This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the semantics of the German am V-inf sein construction, or am-progressive. Like its English counterpart and many other progressive constructions in the world's languages, the am-progressive is shown to convey not only a variety of aspecto-temporal meanings, but also a range of (inter)subjective qualifications, such as intensification, irritation, and evasiveness. These (inter)subjective connotations are argued to reflect the am-progressive's core meaning of epistemic contingency, which we believe is instantiated in all of its uses.*

Abstract. The difference with respect to the kind of evidence evoked by the so-called 'epistemic' uses of the German modals müssen and sollen is argued to affect the epistemic contribution of both verbs in a crucial way. With quotative sollen, a genuine subjective-epistemic moment (which should not automatically be associated with an expression of scepticism, i.e. a low commitment on the part of the speaker) remains marginal at best, whereas inferential müssen easily invites speaker-oriented interpretations to the extent that the speaker can be taken to be rather strongly committed to the factuality of the proposition. The latter 'epistemic' interpretation, however, can but need not occur.

Oliguria is one of the clinical hallmarks of renal failure. The broad differential diagnosis is well known, but a rare cause of oliguria is intracranial hypertension (ICH). The actual knowledge to explain this relationship is scarce. Almost all literature is about animals where authors describe the Cushing reflex in response to ICH. We hypothesize that the Cushing reflex is translated towards the sympathetic nervous system and renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system with a subsequent reduction in medullary blood flow and oliguria. Recently, we were confronted with a patient who had complicated pituitary surgery and displayed multiple times an oliguria while he developed ICH.

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