Parametrized Beginnings of Sentences in English and German

ISSN： 1585-1923

Source： Across Languages and Cultures, Vol.4, Iss.1, 2003-05, pp. : 49-51

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Abstract

Translational evidence from popular-scientific texts shows that about every second sentence of the German translations does not begin in the same way as the English originals although the sentences are subject to the same discourse conditions and although in many cases analogous beginnings are not excluded for linguistic reasons. The differences concern word order and perspective, i.e., active, passive and passive-like structures, but also structural explicitness, i.e., the use of clauses, word groups, words or proforms at the beginning of sentences. To explain the findings, it will be assumed that complex information structures are subject to a strategy of balanced information distribution, which replaces the given-new strategy of simpler information structures, and that both strategies spell out differently if grammatical parameters are set differently. In particular, the different beginnings of German and English sentences suggest that there are stronger constraints in English on reordering due to processing disadvantages which follow from the tighter subject-verb-object link in English.