Journal of Pragmatics IO (1986) 481-514 North-Holland

481

BOOK REVIEWS

Anita Steube, Temporale Bedeutung im Deutschen. (Studia Grammatica XX), W. Motsch and J. Kiinze, eds., Berlin: Akademic Verlag, 1980. 216 pp. DM 17.50.

The book under review offers a comprehensive and minute analysis of tempo- ral meaning in German in its semantic and pragmatic aspects. The attribute ‘in German’, however, should be considered as pertaining essentially only to the description of the surface grammatical realizations of the proposed underlying (logical) meanings. These logical distinctions seem to be valid cross-linguistic- ally (at least for more languages than German), thus providing a good background for evaluating the book from a more general viewpoint.

The book is organized into eight chapters: ch. 1 ‘Introduction’; ch. 2 ‘Tense logic and tense in German’; ch. 3 ‘Temporal conjunctions’; ch. 4 ‘Consecution of tenses’; ch. 5 ‘Temporal adverbs’; ch. 6 ‘Combinations of temporal adverbs within a sentence’; ch. 7 ‘Pragmatic properties of tenses’, and ch. 8 ‘Summary’.

The author operates with a number of logical distinctions, drawn from various logical conceptions, to describe the semantic and pragmatic properties of tenses, temporul conjunctions, and tempo& adverbs in German. She refrains from developing her own logical calculus, that is, she presents only the logical representations of the temporal meanings of surface temporal expressions.

The most important logical distinctions introduced by the author are (cf. p. 18): the time-span of the content denoted by u clause (indicated by Ti); the present time-span (To); the .beginning and end of a time-span (min T, max T); the point of utterance (to), and the point\ of reference (‘Ri). This last notion, however, seems to be too intuitive, and even redundant, in the sense that its introduction is justified, in our opinion, only in cases where the conception of the present time-span is not identical with the point of utterance. The author admits this later on (p. 59) where she suggests that “as the points of reference are located within the time-spans, the indication ‘Ri E Ti is redundant” (my translations throughout, EK). The author’s conception of the point of reference as a primitive notion of her approach may seem also a little bit inconsistent in that she does not follow up on her own considerations (p. 1 l), where she claims that “the point of reference wanders (...) for example the meaning of the immediate present or of certain adverbs (now, just, toduy) should be interpreted only with respect to the point of utterance”. Thus, the author’s conception of the point of reference may lead to terminological confusion: for instance, it is d.iametrically opposed to that of the structuralist-

0378-2166i86/%3.50 c 1986, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)

functional approach of the Prague School (cf. Panevova et al. (1971)) where, in the primary case, the point of reference coincides precisely with the point of utterance.

The author distinguishes altogether nine underlying tense meanings (imme- diate present, past, future, resultative present, resultative past, remote past, resultative future, non-immediate (general) tense, and resultative general tense), which are expressed on the surface by means of six ambiguous tense forms (Present, Preterite, Perfect, Future I, Future 11, Pluperfect). This approach can again be compared to the structuralist-functional conception, where only three underlying tense meanings are distinguished (present, past, future), while the other underlying distinctions are accounted for in terms of other underlying verbal categories such as Aspect (for resultativity), or Immediateness (covering the distinction immediate vs. general). Besides, the conception of remote past (as well as certain instances of anteriority and posteriority) can be alternatively considered as not being directly structured by the system of language, but rather belonging to the cognitive content denoted by a sentence (in the sense of pragmatic commitment of the speaker/hearer), accountable for by means of inferencing. For example, in sentence (1) we infer whether Peter’s coming is anterior or posterior to the point of utterance only on the basis of the context/ situation of the utterance:

(1) Peter promised that he would come.

Describing the temporal conjunctions, the author employs a handful of additional distinctions, such as the hypothetic, negative, durative, or iterative character of the predicate of a clause (more exactly, of the content denoted by a clause). She distinguishes time-relative conjunctions (which are further sub- categorized into conjuctions of simultaneity, such as wie, indem; conjunctions of antetiority, such as nachdem, sohald, kaum daJ; conjunctions of posteriority, such as eher, hevor, bis, and conjunctions with an open time-relation, such as wenn, ~1s); durative conjunctions, such as seitdem, solange, wtihrend; and iterative conjunctions, such as sooft, jedesmal wenn. This last kind of conjunc- tions constitutes an exceptional class, because they are considered as not related to the point of utterance and not restricting the content of the main clause.

The author displays a variety of subtle insights into the occurrence of temporal conjunctions in sentences, the majority of the observed regularities being anchored grammatically (i.e. directly structured by the language system). Still, it is possible (e.g. by means of changing the lexical cast of a sentence) to produce counterexamples, which indicates that some of these regularities are rather of a cognitive/pragmatic nature and can be described on the basis of the prototypical cases of cognitive content denoted by a clause. Thus, for example, we do not fully agree with the author’s notion (p. 42) that “an unlimited

duration of the content [of the temporal hrvor-clause, EK] yields semantically incorrect sentences”; cf. the putatively unacceptable (2) vs. the acceptable (3) (our example):

(2) *Bevor Paul den Nachbarn kennt, setzt cr sich lieber an einen Tisch fur sich aliein.

(3) Bevor Paul wieder arbeitet (arbeiten kann), kann er sich nicht groBe Ausgaben leisten.

Counterexamples from other, non-Germanic, languages such as Czech can be provided, too; here, the conjunctions of anteriority or posteriority (such as potom, co (‘nachdem’) or nei (‘bevor’), respectively) can combine, contrary to the author’s prediction, with the hypothetical character of the content denoted by the temporal clause, cf. (4) vs. (5) (our example):

(4) *Bevor Herr S. in Berlin bleibt, . . . (5) Nei by se vystava uskutecnila, v kagdem piipade bych ti zavolal.

‘Bevor die Aussteilung stattfinden wiirde, wiirde ich dich auf jeden Fall anrufen.’

As concerns the negated content, the author claims that temporal conjunc- tions do not combine with negative predicates (p. 57): “in negated content the data about duration, resultativity . . . lose their force”, but provides her own counterexamples, cf. (6):

(6) Solange das Seil nicht reicht . . .

The author’s account of the consecution of tenses concerns the underlying nine tenses in complex sentences (rather than surface tenses), which are organized according to the meaning of the temporal conjunctions of simul- taneity, anteriority, and posteriority. The author points out that the content of a complex sentence always belongs to a single temporal stage (underlying present, past, future), which yields, for a great part, overlapping tables (cf. tables 2 and 3 on pp. 61-63). For example, all of the types of the underlying present in the temporal clause combine with almost all types of the underlying present tense in the main clause, the several exceptions having to do with anteriority and posteriority. The author mentions only in passing the relation of the underlying tenses to the surface tenses (e.g. in the sentence Eevor Peter ahreist, erledigt er noch seine At-heir, the surface present form is interpreted as the underlying future tense). Empirically valuable results of this approach, as far as temporal conjunctions are concerned, can be found in tables 4.1-4.14 (pp. 6678).

The most interesting, and longest, part of the book is devoted to temporal adverbs, especially to the description of their combinations (two-adverb

484 Book reviews

sequences are treated systematically, while sequences of more than two adverbs are mentioned only marginally, cf. for example (p. 150) Der Vorsitzende sprecht seither schon nicht jedesmal so lange.

Temporal adverbs are subcategorized, analogously to temporal conjunctions, into time-relative, durative, and iterative adverbs. The subcategorization of time-relative adverbs, however, seems not to be consistent. The author distin- guishes adverbs with a single point of reference outside the point of utterance (heute, soeben), adverbs with several points of reference outside the point of utterance (which are further subcategorized into, on the one hand, adverbs without additional pragmatic meaning (gleich, sofort) and adverbs with addi- tional pragmatic meaning (erst, endlich)), and on the other, adverbs which refer to the points of reference in preceding sentences (davon, danach). As we shall see below, the ‘additional pragmatic meaning’ can be accounted for in terms of the focusing function of these adverbs.

To describe the semantics of temporal adverbs, the author further introduces pragmatically based distinctions (based on ‘intersubjective agreement’) such as sehr kurz vorlnach, which clearly have nothing to do with the language system (cf. the difference between the time spans referred to in sentences like Ich schreibe sofort, wenn ich zu Hause angekommen bin and Al.7 die Nachrichten beendet waren, schaltete Peter sofort die Sendung ‘Konzertsaal im Rundfunk’ ein (P. 75)).

The durative adverbs are subcategorized in an analogous way (durative adverbs with a single point of reference outside the point of utterance (bisher, seitdem, von jetzt ab); durative adverbs with several points of reference outside the point of utterance (fortan, weiterhin, noch, noch nicht, nicht mehr, schon, bereits), and durative adverbs without direct relation to the points of reference (ewig, kurze Zeit)). The iterative adverbs are divided into adverbs of implicit iteration (zum ersten Mal, nochmals) and explicit iteration (einmal, selten, wiederholdt).

In multiple (double) occurrences within a clause, time-relative and durative adverbs are claimed to stand in a relation of subordination (i.e. one of them is subordinated to the other), while a relation of cooccurrence is claimed to hold for iterative adverbs (‘Nebenordnung’), with only few selectional restrictions on their mutual combinations.

The possible combinations of adverbs with each other, or the selection of certain adverbs by other adverbs, is one of the crucial notions of this chapter. It is described in terms of the specification (‘Prazisierung’) of the content of one adverb by the content of another, cf. the definition of p. 75: “‘[adverb] A selects [adverb] B’ means that . . . the . . . selecting adverb stands in the [surface] linear order . . . to the right of the selected one”. By contrast, with time-relative and durative adverbs, B is specified by A, whereas with iterative adverbs, A is specified by B (ibid.). Hereby it is assumed, without clarification, that the underlying (logical) order of the adverbs is the inverse of their surface linear ordering. The selection relation is defined, on p. 142, also in negative terms, in

quite a heterogeneous way: “A does not select B, (I) if the semantics of the adverbs stand in a logical contradiction . . . (2) if B brings no additional information with respect to the point of reference”, and (3) “if B and/or A are not stressed in a normal way, i.e. if their positions are contextually or situationally-pragmatically conditioned” (ibid.).

This definition of selection can be commented upon from several aspects.

(i) Intonation. Sequences of two (time-relative or durative) adverbs with marked intonation (i.e. with the intonation center on the adverb to the left) need not be considered as carrying additional pragmatic meaning. They can be simply treated as sequences with marked surface word-order (where the selected adverb has been optionally moved to the right) which are synonymous to the corresponding sequences with a normal surface word-order (where the selected adverb stands to the left, i.e. where ‘B is specified by A’ in the sense of the above-quoted definition).

(ii) Topicalizatiun. Cases described in (i) should be kept apart from the cases where the adverb standing to the left belongs to the topic (old, or given information) of a sentence, while the adverb to the right belongs to its focus (new information). In this case, the surface word-order of the adverbs reflects their underlying word-order. The adverb standing to the left may be optionally moved even farther to the left (to the sentence-initial position, which is typical of the elements belonging to the topic). In this sense, sentences like (7) (p. 142) and (8) (p. 154) should be considered synonymous with sentences (7’) and (8’), respectively (where the adverbial expressions am 25. 11. and zum ersten Ma1 have been moved to the sentence-initial position). In examples (7)-(8’) below, the expressions am 25. 11. and zum ersten Ma1 belong to the topic, whereas the expressions nicht mehr and am 5. 12. belong to the focus of the sentences in question. The slash (/) indicates the topic--focus boundary; it is inserted in the examples in accordance with our interpretation.

(7) Wir erreichen Peter am 25. 11. / nicht mchr? (7’) Am 25. 11. erreichen wir Peter / nicht mehr? (8) Peter kam zum ersten Ma1 / am 5. 12. (8’) Zum ersten Ma1 kam Peter / am 5. 12.

(iii) Other adverbial expressions. Unfortunately, only temporal adverbs are treated by the author in a systematic fashion (i.e. by means of tables, cf. esp. the table on pp. 13&141), while the other types of adverbial expressions are taken into account only marginally (cf. (ii) above). In our opinion, the thrust of the notion of ‘Prazisierung’ could be demonstrated more clearly by means of sequences of adverbial expressions such as prepositional phrases (denoting specific temporal spans), rather than by sequences of adverbs proper (whose semantics are rather general, or vague), cf. jetzt hald or einmal danach.

486 Book reviews

In this connection, one should also consider sequences of adverbial expres- sions such as those in (9)-( 12) (our examples). This paradigm is asymmetric in the sense that with (9)-( lo), the order ‘narrower-wider adverbial’ sounds more acceptable than the inverse order (‘wider-narrower’), while with (I I)-( 12) it is the other way round. In other words, (10) and (12) sound more awkward than their respective conterparts (9) and (1 I), but for different reasons, which are still left to be explained (this could be done within the author’s framework, if she took into into account the considerations presented below on the topic focus articulation of the sentences in question).

(9) Peter passed the examination / in April 1976. (10) ??Peter passed the examination / 1976 in April. (11) Peter passed the examination / yesterday at 3 o’clock. (12) EPeter passed the examination / at 3 o’clock yesterday.

The awkwardness of (10) and (12) becomes more obvious if we imagine the respective foci of these sentences as elliptic answers to the question ‘When did Peter pass the examination?‘; cf. (10’) and (12’) respectively.

(IO’) ?*1976 in April. (12’) ?*At 3 o’clock yesterday.

(10’) can be remedied if we insert in before 1976 and if we present the second adverbial expression (in Apt-if) as an ‘afterthought’, which does not directly belong to the topic-focus articulation of a sentence (i.e. if we detach it by a comma from the rest of the sentence), cf. (IO”). On the other hand, (12’) cannot be so easily remedied, cf. (12”), which does not sound quite natural (as a response to the above-quoted question, (11) or something like Yesterday, at 3 o’clock is preferable).

(10”) In 1976, in April. (12”) ?At 3 o’clock, yesterday.

Note that if the adverbials (in) 1976 and at 3 o’clock belonged to the topic (standing in any surface position in the topic, e.g. in the sentence-initial position), the sentences would become acceptable, cf. (13) and (14), respectively (with contrastive continuations).

(13) In 1976, Peter passed the examination in April (but not in May). (14) Yesterday, Peter passed the examination at 3 o’clock (but not at 4

o’clock).

Book rcviws 4x7

We should point out that e.g. in Czech, the adverbials belonging to the topic can stand in the surface topic-final position, which yields a surface juxtaposition of the two adverbials in question (cf. (13’) and (14’) respectively), which is exactly the same as in the case of the German examples (7) and (8) quoted above.

(13’) Petr sloiil tu zkousku v r. 1976 / v dubnu. ‘Peter passed the examination in 1976 / in April.‘)

(14’) Petr sloiil tu zkouSku vEera / ve 3 hodiny. ‘Peter passed the examination yesterday / at 3 o’clock.’

(iv) Scope. It can be argued that the notion of scope (cf. p. 154) could be extended from the .case of multiple occurrences of iterative adverbs (cf. sentences with different scopes of the adverbials in question, such as Peter kam jedesmal Tag fiir Tag vs. Peter kam Tag fiir Tag jedesmal urn 5 Uhr. or sentences with reversed scopes of the adverbials in question, such as Peter kam einmal zweimal vs. Peter kam zweimal einmal), to cases where certain adverbs exhibit a focusing, i.e. scoping, function (some of them referred to by the author as adverbs. with additional pragmatic meaning), such as erst, endlich, schon, noch, noch nicht, nicht mehr. It is possible (cf. Koktova (1983, 1986, in press)) to speak of these expressions as extending their scope over the focus of a sentence (the other elements of the sentence belonging to the topic).

(v) Semantics vs. pragmatics. Though the author devotes special attention to the description of the pragmatic meaning of temporal elements inside a sentence (namely, as concerns the usage of tenses expressing subjective attitudes (modalities) such as belief, promise, evaluation, etc., cf. pp. 168ff.), she often takes recourse to pragmatic explanations also in her semantic considerations, as has been shown throughout this review. We should only add that we do not consider it adequate to interpret (semantically?; pragmatically?) sentences like (15) containing the adverb endfich as elliptical, i.e. as derived, according to the context, from sentences like (16) or (17).

(15) Peter ist endlich gerdde gekommen. (16) Peter ist heute endlich gerade gekommen. (17) Peter ist gestern endlich gerade gekommen.

In spite of minor inadequacies (e.g. the occasional intuitive character of the author’s description of the meaning of the temporal elements in a sentence, together with a certain confusion between semantic and pragmatic distinctions, which deserve to be kept apart more clearly), the book under review is a valuable contribution to the description of temporal meaning. This is true not only for German: the author provides inspiration for further investigation in

this domain also with respect to (i) other, afftliated, empirical phenomena; (ii) alternative frameworks, and (iii) other, non-Germanic languages.

Eva Koktova c/o Prof. W. v. Hahn

Germanisches Seminar Universitat Hamburg

von-Melle-Park 6 D-2000 Hamburg 13, FRG

References

Bartsch, Rena@ 1972. Advcrbialsemantik. Frankfurt: Athenaurn-Verlag. Koktova, Eva, 1983. Towards the semantics of sentence adverbials. Proceedings of the First

Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Pisa). pp. 74.-80. Koktova, Eva, 1986. Remarks on the semantics of sentence adverbials. Journal of Pragmatics 10:

2740. Koktova, Eva, in press. Sentence advcrbials in a functional description. (Pragmatics and Beyond,

Vol. XX.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Pancvova, Jarmila, Eva BeneSova and Petr Sgall. 1971. Gas a modalita v EcStine. [Time and

modality in Czech.] Praha: Academia. Sgall, Petr, Eva Hajicova and Jarmila Panevova, 1986. The meaning of the sentence in its semantic

and pragmatic aspects. Dordrecht: Reidel. and Praha: Academia. Steinitz, Rena@ 1969. Adverbialsyntax. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Roland Posner, Rational discourse and poetic communication. Methods of linguistics, literary, and philosophical analysis. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton, 1982. x+ 260 pp. DM 78.00, $35.50.

Despite its very appealing title and subtitle, this is not an organic book, conceived in a unitary manner, but rather a collection of essays, all published originally in German over a considerable stretch of time, extending from 1971 to 1980. Although most of them are interesting in themselves, these essays do not follow each other according to any cogent logic, and this preempts any effort to discuss the book as a whole. It is therefore fair to examine every chapter of the book as though they were the contrib.utions of different authors to a miscellaneous volume addressing the ambitious issue of the methodo- logical foundations of humanistic disciplines. For, as Posner himself writes (p. viii), each chapter “not only presents a problem, but also examines the available methods of dealing with it and demonstrates where we need a new approach in linguistics, literary studies and philosophy”.

Chapter 1, ‘Semiotic foundations of text theory’, is a thorough and highly sympathetic discussion of Charles Morris’s principles of semiotics. Although