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

这个项目涉及德语中所谓的“wh-headlines”。Wh-headlines是独立的动词结语从句，在最左边有一个h-元素，只在标题或标题中使用。例如，2017年2月，《法兰克福评论》（Frankfurter Rundschau）关于非洲饥饿危机的头条文章的标题是(1)“为什么饥饿危机与我们有关”。这篇文章的标题也可以改成(2)“Die Hungersnot get unan”（“饥饿危机与我们有关”）或(3)“我们的饥饿不是和我们有关吗？”（“为什么饥饿危机与我们有关？”）。然而，只有(1)以一种最优的方式达到了一定的效果：它表明了一种信念，即饥饿危机实际上与我们有关，并引起了读者对后续文本的好奇心，读者可以从中期待“为什么”的答案。相比之下，(2)是一个简单的陈述，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”的答案的期望，但这个标题似乎要求读者回答，因此没有立即将注意力转移到文本上。尽管“谁”标题在德国报纸中经常使用（例如，“Konzernchefs verdienen”，“ceo挣多少钱”，MOPO， 2005年9月21日；“Wie die Hannoveraner ihre Zähne pflegen”，“汉诺威居民如何照顾他们的牙齿”，HAZ， 2007年9月14日；“Wo Ralph Giordano irt”，“Ralph Giordano错在哪里”，HAZ， 2007年5月29日），但它们在新闻标题功能的语言学检查中只发挥了边缘作用。在这个项目中，它声称，这些句子的特殊语法属性（即，有言外之力，但有从属子句的形式）只有在参考标题格式作为文本语言学范畴时才能解释。该项目的描述目标是首次用语料库语言方法全面描述wh标题的句法和语义特征及其语用和交际功能之间的关系。理论目标是回答体裁在句式系统中所起的作用，以及句式如何对体裁的构成作出贡献的基本问题。虽然经常假定这种相互关系，但仍然缺乏将两个维度相互充分联系起来的理论模型，也缺乏对这一问题的系统实证调查。该项目利用大型共时性和历时性的报纸语料库，定量和定性地分析世界新闻标题的分布和发展。除了更具体的发现，如形式、功能和wh标题的变化，该项目还将产生关于句子类型、言语行为和文本之间相互作用的更一般原则的知识，这也允许更好地理解语法作为传统系统和话语作为其使用潜力之间复杂的相互关系。

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.