, pasttense forms dominate for all off-line contexts, whereas in German the Präteritumdominates for off-line repeated verbalizations/verbal action replays, with thePerfekt forms being more frequent in off-line first verbalizations. This appearsto suggest a closer link of the German Perfekt forms to the present moment thanof the English present perfect. This is a surprising result, particularly considering



that the Perfekt is generally seen as being on its way towards becoming ananalytic equivalent to the Präteritum (see, for example, Leiss 1992), whereas itis the present perfect which is characterized as being linked more closely to thepresent moment through its description as signalling current relevance. In anycase, the gap between present moment and past event (see Quirk et al 1985) isan influencing factor in the German commentaries, but not in the English ones.

One of the reasons why the English present perfect is so rare is the fact thatits main function in descriptive passages of radio football commentary is to sumup or conclude an entire sequence of events, in which it typically has more of astatal quality. Its occasional use of lending immediacy to a situation is extremelyrare and its inability to function as a narrative time reference form makes itvirtually impossible to be used more than once for each sequence of events. Anexception is if the reference is not only to the same event but if it highlights twodifferent consequences this same event has, as in (43).

(43) giggs (..) has scored + (..) (OFF)ryan giggs has equalized + (..) (OFF)

For German, the situation is entirely different. The Perfekt appears to have acloser proximity to the present moment in that it is not used to refer to statesresulting from a longer stretch of events but more to the completion of a singleevent. This also entails that the meaning of the German Perfekt is much moreactional than the English equivalent. In these cases the German Perfekt andPräteritum are definitely not interchangeable.

The vast majority of the Präteritum forms in the present study belong to thesame small set of verbs identified by Sieberg (1984) or Hennig (2000). This, itwould appear, might suggest that the choice of grammatical marker is governedto a large extent by the lexical verb employed. But the use of more unusualPräteritum forms in verbal action replays and the dominance of statal, non-resul-tative sein forms in the Präteritum might suggest that a functional difference isstill maintained.

So not only does the on-line/off-line distinction have an important influenceon past time marking, but proximity to the present moment, i.e. markingcompletion rather than straightforward past time, is an influencing factor in thechoice of past time marker in German. A similar influence cannot be establishedfor English where the choice between present perfect and past tense appears tobe governed more by a statal vs actional interpretation. In other words, in termsof their level of grammaticalization, the classic view can be supported whichstates that the present perfect in English is by no means as grammaticalized asthe German Perfekt. The use of the Perfekt as an event completion marker andits traces of marking simple pastness may suggest that this form is indeed on itsway towards becoming a general past tense. The English present perfect, on theother hand, does not appear to be as far developed. It is neither as frequent asthe Perfekt, nor by any means equipped with a similar actional quality.20

Coming back to the three-stage grammaticalization cline as outlined in section4 (stage 1: statal use; stage 2: resultative use; stage 3: general past tense) anddespite signs in some varieties of English that the present perfect is pushing



towards stage 3, it is interesting to note that in football commentary it is the leastgrammaticalized stage which represents the most frequent use. If similar resultscan be established for other text types, grammars would have to revise their viewsand theories about the use and function of the present perfect. At the very least,the importance of text types in the use and function of grammatical past timemarking should be recognized (see also Hennig 2000 for a similar view).

9 ConclusionThe prediction that explicit past time marking will increase considerably for off-line reference holds convincingly for both English and German. This increaseis already strongly noticeable in first verbalization off-line references and evenmore so for all off-line references and for off-line repeated verbalizations andverbal action replays only. For repeated verbalizations and verbal action replays,two of the English commentators use grammatical past time marking in around75 per cent of all cases, and for off-line overall they both stay above the 50 percent mark, with the German commentators very consistently in the low orhigh 40 per cent region. Only Alan Parry has a very low percentage of past timereferences off-line overall.

The main grammatical construction for the expression of past time in Englishis the past tense. In the English commentaries, few present perfect forms occur,their use being largely restricted to the explicit indication of a change inpossession, the position of the ball or an interruption of the game. In the Englishcommentaries, the present perfect is astonishingly statal and only shows a lowdegree of grammaticalization, probably closer to stage 1 than to stage 2. Whileconcepts such as ‘current relevance’ may well apply in all uses of the presentperfect in the present corpus, it remains unclear whether this concept reallygoverns its use. Proximity to the present moment is certainly no factor whichhas an influence on the choice of past time marking.

For German, the picture is different. Generally, the choice of past time markingmay be seen to be influenced by the lexical verb chosen: certain common verbs(especially sein ‘be’, haben ‘have’, werden ‘become’ and the modals) tend toattract the Präteritum while less common ones appear in the Perfekt, but it seemsthat this is not the entire picture. By far the most frequent verb appearing in thePräteritum is sein, whose atelicity attracts the Präteritum more readily. The mainfunction of the Perfekt appears to be the signalling of completion, particularlythe completion of an individual event within an entire event sequence. Theexpression of completion – rather than the more general expression of pastness– seems to be connected with proximity to the present moment. This is under-lined by the fact that in on-line and in first verbalization off-line references thePerfekt is more frequent than the Präteritum, whereas the Präteritum is morefrequent if all occurrences of off-line reference are counted and also if onlyrepeated verbalizations and verbal action replays are considered (in other wordsin those cases where reference to a corresponding event is furthest from the eventitself).

The results from this study challenge certain assumptions that have beenheld about the grammatical constructions under investigation. In particular, itappears that the present perfect may to a large extent be a far more statal



construction than assumed. While the concept of ‘current relevance’ must notbe equated with ‘proximity to the present moment’ as it was defined here, it isstill astonishing to see that temporal proximity does not seem to have anyinfluence on the choice of past time marker in the English texts at all. TheGerman commentaries display precisely this influence. At least football commen-tators do seem to maintain a functional distinction of Perfekt and Präteritum,and even use unusual and rare ablauting Präteritum forms if the context requiresit.

Notes1 I will continue to use the German terms in order to distinguish the German language

forms more easily from the corresponding English language ones. 2 Broadcast nationwide on ARD radio stations, e.g. HR Info or BR5 aktuell.3 See note 2.4 For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Müller (2006), Chapter 3.1.5 In fact, Müller (2006) distinguishes between events and situations. This distinction

is not crucial in the present context.6 For a more detailed definition of these concepts, see Müller (2006).7 For a fuller discussion, see again Müller (2006).8 Note that cross-linguistically this is not the only possible grammaticalization path

of perfects, but that the development as it is outlined here for English and Germanis very common indeed.

9 Biber et al (1999: 463) note that ‘has/have got in BrE [British English; TM] conver-sation is the single most common present perfect verb in any one register’. It isproblematic to analyse has/have got as a present perfect, as in British Englishconversation the meaning of this form has usually been lexicalized as ‘have’ andhence, strictly speaking, has ceased to be a present perfect although formally it maystill look like one.

10 The Satzrahmen is formed by separating, for example, auxiliary (e.g. habe ‘have’)and main verb (e.g. erzählt ‘told’) and thereby ‘framing’ an utterance as in Ich habedie Geschichte doch schon so oft erzählt (‘But I have told this story many timesbefore’, where English – normally – does not separate the two verbs).

11 Although sein is also the second most frequent verb occurring in the Perfekt inSieberg’s corpus (Sieberg 1984: 91), the Perfekt-Präteritum ratio is in fact in theregion of 1:12. In the chat shows Hennig (2000) analyses, there are only five Perfektforms employing sein but 306 Präteritum forms (179ff.). In the descriptive passagesof live radio football commentary analysed in the present study, only a single Perfektform employing sein occurs.

12 Based on 22 face-to-face conversations on everyday topics (Sieberg 1984: 21ff.). 13 Hennig (2000: 185) also produces a similar list for the written German of private

letters.14 Durrell does not specify what kind of data this claim is based on. 15 The occurrence of definite time adverbials with the present perfect is attested in texts

from, for example, Shakespeare and Pepys (Elsness 1997) and seems to havepersisted in non-standard varieties of English to this day (Miller 2000 and 2004).

16 In this context, English is used to refer collectively to the English language commen-taries, in contrast to the German language ones, not as a term to denote the countryof origin, as Alan Green is from Northern Ireland.

17 + signals the end of an intonation unit. (ON) and (OFF) mark on-line and off-linecommentary, respectively. The label (UNCLEAR) is used for references whose on-



line or off-line status is unclear, (ELAB) identifies elaboration passages. ‘Stage direc-tions’, such as <excited>, mark deviations in pitch or loudness from the speakers’normal register. The meaning of <excited> is obvious, <cres> indicates a moregradual increase in loudness, pitch, tempo or a combination of two or all three ofthe features. A following <decres> indicates a gradual decrease of the same features.Square brackets […] indicate beginning and end of such a special speech style. (.)represents a micropause whereas (..) is used for pauses with a duration of up to 0.8seconds. The duration of longer pauses is given in seconds, e.g. (1.3) indicates a pauseof 1.3 seconds. Where possible, each intonation unit was translated separately (i.e.line-by-line translation). Only in very few cases where this practice would have madethe translation difficult to understand, it was decided to combine two intonation unitsin the English translation. In order to underline that the translations reflect spokenlanguage, no punctuation or capitalization was used.

18 Note that ‘proximity to the present moment’ should not be equated with the conceptof ‘current relevance’.

19 This, of course, also applies to other verbs on Sieberg’s and Hennig’s lists and to othermore frequently occurring Präteritum verbs from Table 2.7. Examples are haben‘have’ or stehen ‘stand’.

20 But note again that there are varieties of English where the present perfect is or canbe used differently, for example Australian English and Scottish English (see section4 and also note 15), and in fact also in the language of football co-commentators,i.e. the so-called expert summarizers.



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3 The structure and function of wenn-clauses andtheir role in problem-solving discourse

Regina Weinert

1 IntroductionInformal spoken language is typically characterized by paratactic or looselyintegrated syntax and the level of subordination is low compared with moreformal written language. Wenn-clauses in German, which are structurallymarked as dependent by verb-final word order as opposed to main clause verb-second order, are nevertheless relatively frequent and this begs the question asto how some level of complexity is accommodated in spoken language.

This chapter takes a two-pronged approach to this question, providing anoverview of the structures and associated functions of spoken wenn-clauses andthen examining their discourse role in problem-solving dialogues in particular.Wenn-clause constructions will be shown to exhibit limited syntactic complexitytypical of spoken language while at the same time being structurally andfunctionally highly versatile. Studies have shown that adverbial clauses inspoken language adhere to preferred spoken language syntax, i.e. they includea substantial proportion of loosely integrated or unintegrated cases and moreintegrated examples have relatively simple clause-internal syntax (Miller andWeinert 1998). The difference in the order of adverbial clause + main clause andmain clause + adverbial clause reflects different discourse functions, but theclauses themselves are in any case structurally not exact mirror images. Forinstance, Chafe (1984) and Miller and Weinert (1998) show that Englishbecause-clauses preceding a main clause have a fairly rigid constituent order asopposed to the more flexible word order of because-clauses which follow a mainclause. The un-subordinate nature of such syntactically flexible because-clausesis accompanied by semantic flexibility.

This type of structural asymmetry is also evident in German adverbial clauses,including wenn-clause constructions, albeit in a more complex way due to thespecifics of finite verb positioning. It has furthermore been noted that wenn-clauses and if-clauses most frequently occur before the main clause to which theyrelate (Ford and Thompson 1986; Ford 1993; Auer 2000). This has been inter-preted in terms of cognitive naturalness as the grounding is placed before anyelements to be grounded and, as with topics, sets up the following discourse. Theoccurrence of structurally unintegrated wenn-clauses in German has been linkedto certain syntactic restrictions and to semantic factors and, more importantly,has been shown to have a range of discourse-pragmatic reasons (Köpcke andPanther 1989; Günthner 1999; Auer 2000). In other words, in line with obser-vations for causal clauses above, looser and more flexible syntax is associated


with functional flexibility. In addition, many languages, including German,have structurally independent and pragmatically conventionalized conditionalclauses which occur on their own and serve, for instance, as polite requests anddirectives (the equivalent of clauses such as ‘if you would like to come through’,uttered in a waiting room).

This chapter establishes a set of broad categories of wenn-clauses whichrepresent points on a structural continuum from integrated to deictically linked,to unintegrated and finally to single clauses, and examines the function and infor-mation structure associated with each set. This then serves as a backgroundagainst which the use of wenn-clauses in one particular text type, i.e. problem-solving discourse, is investigated. In such task-based conversation Germanwenn-clauses assume a central role in helping partners to orient themselves incomplex instructions. Virtually all wenn-clauses in this data precede the mainclauses or the discourse to which they relate, and thus the problem-solvingcontext highlights their grounding role. This often combines with a directivefunction, setting up a frame of action for the task participants. The form-function relationships of wenn-clause constructions are explored in relation toother linking devices in the task-based data and their larger discourse-roles. Theapproach adopted in this chapter is consistent with a usage-based view ofsyntax which is not only interested in how speakers use the potential of alanguage system, but also considers the implications of this usage for the natureof the system. Spoken wenn-clauses form a carefully calibrated set of structureswhich balance complexity and functionality, reflecting preferred spoken languagestructure. They are associated more with topic-comment structure than withhypotaxis, yet informationally they are relatively self-contained and can be anindependent topic or comment. They are not only useful because speakersregularly talk about hypothetical, possible or desirable situations, but alsobecause of their structural and functional versatility as semantic and discourse-pragmatic frames.

2 The structure and function of spoken wenn-clauses2.1 StructureI distinguish six structural categories of wenn-clauses for the purpose of abroad overview. They are illustrated below and will be discussed in detail in2.4–2.8. At times I use the term construction to label sequences of wenn-clauseplus main clause(s) and/or other syntactic units (regardless of the order of thissequence) in order to discuss the relationships between wenn-clauses and thesurrounding discourse. While the approach to form-function relations adoptedhere is compatible with a cognitive or construction grammar framework, my useof the term construction is not aligned with any one particular theory. The sixbroad structural categories of wenn-clauses are:

Embeddedwenn-clause inside main clauseich geh wenn er kommt nicht ins kino‘I go when/if he comes not to-the cinema’

WENN-CLAUSES IN PROBLEM-SOLVING DISCOURSE WEINERT 61


Post-positioned integratedmain clause + wenn-clause, adjacent, intonationally integratedich geh wenn er kommt‘I go when/if he comes’

Pre-positioned integratedwenn-clause + main clause with subject-verb inversion, adjacent, intonationally integratedwenn er kommt geh ich‘when/if he comes go I’

Pre-positioned deictically linkedwenn-clause + deictic main clause, often adjacent and intonationally integratedwenn er kommt dann geh ich‘when/if he comes then go I’

Unintegratedwenn-clause + main clause, no subject-verb inversion, often loosely attached and intonationallyunintegratedwenn er kommt ich geh‘when/if he comes I go’

main clause + wenn-clause, adjacency variable, intonationally unintegratedich geh (terminal intonation) wenn das ok ist‘I go when/if that ok is’

Single pragmaticwenn-clause, isolated speech-actwenn sie da bitte unterschreiben‘if you there please sign’

Structural criteria are straightforward since they relate to positions which canbe identified such as order of clauses, verb position and adjacency. Intonationalintegration typically means a rise on the final element(s) of the first clause or levelintonation, followed by falling intonation on the second clause. Intonationalcriteria do not always apply consistently, however. This can be an issue indistinguishing between integrated post-positioned and unintegrated post-positioned clauses so that semantic content, which needs to be considered in anycase, becomes central in the analysis of some clausal relations.

Embedded clauses, which are syntactically the most complex, are marginal inthe spoken German data and will not be discussed further. Since pre- and post-positioned clauses are not exact structural mirror images and post-positionedclauses are much less frequent than pre-positioned clauses, the categories are notentirely symmetrical.1 But, as will be shown in the detailed discussion, thecategories can be seen as a continuum, especially the three types of pre-positionedclauses. Ultimately even individual wenn-clauses may be arranged on a clinewithin these categories, e.g. depending on how conventionalized their functionsare and which lexical items they contain. The categories mark off the extremepoints of this continuum. At one end we have integrated post-positioned andintegrated pre-positioned wenn-clauses which are attached to a main clause(integrated pre-positioned wenn-clauses are syntactically more closely integratedthan integrated post-positioned clauses, the latter being potentially cognitively



more taxing due to the ‘grounded element-ground’ sequence). At the other endwe have single pragmatic clauses which have conventionalized pragmaticfunctions and are structurally and informationally independent in the sense thatthey can occur as isolated speech acts. In between are pre-positioned deicticallylinked wenn-clauses, and then unintegrated wenn-clauses which can relate topreceding or following discourse or indeed to both. Wenn-clauses can alsorelate to units below clause level, preceding or following these units, with orwithout deictic links, but since numbers are low, they will not be discussedseparately.2 Table 3.1 shows the distribution of the six categories in three typesof data.3 The map task data will be examined in detail in sections 3 and 4.

Table 3.1 Distribution of wenn-clauses

The integrated structures of standard written German are not typical of spokenlanguage. Overall only just over 18 per cent of spoken pre-positioned wenn-clauses are syntactically integrated, with even lower figures in telephone conver-sations. This is consistent with Auer (2000) who reports ca 25 per cent for hisdata, which includes more formal settings. Not only is structural integration rarein spoken German, but the cognitively potentially more taxing order of groundedelement followed by ground which integrated post-positioned clauses presentis even rarer, reaching only just under 11 per cent. For written language Auer(2000) reports that over 65 per cent of pre-positioned clauses are integrated, lessthan 10 per cent are unintegrated and over 50 per cent of all wenn-clauses arepost-positioned. Even without considering clause-internal syntax, it is clearthat structurally spoken and written wenn-clauses are very different. Thedifferent distributions within the spoken data will be commented on at variouspoints in 2.4–2.8.

2.2 FunctionI use the term wenn-clause and refer to the parts of discourse which relate to thewenn-clause with general labels such as following utterance or discourse section,as well as specific labels such as main clause or those used for smaller units, e.g.phrase.4 Depending on whether the relationship of wenn-clauses to the

Structure Telephone Face-to-face Map Task Totalconversations conversations

Embedded 5% (5) 2% (1) 4.3% (3) 4.1% (9)Pre-position Integrated 14% (14) 18% (9) 24.3% (17) 18.2% (40)Post-position Integrated 16% (16) 12% (6) 2.9% (2) 10.9% (24)Pre-positionDeictic link 27% (27) 16% (8) 31.4% (22) 26% (57)Unintegrated 30% (30) 42% (21) 14.3% (10) 27.7% (61)Single pragmatic 3% (3) 4% (2) 17.1% (12) 7.7% (17)Units below clause 5% (5) 6% (3) 5.7% (4) 5.4% (12)Total 100% (100) 100% (50) 100% (70) 100% (220)



surrounding discourse is located on the semantic or discourse-pragmatic level,they can be divided into content and speech-act related clauses (cf Köpcke andPanther 1989 and Günthner 1999 on conditionals). This distinction has beenshown to apply to a range of adverbial clauses and connectors in spokenlanguage. Broadly, it accounts for adverbial clauses which relate directly to thecontent of a main clause or the surrounding discourse (e.g. I’m not buying thecheap tickets cause there’s a queue; I will give you the money if you sign thecontract) vs the discourse-pragmatic use of adverbial clauses, including singlespeech-act uses (e.g. they have cheap tickets – cause there’s a queue; if you’d liketo sign here – I’ll come back later to give you the money). The speech-actrelated, discourse-pragmatic clauses do not conform to the truth-conditionsobserved for content clauses, and the assertions in the adverbial clauses andrelated main clauses are independent (König and Van de Auwera 1988).

The analysis in 2.4–2.8 will show that there is a strong tendency for integratedpost-positioned clauses and for integrated and deictically linked pre-positionedclauses to be associated with semantic relations on the content level and for lackof integration to lead to weaker semantic links and discourse-pragmaticfunctions.5 While many wenn-clauses can be categorized as conditional ortemporal, this distinction can often not be drawn. Nor can content and speech-act related clauses always be clearly separated. It is, however, possible to see anoverarching function of wenn-clauses which can be captured by the label ‘frame’or ‘framing clause’.6 This takes into account both structural and functionalaspects and reflects what makes these clauses so versatile, at times showing aclearly identifiable function and link to the surrounding discourse, at others beingambiguous or weakly linked. Due to the variety of structural and functionalrelationships between the wenn-clause and the surrounding discourse units, itis difficult to find a general label for them, counterpart being a possible neutralalternative. In the case of single pragmatic clauses, the frame has conventionallyincorporated any potential consequent or counterpart (see 2.7).

2.3 Wenn and other temporal and conditional connectorsWenn-clauses are generally the most frequent subordinate, i.e. verb-final,adverbial clauses in spoken German.7 The Dialogstrukturenkorpus (DS) of theInstitut für deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, which includes dialogues in largelysemi-formal settings, contains 791 wenn-clauses in ca 225,000 words, ca oneper 280 words. This is somewhat lower than in the conversational data andacademic consultations I examined (ca one per 200/220 words), but overall itseems that wenn-clauses are more frequent than in formal written language, e.g.Auer (2000) reports one per ca 300 words. (The map task data is different in thisrespect with one wenn-clause per 430 words, but they are nevertheless employedstrategically – see sections 3 and 4). Apart from the structural differences notedabove, we also have to bear in mind that in spoken language other adverbial clauseconnectors are much less frequent. There are ca 30 cases of als (‘when/as’), whichis restricted to clauses in past tenses. There are ca 40 examples of bis (‘until’), 28während (‘while’), 14 nachdem (‘after’), seven seit/seitdem (temporal ‘since’),eight bevor (‘before’), two sobald (‘as soon as’), and 14 solange (‘as long as’).Solange and bevor can also be conditional. Alternative subordinating conditional



connectors are also rare, i.e. ten cases of falls (‘in case’). Instead of using more specificadverbial connectors, speakers use wenn-clauses to cover a range of temporal andconditional functions (but wenn cannot directly replace als, bis, seit/seitdem andbevor). While in written language the more specific connectors are also not asfrequent as wenn, the difference is more striking in spoken language.8

The following sections 2.4–2.8 examine in detail the six structural categoriesintroduced in 2.1. In the numbered examples I use both English glosses and trans-lations depending on the focus of analysis. Glosses are indicated by quotationmarks, translations by a change in font. The German tag is represented as ‘ne’which is also used for the phonologically reduced indefinite feminine article. Dueto their respective distributions this should generally not cause confusion.Intonation and pausing is indicated where relevant: Ú rising intonation; Øfalling intonation; Ù level intonation; + short pause; ++ medium pause.

2.4 Post-position, pre-position and integrationWenn can be a temporal (1) or conditional (2) connector, but disambiguationis not always possible.9 Wenn-clauses can be post-positioned (1a, 2a) or pre-positioned (1b, 2b). Wenn-clauses in written and spoken German have verb-finalorder. In standard written German, subject-verb inversion is required when asubordinate clause appears before the main clause (1b, 2b), making this asyntactically integrated structure. Despite the fact that this construction adheresto the verb-second structure of main clauses with the wenn-clause filling the firstposition, the inclusion of this full clause with verb-final order results in complexsyntax. Post-positioned wenn-clauses are syntactically not mirror images of pre-positioned clauses, i.e. they are not integrated in the same way. The main clauseis structurally independent and the only structural marker of dependency is verb-final order in the wenn-clause.10

Temporal(1a) ich geh wenn er angekommen ist

‘I go when he arrived is’(1b) wenn er angekommen ist geh ich

‘when he arrived is go I’

Conditional(2a) ich fahr nicht wenn es schneit

‘I drive not if it snows’(2b) wenn es schneit fahr ich nicht

‘if it snows drive I not’

In contrast to subordinate clauses in general, it seems that wenn-clauses morefrequently occur before the main clause to which they relate (see also Auer 2000).A general explanation for this order in conditional clauses is its cognitivenaturalness as the grounding is placed first, as with topics (Fauconnier 1985;Ford and Thompson 1986). It has also been observed that conditional clauseswhich precede main clauses in English relate to entities that are topical or given(Miller and Weinert 1998). In the case of consecutive events, the temporalorder is maintained if wenn-clauses are pre-positioned. Post-positioned wenn-clauses are hence less frequent in spoken German, but why are they used at all?



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