Abstract
Abstract In present-day German, the present subjunctive (Konjunktiv I) and the modal verb sollen ‘shall’ are used to mark reported discourse. In this paper, we aim at clarifying the semantic relationship between these two markers. We suggest that they basically pertain to two separate semantic-functional domains, viz. origo-shifting versus evidentiality. While Konjunktiv I is an origo-shifting quotative marker, sollen is a reportive evidential marker. We argue that the proposed basic difference in semantics accounts for the different behavior of these elements in present-day German: e. g. with respect to their distribution over different contexts of use, to complementation patters, to combinatorial potential with certain prepositional phrases, etc. These theoretical observations are corroborated by the results of two small corpus studies: the one analyzing sollen that is embedded under a communicative matrix predicate, and the other focusing on combinatorial regularities with prepositional phrases with nach ‘after’, laut ‘as per’, and zufolge ‘according to’.
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