The ‘subjective’ effects of negation and past subjunctive on
deontic modals:
The case of German dürfen and sollen
Tanja Mortelmans, University of Antwerp
1. German mood and modal verbs as deictic modal expressions
In German, both mood markers (Indikativ, Konjunktiv I and II1) and modal
verbs can be considered as deictic expressions, insofar as they locate a state
of affairs in a particular epistemic region relative to the deictic center.
According to Bühler (1999 [1934]: 102), the deictic center (die Origo des
Zeigfeldes) can be captured by the so-called Zeigwörter (‘pointing words’)
ich (‘I’), jetzt (‘now’) and hier (‘here), referring to a personal, temporal and
local dimension of the deictic center respectively. It is striking that a modal
qualification (something like wirklich or faktisch) is lacking in Bühler’s
characterization (and for that matter, also in a number of other influential
studies on deixis – see Diewald 1999: 173). Diewald relates the absence of a
modal specification to the highly abstract nature of the semantic domain of
modality, which – in contrast to the (also abstract) domain of time – does
not have a physical correlate (Diewald 1999: 174). An alternative
1
explanation for the fact that the deictic center is not characterized in terms
of its epistemological status (or its relation to reality) could focus on the
highly intertwined nature of the temporal and the modal domain; perhaps a
temporal qualification by necessity involves a modal one: following Brisard,
tenses do not just signal “temporal location, but a general epistemic stance”
(Brisard 1999: 288).2
For the purpose of this paper, however, I will abstract from the possibly
close interrelation of time and modality and accept the existence of a
relatively independent modal dimension, which I will characterize in terms
of Langacker’s so-called basic epistemic and dynamic evolutionary model.
(Langacker 1991: 242-243 and 275-278).
1.1 Langacker’s (1991) basic epistemic model and dynamic evolutionary
model
The basic epistemic model (see fig. 1) makes use of three theoretical notions
– known reality, immediate reality, and irreality – in order to capture a
speaker’s basic conception of reality. Known reality (also referred to as
basic reality or simply reality) can be defined as the set of situations that a
given conceptualizer (C) accepts as being real; it “represents the history of
what actually happened” (Achard 1998: 42). The notion of immediate
reality acknowledges the fact that reality is generally conceived as dynamic,
as constantly evolving and growing: immediate reality, then, refers to the
2
latest stage of reality’s evolution and functions as a vantage point, from
which a given conceptualizer (the speaker) views things. Finally, irreality
comprises everything outside (known) reality.
@@ Insert figure 1 here
Figure 1: Langacker’s basic epistemic model
This basic epistemic model does not represent the only possible conception
of reality that speakers entertain. A more intricate conception is captured by
the so-called dynamic evolutionary model (see fig. 2), which includes the
speaker’s knowledge of the possible (future) course of reality and adds the
notions of potential and projected reality (see Langacker 1991; Achard
1998: 43). Both potential and projected reality are by definition part of
irreality. As their names suggest, potential reality refers to all future paths
that reality is not precluded from following, i.e. that are potential, whereas
projected reality refers to those future developments which can be projected
or anticipated by the conceptualizer with considerable confidence.
@@ Insert figure 2 here
Figure 2: Langacker’s dynamic evolutionary model
3
Whereas the meaning of the German moods can best be characterized
relative to the basic epistemic model, the semantics of the modals seems to
rely more on the dynamic evolutionary model.
1.2. The deictic meaning of the German moods Indikativ, Konjunktiv I
and Konjunktiv II
Location in reality represents the unmarked or default value, since reality is
the epistemic sphere in which the speaker finds herself: “[…] the speaking
ego typically regards his/her own current state of being as real, as factual, so
that this value in the modal-deictic dimension appears as the unmarked one”
(Diewald 1999: 175, my translation). In German, those states of affairs that
are viewed as real, are marked by the indicative mood, the “Normalmodus”
(Heidolph, Flämig, and Motsch 1981: 522). The moods Konjunktiv I and II,
on the other hand, both mark a deviation from the default value; by
4
definition, they are taken to locate a state of affairs outside the speaker’s
conception of known reality, albeit in different ways.
1.2.1. The German Konjunktiv I as a modal deictic marker
Following Diewald (1999), I will consider the present subjunctive (or
Konjunktiv I), whose function mainly consists in marking indirect speech,
as a quotative marker indicating an origo shift: it is not the actual speaker,
but a reported speaker who is responsible for the content of the clause. The
Konjunktiv I is generally assumed to reflect the use of an indicative in direct
speech (see for instance Duden 1998: 783), which implies that the reported
speaker has originally located the state of affairs within (her conception of)
known reality.3
It should be emphasized that both conceptions of reality, i.e. the one
entertained by the reported speaker and the one entertained by the reporting
speaker, may very well be (and in practice often are) compatible with each
other. This, however, need not be the case. With a present subjunctive, the
reporting speaker is not taken to commit herself to the validity of the
reported speaker’s conception of reality, as the following examples show.
(1) a. Unrichtig ist die Behauptung, daß ich
Incorrect is the assertion that I
Anwalt sei. [Frankfurter Rundschau, 17.03.1999]
lawyer be-KonjI
5
‘Incorrect is the assertion that I am a lawyer.’
b. Es stimmt nicht, daß die Friedensbewegung
It is.correct not, that the peace movement
unnötig geworden sei. [SZ, 07.09.1995]
unnecessary become-PP be-KonjI
‘It is not true that the peace movement has become
unnecessary.’
1.2.2 The German Konjunktiv II as a modal deictic marker
The past subjunctive (or Konjunktiv II) is generally attributed two main
functions: it either expresses irreality – in a broad sense (see for instance
Zifonun, Hoffmann, and Strecker 1997; Fabricius-Hansen 2000; Duden
1998) – or it marks indirect speech. In its latter function, the Konjunktiv II
is typically taken to replace ambiguous forms of the default present
subjunctive (Duden 1998: 785), i.e. the Konjunktiv II comes in to replace
forms which could be interpreted as either indicative or subjunctive. I will
not go into this reportive use of the past subjunctive (which is generally
considered to be less typical), and focus on the past subjunctive signalling
irreality instead. According to Diewald (1999: 185-187), the Konjunktiv II
doesn’t express irreality in a direct or immediate way, but rather signals
nonfactuality by referring to conditions that are not fulfilled (see also
Kasper 1987); it is the unfulfilled condition that brings about the
nonfactuality of the state of affairs. Apart from its deictic function, the
6
Konjunktiv II is therefore said to exhibit a phoric or textual component, as it
points to a condition which is either textually available or can be
reconstructed from the linguistic or situational context. This phoric
reference to a condition explains why in traditional German reference
grammars like Duden the meaning or use of the past subjunctive is often
illustrated in unreal conditionals. The unreal conditional can be regarded as
the past subjunctive’s prototypical grammatical environment, in which it
unfolds the full potential of its meaning (see Mortelmans (2000: 196–199)
for a more profound discussion of the meaning of the past subjunctive in
conditionals).4
(2) a. Wäre ich an seiner Stelle gewesen,
be-KonjII I in his place been-PP,
hätte ich gehandelt.
have-KonjII I act-PP
‘If I had been in his position, I would have taken action.’
b. Das wäre schon, wenn ewiger Friede
That be-KonjII nice if everlasting peace
herrschte.
prevail-KonjII
‘That would be nice, if everlasting peace existed.’
(examples taken from Duden 1998: 162)
7
1.2.3 The possible inclusion of clausal negation as a modal deictic marker
Interestingly, Diewald (1999) includes a short note on clausal negation, “the
semantic value of which partakes in the make-up of the marked modal
values” (Diewald 1999: 180; my translation) in her discussion of the
German moods. Clausal negation, most often expressed by the negation
particle nicht in combination with the indicative of the finite verb, indicates
that a speaker regards a state of affairs as nonfactual, i.e. it attributes the
indicative’s opposite semantic value to a state of affairs. Negation could
therefore be claimed to enter the paradigm of modal deictic expressions,
although, of course, from a formal point of view it does not count as a
mood.5 Langacker (1991: 134) also stresses the “close association” of
clausal negation in English with the tense and modality predications of a
finite clause, which is not only witnessed by their phonological proximity
(e.g. isn’t, didn’t, shouldn’t), but also by their semantic similarity. In the
course of this paper, I will try to shed some more light on the relationship
between clausal negation and markers of modality (both mood and modal
verbs), more specifically, on the way in which they interact with each other.
1.3 The German modals as deictic expressions
Traditionally, six verbs are taken to belong to the German core modals:
müssen, können, sollen, wollen, dürfen, and mögen. These verbs share a
number of morphological, syntactic and semantic properties, which – taken
8
together – make them stand out from other auxiliaries. First, the modal
verbs are preteritpresents,6 i.e. original past tense forms with a present
meaning; second, they combine with an infinitive without zu, third, they are
semantically ambiguous to the extent that they possess both a root7 and an
epistemic meaning.
The semantic domain covered by the root modals is rather large and
heterogeneous: it extends from volition (wollen, mögen) to ability (können),
permission (können, dürfen), obligation (sollen) and real-world necessity
(müssen). The meanings expressed by the German modals in their epistemic
usage seem to converge more, as they can all be associated with an
assessment of likelihood by the speaker.
Diewald (1999) only takes the epistemically used German modals – which
are shown to exhibit a higher degree of grammaticalization than their non-
epistemic ancestors – as being truly deictic. The epistemic modals are said
to be no part of the state of affairs, but to represent the relationship between
the speaker and the proposition, which is characterized in terms of a
“sprecherbasierte Faktizitätsbewertung [a speaker-based assessment of
factuality]” (Diewald 1999: 14). By contrast, the root modals are claimed to
present a condition of the sentence subject, in which case the modal verb is
part of the coded scene and thus functions as a Nennwort (Bühler 1999:
103). Diewald divides the non-deictic root meanings into three groups: root
modals express either deontic, dispositional or volitional modality. Deontic
modality, typically expressed by the modals sollen and dürfen, is reserved
9
for usages having to do with intersubjective relationships in the domains
permission, obligation, order and prohibition (Diewald 1999: 74). The
modals können and müssen are taken to express dispositional modality, i.e.
they refer to internal or external abilities and dispositions of the subject
(Diewald 1999: 76). The modal status of volitional modality (covered in
German by the verbs wollen and mögen) is somewhat of a borderline case (it
is excluded by van der Auwera and Plungian (1998), for instance). For
reasons of simplicity, it will not be considered any further in the course of
this paper.
1.3.1 The relationship between the modal’s scope and root/epistemic
modality
The semantic distinction between root and epistemic modality has a number
of formal correlates, one of them pertaining to the scope of the modal.
Modals expressing root modality are prototypically associated with narrow
scope, which means that the modal predicates a condition on the subject (see
3a), whereas the epistemic reading, exemplified in (3b), evokes a wide-
scope interpretation, since the modal modifies the entire proposition
(Nordlinger and Traugott 1997: 301–304; Diewald 1999: 77).
(3) a. You must play this ten times over.
b. He said: “I must have a temperature”.
10
Wide-scope interpretations, however, also arise with root modals, in which
case they “emphasize the particular event that should be brought about”
(Nordlinger and Traugott 1997: 303). A number of cases can be discerned
here. First, passivization is a syntactic means to invoke a wide-scope
reading, as it is no longer the subject of the sentence to which the obligation
(or any other modal condition, for that matter) can be attributed.
(4) In dem freiheitlichen Europa der Zukunft soll ja niemand mehr
vertrieben werden.8
‘In the free Europe of the future no one shall be expelled any
more.’
On a semantic level, inanimate subjects in combination with stative or
process verbs also give rise to a wide-scope reading of the modal. Since the
subject has no agentive properties, the modal by necessity has scope over
the whole proposition.
(5) Es muß und soll deshalb eine vordringliche Aufgabe der neuen
Kooperation sein, zu verhindern, […].
‘It must and should therefore be a priority task of the new co-
operation to prevent [...].’
11
Wide-scope interpretations of non-epistemic modals fulfil an important
bridging function towards the development of an epistemic meaning.
Nordlinger and Traugott (1997), for instance, assume that the wide-scope
deontic interpretation of ought to paved the way for the epistemic reading of
the modal through the conventionalization of a conversational implicature.9
The notion of scope also figures prominently in Diewald’s (1999) account of
the rise of the epistemic meanings of the German modals, since the
possibility of a wide-scope interpretation is taken to function as a crucial
Vorbedingung (‘precondition’) for the development of an epistemic meaning
(Diewald 1999: 367).
1.3.2 Speaker involvement in root modals
Diewald’s distinction between non-deictic and deictic modality seems to be
clear for cases like the following – examples and paraphrases are taken from
Diewald (1999).
(6) a. Sie musste sich hinsetzen, denn ihre Beine waren schwach
und wollten ihr nicht gehorchen.
‘She had to sit down, because her legs were shaky and didn’t
want to obey her.’
Paraphrase:
Sie war gezwungen sich hinzusetzen, denn...
‘She was forced to sit down, because...’
12
b. Er muss eine Vorahnung davon gehabt haben.
‘He must have had a premonition.’
Paraphrase:
Ich halte es für wahrscheinlich, dass er eine Vorahnung
gehabt hat.
‘I think it is probable that he has had a premonition.’
Rejecting Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca’s (1994: 179) category of speaker-
oriented modality, Diewald does not accord any special status to speaker-
oriented non-epistemic usages of the German modals. Directive usages of
the modals are treated as indirect speech acts (Diewald 1999: 36), which in
her view are likely to arise given that the root modals code a condition of
the subject, which is the result of a directive that has been performed: the
root modals “represent a condition, which arises from a performed directive
for the receiver of that directive” (Diewald 1999: 125; my translation). In an
appropriate context, therefore, the assertion that a directive speech act has
been performed may give rise to an (indirect) directive interpretation.
(7) Du mußt deine Hausaufgaben machen à Mach deine
Hausaufgaben
‘You must do your homework’ à ‘Do your homework!’
13
However, since directive usages point to some element of the deictic center
(typically the speaker) as a locus of potency and are thus linked to the
immediate speech situation, I would prefer to consider them as intermediate
cases between genuinely descriptive, non-deictic usages, and epistemic
(deictic) ones, in which the modal functions as a Zeigwort. This is in line
with Goossens (1999, 2000), who draws attention to the fact that the rise of
epistemic must in Early Modern English took place at a time when
subjective deontic usages of must, i.e. speaker-oriented usages in which the
speaker associates herself with the modal force, began to outnumber the
non-subjective root usages of the verb, the latter being clearly dominant in
Middle-English. Goossens (2000: 167) concludes that “subjectification in
the participant-external, more specifically the deontic, area paved the way
for the development of the (subjectified) epistemic sense”.
Note that directive usages like (7) typically situate the state of affairs
expressed in the infinitive (deine Hausaufgaben machen) within irreality, or,
to be more precise, within potential reality (see section 1.1.): it is not real at
the moment of speaking, but has the potential of becoming real at a later
stage. Localization within potential reality is a feature that speaker-oriented
root modals share with their epistemic counterparts. An epistemic modal can
be taken to express that a state of affairs cannot be assessed as either real or
unreal at the time of speaking, but may turn out to be real in a later stage. In
this connection it should also be noted that a speaker-oriented root modal
cannot appear in the past tense, which typically evokes an implicature of
14
actualization. In (8), the state of affairs (all sein Geld hergeben, einer
Ehekrise meiner Eltern beiwohnen) can therefore not be said to be situated
within potential reality.
(8) a. Er musste all sein Geld hergeben.
‘He had to hand over all his money.’
b. Zuhause durfte ich dann einer Ehekrise meiner Eltern
beiwohnen. [example taken from Diewald 1999, p. 131]
‘At home I could witness a matrimonial crisis between my
parents.’
According to Diewald (1999), a speaker-oriented interpretation of a root
modal is merely a matter of context: given the appropriate circumstances, a
root modal can take up a directive meaning. It has been shown, however,
that the proportion of speaker-oriented usages associated with a particular
root modal might increase over time, so that it by default comes to express a
speaker-oriented meaning. This process of subjectification, whereby
“meanings become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective belief
state/attitude towards the proposition” (Traugott 1989: 311) has been
witnessed for deontic must (Goossens 1999, 2000) and ought to (Nordlinger
and Traugott 1997).
15
1.3.3. The effect of negation and past subjunctive on a speaker-oriented
reading
In the next sections, I will provide an analysis of the German modals dürfen
and sollen in order to establish if and to what extent these verbs have
developed a subjective-deontic reading. I will focus on two markers which
seem to enhance a speaker-oriented interpretation, namely the past
subjunctive and clausal negation. These two elements are mentioned by
Diewald (1999: 219) in her discussion of subjective-epistemic können,
which has a clear preference for either negated contexts (kann nur in 9a) or
for the past subjunctive (könnte in 9b).
(9) a. Das kann nur dort verloren gegangen sein hier doch nicht.
‘That can only have got lost there but not here.’
b. Er könnte Foch und Falkenhayn vor Augen gehabt haben.
‘He could have had Foch and Falkenhayn in mind.’
Diewald links this preference of epistemic können to appear in combination
with either negation or a past subjunctive to the phoric character of these
two markers: “they express the dependence upon a previously mentioned
element” (Diewald 1999: 221; my translation). As phoric markers, negation
and past subjunctive are said to cancel or neutralize the inherently reactive
character of können, which is by itself more or less incompatible with an
epistemic interpretation. The possibility expressed by können always
16
implies that its bearer (the subject of können) has somehow initiated its
existence; asserting a possibility is – in Diewald’s view – a reactive move,
since the speaker asserting it is taken to react to the subject’s initiative
(Diewald 1999: 159). The reactive component inherent in können prevents
a straightforward epistemic use of the verb, which is typically unconditional
(unbedingt), referring only to the speaker as an authority of assessment. On
a very abstract level, then, Diewald seems to assume that the reactive nature
of können is neutralized – in an almost homeopathic process – by a similar
feature of phoric reference to a previous condition expressed by either
negation or Konjunktiv II.
Instead of focusing on the phoric character of negation and past subjunctive,
however, I would prefer to highlight their inherently speaker-oriented nature
– which is, by the way, also explicitly stated by Diewald: “Indem der
Sprecher auf die Relevanz einer zusätzlichen Bedingung hinweist, wird der
Sprecher als Instanz der Bewertung hervorgehoben [as the speaker points to
the relevance of an additional condition [by using either a past subjunctive
or a negation marker], the speaker as authority of assessment is
emphasized]” (Diewald 1999: 221). Negation and past subjunctive can
therefore be considered as means to enable or at least facilitate a speaker-
oriented interpretation, not only in the epistemic, but also – as I hope to
show – in the root domain.
17
2. Speaker-oriented usages of the German modals: the case of deontic
dürfen and sollen
In the upcoming sections, I will concentrate on the German modal sollen in
its indicative and past subjunctive usages. Before embarking on this,
however, I will briefly comment on some speaker-oriented deontic usages of
the modal dürfen (English ‘may’) in order to show that negation can play an
important role in inducing a speaker-oriented interpretation.
2.1 The modal verb dürfen as a “reactive” modal
As with können, Diewald (1999) attributes a reactive component to the
semantics of dürfen: when a speaker uses dürfen to express a permission,
she is taken to respond to a previous wish of the addressee of the permission
(typically the subject): “dürfen […] reacts to a previous communicative
move, which is aimed at receiving a directive (the permission) to perform
the action” (Diewald 1999: 132; my translation). In a force dynamic account
(see Talmy 1988, 2000) one could say that the original initiative with dürfen
lies in the hands of the addressee of the permission, typically the sentence
subject, who has somehow asked to receive it. The original locus of potency
is therefore not to be identified with the speaker. Negating permission,
however, can be regarded as a clear intervention by the speaker and is
therefore likely to effect a rearrangement of the force distribution.
18
2.1.1 The use of dürfen in negated and affirmative contexts
The indicative of dürfen generally exhibits a deontic meaning,
paraphrasable as ‘to have the permission, the right to do x’. Interestingly,
indicative dürfen typically occurs in negated contexts: an analysis of 150
indicative instances of dürfen (see Mortelmans 1999: 714) revealed that
only 24 of them appeared in an affirmative sentence.10 In negated contexts,
dürfen invites both descriptive and directive interpretations. Example (10),
taken from a manual for lorry drivers, hosts a considerable number of
instances of descriptive dürfen: the speaker simply describes existing
regulations. Note that each instance of dürfen in this section is negated.
(10) Die Ladung des Fahrzeuges ist gemäß nachstehenden
Bestimmungen unterzubringen: Die Breite der Ladung darf nicht
mehr als 2,50 m betragen. […] Beide Lichter dürfen nicht
blenden. Die Länge von Fahrzeug und Ladung zusammen darf 20
m, die Höhe 4 m nicht überschreiten. Lange Gegenstände dürfen
niemals nach vorne über das ziehende Fahrzeug hinausragen. […]
Fahnen, Schilder und Leuchten dürfen nicht höher als 1,55 m über
der Fahrbahn angebracht werden. […] Das Fahrzeug darf nie
überladen sein.11
19
In directive environments,12 however, negated instances of dürfen typically
invite a speaker-oriented, directive interpretation, in which the speaker urges
the addressee not to perform a particular action. Consider the following
instances, all taken from a survey of 66 du darfst occurrences, 41 of which
were negated.13
(11) a. Geh weg, du darfst meiner Mami nicht weh tun!
‘Go away, you mustn’t hurt my mummy!’
b. Nein, Emanuel, da darfst du dich nicht einmischen.
‘No, Emanuel, you mustn’t interfere in that.’
c. Nicht sprechen, Michael, du darfst jetzt nicht sprechen.
‘Don’t speak, Michael, you mustn’t speak now.’
d. “Das darfst Du nicht riskieren”, riet der Stürmer
eindringlich ab.
‘“You mustn’t risk that”, the striker insistently advised.’
Affirmative instances containing darfst, on the other hand, seem to be more
compatible with a non-directive, descriptive interpretation, in which the role
of the speaker is somewhat less prominent. An interesting observation in
this light is the fact that 5 out of 25 affirmative instances appear in a
conditional context – whereas only 1 of the 41 negated instances features in
the apodosis of a conditional. In these cases, the permission expressed by
darfst depends on a condition, the realization of which lies in the hands of
20
the sentence subject. In terms of force distribution, one could say that in
(12) both subject and speaker are somehow involved as loci of potency in
the modal relation, whereas in (11) the main force is clearly with the
speaker.
(12) a. Die […] Abgeordnete […] erklärte, die Koalition gehe bei
der Diskussion um den Ladenschluß nach dem Motto vor:
“Wenn Du mir am Samstag eine Stunde gibst, darfst Du am
Donnerstag abend bis 20.30 Uhr ausweiten” […].
[Mannheimer Morgen, 11.05.1989]
‘The member of parliament stated that the coalition in its
discussion of the shop closing time proceeded according to
the motto: “If you give me an hour on Saturday, you can stay
open till 8.30 p.m. on Thursday [...].”’
b. Natürlich darfst Du heute das Fernsehen ausfallen lassen,
wenn Dir Deine Hausaufgaben wichtiger sind!
[Mannheimer Morgen, 14.11.1995]
‘Of course you can drop television today, if your homework
is more important to you.’
c. Wenn du mir das Rätsel lösen kannst, darfst du meine
Tochter heiraten. [Mannheimer Morgen, 24.12.1995]
‘If you can solve the riddle, you are allowed to marry my
daughter.’
21
2.2. The modal verb sollen as a “non-reactive” modal
Together with dürfen, the German modal sollen is taken to express deontic
modality. In contrast to dürfen, however, Diewald (1999: 128) assumes that
sollen does not indicate a reactive move of the speaker. Sollen expresses that
a directive has been uttered, which is initiated by the speaker and is
independent of any previous communicative moves of the directive’s
addressee. Whereas dürfen is anaphoric – it points to a previous speech act –
sollen is more of a cataphoric marker, as it refers to what is to follow
(Diewald 1999: 129). With respect to its non-reactive nature, sollen is said
to resemble müssen; the main difference between the latter verbs pertains to
the fact that sollen requires an entity capable of communication (typically a
person) as a modal force, whereas the locus of potency evoked by müssen is
generally undetermined and vague.
In contrast to dürfen, then, nothing seems to prevent a speaker-oriented
interpretation of sollen. Such an interpretation seems even more likely than
with müssen, given that sollen is taken to imply that the locus of potency is
human and can therefore very well be equated with the speaker.14 In order to
see whether this prediction is borne out, I conducted an analysis of soll and
sollte occurrences compiled from a part of the so-called Wendekorpus,
provided by the Institut für deutsche Sprache. The search was restricted to
occurrences in the records of the German house of parliament (labelled
22
Bundestagsprotokolle 2.Hj. 89). This part of the Wendekorpus mainly
contains spoken and written-to-be-spoken material taken from speeches by
the members of the Bundestag. The indicative form soll occurred 129 times,
past subjunctive sollte was found 117 times.15
2.2.1 The indicative form soll: a corpus analysis
Given that a directive, speaker-oriented interpretation is most likely to occur
in a declarative sentence, it is slightly surprising to find that indicative soll,
unlike past subjunctive sollte, does not occur that often in a declarative (see
table 1). The quantitative dominance of indicative soll in the corpus is due to
its relatively high frequency in interrogatives (31 soll vs. 2 sollte) and – to a
minor extent – in subclauses (48 soll vs. 28 sollte).
@@Insert Table 1 here
Table 1. The frequency of soll and sollte in various clause types
soll sollte
declarative 50 77
interrogative 31 2
subordinate clause 48 28
Total number 129 107
As is shown in table 2, the indicative of sollen appears with a considerable
frequency in conditional subclauses (example 13a), in complement clauses
introduced by the conjunction daß (example 13b), in relative clauses
(example 13c) and in indirect interrogatives (example 13d). The modal verb
23
generally does not invoke a speaker-oriented interpretation; instead, soll as a
Nennwort typically describes the existence of a modality (obligation,
intention), whereby the locus of potency is not the speaker, but a previously
mentioned entity.
@@ Insert table 2 here
Table 2. Indicative soll in subclauses
conditional 7
complement (daß) 15
relative clause 14
indirect interrogative 12
Total number 48
(13) a. Beide Länder haben erkannt, daß ihr System reformiert
werden muß, wenn es den Herausforderungen der Zukunft
gerecht werden soll, […].
‘Both countries have acknowledged that their system has to
be reformed, if it is to meet the challenges of the future.’
b. Sie schlagen [...] vor, daß im Bereich von Wissenschaft und
Technologie ein interministerieller Ausschuß gebildet
werden soll, der die wissenschaftlich-technologische
Zusammenarbeit organisieren soll.
‘They propose that in the field of science and technology an
interministerial commission should be formed, which is to
organize the scientific-technological co-operation.’
24
c. Vaclav Havel, der im Oktober den Friedenspreis des
deutschen Buchhandels erhalten soll […].
‘Vaclav Havel, who is to receive the German Book Trade’s
Peace Prize in October [...].’
d. Wenn das kein Zynismus ist, dann frage ich mich, wie man
Zynismus definieren soll.
‘If that isn’t cynicism, then I ask myself how on earth one
should define it.’
Occasionally, i.e. in only 4 (out of 48) instances, the speaker can be taken to
be personally involved. This personal involvement is overtly marked,
though, either in the main clause or in the subclause itself.
(14) a. Ich bin der Ansicht, Deutschland soll wiedervereinigt
werden.
‘I am of the opinon that Germany should be reunited.’
b. Uns allen ist der Wunsch sehr nahe, daß dieses Haus
Wirklichkeit werden soll.
‘We all share the wish that this house should become reality.’
c. Man kann gar nicht genug Klarheit darüber schaffen, daß die
Westgrenze Polens nach unserem politischen Willen
dauerhaften Bestand haben soll.
25
‘One can’t be too clear on the issue that Poland’s western
border in accordance with our political will should have long-
lasting existence.’
In 3 other instances, a speaker-oriented interpretation does not seem
unlikely either, but since there are no contextual clues, it is difficult to
decide whether the speaker simply reports on a given intention or plan, or
really associates herself with it. This can be taken to suggest that soll by
itself is not very well capable of transporting a speaker-oriented meaning,
but needs additional markers to unambiguously convey it.
(15) Es [das Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl] wird für die Zukunft unserer
Nation, dieser geteilten Nation, die zusammenwachsen soll, ganz
wichtig werden.
‘It [the feeling of belonging together] will become extremely
important for the future of our nation, this divided nation, which is
to/should merge into one.’
In 31 occurrences, indicative soll features in an interrogative sentence,
which is often to be interpreted as either a rhetorical or a deliberative
question, for which the speaker does not really seek an answer. Again, the
speaker cannot be taken to associate herself with the modal force: soll
typically refers to existing obligations or intentions, the origin of which is
26
either undifferentiated (16a–b) or can be traced to the addressee of the
question (16c).
(16) a. Woher soll eine Gesellschaft die Kraft für Veränderungen
nehmen, wenn ein großer Teil [...] das Land verläßt?
‘Where should a society take the power for changes, if a large
part leaves the country?’
b. Aber die Frage bleibt doch: Wer soll das eigentlich
bezahlen?
‘But the question remains: Who is to pay for that?’
c. Soll denn unsere Bevormundung gleich die andere ablösen,
unter der diese Menschen leiden?
‘Is it really our intention to replace one form of imposition,
under which these people suffer, by another (namely ours)?’
If we finally look at the declarative main clauses containing indicative soll,
we must conclude that here a speaker-oriented interpretation seems to be
dominant. In 33 out of 50 declarative occurrences, the speaker as a locus of
potency seems to partake in the modal relationship, an observation,
however, which should be handled with some care. First, 3 speaker-oriented
occurrences contain an instance of quotative sollen, which, according to
Diewald (1999), represents an inherently deictic (epistemic) usage of the
verb. Like the present subjunctive, the speaker signals that another speaker
27
has assessed the proposition as factual, the reporting speaker, however, does
not commit herself to the factuality of the proposition (see Diewald 1999:
225–226).
(17) Geld [...] soll in bezug auf Ungarn im Spiel gewesen sein [...].
‘Money is said to have played a role with respect to Hungary.’
This leaves us with 30 speaker-oriented deontic occurrences of indicative
sollen, which – under the assumption that deontic modality prototypically
invokes a narrow-scope reading of the modal – can be expected to have an
animate subject and an agentive verb as complement in the majority of the
cases. This expectation, however, is not borne out: half of the verbs in the
infinitive denote either a state (11 instances) or an uncontrollable process (4
instances), both invoking a wide-scope deontic interpretation. Moreover, in
a considerable number of cases the deontic reading seems to be intertwined
with a future one, so that sollen comes to express an intention of the speaker
with respect to the realization of a state of affairs (for this future sollen, see
also Diewald 1999: 281).
(18) a. Wir wollen mit unseren Nachbarn das gemeinsame
europäische Haus bauen und bewohnen. Jeder soll darin eine
Wohnung haben, die seinen Bedürfnissen entspricht.
28
‘We want to build and inhabit a common European house
with our neighbors. In this house, everyone shall have a place
to live in that meets their needs.’
b. [...] denn dieser Zusammenschluß freier Staaten soll sich auf
der Grundlage der Freiheit und des Selbstbestimmungsrechts
vollziehen.
‘[...] because this union of free states is to take place on the
basis of freedom and the right to self-determination.’
Passive occurrences, which are found 6 times, invoke a wide-scope deontic
interpretation as well. Again, the deontic reading is sometimes mingled with
a future one.
(19) Ich will hier eindeutig zusichern: Es ist nicht die Absicht der
Bundesregierung, das Thema [...] zu vertagen. Wir brauchen
natürlich Zeit für vernünftige Gespräche. Aber das Thema soll auf
keinen Fall zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt behandelt werden.
‘I want to assure you unambiguously: it is not the intention of the
federal government to adjourn this issue. Of course we need time
for sensible discussions. But this issue is in no way to be treated at
a later moment.’
29
This leaves only 9 occurrences, in which speaker-oriented indicative soll
appears in a prototypically deontic context, i.e. the subject is human and the
verb in the infinitival complement refers to an action. Note that the subject
is preferably indefinite (6 out of 9 occurrences) and that 4 occurrences are
negated. I will come back to these observations in the discussion of sollte.
(20) a. Das ist eine Aufgabe der Bundesregierung. Das soll man
doch nicht dem [...] Senat zuschieben.
‘That is a task of the federal government. One shouldn’t pass
it on to the senate.’
b. Jetzt soll niemand sagen, das eine habe nichts mit dem
anderen zu tun.
‘At this point no one should say that these things have got
nothing to do with one another.’
By way of a preliminary conclusion, I would like to stress the fact that the
alleged prototypically deontic modal sollen occurs only rarely in a typical
deontic context. Instead, indicative soll can be shown to be compatible with
a wide array of contexts and usages, which on the whole do not seem to
favor a speaker-oriented interpretation of the verb. Having established these
facts, we will now proceed to soll’s past subjunctive counterpart sollte.
2.2.2 The past subjunctive form sollte: a corpus analysis
30
Diewalds’s view on past subjunctive sollte is somewhat ambivalent. On the
one hand, she treats sollte – together with möchte – as a verb form, “whose
splitting-off [from the original modal lexeme] has already gone a long way”
(Diewald 1999: 198; my translation). On the other hand, Diewald claims
that the semantics of sollte, which in the literature is mostly associated with
a judgmental value and a weaker imperative force than both indicative
sollen and müssen, can be explained in a fully compositional way. Whereas
the indicative of sollen is said to express the subject’s condition of having
received a directive, the past subjunctive form is taken to refer to a
condition that affects the validity, relevance or factuality of the subject’s
state: “Der Zustand des Sollens gilt, wenn und soweit die phorisch indizierte
Bedingung gilt [the state of sollen is valid if and insofar the phorically
indicated condition is valid]” (Diewald 1999: 199). In the following
sentence, therefore, the existence or validity of the directive, expressed by
the soll-element, is claimed to depend upon a condition, as is indicated by
the Konjunktiv II; only if this condition – which according to Diewald could
be something like “disharmony in a marriage is no good thing, if one is too
insistent, this might lead to disharmony” – is accepted, the directive is said
to be valid.
(21) Die Dame sollte ihren Mann nicht zu sehr drängen.
‘The lady should not be too insistent on her husband.’
31
Diewald claims that conditions of this kind can be found for all occurrences
of sollte in her corpus (Diewald 1999: 201). Two remarks, however, should
be made in this connection. First, past subjunctive sollte in practice does not
occur that often in an overt conditional construction: I found only 6
examples in my material.16 And, second, if it does, it is typically combined
with a factual (instead of a hypothetical) protasis, the validity of which is
unquestioned.17 This can be taken to imply that even in conditionals, the
validity of the modal relation (expressed in the main clause) is not subjected
to an open condition, but seems to be taken for granted by the speaker.
(22) a. Wenn wir, meine Damen und Herren, sagen, wir wollen unser
Beispiel und Modell nicht aufdrängen, so sollte doch [...]
niemand glauben, [...].
‘If we, ladies and gentlemen, say that we do not want to
impose our example and model, no one should believe [...].’
b. Niemand sollte Genugtuung darüber empfinden, wenn
Menschen in so großer Zahl ihr Zuhause aufgeben wollen.
‘No one should feel satisfied about the fact that so many
people want to give up their homes.’
c. Denn auf die Frage [...] sollte man sich wohl einlassen, wenn
man, wie die Bundesregierung, dazu auffordert, die Ausreise
nicht über die diplomatischen Vertretungen zu suchen.
32
‘For one should get involved in that issue, if one, like the
federal government, asks people not to leave the country via
the embassies.’
Rather than positing an almost always implicit condition for usages of
sollte, I would claim that sollte is a subjective-deontic modal marker, which
typically refers to the speaker as a locus of potency. This implies that the
past subjunctive element within sollte has lost its original conditional
meaning and has fused with the modal into a new unit, which cannot be
analyzed in a fully compositional way, i.e. sollte cannot be adequately
described as a genuine past subjunctive of sollen (anymore). A number of
observations relating to the corpus material sustain this view.
On a superficial level, the relatively high frequency of past subjunctive
sollte (107 sollte vs. 129 soll) can be regarded as a first indication of the fact
that sollte does not function as a genuine past subjunctive: being a marked
mood, the past subjunctive is generally expected to occur far less often than
the unmarked indicative (Jäger 1971 and Bausch 1979 have shown that past
subjunctive verb forms account for only 4 to 6 per cent of all finite verb-
forms in present-day German). In the corpus at hand, however, the
difference between the number of soll and sollte occurrences is not that
big.18
The syntactic behavior of sollte also points into the same direction (see table
1 above). First, sollte shows a clear preference for declarative sentences: 71
33
% of all sollte-instances appear in a declarative, which is the province of
only 38 % of the indicative occurrences. Conversely, sollte is extremely rare
in questions, both direct and indirect ones, whereas soll-questions accounted
for about a quarter of all indicative instances. Assuming, however, that sollte
is a speaker-oriented marker, we should not be surprised at the fact that it
does not frequently appear in interrogatives, which are typically addressee-
oriented. Finally, sollte occurs considerably less often in subclauses than its
indicative counterpart (26 % sollte vs. 37 % soll).
@@ Insert table 3 here
Table 3. Past subjunctive sollte in subclauses
conditional 8
complement (daß) 13
relative clause 6
indirect interrogative 1
Total number 28
In contrast to indicative sollen, a clear majority of the subordinate sollte-
occurrences (22 out of 28) invites a speaker-oriented interpretation, whereby
the verb generally carries a deontic meaning. In the complement clauses
(23a–d), we generally find explicit expressions of the speaker’s
involvement, which is not the case, however, for the relative clauses (23e–
g). In the latter, the speaker undoubtedly associates herself with the
obligation (recommendation), without however overtly marking her
personal involvement.
34
(23) a. Deshalb meinen wir, daß man [..] im mittelständischen
Bereich ansetzen sollte [...].
‘That’s why we think that one should start in the middle
class.’
b. Gleichwohl sind wir der Meinung, daß […] geholfen werden
sollte.
‘Nevertheless we think that one should help.’
c. Ich denke, daß man deshalb von dem Beginn einer zweiten
Etappe […] sprechen sollte.
‘I think that therefore one should speak of the beginning of a
second phase.’
d. Ich glaube, daß sich die Europäische Gemeinschaft nicht mit
jenen Kräften verbinden sollte, die [...] nur den Status quo
stabilisieren können
‘I believe that the European Community should not join
forces with those who are only able to maintain the status
quo.’
e. Und das ist eine Leistung der Bevölkerung [...] in der ganzen
DDR, […] die nicht etwa selbstgefällige Triumphgefühle
auslösen sollte.
35
‘And that is an achievement of the people in the whole GDR,
which should not provoke any complacent feelings of
triumph.’
f. Denn er hat den Schuß Realismus in die außenpolitische
Debatte gebracht, ohne den man über die Ergebnisse [...]
nicht sprechen sollte.
‘Because he has brought the necessary dash of realism in the
foreign policy debate, without which one shouldn’t speak
about the results.’
g. Sie haben das mit einer Würde und mit einer sprachlichen
Kraft getan, die auch für uns Maßstäbe setzen sollte [...].
‘They have done that with such dignity and verbal power,
which should set standards for us as well […].’
Past subjunctive sollte also appears in a conditional protasis (see example
24), which I consider to be a speaker-oriented use as well, to the extent that
the speaker can be said to localize the hypothetical event expressed in the
protasis within potential reality. Note that sollte – like English conditional
should – does not carry a deontic meaning here.
(24) Sollte sich eine Mehrheit für zwei deutsche Staaten entscheiden, so
werden wir dies selbstverständlich respektieren.
36
‘Should a majority decide in favor of two German states, we will of
course respect this.’
If we focus on the declarative sollte-occurrences, a number of similar
observations can be made. First, each instance seems to be speaker-oriented
to some extent (whereas a considerable number of the indicative declarative
instances of sollen – 17 out of 50 – were not). Compare in this respect (25a)
with (25b) and note that replacing non-subjective soll by sollte in (25a) does
not seem to be a very likely option.
(25) a. Einig sind Sie sich also alle in dem Ziel, die DDR
einzuverleiben. Die kapitalistische Marktwirtschaft soll ihr
Comeback in der DDR finden. Der Schlußpunkt ist dann die
Wiedervereinigung.
‘So you all agree on the goal to annex the GDR. The
capitalist economy is to find its comeback in the GDR. The
end point will be the re-unification.’
b. Nur, eines sollte man auch in dieser Aktuellen Stunde nicht
verschweigen.
‘But there is one thing that even at this current moment
should not be concealed.’
37
With past subjunctive sollte, the speaker involvement is only sometimes
explicitly marked by expressions like ich denke, meiner Meinung nach or
meine ich.
(26) Das ist ein Konflikt […], der dringend einer öffentlichen Debatte
bedarf. Sie sollte meiner Meinung nach im Abgeordnetenhaus von
Berlin geführt werden, nicht hier.
‘This is a conflict that is in urgent need of a public debate. This
should, in my view, be done in the house of parliament in Berlin,
not here.’
In contrast to indicative soll, past subjunctive sollte is combined with an
animate subject and an agentive verb in almost half of the cases (38 out of
77 declarative occurrences). As with soll, the animate subject is preferably
indefinite,19 as table 4 shows. Note, however, that for every man soll
occurrence in the corpus, we find about 5 instances of man sollte.
@@ Insert table 4 here
Table 4. The nature of the subjects with sollte in declaratives
subject sollte
man (‘one’) 15
niemand (‘no one’) 6
wer (‘who’) 3
jeder (‘everybody’) 2
der eine oder der andere (‘someone, somebody’) 1
38
manch einer (‘many a person’) 1
Total number of indefinite subjects 28
Total number of definite subjects 10
Another observation pertains to the relatively high frequency of negated
occurences: almost one third (i.e. 25 out of 77) of the declaratives
containing sollte is negated, which more or less resembles the proportion of
negated occurrences with speaker-oriented soll in declaratives (4 out of 9).
Again, it should not be ignored that for each negated occurrence of soll, we
find about 5 negated occurrences of sollte. Passive complements are found
in 13 sollte-occurrences; this again reflects the amount of passives with the
indicative (6 out of 30).
In view of these findings, then, it seems very difficult to posit a clear
distinction between deontic, speaker-oriented usages of soll and deontic,
speaker-oriented usages of sollte. They share a preference for indefinite
subjects, and they are to more or less the same extent negated and
passivized. In the following occurrences, therefore, indicative soll and past
subjunctive sollte seem to be simply interchangeable.
(27) a. Die Deutschen haben – auch dies soll hier noch einmal
gesagt werden – […] ein Recht auf Selbstbestimmung.
39
‘The Germans have – this also should be said here once again
– the right to self-determination.’
b. Meine Damen und Herren, wir haben – das sollte man sagen
– […] doch […] den nötigen Schuß Realismus zu beachten.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we still – one should say that – have
to observe the necessary dash of realism.’
Speaker-oriented, deontic sollte instances can mainly be said to clearly
outnumber the indicative ones. This does not mean, however, that every
instance of soll can be replaced by sollte. In the wide-scope future-deontic
usages, exemplified in (18) and (19), replacing soll by sollte seems to
induce a shift in meaning, whereby the speaker does not so much look into
the future, but concentrates on what is going on right now.
3. Negation and past subjunctive in combination with sollen: a new
interpretation
How can it be accounted for that past subjunctive sollte is generally
preferred over indicative soll to express a speaker-oriented obligation? What
role should we attribute to negation in this respect, bearing in mind that one
third of the inherently subjective sollte-occurrences is negated? Note also
40
that indicative soll is negated in 12 instances (out of a total number of 129),
8 of which are clearly speaker-oriented.
Roughly, the answer to these questions could be sketched in the following
way. In contrast to Diewald (1999), I assume that the modal verb sollen is
anaphoric as well, i.e. it typically refers to a previous communicative move
which has given rise to the modal relation of obligation. It is well-known
that sollen as a main verb meant something like to owe, i.e. the subject is
obliged to do something (to pay something back), because someone else did
something for him or her. It is sollen’s anaphoric character that prevents the
speaker from functioning as a straightforward locus of potency. Unlike
können and dürfen, however, the original initiative does not lie with the
subject, but with a third entity – different from both subject and speaker.20
Speaker-oriented usages of sollen, therefore, have a tendency towards
negation and past subjunctive, as both represent speaker-oriented
interventions in an otherwise more objective scene.
(28) a. Du sollst es tun. (weil ein Dritter es will)
‘You are to do it.’ (because a third person wants you to)
b. Du sollst/solltest es nicht tun. (weil ich es will)
‘You shouldn’t do it.’ (because I want you to)
The tendency towards negation is less outspoken with sollen than with
dürfen, for at least two reasons. First, the conceptual move from a sentence-
41
external locus of potency (a third person) towards the (also external) speaker
as locus of potency in the case of sollen is less drastic than the move from a
sentence-internal modal force (the subject) towards the speaker in the case
of dürfen. In other words, on the basis of its semantics, sollen is less in need
of additional speaker-oriented markers than dürfen. Second, sollen allows
both internal and external negation; in fact, it often seems difficult to decide
whether negation in the case of sollen affects the infinitival complement or
the modal. In the German literature on this subject, sollen is usually said to
invite internal negation: “Es wird ein Gebot ausgesprochen, etwas nicht zu
tun [It expresses an order not to do something]” (Diewald 1999: 132, see
also there for other references on internal negation with sollen). Fritz (1997:
55) also claims that internal negation is more common with sollen, but
concedes that external negation is sometimes possible as well. His example
sentence for external negation Du sollst nicht [so dumm lachen] (‘You
shouldn’t laugh so foolishly’), however, seems to be compatible with
internal negation as well: Was du tun sollst ist: nicht so dumm lachen. I
therefore side with Coates, when she writes that with root should in English
“it is immaterial whether the modal predication or the main predication is
seen as being negated: semantically it makes no difference” (Coates 1983:
64). Since a speaker-oriented interpretation of negation only arises with
wide-scope external negation, it does not come as a surprise that the link
between speaker-oriented soll(te) and negation is less strong.
42
As far as the subjective character of the Konjunktiv II in combination with
sollen is concerned, we can point to other past subjunctive forms of the
modals, which have acquired speaker-oriented meanings as well. Both
könnte and dürfte, for instance, exhibit an epistemic meaning, which –
especially in the case of epistemic dürfte – seems to resist a compositional
analysis.
(29) Es dürfte unmöglich sein zu beweisen, daß im folgenden Satz das
Dativobjekt das Akkusativobjekt “determiniere”. [Engel, U.
(1970), Forschungsberichte des IDS 5, p. 14]
‘It is probably impossible to prove that in the following sentence
the dative object determines the accusative object.’
An epistemic reading of sollte, however, is marginal (Diewald 1999: 202–
203): in present-day German, sollte seems to have specialized as a
subjective deontic marker. Note, however, that the necessary precondition
for an epistemic meaning to arise – the possibility of a wide-scope reading
of the modal – is fulfilled (through passivization, or the combination of
inanimate subjects with stative verbs, both evoking a wide-scope reading).
Whether this means that sollte is on its way towards the development of a
full-fledged epistemic meaning, is hard to say, though.
Finally, it should be noted that one German modal has remained
conspicuously absent in the previous discussion: müssen, which is almost
43
exclusively used in affirmative contexts (Diewald 1999: 160; Mortelmans
1999: 241) and whose past subjunctive form (müsste) generally does not
trigger a speaker-oriented interpretation (Mortelmans 1999: 400–401). In
view of the argumentation put forward in this paper, this can only be taken
to mean one thing: müssen is not anaphoric or reactive and therefore by
itself very well capable of transporting speaker-oriented meanings (Diewald
1999: 224). And indeed, it can be observed that indicative muß is often used
as a subjective marker, both in the root (Mortelmans 1999: 759) and the
epistemic realm (Diewald 1999: 215–225).
(30) a. Petra Kelly ruft noch in derselben Nacht ihre innigste
Freundin an, Erika Heinz in Calw: “Du mußt mir helfen. Du
mußt sofort kommen. Noch heute Nacht!” [Spiegel (1993) 26,
p. 126]
‘On the same night, Petra Kelly calls her best friend, Erika
Heinz in Calw: “You must help me. You must come
immediately. Tonight!”’
b. Doch es muß unendlich viel Mühe gekostet haben. [Die ZEIT,
19.04.85, p.70]
‘But it must have cost a tremendous amount of time and
effort.’
44
4. Conclusion: a systematic account of modal verbs and mood in
German
Diewald (1999) argues in favor of an integration of the epistemically used
German modals into the more strongly grammaticalized mood system, since
epistemic modals and the moods Indikativ and Konjunktiv can be considered
as modal deictic expressions with a similar function, i.e. they express the
speaker’s epistemic stance with respect to a state of affairs. The on the
whole less grammaticalized root modal uses are discarded by Diewald: as
Nennwörter, non-epistemic modals are said to be part of the propositional
content of the sentence, whereby speaker-oriented interpretations only arise
in an indirect way.
In the course of this paper, however, I have argued that a number of
similarities between root modals – more specifically their speaker-oriented
usages – and epistemic modals can be detected, which calls Diewald’s
exclusion of the root modals as deictic expressions into question. First, both
speaker-oriented root modals and epistemic modals refer to the deictic
center (prototypically the speaker) as a locus of potency. Second, the state of
affairs expressed in the infinitive is typically non-actual, as it is localized in
either potential or projected reality. In other words, both speaker-oriented
root and epistemic meanings can be described in terms of the dynamic
evolutionary model. Third – and this can be considered as the main issue of
this contribution – root and epistemic modals interact with negation and the
45
past subjunctive in a similar way, i.e. negation and past subjunctive enhance
the tendency towards a speaker-oriented interpretation. These observations
therefore call for an integrated account of mood and modal verbs, which
should not concentrate too much on the conceptual difference between root
and epistemic meanings (see also Langacker 1991: 272), but focus on the
relationship to the deictic center and on the way in which this relationship is
linguistically construed. Speaker-oriented usages of indicative sollen, for
instance, tend to occur in contexts in which the speaker objectifies her own
involvement by bringing it onto the linguistic scene (see examples 14a-c),
whereas the speaker using past subjunctive sollte generally does not
explicitly mark her personal involvement. The latter can therefore to
claimed to be inherently subjective. As the German root modals provide
interesting borderline cases between descriptive uses, on the one hand, and
inherent speaker-oriented ones, on the other, an analysis of the German
modals in terms of deictic expressions should not a priori restrict itself to
their epistemic usage.
Notes
References
Achard, Michel
46
1998 Representation of Cognitive Structures. Syntax and Semantics of
French Sentential Complements [Cognitive Linguistics Research 11]. Berlin
and New York: de Gruyter.
Akatsuka, Noriko
1985 “Conditionals and the epistemic scale”. Language 61(3): 625–639.
Bausch, Karl-Heinz
1979 Modalität und Konjunktivgebrauch in der gesprochenen deutschen
Standardsprache. München: Hueber.
Brisard, Frank
1999 A critique of localism in and about tense theory. Ph.D. dissertation,
Department of Germanic Linguistics and Literature, University of Antwerp.
Bühler, Karl
[1934] 1999 Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Mit
einem Geleitwort von Friedrich Kainz. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius.
Bybee, Joan L., Perkins, Revere and Pagliuca, William
1994 The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the
languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coates, Jennifer
1983 The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London and Canberra: Croom
Helm.
Comrie, Bernard
1986 “Conditionals: a typology”. In On Conditionals, E. C. Traugott, A. ter
Meulen, J. Snitzer Reilly and C. A. Ferguson (eds), 77–99. Cambridge,
47
London and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Diewald, Gabriele
1999 Die Modalverben im Deutschen: Grammatikalisierung und
Polyfunktionalität [Reihe Germanistische Linguistik 208]. Tübingen:
Niemeyer.
Duden, Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache
1998 Herausgegeben von der Dudenredaktion. Bearbeitet von Peter
Eisenberg […]. 6. neu bearb. Auflage [Der Duden in 12 Bänden Bd. 4].
Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien, Zürich: Dudenverlag.
DWB = Deutsches Wörterbuch
1854ff. Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm. 33 Bde. Leipzig: Hierzel [Reprint
München 1984]
Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine
2000 “Die Geheimnisse der deutschen würde-Konstruktion”. In Deutsche
Grammatik in Theorie und Praxis, R. Thieroff, M. Tamrat, N. Fuhrhop and
O. Teuber (eds), 83–96. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Fritz, Gerd
1997 “Historische Semantik der Modalverben. Problemskizze – exemplarische
Analysen – Forschungsüberblick”. In Untersuchungen zur semantischen
Entwicklungsgeschichte der Modalverben im Deutschen, G. Fritz and T.
Gloning (eds) [Reihe Germanistische Linguistik 187], 1–157. Tübingen:
Niemeyer.
Goossens, Louis
48
1999 “Metonymic bridges in modal shifts”. In Metonymy in Language and
Thought, K.-U. Panther and G. Radden (eds) [Human Cognitive Processing
4], 193–210. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Goossens, Louis
2000 “Patterns of meaning extension, “parallel chaining”, subjectification,
and modal shifts”. In Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A
Cognitive Perspective, A. Barcelona (ed.) [Topics in English Linguistics
30], 149–170. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
Heidolph, Karl Erich, Flämig, Walter and Motsch, Wolfgang
1981 Grundzüge einer deutschen Grammatik. Berlin: Akademie.
Honda, Isao
1996 Negation: A cross-linguistic study. Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of the
Graduate School of State, University of New York at Buffalo.
Jäger, Siegfried
1971 Der Konjunktiv in der deutschen Sprache der Gegenwart:
Untersuchungen an ausgewählten Texten. München: Hueber.
Kasper, Walter
1987 “Konjunktiv II und Sprechereinstellung”. In Satzmodus zwischen
Grammatik und Pragmatik. Referate anläßlich der 8. Jahrestagung der
Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Heidelberg 1986, J. Meibauer
(ed.), 96–113. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Langacker, Ronald W.
49
1991 Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume II: Descriptive
Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Lehmann, Christian
1991 “Strategien der Situationsperspektion”. Sprachwissenschaft 16: 1–26.
Leiss, Elisabeth
1992 Die Verbalkategorien des Deutschen: ein Beitrag zur Theorie der
sprachlichen Kategorisierung [Studia linguistica Germanica 31]. Berlin: de
Gruyter.
Mortelmans, Tanja
1999 Die Modalverben ‘sollen’ und ‘müssen’ im heutigen Deutsch unter
besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Status als subjektivierter ‘'grounding
predications’. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Germanic linguistics and
literature, University of Antwerp.
Mortelmans, Tanja
2000 “Konjunktiv II and epistemic modals in German. A division of
labour”. In Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics, A. Foolen and F. van der
Leek (eds) [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 178], 191–215. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Nordlinger, Rachel and Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
1997 “Scope and development of epistemic modality: evidence from ought
to”. English Language and Linguistics 1(2): 295–317.
Sweetser, Eve
50
1990 From etymology to pragmatics: metaphorical and cultural aspects of
semantic structure [Cambridge studies in linguistics 54]. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Talmy, Leonard
1988 “Force dynamics in language and cognition”. Cognitive Science 2: 49–
100.
Talmy, Leonard
2000 Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Volume I: Concept Structuring
Systems. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press
Traugott, Elizabeth C.
1989 “On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: an example of
subjectification in semantic change”. Language 65(1): 31–55.
van der Auwera, Johan and Plungian, Vladimir A.
1998 “Modality’s semantic map”. Linguistic Typology 2: 79–124.
Zifonun, Gisela, Hoffmann, Ludger and Strecker, Bruno
1997 Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Volume 3. Berlin/New York: de
Gruyter.
51
1 The status of the imperative as a genuine mood marker or Modus is rather controversial. It is excluded from the category of mood in Diewald (1999: 172); van der Auwera and Plungian (1998: 83) “consider distinctions such as imperative […] as pertaining to illocutionary type [rather] than to modality”, a position also taken by Langacker (1991: 503), who treats imperative as one of the basic sentence types, on a par with declarative and interrogative.
2 It is well-known that tense and mood categories tend to overlap. One could for instance refer to the temporal and modal functions of German werden and English will, the conflation of tense and mood in the German Konjunktiv I and II (mood markers built on a present and past verb stem respectively) or the mainly modal use of the original past tense forms would, could, should, might (and must!) in English. For an alternative explanation, however, see Leiss 1992.
3 In fact, Diewald (1999) attributes a double function to the Konjunktiv I: apart from signalling a change of perspective, the Konjunktiv I is also said to characterize the relationship between the reported speaker and the proposition as [+factual], i.e. the reporting speaker asserts that the reported speaker has indeed said what is quoted (Diewald 1999: 182). The latter function is taken to be the truly deictic one; note that in this analysis the Konjunktiv I is associated with a [+factual] deictic value, which is rather awkward.
4 The conditional interpretation, whereby the nonfulfillment of a particular condition triggers the non-factuality of the state of affairs, is to be viewed as a default interpretation, i.e. the most likely interpretation of a past subjunctive verb form, given that no other contextual clues are at hand. The past subjunctive does not necessarily trigger a counterfactual interpretation, though. A well-known exception is the so-called polite or deferential use of the past subjunctive (Ich hätte eine Frage, lit. I would have a question).
5 Arguments in favor of integrating negation in the modal system are provided by Lehmann (1991: 1), who claims that negation is sometimes expressed on a par with other modal markers, i.e. by means of auxiliaries resembling modal verbs or inflectional markers resembling other mood markers. Compare in this respect also Honda (1996), who discusses a number of languages in which the negative marker is also used to mark irrealis events or events unrealized for the speaker, such as imperatives, conditional protases, and sentences referring to future states of affairs (Honda 1996: 190).
6 Strictly speaking, the modal wollen does not count as a preteritpresent, as it is derived from an original optative form (Diewald 1999: 181). The only other surviving preteritpresent that does not belong to the group of modal verbs is wissen. It contrasts with the modal verbs on both a syntactic and a semantic level. When used as an auxiliary, wissen does not take a bare infinitive, but an infinitive with zu. It can then be paraphrased as know how to, be able to (e.g. sich zu benehmen wissen: ‘know how to behave oneself’) so that it resembles können. Unlike können (and the other German modals), however, wissen does not exhibit an epistemic or epistemic-like meaning.
7 Following Coates (1983), Sweetser (1990) and Langacker (1991), amongst others, I will use the notion root modality as a cover term for non-epistemic modality.
8 Note that word-by-word translations will not be provided for the German examples to come. The English translations are mainly intended to capture the meaning of the modal verb rather than to exactly render the German original.
9 “[…] if something is socially or morally required and expected then, given the assumption that people are generally concerned to do what is socially and morally correct, it will probably be done” (Nordlinger and Traugott 1997: 313).
This resembles Achard’s (1998) description of the French modal pouvoir in its ability and possibility sense: “the subject is [...] most strongly associated with the locus of potency, precisely because of her intentionality” (Achard 1998: 149).
10 Diewald is slightly surprised at the high percentage of negated dürfen in her corpus material: out of 20 non-deictic indicative occurrences, only 7 are affirmative (Diewald 1999: 132).
11 Example taken from Anweisung für Fahrer von Dienstwagen, 01.03.1962, p. 11. For reasons of space, this example is not translated, its main function being an illustration of dürfen’s outspoken preference for negation.
12 A directive environment can be characterized as a speech situation that easily invites a directive interpretation. Expressions in which the subject (addressee) will have to function as agent of the action specified in the infinitive qualify as such (e.g. you must do that).
13 The data were collected from a number of electronic corpora provided by the Institut für deutsche Sprache (http://corpora.ids-mannheim.de/~cosmas/). A set of 72 occurrences was compiled, 66 of which appeared in a declarative sentence.
14 Diewald notes that müssen can take up a deontic meaning of obligation as well, which is, however, only a contextually induced variant of its basic dispositional meaning (Diewald 1999: 154).
15 In 10 of these 117 occurrences, sollte is to be analyzed as a past indicative rather than a past subjunctive; these instances will be left undiscussed.
16 Occurrences of sollte in the protasis of a conditional are excluded for the time being (but see section 2.2.2, example (24)).
17 Since the non-factuality of the protasis can be taken to represent the default case (Comrie 1986, Akatsuka 1985), conditionals whose protasis is factual, are marked.
18 Note that muss in the same corpus occurred no less than 439 times, its past subjunctive counterpart müsste, however, only 22 times.
19 Nordlinger and Traugott (1997: 308) draw attention to the fact that prototypical narrow-scope deontics have a definite subject. To the extent that sollte favors indefinite, generic subjects like man or niemand, it cannot be considered as a prototypical narrow-scope deontic modal.
20 Compare also DWB (16, 1468): “grundbedeutung von sollen ist die einer verpflichtung oder eines zwanges, der auf einem fremden willen beruht [basic meaning of sollen is one of obligation or compulsion that is based on other people’s will].”
