German future constructions - past and present: A corpus-based perspective

这个项目解决的问题是，说今天德语的人如何提到未来的事件，以及在过去的几个世纪里，供未来参考的惯例是如何变化的。为此，使用了基于语料库的方法，即我们考虑到真实的数据，使用了一些不同的资源，其中一些资源是最近才提供的。这个项目可以分为两个大的领域：a)从历史的角度，我们调查未来结构是如何‘成为’+不定式(例如“ich Werde Morgen nach Hamburg fahren”‘I Werde Morgen nach Hamburg fahren’)发展起来的，以及哪些其他结构可以被认为是这个模式的前身或竞争者。例如，人们经常认为，情态动词结构，特别是Sollen‘will’+不定式，在德语的早期阶段也被用于将来的指称，并且它们可能在weden+不定式的语法化过程中发挥作用，因为它们可能是类比模板。此外，WERDEN+现在分词经常被认为是潜在的前身(“es wird regnend”Lit)。‘天在下雨’)。该项目使用数据驱动的方法解决了这些不同的构造如何相互关联这一极具争议的问题。我们从最近可用的德语历史阶段参考语料库中提取了所有相关构式的所有实例，并对它们进行了语义和句法标准的标注。通过这样做，我们可以评估每个构式在多大程度上被用于未来的参考，文献中提出的众多因素中有哪些实际上对语言使用者的构式选择起到了作用，以及这些因素是如何相互作用的。B)从共时的角度考察了在现代德语中表达将来指称的两种最重要的可能性之间的选择是什么因素，即结构weden+不定式和所谓的未来态现在时(如“ich gehe Morgen ins Kino”，LIT)。‘我明天去看电影’)另一方面。我们认为语域和语篇类型(例如，在概念上更多地是口头交流而不是书面交流)以及语义和句法因素起到了一定的作用。语义因素包括时间距离、句法距离、其他结构在直接语境中的出现以及在否定或疑问语境中的出现。综上所述，这些关于德语未来参照的历史和现实惯例的研究有助于澄清一些悬而未决的问题，这些问题在以前的文献中已经从理论的角度进行了广泛的讨论，但现在可以首次在大量经验数据的基础上进行探讨。

This project addresses the question of how speakers of present-day German refer to future events and how the conventions for future reference have changed over the past centuries. To this end, a corpus-based approach is used, i.e. we take authentic data into account, using a number of different resources, some of which have become available only recently. The project can be divided into two broad areas: a) From a historical perspective, we investigate how the future construction werden ‘become’ + infinitive (e.g. “ich werde morgen nach Hamburg fahren” ‘I will go to Hamburg tomorrow’) developed and which other constructions can be considered predecessors or competitors of this pattern. For example, it is often assumed that modal verb constructions, especially sollen ‘shall’ + Infinitive, were used for future reference in earlier stages of German as well and that they could play a role in the grammaticalization of werden + infinitive as they might have served as analogical templates. In addition, werden + present participle is often discussed as a potential predecessor (“es wird regnend” lit. ‘it becomes raining’). This project approaches the highly controversial question of how these different constructions relate to each other with a data-driven approach. We extract all instances of all relevant constructions from the newly available reference corpora of historical stages of German and annotate them for semantic and syntactic criteria. By doing so, we can assess to what degree each construction is actually used for future reference, which of the numerous factors that have been proposed in the literature actually play a role in language users' choice of constructions, and how these factors interact with each other. b) From a synchronic perspective, we investigate which factors drive the choice between the two most important possibilities to express future reference in present-day German, namely the construction werden + infinitive on the one hand and the so-called futurate present (e.g. "ich gehe morgen ins Kino", lit. ‘I go to the cinema tomorrow’) on the other. We assume that register and text type (e.g. conceptually more oral vs. written communication) as well as semantic as well as syntactic factors play a role. Semantic factors include temporal distance, syntactic ones the occurrence of other constructions with werden ‘become’ in the immediate context or the occurrence in negated or interrogative contexts. Taken together, these studies about historical and present-day conventions of future reference in German can help to clarify a number of open questions that have been discussed extensively from a theoretical perspective in the previous literature but that can now be approached on the basis of a substantial amount of empirical data for the first time.