TY - JOUR

T1 - Grammatical Tenses and Communicative Intentions

T2 - A case study of the German Perfekt and Präteritum

AU - Concu, Valentina

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Valentina Concu, published by Sciendo.

PY - 2021/9/1

Y1 - 2021/9/1

N2 - Recent research in syntax and corpus linguistics has shown how the German Perfekt (present perfect) and Präteritum (simple past) are widely used in written language - even though these tenses are commonly described in DAF (German as a foreign language) materials as used respectively in the spoken and written forms. While these analyses only focus on written corpora, an extensive study on the use of tenses in spoken interaction is still missing. In this paper, I try to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the use of Perfekt and Präteritum in the recordings of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, held in Frankfurt am Main, from December 20, 1963, to August 19, 1965, and available on the web page of the Fritz Bauer Institute. Textual analyses of the depositions of five former German prisoners of the Polish concentration camp show that German native speakers use both tenses in their spoken interactions. These results widely contradict their depiction in DAF materials, textbooks, and grammars. Furthermore, the types of Präteritum found are far more diverse than is traditionally held by scholars, who claimed that the use of this tense in spoken language is limited to verbs such as sein (to be), haben (to have) and modals, such as können (can), müssen (must), sollen (should), etc. The outcome of this study shows how the difference between Perfekt and Präteritum is determined by the subjective attitude of the speakers in relation to the information they want to convey.

AB - Recent research in syntax and corpus linguistics has shown how the German Perfekt (present perfect) and Präteritum (simple past) are widely used in written language - even though these tenses are commonly described in DAF (German as a foreign language) materials as used respectively in the spoken and written forms. While these analyses only focus on written corpora, an extensive study on the use of tenses in spoken interaction is still missing. In this paper, I try to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the use of Perfekt and Präteritum in the recordings of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, held in Frankfurt am Main, from December 20, 1963, to August 19, 1965, and available on the web page of the Fritz Bauer Institute. Textual analyses of the depositions of five former German prisoners of the Polish concentration camp show that German native speakers use both tenses in their spoken interactions. These results widely contradict their depiction in DAF materials, textbooks, and grammars. Furthermore, the types of Präteritum found are far more diverse than is traditionally held by scholars, who claimed that the use of this tense in spoken language is limited to verbs such as sein (to be), haben (to have) and modals, such as können (can), müssen (must), sollen (should), etc. The outcome of this study shows how the difference between Perfekt and Präteritum is determined by the subjective attitude of the speakers in relation to the information they want to convey.

KW - German

KW - Perfect

KW - Pragmatics

KW - Preterite

KW - Tenses

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85198343710&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.2478/lf-2021-0015

DO - 10.2478/lf-2021-0015

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85198343710

VL - 4

SP - 31

EP - 37

JO - Linguistic Frontiers

JF - Linguistic Frontiers

SN - 2544-6339

IS - 2

ER -