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Fragehandlungen und Frageverben. Ein Beitrag zur Vermittlung von Pragmatik, Grammatiktheorie und Lexikographie
499
Book reviews
Merlini makes few allowances for lethargic readers with less than an iron will. But then her master Peirce was not easy reading either. An empiricalminded linguist might occasionally wish for more exemplification, even of samples long enough to suggest stylistic flavour, and of different manifestations of markedness and naturalness in specific text types and styles. A sketch towards a catalogue of possible exponents of semiotic principles at different levels of discourse and text would also be welcome. I already emphasized that a certain structure, or a certain density of a certain structure, may be marked (or have low naturalness and low expectancy) in one context, and unmarked (or have high naturalness and high expectancy) in another context. Though involving enormous labour, more elaborate stylistic and text-typological analyses of a range of different texts would be the obvious next step in finding backgrounds and touchstones for judgements of markedness and naturalness. Indeed Merlini is at her best when describing concrete text strategies characteristic of specific text types. For instance she interestingly shows how in economic texts, the argument tends to run from theory to concrete predictions. This strategy is reflected both in textual macro-structuring and in the themerheme arrangement of sentences (pp. 157ff.): “the themerheme organization is tendentially diagrammatic with the macro-level of discourse . .” (p. 160). One particular constellation of exponents of semiotic universals thus turns into a style marker. Altogether, Merlini has written a provocative book. To begin with, she joins the advocates of a processual view of discourse as an outcome of conflicts between opposing forces and of conspiracies between compatible ones. Secondly, she shows that markedness and naturalness can exist at many different levels of language, discourse and semiotics. Thirdly, and more tacitly, her book brings up the fundamental problem of optimizing what M.A.K. Halliday calls the delicacy level in linguistic description. Semiotic generalizations are powerful in covering a lot, but on the other hand they are so general and non-delicate that bridging them to nitty-gritty linguistic detail may be difficult. In suggesting designs for some such bridges from universals to particulars Merlini has successfully faced an important challenge.
Wolfgang Zimmermann, Fragehandlungen und Frageverben. Ein Beitrag zur Vermittlung von Pragmatik, Grammatiktheorie und Lexikographie. Erlanger Studien Bd. 76. Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1988. xii + 608 pp. DM 68,00. Reviewed
by Jiirgen
The first part
Lenerz*
of this book,
a dissertation
written
* Correspondence to: J. Lenerz, Institut fiir Deutsche Sprache K61n, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-W 5000 Kiiln 41, Germany.
in Erlangen, und
Literatur,
is a rather Universitlt
zu
500
Book reviews
lengthy and tedious presentation of the literature as it may have been considered relevant in introductory courses in linguistics in the seventies, covering the basic positions in speech act theory as well as the work in generative semantics plus its well-known criticism. It is apparent that the author relies on the handbook literature to a large extent. For the most part, it remains unclear what all this is supposed to have to do with the subject of the book in any precise sense, apart from the fact that the author seems to assure himself of the necessary preconditions for any kind of dissertation in linguistic pragmatics. Most important, the intention as specified in the subtitle, is not fulfilled. The account of various positions in the linguistic literature does not, to my mind, contribute by itself to a ‘mediation’ between pragmatics, the theory of grammar and lexicography. Almost all the comments on the first 300 pages of the book should have been omitted. Chapter 3 (pp. 301441) entitled ‘Zur Lexikologie der Verben des Fragens’ (‘On the lexicology of questions verbs’) presents the author’s empirical study, which made use of an immense amount of original data in the large body of written and spoken German provided by the Mannheim corpus, the Freiburg corpus, and the files of the Duden-Verlag, along with the results of a questionnaire of the author’s (cf. the 9-page appendix at the end of the text, following p. 601), which was answered by 170 persons. The result is a meticulous description of the conditions of use of some 40-odd German question verbs, presented in two parts. The second part of chapter 3 (esp. pp. 351ff.) consists of a systematic description, based on several criteria considered relevant for the analysis of questions and question acts: syntactic and semantic aspects (syntactic realization of the person asking a question, the person being asked and the object of the question, etc.) are treated as well as those concerning stylistic and pragmatic aspects of the use of questions in different situations. The various criteria are developed in the preceding parts of the book mainly on the basis of concepts of (generative) semantics (cf. p. 200, schema 5) and other proposals concerning the act of asking as such (cf. esp. pp. 301 ff. for some exemplification). The second part of chapter 3 gives a detailed description of the use of the verbs under consideration. Following chapter 3 is an attempt at a lexicographical description of the verbs concerned (pp. 4655561); additional appendices give the result of the questionnaire and some other information on the data drawn from the literature. Apart from lengthy and detailed descriptions of the grammatical properties and the use of a major part of the German question verbs, the book does not, to my mind, present any results worth mentioning. Especially, the author seems not to be aware of any developments in the field in the eighties. Except for Dietmar Zaefferer’s (1984) monography on Frugeausdriicke und Frugen inz Deutschen, which is mentioned only in passing (p. 71) there is almost no literature taken into consideration which was published later than 1980. Important work on rhetorical questions (like Meibauer 1985) is missing. No
Book reviews
501
mention is made of the influential work of Bierwisch and a number of German linguists in the (then) East German group of the ‘Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR’, concerning the relation between sentence type, sentence mood and illocutionary force. l Much more relevant work is missing, but these remarks may suffice. Annoying is the fact that neither author nor editors took the trouble of reducing the volume of the text by simply omitting the main part of the first two chapters and reducing the redundancy in chapter 3 which arises from the fact that the author presents his material at least twice in different order and under (only slightly) different aspects. Thus, the reading of the bulky book is a rather tedious task, and, to my mind, not recommendable.
References Bierwisch, Manfred, 1980. Semantic structure and illocutionary force. In: J.R. Searle, F. Kiefer and M. Bierwisch, eds., Speech act theory and pragmatics, l-36. Dordrecht: Reidel. Doherty, Monika, 1985. Epistemische Bedeutung. Studia grammatica 23. Berlin: AkademieVerlag. Kiefer, Ferenc, ed., 1983. Questions and answers. Dordrecht. Meibauer, Jorg, 1985. Rhetorische Fragen. Tubingen: Niemeyer. Motsch, Wolfgang, 1984. Satzmodi und illokutive Funktionen. Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 44: 10-22. Motsch, Wolfgang and Dieter Viehweger, eds., 1983. Richtungen der modernen Semantikforschung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. RdiiEka, Rudolf and Wolfgang Motsch, eds., 1983. Untersuchungen zur Semantik. Studia Grammatica 22. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Zaefferer, Dietmar, 1984. Frageausdriicke und Fragen im Deutschen. Zu ihrer Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik. Munchen: Fink.
1 as, e.g., Bierwisch (1980) Motsch (1984) and Doherty (1985) and the contributions ed. (1983). Motsch and Viehweger, eds. (1983), and Rdiicka and Motsch, eds. (1983)
in Kiefer,
Book reviews
Merlini makes few allowances for lethargic readers with less than an iron will. But then her master Peirce was not easy reading either. An empiricalminded linguist might occasionally wish for more exemplification, even of samples long enough to suggest stylistic flavour, and of different manifestations of markedness and naturalness in specific text types and styles. A sketch towards a catalogue of possible exponents of semiotic principles at different levels of discourse and text would also be welcome. I already emphasized that a certain structure, or a certain density of a certain structure, may be marked (or have low naturalness and low expectancy) in one context, and unmarked (or have high naturalness and high expectancy) in another context. Though involving enormous labour, more elaborate stylistic and text-typological analyses of a range of different texts would be the obvious next step in finding backgrounds and touchstones for judgements of markedness and naturalness. Indeed Merlini is at her best when describing concrete text strategies characteristic of specific text types. For instance she interestingly shows how in economic texts, the argument tends to run from theory to concrete predictions. This strategy is reflected both in textual macro-structuring and in the themerheme arrangement of sentences (pp. 157ff.): “the themerheme organization is tendentially diagrammatic with the macro-level of discourse . .” (p. 160). One particular constellation of exponents of semiotic universals thus turns into a style marker. Altogether, Merlini has written a provocative book. To begin with, she joins the advocates of a processual view of discourse as an outcome of conflicts between opposing forces and of conspiracies between compatible ones. Secondly, she shows that markedness and naturalness can exist at many different levels of language, discourse and semiotics. Thirdly, and more tacitly, her book brings up the fundamental problem of optimizing what M.A.K. Halliday calls the delicacy level in linguistic description. Semiotic generalizations are powerful in covering a lot, but on the other hand they are so general and non-delicate that bridging them to nitty-gritty linguistic detail may be difficult. In suggesting designs for some such bridges from universals to particulars Merlini has successfully faced an important challenge.
Wolfgang Zimmermann, Fragehandlungen und Frageverben. Ein Beitrag zur Vermittlung von Pragmatik, Grammatiktheorie und Lexikographie. Erlanger Studien Bd. 76. Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1988. xii + 608 pp. DM 68,00. Reviewed
by Jiirgen
The first part
Lenerz*
of this book,
a dissertation
written
* Correspondence to: J. Lenerz, Institut fiir Deutsche Sprache K61n, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, D-W 5000 Kiiln 41, Germany.
in Erlangen, und
Literatur,
is a rather Universitlt
zu
500
Book reviews
lengthy and tedious presentation of the literature as it may have been considered relevant in introductory courses in linguistics in the seventies, covering the basic positions in speech act theory as well as the work in generative semantics plus its well-known criticism. It is apparent that the author relies on the handbook literature to a large extent. For the most part, it remains unclear what all this is supposed to have to do with the subject of the book in any precise sense, apart from the fact that the author seems to assure himself of the necessary preconditions for any kind of dissertation in linguistic pragmatics. Most important, the intention as specified in the subtitle, is not fulfilled. The account of various positions in the linguistic literature does not, to my mind, contribute by itself to a ‘mediation’ between pragmatics, the theory of grammar and lexicography. Almost all the comments on the first 300 pages of the book should have been omitted. Chapter 3 (pp. 301441) entitled ‘Zur Lexikologie der Verben des Fragens’ (‘On the lexicology of questions verbs’) presents the author’s empirical study, which made use of an immense amount of original data in the large body of written and spoken German provided by the Mannheim corpus, the Freiburg corpus, and the files of the Duden-Verlag, along with the results of a questionnaire of the author’s (cf. the 9-page appendix at the end of the text, following p. 601), which was answered by 170 persons. The result is a meticulous description of the conditions of use of some 40-odd German question verbs, presented in two parts. The second part of chapter 3 (esp. pp. 351ff.) consists of a systematic description, based on several criteria considered relevant for the analysis of questions and question acts: syntactic and semantic aspects (syntactic realization of the person asking a question, the person being asked and the object of the question, etc.) are treated as well as those concerning stylistic and pragmatic aspects of the use of questions in different situations. The various criteria are developed in the preceding parts of the book mainly on the basis of concepts of (generative) semantics (cf. p. 200, schema 5) and other proposals concerning the act of asking as such (cf. esp. pp. 301 ff. for some exemplification). The second part of chapter 3 gives a detailed description of the use of the verbs under consideration. Following chapter 3 is an attempt at a lexicographical description of the verbs concerned (pp. 4655561); additional appendices give the result of the questionnaire and some other information on the data drawn from the literature. Apart from lengthy and detailed descriptions of the grammatical properties and the use of a major part of the German question verbs, the book does not, to my mind, present any results worth mentioning. Especially, the author seems not to be aware of any developments in the field in the eighties. Except for Dietmar Zaefferer’s (1984) monography on Frugeausdriicke und Frugen inz Deutschen, which is mentioned only in passing (p. 71) there is almost no literature taken into consideration which was published later than 1980. Important work on rhetorical questions (like Meibauer 1985) is missing. No
Book reviews
501
mention is made of the influential work of Bierwisch and a number of German linguists in the (then) East German group of the ‘Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR’, concerning the relation between sentence type, sentence mood and illocutionary force. l Much more relevant work is missing, but these remarks may suffice. Annoying is the fact that neither author nor editors took the trouble of reducing the volume of the text by simply omitting the main part of the first two chapters and reducing the redundancy in chapter 3 which arises from the fact that the author presents his material at least twice in different order and under (only slightly) different aspects. Thus, the reading of the bulky book is a rather tedious task, and, to my mind, not recommendable.
References Bierwisch, Manfred, 1980. Semantic structure and illocutionary force. In: J.R. Searle, F. Kiefer and M. Bierwisch, eds., Speech act theory and pragmatics, l-36. Dordrecht: Reidel. Doherty, Monika, 1985. Epistemische Bedeutung. Studia grammatica 23. Berlin: AkademieVerlag. Kiefer, Ferenc, ed., 1983. Questions and answers. Dordrecht. Meibauer, Jorg, 1985. Rhetorische Fragen. Tubingen: Niemeyer. Motsch, Wolfgang, 1984. Satzmodi und illokutive Funktionen. Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 44: 10-22. Motsch, Wolfgang and Dieter Viehweger, eds., 1983. Richtungen der modernen Semantikforschung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. RdiiEka, Rudolf and Wolfgang Motsch, eds., 1983. Untersuchungen zur Semantik. Studia Grammatica 22. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Zaefferer, Dietmar, 1984. Frageausdriicke und Fragen im Deutschen. Zu ihrer Syntax, Semantik und Pragmatik. Munchen: Fink.
1 as, e.g., Bierwisch (1980) Motsch (1984) and Doherty (1985) and the contributions ed. (1983). Motsch and Viehweger, eds. (1983), and Rdiicka and Motsch, eds. (1983)
in Kiefer,