Bare Root Infinitives in German

Irene Rapp,Jonas Bozenhard,Saskia Brockmann,Christian Fortmann,Susanne Riecker

doi:10.15462/ijll.v10i2.133

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how linguistic and literary studies can benefit from a joint work about linguistic structures in poetry. Firstly, the analysis of poetry has an important impact on linguistic theory as it leads our attention to specific structures and meanings that so far have not been considered. Secondly, a close linguistic analysis can reveal hitherto overlooked facets of meaning which have a great significance for the overall interpretation of a poem. We focus on Bare Root Infinitives (BRIs) in German. As they lack the features for tense, mood, person and number, they are more flexible in meaning than finite forms. When looking at poetry, besides the well-known deontic and bouleticmeanings (cf. Reis 1995, 2003; Gärtner 2014) a third meaning that we call reactive meaning stands out. Remarkably, this reactive meaning can also be found in everyday language. Its specific semantic properties show that a semantic analysis of BRIs in the style of Kaufmann (2012) is adequate: modality, but not non-referentiality, is a “hard-wired” semantic property of BRIs. The specific case study of the poem ‘muster fixieren’ (‘fixating patterns’) by Nico Bleutge reveals how the restricted context of the poem interacts with the different interpretations of BRIs to arrive at a complex text interpretation. Keywords: bare root infinitives, semantic-pragmatic interface, poetry, modality, pragmatic enrichment, semantics

Highlights

We intend to show that both linguistic theory and literary scholarship can benefit from a joint analysis of poetic texts
Nominalised infinitives, present participles and Bare Root Inf initives (BRIs) are more flexible in meaning than finite forms, since they lack the features for tense, mood, person and number: for instance, due to the lack of person-number-features, non-finite verb forms cannot occur with an overt subject
We argue that the BRIs must be attributed a reactive meaning, since the events described seem to be an inevitable consequence of a specific situation

Summary

Introduction

We intend to show that both linguistic theory and literary scholarship can benefit from a joint analysis of poetic texts. We will argue that, firstly, poetry is an important data source for theoretical linguistics (cf. Bade and Beck 2017).

The interpretation of BRIs in German

The reactive reading: A ‘touchstone’ for the theory

Evidence for the interpretive potential of BRIs from poetry

Different interpretations for the BRI ‘muster fixieren’

Conclusion