Changing conventions in German causal clause complexes

Abstract

This paper contributes to the field of diachronic corpus studies of linguistic change through language contact in translation by replicating Becher’s (2011) study which found a trend from hypotaxis to parataxis in concessive clause complexes of German popular scientific articles, and examining whether a comparable trend can be found in causal clause complexes in another genre. The study draws on a one-million-word translation corpus of English business articles and their German translations, as well as on a comparable corpus of German non-translations. The corpora consist of texts published in two time periods, 1982–3 and 2008. German translations of English causal conjunctions are compared for both time periods to determine diachronic changes in causal clause complexes. The comparable corpus is then analysed to find out whether those changes also happened in non-translated language. While a trend from hypotaxis to parataxis in both corpora can be observed, hypotaxis remains more frequent than parataxis. The study also detects a shift in preference for the causal conjunctionsweil,dennandda, which partly causes the decrease in hypotaxis.

English supplementive ing-clauses and their German and Swedish correspondences

“…This result is probably related to changing preferences in Present-Day German. Evidence of an increased German tendency of using parataxis rather than hypotaxis for causal clauses has been observed both for popular science by Becher (2011) and for business articles by Bisiada (2013), and both in original texts and translations. Becher (2011: 199) explains this trend towards parataxis with reference to readability.…”

“…The main difference between the target languages, i.e. the greater German use of main clauses, is probably a reflection of the ongoing German change towards parataxis identified by Becher (2011) andBisiada (2013). So far the results have only concerned translations from English.…”

“…of an ongoing shift in German from hypotaxis to parataxis, as noted by Becher (2011) andBisiada (2013). Like coordination, a prepositional phrase is a compressed alternative.…”

Structural effects of English–German language contact in translation on concessive constructions in business articles

“…It has found that German language users do not increasingly prefer paratactic over hypotactic constructions. Though the use of hypotaxis in concessive constructions has decreased more strongly than in causal constructions (Bisiada 2013), it continues to be used frequently.…”

“…Some of those studies have reported a cross-linguistic increase in popularity of coordinated, paratactic structures, at times at the expense of hypotaxis, and attributed this shift to the status of English as a lingua franca (Musacchio 2005;Becher 2011;Bennett 2011, Bennett 2013Hansen-Schirra 2011;Bisiada 2013). However, despite the absence of structurally marked subordination, English can often be shown to exhibit a more hierarchical and subordinated structure characteristic of a hypotactic style than German does (Fischer 2007: 397, Fischer 2013Bisiada 2014).…”