Perspective in German and French: Divergences in Formal Marking and Temporal Anchoring

Abstract

In narratives, either a narrator or a protagonist may be the perspective taker. Importantly, shifts between the two are possible. German and French differ with respect to the means which indicate that the perspective is shifted. While German may use a specific pronoun to indicate that the perspective is shifted from the protagonist to the narrator, French may display tense-aspect forms deviating from the expected ones. In our analysis, we take into account larger strings of context, thus committing to the discourse level. We apply a staged translation approach. This allows us to determine more precisely the diverging functioning of the language-specific means of perspective marking. The comparison of the means indicating perspective shifts opens a second question. If French allows for deviating tense-aspect forms, may the temporal anchoring diverge between the two languages? We confirm this on the grounds of a comparison of translations of German free indirect discourse to French.