German Construction Research Articles

Adjectival Construction in English and German: A Contrastive Analysis

Adjectival Construction in English and German: A Contrastive Analysis

Cluster analysis of word-order judgment latencies for German active and passive sentences

A group of nine German-speaking Ss judged pairs of words as “forward” or “reversed” with regard to a previously learned sentence. Response latencies for all “forward” judgments were subjected to hierarchical cluster analysis. The resulting tree diagrams reflect some of the differences marked in the active and passive constructions in German. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that Ss store sentences as hierarchically organized subgroups.

Infinitive Constructions in German: A Reply to Mark Twain

In the essay entitled The Awful German Language, Mark Twain suggests a number of ways in which the German language might be improved. Among the reforms proposed by the author is one which would require a speaker of German stop talking when he is done, and not to hang a string of those useless 'haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden seins' to the end of his oration! While Twain's reforms were set forth tongue-in-cheek, most students of German fully share his dismay at the verb clusters which so frequently occur at the end of a grammatical clause. Since these verb clusters often involve infinitive constructions, it is essential for students to be able to recognize all forms of the infinitive if this aspect of German grammar is ever to be mastered.

The Effect upon Recall of Syntactical Construction in German

The Effect upon Recall of Syntactical Construction in German

Advanced Readings in Chemical and Technical German

THE selections for translation given in this book have been chosen from seven standard works of reference in German, which cover inorganic and organic chemistry and metallurgy. No explanation is given as to why physical chemistry has been excluded, and the omission seems curious. There is an introduction giving some points of German grammar and construction which would be useful in revision. A minimum chemical German vocabulary arranged in numbered order of frequency of occurrence follows. Since physical chemistry is not represented in the book, this order is purely accidental and of no real value.

War Literature II

Is Britain’s frontier on the Rhine or on the Straits of Dover? Since July, 1940, this question has been a poignant one. It has a more than military significance, however, for it comports great moral issues, the duty or indifference which Britain owes to the Continent of Europe. That it owes only indifference is the theme of one of the most interesting books which the war has produced in English. Sea tower, by T 124, is a book lucid in its composition and extremely compelling in its conclusions. Briefly, the author sets out to show that the original Anglo-French Entente, which first caused us to send great armies to the Continent, arose out of the threat to British sea-power when the Germans began to build a large navy in the first years of this century. This German construction was the result of the appreciation by the Kaiser and his advisers of the doctrine elucidated in Mahan’s classic work on sea-power, that ‘Great Britain, the wealthiest country in the world, possessor of the world’s greatest empire,’ had achieved that position through her naval supremacy. The author maintains that, as the threat was a naval one, it was paradoxical to contribute a great land-army to the struggle on the Continent, and successfully shows that the responsibility rests chiefly upon two men; these were Sir Edward Grey and Sir Henry Wilson, two men whose reputations become more questionable year by year. An expeditionary force, he says, was no more necessary to our interests in 1939 than it was in 1914.

Nationalism and International Science

DR. HANS HOYER, of the Leverkusen-L G. Werk, referring to the facetious note from a correspondent published in NATURE of January 4, p. 28, says that no one in Germany proposes to adopt new words for ‘mikroskop’ or ‘binokular’; and that in any event the word coined by our correspondent was an impossible German construction. We may point out that in the note in NATURE of December 28, 1935, p. 1021, on the proposed new German scientific words, we recorded that the Editor of the Chemiker Zeitung was opposed to the adoption of such an innovation as Kleinsehwerkzeuj) for Mikroskop. Another correspondent, writing upon the same subject, says, “I have travelled much in Germany during the past three years, and I consider it my duty to draw your attention to the fact that eighty to ninety per cent of German scientists have no great sympathy with certain doctrines of their Government and with those of ten to twenty per cent of their Nazi colleagues. … I hope you understand that only my great interest in your unique journal, NATURE, and in the promotion of international cooperation, has induced me to write this letter. Never write ‘Germany’ or ‘German scientists', but something like ‘a small, but unfortunately powerful, group of German scientists'. Hundreds and hundreds of German scientists have during the past few years risked more for their Jewish colleagues, etc., than is known in England”.

The Double Infinitive Construction in German

The Double Infinitive Construction in German

German Constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German constructions

German constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German constructions

German constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

German Constructions

The Factitive in German

The design of the present article is a discussion of some points of special interest in the factitive construction in German and its comparison with that of the same case in the cognate languages; this will best be attained by an historical tracing of this construction as far back as possible and expedient, and by showing its later and special development on German soil. Clearness will necessitate a discussion of the nature and functions of this case and its relations to the accusative (to which it is now more nearly allied) and to the other cases. Inasmuch as the factitive case forms part of the predicate it will involve the consideration of the predicative idea, or the relation of subject, verb and object to one another, since these three ideas, according to Becker, the idea of action expressed by the verb, the idea of being, either as agent of the action, as in case of the subject, or as objective and terminal point of the force of the verb, as in case of the passive object, form when united that antithesis of action and being out of which the sentence is developed. The intimate relation of the active subject and passive object appears in that “what is predicated of the subject as an action, may be predicated of the object as suffering,” whenever it becomes subject, but always so that it forms a direct antithesis to the real agent. Both are again intimately connected with the verb as its support or immediate complement and modifier. The subject, however, always represents something general and indeterminate while the verb, either in itself or with its complement or modifier, i. e. the predicate, is specific. It would appear, then, that the verb contains not only the idea of motion or the active force in the sentence, but it also unites in itself the additional idea of substance, not necessarily appearing as substantive, but rather in the motion which of itself forms the synthetic bond between the subject and this substantive element of the verb. These two elements of the verb, the substantial or predicative and the verbal or copulative, form the predicative idea of every sentence. Whenever the verb contains more of the substantial element it becomes firmer and self-supporting and we call it intransitive, but when the verbal element predominates and the substantial element is to a greater or less degree eliminated, then the verb seeks support and durability in a new substance, the object becomes the necessary complement, and we call the verb transitive; hence the frequent transition from one State to the other (cf. Rumpel in Hübschmann Zur Casuslehre, p. 59.). The very nature of the transitive verb requires an immediate complement for the completion of its sense, which the self-reliant intransitive verb can dispense with, though capable of modification by an added substantive. Still a third class of verbs, which do not form a complete thought even when qualified by an object, require besides the regular object an additional complement or modifier for the completion of the predicative idea. This may properly be called the verbal objective to the object; it is also called essive or predicative case, better known as the factitive. The nature of this additional complement, its relation to the regular object and the verb must claim our attention for a moment before we proceed to special cases.