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Dieser Vortrag stellt Kriterien der Auswahl von deutsch-tschechischen und tschechisch-deutschen Teilkorpora für die Analyse der deutsch-tschechischen Wortstellungsunterschiede, einen Kommentar zur Analyse der Dependenzgrammatik und der Thema-Rhema-Gliederung und die Veröffentlichung einiger Erkenntnisse dieser Forschungsarbeit vor.
The filling of the 'Vorfeld' in German sentences is basically obligatory; which constituent, however, actually moves to the Vorfeld is underdetermined by syntax and thus governed presumably by discourse factors. Coming from English, there are certain competing expectations one could have: either the topic — more specifically, the backward-looking center — of a sentence is moved to the Vorfeld, or an element in a poset relationship to a set mentioned in the previous discourse, or elements with other functions, such as the exposition of brand-new information or the setting of a scene. A study of a corpus of texts of different stylistic levels showed that indeed all elements expected to appear in the Vorfeld are eligible for Vorfeld-movement, but that there is a strict ranking. Preferred Vorfeld-fillers are phrases containing brand-new information as well as scene-setting elements; only if no such elements are present can elements in a poset relationship with some previously mentioned set be moved to the Vorfeld. Finally, if such elements are not present either, backward-looking centers can move to the Vorfeld. Backward-looking centers have, for this reason, a relatively poor quota among Vorfeld-fillers, namely around 50%.
This paper examines four German transportation verbs with the prefix weg-, concentrating on their syntax and their semantic and pragmatic interpretations. The empirical data investigated are from across-linguistic Corpus of German and Brazilian Portuguese as foreign languages. The analysis is based on the concept of focus, which is defined as a point on the path along which the patient of the process moves. The focus must be either mentioned or contextually evident. Each transportation verb will be able to establish a typical focus. German prefix-verbs with weg- are characterized by a focus-conflict that can be resolved through different interpretation strategies.