Modern German Research Articles

Англоязычное влияние на процесс возникновения новых слов в современном немецком языке (на материале словарей неологизмов, связанных с тематикой пандемии коронавируса)

The aim of the study is to determine how the English language influences the process of new lexemes emergence in modern German based on the material of dictionaries of neologisms related to the topic of COVID-19. The scientific novelty lies in the identification of the mechanisms of the English-language influence when German neologisms appear. As a result, it is proved that the English influence is manifested in the borrowing of whole words, components for the formation of hybrid compound words and pseudo-borrowings, as well as the word-formation model of complex syntactic words. To replenish the vocabulary of the German language, the interaction of the processes of borrowing, word formation and semantic derivation is typical.

Черный юмор в неформальном академическом дискурсе (на материале современного немецкого языка)

The article discusses the features of German-language black humour conditioned by the factor of the addressee. The aim of the work is to ascertain a connection between anecdotes in the genre of black humour and the level of recipients’/readers’ education. The scientific novelty of the research is due to the authors’ appeal to the study of the issue of correlating jokes in the genre of black humour with academic discourse. The article presents a description of the lexical markers of academic discourse in modern German jokes in the genre of black humour, which are bookish and special vocabulary, foreign culturally significant vocabulary, vocabulary of the university environment, as well as precedent proper names. As a result, it has been found that only one fifth of black humour jokes are addressed to educated people.

Linguistic Representations of <i>Disgust</i> in the Modern German Language

The present research featured linguistic units of the primary and secondary nomination, as well as expressive interjections, which describe the emotion of disgust and its physiological characteristics. The purpose of the research was to analyze the linguistic representations of disgust and to describe the physiological characteristics that reflect the fundamental status of the emotion. The study focused on the German lexeme Ekel, linguistic metaphors, metaphors with somatic components, and expressive interjections. The authors analyzed linguistic representations of the emotion of disgust, outlined its somatic components, described its physiological characteristics, defined the actual linguistic nomination of disgust, classified linguistic metaphors and metaphors with the somatic components according to linguistic hierarchy, and analyzed the somatic components that reflect the physiological characteristics of disgust. The emotion of disgust appeared to be based on such physical sensations as choking, nausea, and vomiting. The expressive interjections proved to reflect the intensity of the emotion. Disgust is represented at three levels: non-verbal – by facial expressions and gestures; physiological – nausea, asthma attacks, gag reflex; verbally – the base lexeme-representative der Ekel, the metaphor-word die Grenze, the metaphorword with the somatic component Brechmittel, the metaphor-phrase Ekel schüren, the metaphor-sentence with the somatic component Das Ekelhafte würgt mich, and the expressive interjections Bäh!, Ih!, Igitt!, Pfui!

Словообразовательный потенциал существительного Corona в немецкой cубстантивной лексике периода пандемии COVID-19

This article examines the word-formation capacity of the noun base Corona, the core of the lexical-semantic field Coronavirus pandemic in modern German. It highlights the word-formation dynamics in the bulk of German nouns that are built with the noun stem Corona and are united in a thematic group. About 250 lexemes served as research material. Information on their usage was collected by examining the content presented in lexicographical editions, German news publications, on websites and social networks. The word-formation models of nouns that are currently productive in the German pandemic discourse were identified, with compounding defined as the dominant method of constructing neologisms in the German language. Among productive models the compounds with the noun stem Corona- were singled out; their word building meaning was characterized according to degrees of morpho-semantic motivation. The degree of word-formation activity of the models and affixes, which are productive in the lexical field under analyzes, was determined. Specificity of the usage and frequency level were distinguished; the lexemes that are formed after synonymous models showed semantic and functional differences. It is concluded that word formation of substantives in the time of coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the enhancement of the activity of peripheral word-formation models, in particular, paronomastic pattern.

INDICATORS OF CATEGORIAL SEMANTICS OF ITERATIVE TAXIS (on the material of the German language)

This article considers the issue of describing indicators of the categorical semantics of iterative, in particular, iterative-secondary taxis of simultaneity in modern German. Under the term «iterative-secondary taxis of simultaneity» we mean the secondary taxis values of simultaneity of the iterative (actually iterative, multiplicative, distributive) nature, combined with concomitant values of adverbial modification (modal, instrumental, medial, causal, etc.). Diagnostic indicators of the categorical semantics of the iterative-secondary taxis of simultaneity in the German language include genetically-iterative and derivational-iterative deverbatives, verbs of iterative semantics (multiplicatives, actually iteratives, diminutives, intensities, distributions, etc.), as well as iterative quantifiers, which are iterative attributes and adverbials of multiplicity, frequency, interval, usuality, counting complex, etc. The above indicators of iteration determine the actualization of the categorical semantics of various versions of the iterative-secondary taxis of simultaneity (in particular, iterative-modal, iterative-instrumental, iterative-medial, iterative-causal, iterative-concessive, iterative-conditional, iterative-final) in German.

Гибридная немецко-славянская семантика идишских глаголов с префиксом tse-

The aim of the research is to analyse the hybrid German-Slavic polysemy of Yiddish verbs with the prefix tse-. Scientific novelty lies in studying hybridisation of Yiddish as a synergy of the inherent properties of the original Middle High German language and the results of its contact with Slavic languages. The paper shows that the prefix tse- genetically goes back to the Middle High German ze[r]- and as a result of adstrate hybridisation, it also acquired the semantic properties of the Slavic prefix roz-/роз-/раз-. The research findings have shown that the German and Slavic components of the prefix tse- are reducible to the archiseme <split in two; apart>, which is contained in the Middle High German ze[r]-, the Slavic roz-/роз-/раз- and verbs with these prefixes, but it is found in the modern German zer- only partially, with a number of Yiddish verbs with tse- formed only on the basis of the Slavic model.

Formation of Neologisms with English Component ‘Lockdown’ in Modern german

During the pandemic, the German language lexicon was replenished with socially significant keywords, including anglicism ‘Lockdown’. The study of new formations on the basis of socially significant generating bases is important for studying the dynamics of word-formation processes in modern German, which determines the relevance of this work. The analysis of neoplasms with the ‘Lockdown’ component is carried out from the standpoint of the structural and semantic description of lexemes. The material for the analysis was neologisms from German printed online publications, as well as lexemes from the electronic database OWID. It is proved that the dominant nominations with the ‘Lockdown’ component are nouns, this phenomenon reflects the tendency towards substantiation and univerbation in the German language. Some adjectival composites have also been identified. Verbal nominations, represented by two lexemes with a structural feature: lockdownen and downlocken (down locken) are described. It is shown that ‘Lockdown’ anglicism is able to combine with borrowed and native roots and morphemes, forming composites, derivatives and phrases. Examples of the creation of occasional contaminants formed by analogy with the word ‘Lockdown’ are given. It has been established that composites with a metaphorical meaning are designed to express the attitude of a linguistic personality to realities. The differentiation of neologisms-synonyms in semantic and stylistic terms is revealed.

Thinking Proleptically: Paul Mendes-Flohr on Intellectual History as Second-Person Dialogue

The current article argues that Paul Mendes-Flohr’s turn to address contemporary challenges faced by Jews at large, and Israeli Jews in particular, is proleptic in the sense that it excavates the anticipation of the current intellectual, spiritual and moral reality from the intellectual history of modern German−Jewish thought. Based on a reading of his recent book, Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities, the discussion shows how Mendes-Flohr’s adaptation of Martin Buber’s call to aspire to I−Thou relations supports proleptic historiography both as a historiographical methodology and as a moral act.

Officials on the Scaffold: Lutheran Martyrdom in Andreas Gryphius’ Catharina von Georgien

In a reading of Gryphius’ Catharina von Georgien within its political and confessional context of Silesia at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, this article analyzes the transformation of the Christian martyr cult within early modern German tragedy. It argues that Gryphius used the hagiographic type of the royal martyr as a moral example and figure of governmental order. He depicted the pious Georgian martyr Queen Catharina and her devout officials as an inspiring community of civic virtue to be imitated by his fellow Silesians. This patriotic injunction of the tragedy resonates with legal concepts of public law put forward by Gryphius’ mentor, Georg Schönborner and others. The article finds that Gryphius’ martyr tragedy must be read as an aesthetic contribution to some of the legal movements decisive for German state formation around 1650.

Challenging Ancient DNA Results About Putative HLA Protection or Susceptibility to Yersinia pestis.

In a recent article, Immel et al. (Immel A, Key FM, Szolek A, Barquera R, Robinson MK, Harrison GF, Palmer WH, Spyrou MA, Susat J, Krause-Kyora B, et al. 2021. Analysis of genomic DNA from medieval plague victims suggests long-term effect of Yersinia pestis on human immunity genes. Mol Biol Evol. 38:4059–4076) extracted DNA from 36 individuals dead from plague in Ellwangen, Southern Germany, during the 16th century. By comparing their human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genotypes with those of 50 present-day Ellwangen inhabitants, the authors reported a significant decrease of HLA-B*51:01 and HLA-C*06:02 and a significant increase of HLA-DRB1*13:01/13:02 frequencies from ancient to modern populations. After comparing these frequencies with a larger sample of 8,862 modern Germans and performing simulations of natural selection, they concluded that these changes had been driven by natural selection. In an attempt to provide more evidence on such stimulating results, we explored the HLA frequency patterns over all of Europe, we predicted binding affinities of HLA-B/C/DRB1 alleles to 106,515 Yersinia pestis-derived peptides, and we performed forward simulations of HLA genetic profiles under neutrality. Our analyses do not sustain the conclusions of HLA protection or susceptibility to plague based on ancient DNA.

The Prosody of Directive Speech Acts: Pragmastylistic Aspect (On the Material of the Modern German Language)

The article represents the results of a phonetic experiment devoted to the study of pragmatically, and the stylistically determined manifestation of directive speech acts in the modern German language. The experiment allowed establishing the prosodic invariant of the directive speech act and describing variant patterns realized in diverse situational conditions which demonstrated a different degree of categoricalness and revealed their differential character on the level of prosodic expressive means. The research showed that pragmatic identification and stylistic differentiation of directive speech acts is realized utilizing all prosodic parameters - pitch, intensity and tempo. The complex analysis of pitch, intensity and tempo characteristics specific for situational variants of the directive illocutive allowed defining the level of involvement of these prosodic means in the functional realization of directive speech impact.

Regulating urban death in early modern German towns

ABSTRACT The article argues that in the course of the early modern period, urban death was ordered in new ways. Since the mid-sixteenth century, clerics and church officials already kept lists of the deceased in their congregation. Gradually, these functions were taken over by urban magistrates, who also promoted a new kind of order during burials. Through the rise of additional instructions, rules and orders, they gave urban death a new shape. The reasons for these instructions were manifold and included fear of divine punishment because of inappropriate behaviour, damage to the town through the spread of diseases and the fortification of privileges reserved for mayors, councilors, or high-ranking clerics. As the early modern period progressed, the number and details of the funeral ordinances increased. Additionally, burial spaces became increasingly regulated and by the nineteenth century, decrees by both rulers and individual towns stipulated how cemeteries should be regulated and administered.

The Geological Unconscious: German Literature and the Mineral Imaginary by Jason Groves

Reviewed by: The Geological Unconscious: German Literature and the Mineral Imaginary by Jason Groves Bernhard Malkmus The Geological Unconscious: German Literature and the Mineral Imaginary. By Jason Groves. New York: Fordham University Press. 2020. x+208 pp. $105. ISBN 978-0-8232-8810-6. Human civilization's geological agency in transforming the biosphere has been reframing the epistemologies of all academic disciplines, in particular in the humanities. Reflection on what it means to be human no longer takes place on a stage for which the natural world is a mere backdrop; it is complicated by the myriad feedback loops between human cultures and anthropogenically transformed natures that mark our human condition today. The geological imaginary in the Anthropocene is closely tied to the history of Earth systems sciences that emerged during the hottest phase of the Cold War and to the epistemic construction of a global environment by the United Nations and international diplomacy. It is thus a form of planetary thinking, for which the Austrian writer and polymath Raoul Schrott has forged the new literary genre of a 'scientific epic' in his Erste Erde Epos (Munich: Hanser, 2016). However, as Jan Volker Röhnert reminds us in his Über das Gehen im Karst (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2021), the geological imaginary has a much longer history, in particular in German-language letters. Geology is, of course, the discipline that revolutionized the human sense of time; it opened up the vista of unimaginable natural histories that allowed humans to conceive of life as an evolutionary development. Geology has also provided a plethora of metaphors for rethinking the human on the threshold to modernity; it has offered ambivalent imagery between the biotic and the abiotic, the latent and the manifest, the exploitable and the uncanny. Grounded in this ambivalence, geology in modern German literature functions also as a mode of thinking about alternative modernities. This is evident in Jason Groves's new study, which traces the signs of a planetary ecological reflexivity in the archive of German literature in modernity, aiming to unearth 'those imaginaries in which other earths emerged' (p. 1). His close readings of a 'mineral imaginary' add up to a genealogy of the discovery of a climatologically volatile and unreliable Earth. In the process, the study becomes a cryptogram of a planetary imagination that enables us to consider alternative genealogies of modernity and trace the roots of Anthropocene thinking. His point of departure is the observation that the climax of modern Subjektphilosophie coalesces with an unprecedented fecundity of scientific and imaginative thinking about minerality and geology. He thus complicates the conventional narrative of an intrinsically teleological post-Enlightenment concept of the subject by revealing the degree to which the reflection on human subjectivity around 1800 was modulated by creatureliness—and the degree to which that creatureliness encompassed both [End Page 308] animality and minerality. Intense efforts to imagine deep earth and deep time reframe the standardized genealogy of the modern subject. The Germanic obsession with foundlings, in particular, and the multiple attempts to reassemble historical narratives around these erratic witnesses to Earth's history offer a particularly compelling way of rethinking modern human self-reflection through the lens of 'the lithic' (p. 6). Groves is engaging in an exercise of ichnology; he is reading what was never written, he is tracking traces such as foundlings to piece together the hidden geology of intellectual history. In claiming a 'geophilological turn', however, he is probably overstating the case. In his Introduction one gets the impression that Groves wanted to synthesize his considerable theoretical acumen as early as possible. However, a more gradual argumentative approach that links theoretical inferences to concrete close readings and thus creates a narrative momentum would have been more reader-friendly. In spite of the apparent theoretical ambition, some of the references remain underexplored, for example trauma theory and colonialism. Some readers might find Groves's choice of authors somewhat eclectic and wonder why, for example, there are no in-depth discussions of Jean Paul and E. T. A Hoffmann or Theodor Fontane and Alfred Döblin. Others might bemoan the fact that the book does not strictly adhere to the format of a traditional academic...

"HERO" ARCHETYPE IN THE MODERN GERMAN LANGUAGE

In the collective unconscious of almost every nation there is an archetype of the hero, which is reflected in the linguistic picture of the world through the appropriate concept. The purpose of this study is to analyze the significance of the "hero" archetype in German linguistic culture. The object of research is the use of the lexeme HELD in German. The subject of the research is the syntagmatic and paradigmatic connections of the lexeme HELD, as well as the semantic content of the corresponding concept in the German language. In our study, we rely on such methods as analytical, descriptive, inductive, as well as sociological and logical-psychological techniques and the elements of distributive analysis. Results. The semantic content of the "hero" archetype in modern German linguistic culture has been established. Conclusions. In the German collective unconscious a hero is a person (man) who performs brave or extraordinary, socially significant deeds and who is distinguished by moral qualities, first of all courage, fearlessness and sacrifice, which brings him public recognition and fame, and makes him a role model. In another sense, the hero is the main protagonist of a certain work. Practical implementation. The results of the research can be used to form the intercultural competence of students and to study the mentality of the German people.

Мультимодальные аспекты лингвокреативности в политическом плакате (на материале немецкого языка)

The paper considers the types and compositional and conceptual functions of combinations of verbal and non-verbal elements in modern German political posters. The aim of the research is to identify the persuasive potential of multimodal interaction between verbal and non-verbal elements as manifestation of the addressee’s linguistic creativity. The scientific originality of the research is determined by the fact that it considers non-verbal elements of text structure together with verbal elements as multimodal implementation of syncretic linguistic creativity. As a result, it has been discovered that non-verbal elements either become an integral part of the meaning of linguo-creative elements of a political poster, or serve as pragmatic background for their better perception by the recipient.

Humour from a linguistic perspective

Humour represents a central aspect of our everyday conversation. This is why the study of humour has attracted the attention of researchers for centuries. Although research on humour in its numerous genres has been pursued for centuries, only scant attention has been paid to research on theoretically interpretation of the humour theory in compliance with an anthropocentric scientific paradigm based on the modern German language. The present study focuses on humour from a linguistic perspective, trying to describe the types of humour theories. The views of famous researchers on this problem have been analyzed. Before discussing humour theories in detail, it will be helpful to define humour. This study shows which of the theories are the most relevant ones for cognitive-semantic research, as well as what their function is. We can conclude that the classification of humour theories by J. Jablonska-Hood is the most comprehensive.

Parameters of Lexicographic Description of New Vocabulary of Modern German in Electronic Dictionary of Neologisms of Leibniz Institute for German Language

The problem of lexicographic fixation of neologisms at the present stage of development of German-language lexicography by private explanatory dictionaries of electronic format is considered. A fairly successful example of lexicographic practice was chosen as the object of the study — an electronic dictionary of neologisms of the modern German language on the lexicographic online portal of the Leibniz Institute for the German Language. The dictionary is a “living”, constantly updated edition, which is based on the criteria for the definition and classification of neologisms, developed by its compilers. The authors of the article performed an analysis of the parameters of the lexicographic description of neologisms in this dictionary. The question is raised about the mandatory or optional nature of the parameters used by the compilers of the dictionary when forming the microtext (dictionary entry). Standard and specific parameters of lexicographic description, which are profile for the dictionary of new words are distinguished: example-definition, first fixation, language reflection, encyclopedic information, representation in dictionaries, etc. The analysis of lexicographic practice sets the task of summarizing the practical experience of lexicographers in order to determine the optimal set of parameters for the codification of neology.

Early Modern German Shakespeare: “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet” / “Der Bestrafte Brudermord” and “Romio und Julieta” in Translation. Edited by Lukas Erne and Kareen Seidler

With their new series on Early Modern German Shakespeare, the Arden Shakespeare provides an invaluable look at Shakespeare’s influence on the European stage through an in-depth research compilation containing cross-references to years of scholarship on performance practices and textual clues. The series commences with the current scholarship on and a translation of Der Bestrafte Brudermord, a play based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Romio und Julieta, a version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Editors Lukas Erne and Kareen Seidler provide detailed commentary on the history of each of the plays. They look at the relationship of the German text to its origins, Shakespeare’s play, and stage history, comparing it to the surviving versions of Q1, Q2, and the Folio. The detailed annotations for Der Bestrafte Brudermord even include references to the Theaterkalender, where an excerpt of Der Bestrafte Brudermord was originally printed, as well as to Shakespeare’s...

Ժամանակակից գրական արևելահայերենի և գերմաներենի ենթակայական ու հարակատար դերբայների քերականական տիպաբանություն

Subject participles of modern German and literary Eastern Armenian maintain the uniformity of composition. Resultative participle of German, due to the peculiarities of the verb, appears in two different forms of composition, by revealing certain peculiarities over composition of the Resultative participle in the Armenian language. Resultative participle is closely connected with the German verb system. Being one of the three main forms of the verb, it participates in the composition of compound finite tense forms and the Simple Past. In the modern literary Eastern Armenian language, resultative tense forms, unlike German, are not formed, and past tenses with the Resultative participle of literary Western Armenian have a predominant role over the perfect tenses in the frequency with which they are used. As the Perfect tenses are of the same form and there is no semantic difference between them (in Grabar = Old Armenian the Past participle was translated to Modern Armenian = Ashkharabar as Perfect or Resultative), the choice of the participle comes from the meaning of the sentence. The Resultative participle form in German used in the formation of the compound finite tenses of the Past is necessarily transformed into the Perfect tense form. Subject participle and Resultative participle, by combining verbal and noun features, appearing in corresponding syntactic positions in paralleled languages, become more capacious and practical, expressing also the functions of disappeared forms and participles.

ДРЕВНЕГРЕЧЕСКИЙ СЮЖЕТ И ЕГО ТВОРЧЕСКАЯ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЙ СОВРЕМЕННОГО НЕМЕЦКОГО ПИСАТЕЛЯ ШТЕФФЕНА МАРЦИНЬЯКА)

The article analyzes the transcriptions of ancient myths in the work of the modern German writer Steffen Marciniak. The reasons for his appeal to ancient Greek mythology, its plots, motives and images are clarified, the author’s intentions and ways of their artistic embodiment (interpretation) in a specific text are fixed. The analysis is carried out with the involvement of the reception history of ancient myths in the German-speaking cultural space. Within the framework of historical-literary and historical-comparative analysis, the Russian language context is involved. The transcriptions-retellings-interpretations by Marciniak of original ancient mythological storylines are analyzed both from the point of view of the problem and thematic scope, and the plot, structural and compositional particulars of the writer’s texts. The connection of Marciniak’s works with the peculiarities of his biography, personal psychological and ideological, as well as artistic and aesthetic orientations is traced. It reveals that the main theme, that excites the writer and forms the basis of his plots, becomes the core of interpretation and refers to tradition. Based on the analysis, an attempt is made to determine the specifics of the individual poetics of the writer, to fit it into the general context of German literature of the XX-XXI century.