Wh-Headlines in German. Empirical Investigation and Theoretical Modelling of the Interface between Sentence Type and Genre

Wh 德语头条新闻。

• 批准号: 393766203
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Rita Finkbeiner
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung Deskriptive Sprachwissenschaft
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/393766203?language=en
• 关键词: Wh; Headlines; German.; Empirical; Investigation

This project deals with so-called wh-headlines in German. Wh-headlines are independent verb-final clauses with a wh-element in left-most position that are only licensed in headlines or titles. For instance, in February 2017, the leading article's headline in the Frankfurter Rundschau about the hunger crisis in Africa read (1) 'Warum die Hungersnot uns angeht' ('Why the hunger crisis concerns us'). The article might as well have been entitled (2) 'Die Hungersnot geht uns an' ('The hunger crisis concerns us') or (3) 'Warum geht uns die Hungersnot an?' ('Why does the hunger crisis concern us?'). However, only (1) achieves certain effects in an optimal way: It suggests the belief that the hunger crisis in fact concerns us, and arouses curiosity about the subsequent text from which the reader can expect an answer to the 'Why'. By contrast, (2) is a mere statement which readers do not have to share and simply can skim through. As to (3), while also generating the expectation of an answer to the 'Why', this headline seems to require the answer from the reader, thus not immediately directing the attention to the text. Even though wh-headlines are frequently used in German newspapers (e.g., 'Was Konzernchefs verdienen', 'What CEOs earn', MOPO 21.9.2005; 'Wie die Hannoveraner ihre Zähne pflegen', 'How Hannover residents take care of their teeth' HAZ 14.9.2007; 'Wo Ralph Giordano irrt', 'Where Ralph Giordano is wrong' taz 29.5.2007), they only play a marginal role in linguistic examinations of the functions of news headlines. In this project, it is claimed that the special grammatical properties of these sentences (i.e., having illocutionary force but the form of a dependent clause) can only be accounted for if reference is made to the headline format as a text-linguistic category. The descriptive goal of the project is to comprehensively describe for the first time the relation between the syntactic and semantic properties of wh-headlines and their pragmatic and communicative functions by using corpus-linguistic methods. The theoretical goal is to answer the fundamental question which role genre plays in a system of sentence types, and how sentence types contribute to the constitution of genre. While such a mutual relationship often has been assumed, a theoretical model that adequately relates the two dimensions to each other is still missing, as are systematic empirical investigations of this matter. The project exploits large synchronic and diachronic newspaper corpora, which are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed w.r.t. the distribution and development of wh-headlines. Beyond more specific findings as to the form, function, and change of wh-headlines, the project will also generate knowledge as to the more general principles of the interaction between sentence type, speech act and text, which also allow for a better understanding of the intricate interrelation between grammar as a conventional system and discourse as its usage potential.

这个项目涉及德语中所谓的wh标题。wh-标题句是一种在最左边带有wh-成分的独立的动词词尾分句，只在标题或标题中使用。例如，2017年2月，《法兰克福评论》关于非洲饥饿危机的主要文章标题为（1）“Warum die Hungerssnot uns angeht”（“为什么饥饿危机与我们有关”）。这篇文章的标题不妨改为（2）“饥饿危机与我们有关”或（3）“Warum geht uns die Hungersnot an？（“为什么饥饿危机与我们有关？').然而，只有（1）以最佳的方式达到了某些效果：它表明了饥饿危机实际上与我们有关的信念，并引起了读者对随后文本的好奇心，读者可以期待对“为什么”的答案。相比之下，（2）只是一个陈述，读者不必分享，只需浏览即可。至于（3），虽然也产生了对“为什么”的回答的期望，但这个标题似乎需要读者的回答，因此没有立即将注意力引向文本。尽管德国报纸经常使用wh标题（例如，“Was Konzernchefs verdienen”，“What CEOs earn”，MOPO 21.9.2005;“Wie die Hannoveraner ihre Zähne pflegen”，“How汉诺威居民take care of their teeth”HAZ 14.9.2007;“Wo Ralph Giordano fault”，“Where Ralph Giordano is wrong”taz 29.5.2007），它们在对新闻标题功能的语言学检查中只发挥边缘作用。在这个项目中，声称这些句子的特殊语法属性（即，具有言外之力，但形式为从属分句），只有将标题格式作为一个语篇语言学范畴来考虑才能得到解释。该项目的描述性目标是首次采用语料库语言学的方法全面描述wh标题的句法语义特征与其语用交际功能之间的关系。其理论目标是回答语类在句类系统中扮演何种角色以及句类如何构成语类的基本问题。虽然这种相互关系经常被假定，但仍然缺少一个将这两个维度充分联系起来的理论模型，就像对这一问题的系统的经验调查一样。该项目利用了大量的共时和历时的报纸语料库，并对其进行了定量和定性分析。wh标题的分布和发展。除了更具体的发现，如形式，功能和变化的wh-标题，该项目还将产生的知识，更一般的原则之间的相互作用的句子类型，言语行为和文本，这也允许更好地理解之间的错综复杂的相互关系语法作为一个传统的系统和话语作为其使用潜力。