Form, Meaning and Aspect in the German Impersonal Passive
Summary
(Petra M. Vogel, Professor of German Linguistics, University of Siegen, Germany)
«This book presents a vast amount of original data to confront a glaring weakness of the aspect analysis of the German passive: if the actional passive is telic, why is the impersonal passive of the type Es wurde getanzt atelic? The answer given is a revelation delightful in its simplicity.»
(Dr Christopher Beedham, Honorary Lecturer, Department of German, University of St Andrews, Scotland)
Actional passives are conventionally considered to be the result of a voice analysis conversion process. They are said to derive from semantically identical underlying actives, even though most passives do not contain the agent – the entity carrying out the action – that would be crucial to such a conversion. Beedham’s aspect analysis offered an alternative perspective which discarded any notion of a mandatory connection to the active, and instead proposed that passive formation requires only a lexically telic verb, compositional telicity and a patient (affected entity) subject.
This book challenges both these analyses via an empirical investigation into the somewhat neglected impersonal passive in German of the type Es wurde getanzt, which, as a zero-argument, atelic construction, exists as an exception to both the voice and aspect analysis rules. Using the theoretical framework of Saussurean structuralism and Beedham’s «method of exceptions and their correlations», this book presents a new, «event-focused» analysis of both this impersonal passive and the German actional passive in general; plus, it proposes that since Es wurde getanzt, as the barest form of passive and the closest realisation of the werden + ge-V-t core of all passives, is atelic, this werden-passive core too is atelic.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Previous analyses of the passive and of the impersonal passive of the type Es wurde getanzt
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 The voice analysis
- 2.3 Reasons for the passive
- 2.4 The aspect analysis
- 2.4.1 Aspect
- 2.4.2 The aspect analysis of the passive as a response to the flawed voice analysis
- 2.5 Es wurde getanzt: Compositional atelicity?
- 2.5.1 The power of the adverbial
- 2.5.2 Multiple implicit arguments and their contribution to atelicity
- 2.6 Es wurde getanzt: Other issues and the gaps in our knowledge that remain
- 2.6.1 The nature of the implicit, unexpressed argument
- 2.6.2 The use, status and identity of the impersonal passive
- 2.6.3 The impersonal passive as a means of defocusing/demoting the agent
- 2.6.4 The impersonal passive as a means of generalisation
- 2.6.5 The Es wurde getanzt passive as a means of focusing on the action, process, event and the verb itself
- 2.7 Chapter summary and conclusion
- Chapter 3 The theoretical and methodological frameworks of the project
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 Saussurean structuralism
- 3.2.1 The linguistic sign, form and meaning, and the language system
- 3.2.2 Langue and parole
- 3.2.3 Synchronic vs. diachronic linguistics
- 3.3 The method of exceptions and their correlations
- 3.3.1 The origin of the method
- 3.3.2 Practical steps in applying the method
- 3.4 Chapter summary and conclusion
- Chapter 4 The empirical investigation
- 4.1 Introduction
- 4.2 Objectives of the investigation
- 4.3 Investigation structure
- 4.4 Results of an earlier preliminary study
- 4.4.1 Limitations of this data
- 4.4.2 Patterns to look out for in this investigation
- 4.5 The formal and semantic properties tested
- 4.6 The process of verb sampling
- 4.7 Surveying native speaker informants and producing questionnaires
- 4.7.1 The selection of native speaker informants
- 4.7.2 The creation of the test sentences
- 4.7.3 The structure and distribution of the questionnaires
- 4.7.3.1 The benefits of the questionnaire format and of grammaticality judgements
- 4.7.3.2 The response options
- 4.7.3.3 The presentation of the test sentences
- 4.7.3.4 The questionnaire instructions
- 4.7.3.5 The distribution of the questionnaires
- 4.8 Questionnaire completion: Issues and feedback
- 4.8.1 Completion issues and new informants
- 4.8.2 The wording of the response options
- 4.8.3 The informants’ comments and feedback
- 4.9 An additional questionnaire: Anglicisms
- 4.9.1 The collation of the responses to questionnaires 1 to 6
- 4.9.2 The initial overview of the results: Limitations, necessity and decisions
- 4.9.3 The Anglicisms questionnaire: The verb sampling process and questionnaire production and distribution
- 4.9.4 The informants’ comments on the Anglicism sentences: Problems with the adverb viel
- 4.9.4.1 Es wurde viel angeeckt
- 4.9.4.2 Es wurde viel einmarschiert
- 4.9.4.3 Es wurde viel geschockt
- 4.9.4.4 Es wurde viel relaxt
- 4.9.4.5 Es wurde viel gestartet
- 4.9.4.6 The adverb viel and the impersonal passive: What can we conclude?
- 4.10 Chapter summary and conclusion
- Chapter 5 The results: A new synthesis for the impersonal passive and for the actional werden-passive in general
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 The statistics
- 5.3 The statistical analysis
- 5.3.1 Were the MLitt project results correct?
- 5.3.2 Summary of results
- 5.3.3 The ‘Sein Survey’
- 5.4 Main Survey + ‘Sein Survey’: Final conclusions
- 5.5 A discussion of the results: Corroborating studies
- 5.6 A discussion of the results: The components of a new synthesis for the impersonal passive of the type Es wurde getanzt
- 5.6.1 The implicit argument and its semantic role
- 5.6.2 Telic verbs and their compatibility
- 5.6.3 Verbs with a sein perfect auxiliary
- 5.6.4 ‘Transitively flexible’ verbs
- 5.6.5 Intransitive verbs
- 5.7 The meaning of the individual elements of the Es wurde ge-V-t passive
- 5.7.1 The meaning of es
- 5.7.2 The meaning of the werden auxiliary
- 5.7.3 The meaning of the 2nd participle ge-V-t
- 5.7.4 Summary
- 5.8 The meaning of the Es wurde getanzt impersonal passive and of the werden-passive in general
- 5.9 Chapter summary and conclusion: A new descriptive analysis and synthesis of the Es wurde getanzt impersonal passive and of the werden-passive in general
- Chapter 6 Bringing it all together: The passive, the theoretical frameworks and the future
- Bibliography
- Appendices
- Index
Figures
Figures 4.1–4.4. Extracts from the Main Verb Spreadsheet.
Figure 5. Extract from the Main Verb Spreadsheet entry for nachplappern.
Figure 6. Extract from the Main Verb Spreadsheet entry for schnorcheln.
Figure 7. Extract from the Main Verb Spreadsheet entry for anecken.
Figure 8. Extract from the Main Verb Spreadsheet entry for gellen.
Figure 12. Extract from the ‘Acceptable Verbs’ sheet of the Categorised Results spreadsheet, showing a selection of the formal properties of the verbs.←xiii | xiv→
Figure 15. Extract from the Sein Survey Responses spreadsheet.
Tables
Acknowledgements
This book is a slightly amended version of my 2019 PhD thesis from the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
I would firstly like to thank my supervisor, Dr Christopher Beedham of the Department of German in the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews. During the four years of my PhD, Dr Beedham was incredibly supportive, kind and generous with his time. He was always eager to receive my questions, listen to my incessant streams of new ideas and was, and continues to be, ever enthusiastic about my work. I am also grateful to the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews for their generous award to me of a 7th Century PhD Scholarship, which made my PhD possible. I owe much too to the school and college teachers who believed in my abilities and nurtured my development in modern languages during my teenage years, in particular Dave Winter and Yolande Shaikh.
Warm thanks are also due to Professor Ad Neeleman of University College London, who facilitated my membership of the libraries at UCL during my time in London, and to Andrea Meyer Ludowisy of Senate House Library, who kindly took the time to assist me in becoming acquainted with the Germanic Studies Library, periodicals and database at Senate House. My thanks also go to Rainer Perkuhn of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim, who provided me with a list of verbs from their DeReWo resource which proved invaluable to my research. I am especially grateful to the native German speaker informants who gave up their time to provide the acceptability judgements that constituted the foundation for the description of the impersonal passive that is presented in this book.
In addition, I am extremely appreciative of the time devoted to the assessment of this work by my PhD examiners, Professor Seán Allan of the University of St Andrews and the late Professor Beatrice Primus of the University of Cologne, Germany. Their feedback was most encouraging and valuable.←xvii | xviii→It also means a great deal to me for this book to have received the generous endorsements of Professor Petra M. Vogel of the University of Siegen, Germany, and my supervisor, Dr Beedham. Many thanks to both for this much appreciated support.
I am very thankful indeed to my publisher, Peter Lang Oxford – particularly to the Contemporary Studies in Descriptive Linguistics series editors and reviewers, and to Dr Laurel Plapp. Thank you for believing in my work and for sharing it with the world.
Completing a PhD requires the utmost in commitment, stamina and patience, and despite the actual undertaking of it largely being a solitary pursuit, the support of others along the journey is vital. In this regard I will be forever thankful to my partner, Jack, who has held my hand throughout the years of this journey and has been a constant source of loving encouragement. Thanks also to my brother and sister, Stevan and Jane, and to my nephews Leon, Joe and Saul, and my niece, Sophie.
My especially deep and heartfelt gratitude goes to my Mum and Dad, Marilyn and Peter, my champions and my best friends who have been by my side always, both when the sun has shone in my life and when the days have been cloudier. Words are not enough to express how much you both mean to me and how grateful I am for the opportunities in my life that you have worked so hard to make possible.
Chapter 1
Introduction
Most of us were taught in our early years at school, and indeed in virtually all the grammar books we have come across since, that a passive sentence, such as The gift was wrapped by Jane, is derived from an underlying active sentence, i.e. Jane wrapped the gift. This is the case in German too: a passive sentence like Das Buch wurde von Goethe geschrieben ‘the book was written by Goethe’ is said to derive from the active sentence Goethe schrieb das Buch ‘Goethe wrote the book’. This ‘rule’ or widely accepted belief is known as the ‘voice analysis’ of the passive (see Chapter 2). It claims that (actional) passive sentences have their origin in underlying active sentences and that they therefore have the same meaning as them.
But is this really an accurate assessment of the actional passive? For a start, passive sentences in both English and German are structurally different from their active counterparts. In the English example above, the gift, which is the object of the active sentence, is placed at the beginning of the sentence in the subject position in the passive. Similarly in German, das Buch ‘the book’, the object of the active sentence, becomes the sentence-initial subject in the passive sentence. Plus, in both English and German, the passive introduces an auxiliary that does not appear in the active: was in English and wurde (from werden ‘to become’) in German. Yet despite these structural differences, the voice analysis tells us that the active and the passive have the same meaning. Fair enough, some might initially say on the basis of the above examples: the active and passive sentences in these instances have the same number of arguments, meaning that in both constructions, we know who carried out the action (the ‘agent’) and what was affected by that action (the ‘patient’), so it is not too much of a stretch to see where the voice analysis is coming from here (though we will later see in this book how this view is flawed even for this type of example). ←1 | 2→But what about the most common form of passive, in which the agent of the action is not included, such as in The gift was wrapped and Das Buch wurde geschrieben ‘the book was written’? Can we really say that the former means the same as the active sentence Jane wrapped the gift, and that the latter means the same as the active sentence Goethe schrieb das Buch? The answer is, of course, no. In these passive sentences, we do not know who wrapped the gift or who wrote the book, which leads us to ask: what do the active sentences from which they are said to derive look like? The truth is, simply, that no such sentences exist; we do not have enough information for them to exist, at least as complete sentences in their own right. All we have as possible active forms are the incomplete sentences ___ wrapped the gift and ___ schrieb das Buch. Thus we see the major flaw in the voice analysis: once passive forms start occurring without the same number of arguments that they require in the active, the rule shows its inapplicability and, in turn, its weakness.
Focusing now on German specifically, there exists in this language one passive form in particular that shows the ultimate defiance of the voice analysis rule, and that is the impersonal passive of the type Es wurde getanzt ‘there was dancing’, literally ‘it was danced’, a zero-argument construction that contains neither an agent argument nor a patient argument. In other words, neither the original subject nor the original object of the underlying active sentence appears in this passive form; we do not know who danced or what was danced (Tango ‘the tango’? Walzer ‘the waltz’?). This type of passive makes the existence of the voice analysis notion of an underlying active sentence more doubtful than ever.
In the attempt to address the flaws of the voice analysis, Beedham (2005) proposed a new perspective on the (actional) passive, known as the ‘aspect analysis’ (see Chapter 2). According to the aspect analysis of the passive (in relation to both English and German), the passive is an aspect and not a voice of the verb, and it is not derived from any underlying active sentence; the passive exists in its own right with all its elements having been taken straight from the lexicon. The aspect analysis does not require the presence of an agent in the passive sentence in order for it to work, meaning that it can accommodate the most common form of passive that occurs, i.e. one with a patient subject and no agent. The main requirement ←2 | 3→of the aspect analysis is that a verb must have telic lexical aspect (i.e. it must have an end-point inherent in its meaning) in order for it to form a passive. The aspect analysis describes the meaning of the passive as ‘action + state’, whereby the change in state that occurs in the passive takes place on the patient subject of the sentence.
However, the problem with the aspect analysis is that, like the voice analysis, it requires the presence of a patient subject in the passive in order for it to work. In other words, like the voice analysis, it can only be applied to the passive of transitive verbs. The impersonal passive in German of the type Es wurde getanzt, however, does not have a patient subject, since it uses its verb intransitively, and yet it exists as a perfectly valid passive form. The impersonal passive is also an atelic construction (i.e. it has no end-point inherent in its meaning) and it can be formed from lexically atelic verbs, meaning that the aspectual requirement of the aspect analysis is also incorrect.
Standing in defiance of not one, but two analyses of the passive, therefore, the zero-argument, Es wurde getanzt type of impersonal passive has clearly slipped under the radar and evidently requires further research. Firstly, its workings need to be understood, i.e. the rules that govern its formation, since it is an infrequently occurring construction that has received little attention in previous analyses of the passive; and indeed on a more general level it has been recognised over the years that impersonal constructions like this require more study. And secondly, once we understand how this particular passive works and what rules govern its formation, we will then be in a position to produce a better description of the passive in general – one that can apply not just to the most common forms of passive, but to passives of all structures and with varying aspects.
The project on which this book is based, therefore, was undertaken according to the following aims: (1) to perform a thorough, in-depth investigation into the structural workings of the German impersonal passive of the type Es wurde getanzt with a view to producing a description of its category/form, meaning and syntax; and (2) to use the information gained about this impersonal passive, as a construction that defies two previous analyses of the passive, to produce a new description of the German actional passive in general that accommodates all of its forms.←3 | 4→
The first theoretical framework that underlies this work is that of structuralism (see Chapter 3), specifically that as described in Saussure’s (2013 [1916 in French]) Course in General Linguistics. Saussurean structuralism is based on the theory that a language is a system in which everything fits together, and in which the value of each element depends on the existence of all the other elements. In other words, language is an all-inclusive system in which everything has a place, and so, following this theory, those items and constructions that we call ‘exceptions’ must have a place in the system too, since the value of all the other members is dependent on their existence. The German impersonal passive of the type Es wurde getanzt exists as an exception to the voice and aspect analyses of the passive, but if we work according to Saussure’s theory of an all-inclusive language system, it should not be exceptional to any analysis; it is a perfectly valid member of the system and should be described as such.
Details
- Pages
- XVIII, 306
- Year
- 2022
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781800798502
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781800798519
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781800798496
- DOI
- 10.3726/b19691
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2022 (September)
- Keywords
- The impersonal passive in German of the type Es wurde getanzt Structural Empirical investigation descriptive analysis Form, Meaning and Aspect in the German Impersonal Passive Michelle Leese
- Published
- Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2022. XVIII, 306 pp., 18 fig. b/w, 4 tables.
