The Ditransitive Alternation in Present-Day German

Download or read book The Ditransitive Alternation in Present-Day German written by Hilde De Vaere and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ditransitive (or “dative”) alternation is a much-studied phenomenon in contemporary linguistics. This monograph is the first to address the alternation in present-day written German from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. As well as providing a corpus-based analysis of extensively annotated data and detailed statistical information, the book also contributes to the theory of language by developing an alternative framework to existing investigations of the alternation. It is shown that the alternation can be accounted for in a comprehensive way by adopting a three-layer approach to meaning and sense based on the work of E. Coseriu and S. Levinson. In this approach, a construction’s language-specific encoded meaning is distinguished both from its conventional (“normal”) uses and its discourse-specific interpretations in particular contexts. The monograph is likely to attract attention from researchers in the fields of German and English linguistics, general and contrastive linguistics as well as linguistic theory.