A corpus-based analysis of German (sich) erinnern

Abstract

'A corpus-based analysis of German (SICH) ERINNERN'' (italics in original) is the topic of the paper by Andrea C. Schalley and Sandra Kuhn, which, in contrast to what its title suggests, is not based on usage or on syntactic structures, but aims ''to identify rigorously what is actually part of the lexical semantics of the verb (SICH) ERINNERN'' (p. 182f; italics in original); the examples discussed, however, are taken from the COSMAS II corpus. The framework used is that of ''Unified Eventity Representation'', based on the ''Unified Modeling Language'' (see p. 182); the approach chosen is called ''object-oriented'' (p. 182): at the centre of this model lies ''the concept of an object or entity, whose characteristics, relations to other entities, behaviour, and interactions with other entities are modelled'' (p. 182). The Authors start their analysis by discussing in some detail the study of Van valin & Wilkins 1993, and then propose ''prototypical components of REMEMBER [capitals in original], where REMEMBER [capitals in original] is understood as the eventity which comprises the 'core semantics' of (SICH) ERINNERN [italics in original]'' (p. 192). Applying this analysis to German (SICH) ERINNERN, Schalley and Kuhn identify four different readings of the verb: an ''achievement ERINNERN'' and its causative variant, an ERINNERN 'to be similar to' and an ERINNERN used to make the addressee ''aware of 'what she should know''' (p. 197). The Authors conclude that ''there is some non-neglectable semantic difference but that there is no clear-cut reading difference'' (p. 205).