Language Processing in Discourse: A Key to Felicitous Translation (Routledge Studies in Germaniclinguistics)

Language Processing in Discourse

What do we choose to begin a sentence? How do we highlight the most important information in a sentence? This book argues that language systems determine language use to a greater extent than is generally assumed. The author demonstrates how the typological characteristics of a language determine even the most general aspects of our stylistic preferences. Through extensive analysis of examples in German and English, the author demonstrates how analogous options of sentence structure must be surrendered in order to achieve felicitous translations. Two major aspects that determine the appropriateness of language use are examined: language processing and discourse-dependency. The most important area where the typological characteristics of a language interact with language processing, Doherty argues, is the area of information structure, that is, the way in which thoughts are packaged into sentence structures to express informational progress. Investigating examples such as the different verb positions of German and English, she shows how such variances have far-reaching repercussions in terms of word order, case frame and structural explicitness. Essential reading for translation scholars and linguists involved in the comparative study of English and German, this book will also be of interest to scholars of psycholinguistics and cognitive science, as well as translators and linguists more generally. Monika Doherty began her career with the study of English, Russian and General Linguistics in Berlin (PhD in 1969, Professor in 1981). She concentrated on semantics, later pragmatics, and translation. In 1990 she was appointed Professor for Translation Theory. Two major publications contributed to her success with a wider readership: Übersetzen (2nd edn 1997) and Das grammatische Varieté (4th edn 1998).

Routledge studies in Germanic linguistics Series editors: Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera

1. Negative Contexts Collocation, polarity and multiple negation Ton van der Wouden 2. When-clauses and Temporal Structure Renaat Declerck 3. On the Meaning of Topic and Focus The 59th Street Bridge accent Daniel Büring 4. Aspectual Grammar and Past-time Reference Laura A. Michaelis 5. The Grammar of Irish English Language in Hibernian-style Markku Filppula 6. Intensifiers in English and German Peter Siemund 7. Stretched Verb Constructions in English David Allerton 8. Negation in Non-standard British English Gaps, regularizations and asymmetries Lieselotte Anderwald 9. Language Processing in Discourse A key to felicitous translation Monika Doherty

Language Processing in Discourse A key to felicitous translation

Monika Doherty

London and New York

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2002 Monika Doherty All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-21693-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27300-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-28189–X (Print Edition)

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1

ix xiii xiv

Setting the scene

1

Ascending a tightrope 2 Discarding dictionary problems 3 Taking sides 6 The style of the original and a Translation Maxim 8 Optimal relevance and the importance of a common basis 9 Control paraphrases 11 Linguistic knowledge 14 Sentence processing 16 Considering selection restrictions and wrapping up 18 2

Questions of order

21

Parametrized processing conditions 22 Parametrized beginnings 23 Information structure: the point of departure 24 Reordering information structures 26 The most important element 28 Structural focus 30 Basic verb positions 31 Context sensitivity 32 Hierarchies 33 Focus projection 35 Focusing elements 37 3

Complex sentences

39

A double-storeyed focus 40 Scrambling 41 v

vi Contents Focus spacing 42 Dummies 44 A difference in initial positions 46 Another type of focus spacing 47 Generalizing the findings 49 Cross-clausal 50 Degrees of accessibility 52 The different ways to perfection 53 Reviewing and resetting the stage 55 4

In favour of primary relations

58

Alternative perspectives 58 Placing a modifier 61 The parsing strategy of Minimal Attachment 63 After the subject or before it 65 Competing for attachment 67 Different perspectives 68 Contrasting the agent 70 A covert shift 73 The morphological advantage 75 Lexical repercussions 76 Revisiting the beginning 78 5

Structural weight

81

Anaphoric ambiguities 82 The missing gender 83 Tucked away 85 Decomposing the unpredictable 87 Grammatical dummies 88 An extra clause for the second focus 90 Adverbial expansion 92 Too short 95 Textual relevance 97 Making it visible 99 A comment 100 6

Grammaticalized clues It-clefts 104 Focusing a clausal subject 106 Pseudo-clefts 107 Presupposing and contrasting 108 Dispensable information 109 The great variety 112

103

Contents

vii

Processing aid or processing burden 115 Ambiguities 116 The domino effect 118 7

Shifting boundaries

121

Linking 122 Linking by resumption 123 Separating 125 Felicitous contrasts 128 Shifting sentence borders 130 Extrasentential reordering 133 8

Relativizing optimality

137

A preamble 137 No liberalism 139 Quite normal 140 Statuesque and dense 143 Overspecifying 146 Normalizing the extraordinary 147 Artistic redundancies 150 No choice 151 Leaving the tightrope for the trapeze 153 Pre-programmed losses 155 Flouting the Maxim 158 9

Reviewing the scene

160

Parametrized focus structures and theoretical implications 160 Glossary: technical terms seen through the Keyhole Notes Bibliography Index

165 180 183 189

Preface

This book addresses students and teachers of English and German, linguists, translators and translation scholars. Some preliminary remarks may be in place to help unify expectations. I have written the book in the belief that language systems determine language use to a greater extent than is generally assumed. It is not just the way in which the words of a language and its grammatical properties commit us to categorize the world in languagespecific ways, and not just how each register requires us to follow special conventions of language use – it is the fact that the typological characteristics of a language have an impact on the way in which we prefer to encode our thoughts. That is, the typological characteristics of a language determine the most general aspects of our stylistic preferences. In my view, this involves two major aspects of language use: language processing on the one side and discourse-dependency on the other – hence the first part of the title, Language Processing in Discourse. The most important area where the typological characteristics of a language interact with language processing in discourse is the area of information structure, that is, the way in which thoughts are packaged into sentence structures to express informational progress in discourse. Thus, this is a book about information structure and deals with questions like: What do we choose as the beginning of a sentence? In which way do we highlight the most important information of a sentence? What are the lexical and grammatical options that can secure optimal transfer of a thought in its discursive context? I consider these questions fundamental to a felicitous use of language, whatever additional aspects may have to be studied for non-informative functions of language. If we want to find answers to these questions we have to study language use in discourse, assess its appropriateness and compare the results with similar data from other languages. We could do this statistically with parallel texts or with translations. But the texts may not be really parallel and the translations may be distorted by mistakes. Although the individual mistakes might eventually be filtered out by the sheer quantity of statistical data, assessing the discursive appropriateness of a sentence requires us to analyse individual cases anyway – which we can do straightaway without recourse to statistical data. ix

x

Preface

Analysing individual cases, we may, however, end up with highly unreliable and subjective judgements, losing any chance of predictive generalizations. But my experience with many generations of students is that the individual judgement can be stabilized and become more ‘objective’ (that is, representative of majorities) if sentences are assessed in comparison to other, systematically varied paraphrases within the same context. For typological purposes, when comparing original and translated sentences, the direction of such a systematic variation is predetermined by the differences between the languages involved. The preferred paraphrases will occasionally differ widely between target and source language. But wherever different preferences recur we can expect systematic reasons and look for the typological characteristics that might explain the observational data. And this is what the book will do: it will compare individual examples of original sentences in German and various English translations, assess their discursive appropriateness and suggest typological explanations for the language-specific preferences observed. In view of the different backgrounds of the addressees, the procedure may be considered problematic for various reasons. Firstly, it presupposes some knowledge of linguistic concepts and hypotheses. As I know from my experience with audiences of students and translators, explicit linguistic knowledge – even of the school-grammatical type – is not very widespread and does not meet with much interest, either. To relieve the main body of the book from all the linguistic knowledge its readers should share, I have therefore briefly described the linguistic terms used in an alphabetical glossary at the end (some elementary syntactic concepts are revised in the first chapter). Although I am acutely aware of the fact that there are many different and often contradictory interpretations of the linguistic concepts, I have decided against discussing alternative views in order to simplify the main argument of the book. I am certain that the main ideas are also of interest to readers who do not want to specialize in linguistics, but may be willing to follow a linguistic argument which is not burdened with too many technical details. Thus, I have written the book in a non-technical, common-sense format, which the more academically oriented reader is asked to excuse in the interest of a wider readership. (A few suggestions for further reading will be given in the notes at the end for the more linguistically interested reader.) In addressing a wider readership, one runs the risk of simplifying theoretical issues to such an extent that they may no longer represent the state-of-the-art within the specific theories they belong to. The danger of trespassing over the limits of accepted disciplines is enhanced by the fact that none of the theories accessed has yet developed a sufficiently rich repertoire to explain all the observations we can make in studying translations. But the translational perspective can also sharpen understanding of the linguistic concepts needed and thus help to develop them further. (For example, some of my assumptions about the information structure of complex sentences, or

Preface

xi

about the greater textual relevance of certain foci, are theoretical extrapolations which need much more research work to become properly integrated into accepted frameworks.) Second, from the point of view of text linguistics and translation studies, I am aware of another peculiarity of the book. Concentrating on information structure, the presentation proceeds from sentences as the linguistic basis of information packaging and considers only those aspects of a discursive context which are relevant for the information structure of the example under discussion. This is a highly restrictive approach, using, so to speak, the microscope as an instrument for questions of discourse analysis and translations; as it is in direct opposition to the multi-functional perspective of text linguistics and the culture-dominated approach of modern translation studies, it will require an extra amount of tolerance on the side of the textlinguistic or translation-theoretic reader. Third, for the basic typological claim of the book, a restriction to two languages may look highly suspicious. However, German and English are related but typologically alternative languages, and we can observe a remarkable amount of restructuring in felicitous translations between the two languages. It remains to be seen in which way other languages promote similar or different patterns of restructuring. (Even a very superficial look at closely related languages, as for example English and Norwegian, German and Dutch, or widely divergent languages, like English and Japanese, German and Russian shows that the simple connection between alternatively distributed information and basic grammatical parameters characterizing German and English has to be enriched by further distinctions to explain the different preferences we can observe in translations between these other languages.) With respect to German and English, the examples discussed in the book are seen as prototypical cases of a great number of translations with similar information structures. The research projects preceding and accompanying the book revealed that the most frequently recurring patterns of restructuring between English and German were of the type illustrated in the book. The restructuring patterns are related to the linguistic themes of word order, case frame, explicitness and sentence boundaries, which will be looked at from the perspective of information structure and language processing in Chapters 2–7. The first chapter of the book will set the scene for felicitous translations. And this may be seen as yet another problematic aspect of the presentation: felicitous translation or felicitous use of language in general is not exhausted by the informative function of language. Except for the last chapter, where the discussion covers examples from a judicial text type and several literary ones, the book deals with one default Maxim of Translation, one text type, one register and one pair of languages. This is, as every translator knows, not even the tip of the iceberg. Setting all functional variables at a default value, I have tried to

xii

Preface

concentrate on one, basic aspect of language use. There are many translational purposes and many text types dominated by other aspects of language use, and with other aspects in the foreground, considerations of information structure may be of little interest: rhyme and rhythm, metaphor and puns, stereotyped and stylistic figures, cultural gaps and mismatches involve translation problems which are only indirectly related to questions of information structure. Yet even here, where we may face the greatest limitations of surface equivalence, the choice of substitutes will to some extent be guided by the informational relevance of the problematic elements. (One of the most urgent tasks for future studies in this direction will be to identify the special conditions for spontaneous oral language use, where the prosodic options may dispense with the focus expectations typical of written language altogether.) Nevertheless, although it is also necessary to study the special conditions of ‘marked’ text types, registers or translational purposes, it seems reasonable to sort out the basic conditions first.

Acknowledgements

The main part of this book was written during my ‘sabbatical’ in the winter of 1998/9. It is the result of several years of research work with colleagues and students on questions of position and explicitness in translations between German and English. Most examples in the book were taken from selected chapters in a popular scientific German book. The original and its translation form part of an electronic corpus of German/English texts gathered during three successive research projects (on parametrized perspectives, adverbial clauses and cleft sentences). I would like to thank Gideon Toury and Peter Eisenberg for their critical and encouraging comments on the manuscript; Phyllis Anderson for her painstaking work with the corpus and the bibliography, tracing the discussions of past and current research sessions; Michael Davies for his prompt and subtle control of the English wording of the book, including the ranking of the control paraphrases of the English translations; Sigrid Venuß and Thomas Schulz for their precise and patient assistance with the orthography and layout of the various components of the book; Birgit Ahlemeyer, John Bergeron, Inga Kohlhof and all my students for their stimulating arguments on a great variety of aspects directly or indirectly related to the topic of the book.

xiii

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in the text to refer to sources: B = T. Bernhard; E = H. M. Enzensberger; EW = M. Eigen and R. Winkler.

xiv

1

Setting the scene

As the object of translation includes anything that can be expressed as well as anything limiting the power of expression, a key to translation could be a key to an infinite number of worlds, real ones and virtual ones. It would take all the disciplines of philosophy and science to deal with such a topic. But the object of translation is not so much what may be expressed and hence translated, it is the way in which something is expressed in one language as opposed to another. Or, more precisely, it is the way in which the differences in the expressive power of two languages may be overcome. There are basically two perspectives we could choose from to study translation: there is the historical perspective, focusing on the paths already taken in the effort to bridge the differences between languages. If we say, ‘Translations are facts of target cultures’ (Toury 1995: 29), which can only be studied if they are properly contextualized, we opt for the historical perspective. But we can also view translation as a set of possible correspondences between languages, and each translation as a contextualized instance of these possibilities. Such a basically generative, but at the same time strictly context-oriented, line will be followed by the Key to Felicitous Translation (henceforward referred to as ‘the Key’), which bases theoretical claims on detailed empirical evidence as seen through the critical eyes of a competent translator. However, even if we restrict the concept of language to natural language and ignore all non-linguistic means of expression, the set of possible correspondences between languages is endless, since the set of linguistic structures that can be formed in each language is endless. Thus the Key will focus on a subset of possible correspondences leading to translations which can be considered felicitous or ‘optimal’ in terms of language processing in discourse. What optimal conditions for language processing in discourse are and how their clarification can provide a deeper insight into translation relations – possible or contextually instantiated ones – will be demonstrated in this book.

1

2

Setting the scene

Ascending a tightrope The ability to translate from one language into another is one of the most miraculous abilities we can develop. Everybody who has not acquired this ability thinks that it is enough to know two languages to do it. This is definitely a good basis, but it is not sufficient. Knowing a language can, of course, mean different things. If we take it to mean what we know in our own language, we could say that we are, ideally, able to understand anybody who speaks or writes English, and that we can express anything we want to express – as long as it can be expressed in English at all. Although this is a euphemistic understanding of our common abilities, in which not everybody participates in the same way, the basic capacity we all share involves so many highly sophisticated aspects that we can only consider it as ‘one of the wonders of the natural world’. Steven Pinker, from whose famous book The Language Instinct this is a quotation, has shown all of us what an enormous intellectual achievement knowing a language is. But even if someone has a perfect command of two languages, as good as any bilingual speaker, this does not equate to translational competence itself. Translators have developed an additional capacity, over and above the ‘normal’ capacities of language use: in the languages they work in, translators are, ideally, not only able to identify and produce any expression of these languages, but also able to identify and produce any pair of corresponding expressions that could be formed between these languages. The feat they perform when applying this capacity is not unlike walking on a tightrope – as everybody knows who works as a translator or interpreter. The difficulties often begin before the acrobatic part of the translation act sets in. There is, first of all, the original you have to understand, which is, more often than not, quite a challenge – not so much on the linguistic side itself, but due to its context-dependency. You can never be sure about the meaning of linguistic elements unless you know the context they have been used in. That this is by no means a trivial matter will become clear when we analyse our examples in regard to their ‘textual relevance’ (Chapter 5). It is the built-in vagueness and ambiguity of linguistic elements that makes language adaptable to the infinite number of situations we use it in, and the unlimited number of elements we use it for. Part of the enormous variability of individual linguistic elements is their potential for being combined, but this, too, can be subsumed under the heading of contextual dependency. Seen thus, ‘context’ has many different aspects: the immediate context of an expression is the phrase it is used in, the clause it belongs to, and the sentence containing the clause; and then, less immediately, any of the preceding or subsequent sentences that are relevant for the interpretation of the linguistic element we started from. This linguistically encoded context of an element is sometimes referred to as ‘co-text’, to distinguish it from the ‘extralinguistic’ context relevant for the interpretation of a linguistic element. The extralinguistic context of a linguistic expression comprises our mental

Setting the scene

3

model of the situation, as well as all the aspects of world knowledge the linguistic expression is expected to activate in our minds. The more we know about the things talked about, the better we can cope with the task of comprehending the original. Yet there are so many limitations to our knowledge of the world that we have to content ourselves in many cases with the co-textually presented information relevant for the interpretation of an expression, enriching it by whatever thematically relevant information we can obtain. However formidable a challenge it may be to comprehend an original, it does not require any other faculties than those we need for the monolingual use of language. The walk on the tightrope begins only when we want to transfer into another language what we have read off from the original text. One of the most important statements characterizing these problems was made by Roman Jakobson, who said that languages do not so much differ in what they can express but in what they must express. To this we might add: and in what they ‘prefer’ to express. We can be sure that any original and any translation contain many linguistic expressions which are not needed for the message itself, but for the special requirements of the languages involved. If we know something about these requirements, we can identify the linguistic elements of the original that serve this particular aspect, and may not have to be transferred into the other language. Certain aspects of the original are at our disposal – unless the translation is to reveal the peculiarity of the language of the original, which is not what translations normally aim for. On the other hand, we are free to add linguistic elements to the translation for which there are no corresponding elements in the original with the sole aim of meeting some special requirements of the target language. The differences between what languages prefer to express will go unnoticed as long as the linguistic expressions of two languages are not related to each other by the type of relations characteristic of translations. Actually, there are many differences in the use of languages which are of a less obvious nature, revealing themselves only to the eyes of the competent translator. Translation relations teach us more about the different use of two languages than we can learn from their systematic comparison. The linguistic discipline that looks at differences between language systems is contrastive linguistics, and to some extent, translation relations have always been included in its empirical basis. One cannot describe a linguistic element exhaustively unless one looks at its contextual properties. But the discipline that must look into the contextual properties systematically due to the very nature of its purpose is translation studies: translation relations are always context dependent.

Discarding dictionary problems Most of what we read has been translated, and as most people’s ideas proceed from other people’s ideas, including translated ones, the effect of

4

Setting the scene

translation on our view of the world can hardly be overestimated. Against this background, it is quite amazing how little attention the topic of translation itself attracts. Beyond the realm of translators and the few studying and teaching translation, there seems hardly anybody who is aware of or cares about any of the problems involved in translating. Sometimes, however, we cannot help stumbling over some of the shortcomings of incompetent translations, as when we find ‘cancer soup’ on a menu of a Prague restaurant or this passage from a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo: When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor. (Davies 1989: 41) But even in these cases, everybody would just think of the problems somebody must have had with English and not of the translation problems arising from mismatches between Czech or Japanese and English. True, not everything rendered in another language needs to be a translation. Inferences of our own language can occur in the other language even if there is no original serving as an inferential basis. What matters is that our thoughts can hardly be thought without the medium of a language, whether our own language or another one. In any case, whether misuses like the above originate in translations or not, they do not belong to the core of translation problems. The real problems of translation will in most cases remain invisible to the average reader. They are only visible to those readers who can compare the original and the translation and are thus able to discover differences between their content and style. There are relatively few who can do this. Most readers have to accept what they get for what it claims to be: Leibniz, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kafka, Brecht, Freud, Einstein or whatever literary, political, scientific or technical writer, etc., the translation may be attributed to. What problems the translators faced, the ways in which they solved them, what congenial ideas they created, what blunders they made – all this remains invisible as long as the translation is not held against the original. But if you could read and understand the original, you would normally have little reason to read a translation of it, unless, for example, you specialize in translation or translation studies. No wonder translators and their problems meet with so little interest despite their dominant role for the cultures of this world. As everybody knows who has tried it seriously, it is one thing to express oneself in a language and another thing to express what has already been said in a different language. While thinking a thought and expressing it are very much like two sides of a coin, taking shape simultaneously, translating equates to exchanging existing coins of different currencies. But while exchange rates specify transfer rules clearly, the unlimited combinatorial

Setting the scene

5

possibilities of languages open up an infinite number of potential correspondences. Thus, even the most gifted translator is bound to encounter problems that cannot be solved automatically. And there is an additional difficulty. It is by no means guaranteed that a translation really says the same as the original. In fact, if we take a very close look at the original, we may even find that nothing is fully translatable if only because the differences between the languages involved can never be fully overcome. This book will provide ample opportunity to study this question from various sides. But the side from which the question of translatability has been approached most often will be excluded right away as it relates to individual, ‘idiosyncratic’ differences, which do not lend themselves to generalizations. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that it is the unique nature of such problems that determines the main battlefield of translation. The differences which everybody thinks of first are those between the words of languages. Although dictionaries seem to suggest that there is always a word in the other language for every word of our own language, the range of the meanings of these words differs, so that one word corresponds to many different ones in the other language, and some of the meanings may not have any correspondences at all. However, differences like these are not insurmountable. Missing meanings can be supplied through syntactic composition. This is the normal, the ‘default’ case, which we will rely on in the Key. Missing meanings, however, can also be supplied by the creation of new words, or the addition of new meanings to existing words – that is, by an extension of the vocabulary, the lexical repertoire of a language. This is what happens within our language anyway. As we all know, new words crop up continuously as new situations arise and new objects come into being. In this respect, too, languages constitute very powerful systems with a potential to cope with any new aspect of our lives we might want to express. As different languages absorb different aspects of lives other than our own, translation involves the creative potential of anyone who translates an original referring to such new aspects. Famous translators have therefore often been credited for the impact they had on their language and its expressive potential. As we know from the impressive compendium Translators Through History, edited by Jean Delisle and Judith Woodsworth, famous translators were always people with a religious, political, poetic or scientific mission, who made use of translation as a means to increase their influence. They were definitely not the anonymous type of translators struggling to make a living from translations. But it is also the anonymous translator, or, more precisely, legions of translators, who by reducing the differences between the languages they work with contribute to changes in these languages. This is a fascinating topic for historical study, which is, however, altogether outside the scope of this book. Instead, the Key will concentrate on the combinatorial power of languages as they are and all the translational problems and chances associated with it.

6

Setting the scene

Taking sides Making use of new words or new uses of existing words, translators can fill in missing words, so-called lexical gaps, in the language they translate into. But in many cases they would rather content themselves with exploiting the combinatorial possibilities of their target language and use syntactic means, that is paraphrases, to compensate for missing lexical elements or grammatical differences. To a certain extent, one can always express the same idea in various ways. Although variations involve differences, the differences could be ignored under certain conditions (as for example within a specific context). In fact, paraphrases are the normal way to compensate for differences between languages, whether lexical or grammatical, and the crucial question in translation is, which paraphrases were chosen and for what reason, or which paraphrases should be chosen to reach one’s translational goal. Unless we have a special reason not to do so, we would normally want to overcome the differences between the languages in an optimal way. But who can tell us what the optimal way is? Can there be anything but a subjective answer to this question? Theoretically, there are two basic options the translator can choose from. The differences in the languages involved in a translation force the translator to take side either with the language of the original – the source language – or with the language of the translation – the target language. Even if it is both one and the other way in most translations, there will be an explicit or implicit dominance of one side. Taking side with the source language means retaining as many of the linguistic aspects of the original as possible. In the extreme, this means a literal translation, where nothing but the form of the words is exchanged, never mind how many grammatical or stylistic rules of the target language are violated. This is an accepted procedure for the demonstration of the formal properties of another language. Linguistic work on less-known languages could not be conceived of without such literal translations. But even the fiercest proponent of literal translations of religious or literary origin would accept some changes in the interest of comprehensibility. Unless presented as interlinear versions commented upon in terms of real translations, literal translations are more often than not incomprehensible. For example: There small laugh there big stop keep on. tells us hardly any more than the original version in Dyirbal, an Australian language from North Queensland: anydya ban midi miyandaygu banggun bulgandu dyabilganinyu.

Setting the scene

7

It is only the translation getting closer to the target language which will give us an idea of the meaning: small (woman) wanted to laugh (but) the big one stopped (her). (Cooreman 1988: 730f) Obviously, if we want to understand what the original says, we must not take side with the source language – at least, not exclusively. To get at the meaning of the original, some of its formal aspects will have to be given up. But if I give up some forms of the source language, which ones should I give up and which ones retain? If I were to take comprehensibility as the only guide, I might still end up with grammatically ill-formed sentences. Thus, we could easily understand the close translation of: Gestalt ist in unserem Denkorgan als Ganzes reflektiert. (EW 1983a: 88) as *Form is in our brains as a whole reflected. despite its grammatical defect. (The asterisk signals grammatical unacceptability.) But it seems that, unless there was a special political, literary or academic reason for ungrammatical expressions already given in the original, grammatical acceptability is what everybody would expect of a translation. Whatever else we might want to alter in the translation of the German original, the grammatically correct position of the verb is a requirement nobody would dispute: Form is reflected in our brains as a whole. It goes without saying that grammatical acceptability means more than choosing the correct position of a word. Just think of the many grammatical categories for the expression of time and aspect, negation and emphasis, modality and quantity, et cetera that are used differently in different languages. So far, we have taken side with the meaning of the original and constrained the corresponding expressions in the target language by their grammaticality. But grammatical acceptability alone is not sufficient. After all, there are mostly several paraphrases available to overcome the grammatical differences between the source and target languages. Thus, for example, we could also reorder the two extensions of the verb: Form is reflected as a whole in our brains.

8

Setting the scene

or even reformulate the entire version as: Our brains reflect form as a whole. So here we are back to the crucial question from above: which paraphrase would be chosen and for what reason? Which paraphrase would be optimal? As the Key is meant to focus on felicitous translation, we will from now on concentrate on the second question.

The style of the original and a Translation Maxim As the differences between the above paraphrases are relatively subtle, we will postpone their discussion somewhat and look at a more drastic example to get a better idea of what else we have to take into account. In their discussion of the perception of form, shape or Gestalt, from which the first example was also taken, Eigen and Winkler say that: Mittelwertbildung ist gleichbedeutend mit Informationsverlust. (EW 1983a: 167) This means roughly: Forming an average means losing information. But the sentence has been translated as: Whenever we represent a system by an average we necessarily lose some information about the total system. (EW 1983b: 144) We could translate these two clauses back into German as Sobald wir ein System durch einen Mittelwert darstellen, verlieren wir notwendigerweise etwas Information über das Gesamtsystem. which seems to be equally far away from the original statement as the English translation is from the first rough paraphrase. All these versions are grammatically acceptable, however, and express the same idea. Yet they do it in different ways and the differences between the original and the translation are obviously greater than what we would have expected. It seems that the original says what it says in a way that is not reflected in the existing translation. Let me refer to how the original says something as the ‘style’ of the original. If we want to retain the style of the original in addition to its meaning, we must find a way to express the meaning of the original and,

Setting the scene

9

maybe, retain those forms of the original that constitute its style. But while the style of the original is somehow constituted by the way in which the forms of the source language have been used, retaining the original forms – where this is possible – will not automatically reproduce the style of the original. Similar forms may well have different values in the target language. What we must look for in the target language are those forms that can reconstruct the style of the original. We shall see whether this is possible at all and, if so, to what extent. Wanting to retain the style of the original is, however, just another aspect of the overall decision to take side with the original, that is, it is part of one of the two alternative translational norms we may opt for. We are free to choose. We may opt for a free translation and adapt the original to whatever social, political, ideological, artistic or scientific commitments we have or consider adequate for the readers of the translation. As long as we do not lose sight of the meaning of the original altogether, we would probably still speak of a translation in many of these cases. But we could also opt for a stricter norm and stay as close to the meaning and the style of the original as is possible within the constraints of the target language. It is this second way the Key will choose in its search for an optimal way to overcome the differences between the languages, their systems and their use. It will be considered the default case of a translation norm, against which any of the more specific cases can be measured.

Optimal relevance and the importance of a common basis The first part of the Translation Maxim is what the Key proposes as a yardstick for equivalence: the closer a translation is to the meaning and style of the original, the more equivalent original and translation are.1 Equivalence is a highly complex concept, for meaning is made of many different ingredients (a rough survey will be given shortly), just as style is assembled from myriad different aspects. The following chapters will successively demonstrate several of the more general factors involved in the equivalence between original and translation. The Maxim considers ‘licensed’ only those deviations from equivalence which can be shown to pay tribute to the constraints of the target language. This is a highly restrictive norm and presupposes a great degree of awareness about the subtleties of such constraints. Being aware of the differences between the constraints of target and source language is a major precondition for measuring the quality of translations relative to the Maxim. As the Key will show, this means being aware of many highly intricate aspects of language (systems and use), but it presumes that quality assessment is possible.2 Staying close to the meaning and style of the original requires us to access our knowledge about the ways in which source and target language are used. To a certain extent, the way in which languages are used is universal.

10

Setting the scene

Needless to say, translations, representing a specific type of communication, share some of the properties characteristic of communication in general. Whenever we participate in communication, we intuitively adhere to some basic principles or maxims of cooperation, which we expect anyone participating in the communication to follow, too. Now, of course, we are free to follow maxims or to deviate from them, but deviations can only be registered as such against the background of the norm. Relevance theory says that the most general principle followed is the Principle of Optimal Relevance. Relevance is measured against cognitive gains and processing effort. Everyone participating in communication can be expected to follow the goal of maximizing relevance, of securing ‘the greatest possible cognitive gains for the least expenditure of effort’ (Carston 1988: 59). Cooperation between the participants in communication is automatic in the sense that: every ostensive act of communication ‘communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance’. (Sperber and Wilson 1986: 158) That is, with every act of communication, whether speaking or writing, you tell the others, or you are told, that it is worth while listening or reading. The fact that there are so many things communicated which are far from relevant for a listener or reader does not restrict the general validity of the principle since even failure to meet the principle is registered automatically against the background of the principle. What are cognitive gains – or, more general, cognitive effects – and what is processing effort? Relevance theorists distinguish three types of cognitive effects. All three of them relate to our knowledge or our beliefs, our assumptions about the world. The assumptions we have could be confirmed, extended or rejected by what we are told. There would be no gains if none of the three effects came about. If there were no assumptions that the information could confirm, extend or contradict, the act of communication would be considered irrelevant. The information would be considered as not optimally relevant if the processing effort needed to arrive at the information communicated was disproportionate to the cognitive gains made. But what is it that determines processing effort? For one thing, it is clear that novelty of information will be taken as a yardstick of processing effort. If what has been said is familiar to you, you will require little effort to understand it. If you are not familiar with most of what has been said, you will have considerable difficulty understanding it. If you do not know anything at all of what has been said, communication will fail altogether. No processing effort whatsoever could compensate for that. With a sentence like the following, the fact that we are familiar with some of the words is of little help:

Setting the scene

11

Imprint a polymer with right-handed isomers, and left-handed isomers won’t fit into the cavities. (New Scientist, 13 September 1997: 36) But in context we have been familiarized with most of the new concepts and are able to process the sentence without difficulties. ‘Right- and left-handed’, we are told, are mirror-image pairs of molecules which differ only as a right hand differs from a left hand. And ‘imprinting’ is a technique used by chemists to make polymers ‘remember’ the shape of a molecule by moulding polymers around a target molecule and then washing it away, thus creating a cavity only the target will fit. Knowing all this, we can identify the form of the sentence as an imperative with the meaning of a conditional – ‘If you imprint . . . won’t fit . . .’ – which tells us that the ‘memory’ of the polymer, the cavity, is very precise when it ‘remembers’ the shape of a particular molecule. Even so, there might be many aspects of a message which we fail to understand despite the effort we invest when processing its linguistic form. This may be either because we do not have the special knowledge required over and above the context (what about ‘polymers’ and ‘isomers’, for example?) or simply because the message communicated is poorly formulated and fails to meet the Principle of Optimal Relevance. What it is to be poorly formulated, or well-formulated at that, is a topic in its own right – in fact, it is the major topic of this book – and processing effort is a key concept for this topic. But before we can spell this out, we have to agree on a common empirical basis for the future line of reasoning.

Control paraphrases As every processing effort is relativized to what we know when we start processing a linguistically encoded piece of information, there cannot but be great differences between the background knowledge each of us can make use of. The differences will be partly compensated by the context, especially co-text, of the information, and by all the relevant assumptions we happen to share as members of the same language community. If we ignore the fact that there are an unlimited number of subgroups in a language community and concentrate on the ‘standard’ speaker of English who would read the type of text exemplified by the Key and its examples of translations between German and English, we may assume a great deal of common knowledge regarding the content and form of a contextualized piece of information. Regarding linguistic form, shared knowledge comprises not only the grammatical competence necessary to understand, for example, the following set of paraphrases, but also the stylistic competence which tells us that, under certain conditions, (f) is the paraphrase which meets the Principle of Optimal Relevance best:

12

Setting the scene

(a) At the beginning of creation stands the emergence of form. (b) At the beginning of creation there is/was/we have/see . . . the emergence of form. (c) The emergence of form stands at the beginning of creation. (d) The emergence of form began at the beginning of creation. (e) The emergence of form began with creation. (f) Creation began with the emergence of form. Comparing the paraphrases in context, we shall see that it is (f) that secures the ‘greatest possible gains for the least expenditure of effort’. For a first assessment, all we need to know is that this is the beginning of a popular scientific text on form (Gestalt), and that our paraphrases are translation versions of a German original. Let us ignore the role of the German original for a moment and ask ourselves which of the six English versions we would prefer at the beginning of a popular scientific text on form. Provided there are no special requirements, I claim that the variants (e) and (f) are the paraphrases most of us would prefer. (The minimized contextual conditions do not allow us to distinguish between these two versions yet.) It will take some time to spell out all the details contributing to this intuitive ranking. If we take a look at the German original: Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die Gestaltbildung. we can see that the set of the English paraphrases starts with the version: (a) At the beginning of creation stands the emergence of form. which is formally closest to the German original. Thus, we can suspect that the differences between the various paraphrases reflect differences in the use of English and German, which provide different conditions for optimal processing. The detailed analysis of this and other examples will show that this is indeed the case. If we want to reach a better understanding of language-specific processing conditions, we have to know something about the ways in which languages can differ from each other. As a whole, this is an endless affair, but there are some major aspects associated with word order, syntactic functions, structural explicitness and discourse incrementality (sentence boundaries) which can cover a wide variety of frequently recurring phenomena. We will look at them one by one in the following chapters, preparing the ground in the remaining part of this chapter by surveying some of the more general linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects involved in the discussion. Assuming that we take the final two paraphrases as the best possible versions among those we have compared, does this really mean that they are the optimal versions? What is the relationship between our intuitive

Setting the scene

13

preferences and the Principle of Optimal Relevance? What about cognitive gains and processing effort in the individual paraphrase? As all paraphrases express basically the same idea, they should yield the same cognitive gains. The degree of novelty, too, seems to be the same in all paraphrases, in that we are more or less familiar with all of the concepts used. What differs from paraphrase to paraphrase, however, is the linguistic structure encoding the message. And this means that we face different processing conditions in each paraphrase. With a short, isolated sentence like this, the idea of processing effort may seem somewhat far-fetched. Yet if we look more closely at the version(s) we prefer, as opposed to those we do not prefer, we will find a processing advantage in each preferred version which eliminates a processing disadvantage of the other version. Take the first paraphrase with its initial temporal adverbial: (a) At the beginning of creation stands the emergence of form. In combination with stands, the initial adverbial admits the subject of the sentence in a position after the verb, that is, in a position which is not the normal position for English subjects. If we assume that normal structures are easier to process than those which deviate from our normal expectations, the first paraphrase has a processing difficulty that does not exist in the other paraphrases, which all place the subject before the verb. (The second paraphrase with there is a border case as there is only a structural dummy filling the position of the real subject, which is yet to follow.) If this line of reasoning is correct, we can answer the above question right away. We can expect the preferred version to be the paraphrase with the fewest processing difficulties, the version on which we have to spend the least processing effort. All else being equal, this paraphrase will carry the highest degree of optimal relevance. If speakers or authors opt for the version with the highest degree of optimal relevance, they do this in the interest of the reader, whom they want to understand their message quickly – as this will in the end serve their own goals. Optimal relevance is determined by processing effort of language perception. The processing effort of language production, that is, the effort that goes into encoding a message, is something else. Yet, to secure optimal relevance we have to control what we produce, which we can only do by making use of language perception. Thus, even in writing or speaking, the criterion of optimal conditions for language perception is of prime importance. But why should expectations about the position of subjects play a role in language processing? After all, quite a number of people do not even know what a subject is, let alone what its normal position is or the special conditions under which we can deviate from the norm.

14

Setting the scene

Linguistic knowledge Knowledge about the properties of a language exists in two forms, explicit and implicit. We all share the implicit knowledge which enables us to use our own language adequately and so, for example, place the subject in its grammatically required position. But when we want to talk about this knowledge, we have to make it explicit. As we have no direct access to our implicit knowledge, we can talk about it only in the form of hypotheses – hypotheses about the elements constituting it and about the way in which these elements are used. Some of the theoretical concepts used when we talk about language have a long tradition. They belong to the things we hear about at school and may not remember afterwards. But if we want to name the conditions impeding or promoting optimal processing, we have to make the implicit knowledge explicit and identify the differences between the paraphrases. Most of the differences are tied to the grammatical properties of the linguistic structure, that is, to those properties that bind words together into phrases and relate them to classes of sentences constituted by different words but similar relations. Let us recall some of the basic concepts used in the description of sentence structures and their constituents. The major categories of word classes are verbs (like stand and begin) and substantives or nouns (like creation and emergence) and there are some minor categories like articles (the) and prepositions (of, at). Together they form ever-larger word groups, ‘phrases’, like the beginning, at the beginning, emergence, emergence of form, the emergence of form, with the emergence of form, began with the emergence of form, up to whole sentences: creation began with the emergence of form. Word groups have different functions in their sentence, depending on the relation in which they stand to one another. The verb with its extensions functions as the predicate. The predicate is asserted about the nominal phrase that functions as the subject, which is, in other words, the phrase the predicate is attributed to. In (f), for example, (f) Creation began with the emergence of form. began with the emergence of form is the predicate attributed to the subject creation. Subject and predicate are primary relations, which can be modified by secondary relations, as for example adverbials, like at the beginning of creation, which modifies the entire sentence. There are many English sentence structures like (f). (e) The emergence of form began with creation. is just one of them. But there are also many German sentence structures similar to (f), although the original is not among them.

Setting the scene

15

Verbs, nouns, subjects, adverbials – these and similar categories and relations are the inventory from which the variety of paraphrases are formed. The variation could concern the positions of constituents, as in: (a) At the beginning of creation stands the emergence of form. and: (c) The emergence of form stands at the beginning of creation. where the temporal adverbial and the subject swap places. It could also concern the grammatical relation of the constituent as in: (e) The emergence of form began with creation. and: (f) Creation began with the emergence of form. where the things talked about are alternatively encoded as subject or as temporal adverbial; it could even concern word formation, as in Gestaltbildung vs. the emergence of form, etc. The difference in the grammatical relations could be associated with a difference in the word class, as in (c) and (f ), where the temporal relation is expressed by the noun beginning in the adverbial phrase or the verb began in the predicate, and so on and so forth. Linguistic knowledge does not end with the repertoire of syntactic elements and relations, however. It comprises all the information of the lexicon of a language and this does not only determine the way in which individual elements can be combined into phrases and clauses, it determines also what the lexical elements mean. Meaning can be subdivided into semantic meaning, carried by the linguistic forms themselves (including phonetic and syntactic-morphological aspects), and contextualized meaning, enriched by the knowledge associated with a particular contextual usage of a linguistic expression. The categorial repertoire of semantic elements can be generalized into individuals and predicates forming propositions, that is, meanings that can be subjected to modal modifications and assessed in regard to their truth values. Let me illustrate this. The examples: (e) The emergence of form began with creation. and: (f) Creation began with the emergence of form.

16

Setting the scene

express the same propositional meaning, constituted by the individuals creation, the emergence of form and the predicate began (with). The contextually ‘instantiated’ meaning (that is, the meaning that is used in a certain context) is used in an interactive situation, where it acquires a certain communicative sense,3 in our example that of an assertion (by which the speaker claims that what (s)he says is true). Seen within its discourse context, the meaning of a sentence constitutes a simple or complex information unit, structured into various layers according to their functions within the progress of discourse as topic and comment, background and focus, which are basic concepts to be taken up in more detail later on. For now, it may suffice to note that (e) and (f) structure their propositional meanings alternatively. Although the line is difficult to draw, there is a linguistic and an extralinguistic part of meaning. The former is carried by our (mostly implicit) linguistic knowledge, the latter by our knowledge about the relevant world and general principles of inference. Looking at translation under the aspect of contextual appropriateness, we have to access both types of meaning. A great deal of the extralinguistic meaning is provided by the linguistically encoded co-text. Although the contextualized meaning is built up from linguistic knowledge, it is enriched by all the extralinguistic aspects associated with it, which can be highly specialized knowledge (as in the example about the polymers) including all the culture-specific aspects which may play a role in the discourse. Linguistic meaning itself can be expressed explicitly and implicitly, with different degrees of affirmativeness in case of presuppositions and implications. The latter can again be distinguished into conventionalized implications, that is purely linguistic meaning, and conversational implicatures (Grice 1975), which draw upon extralinguistic meaning. It is the conversational implicatures associated with the original and (f) that compensate for the difference between the propositional meanings of the German and the English version. (See the further discussion of this example in Chapter 2.)

Sentence processing Identifying the linguistic properties that distinguish various paraphrases is simply a precondition for the crucial question to which we will now return: why would one prefer a paraphrase with property X to other paraphrases within a certain context? And the general answer to this question suggested was: property X is easier to process than alternative properties. But how can we prove this? Why for example should subjects positioned before verbs be easier to process than subjects positioned after verbs? The answer indicated above was that the preverbal position was the normal position for English subjects, and that this is something that belongs to the implicit knowledge possessed by everybody who speaks English. And everybody who speaks English knows under which conditions s/he can

Setting the scene

17

expect exceptions to this: in yes–no questions, like ‘Was the boy there again?’; after negative adverbials at the beginning of the sentence, as in Hardly had he begun . . .; and under some odds-and-ends conditions, including those in paraphrase (a). But in contrast to the first two classes of exceptions, which are easy to identify by their specific conditions – finite verb or negative adverbial in initial position – paraphrase (a) has no indicators which could ‘license’ the inverse order, subject after verb. Now we can see that it is not the inverted order of subject after verb itself that hampers processing. The canonical cases of subject–verb inversion will certainly not present any processing difficulties. It is the unexpectedness of the inversion, the fact that we have not been prepared for it by the initial elements, that turns the order of subject after verb in (a) into a processing obstacle. ‘Obstacle’ certainly sounds like a big word for something that may take no more than milliseconds. Still, we process a sentence from its beginning to its end, in a slow motion picture, we could say, step by step, or ‘incrementally’ as the technical term has it. (Just look at the eyes of a reader moving from left to right, top to bottom or whatever the direction may be that the sentences are written in.) If the sentence is long, we will break it up into smaller chunks, the way we do when reading out aloud. Although theorists specializing in language processing (psycholinguists) still disagree on the details of the process, there is a great deal of evidence for a certain autonomy of these individual chunks, or ‘information units’. That is, our brains seem to become quite absorbed in the process of analysing such an information unit, starting from its syntactic structure and proceeding to its explicit and implicit meaning. Inside the chunk, expectations are built up on the basis of what we have already processed in the chunk and identified in accordance with our implicit knowledge of linguistic structures. This enables us to predict some aspects of the next elements. Afterwards, at the end of the process, when we ‘wrap up’ our processing results and integrate them into those of the preceding information units, we will know whether our current analyses and predictions are right or not. If we end up on the wrong track, and the results do not make sense, we will have to break off and correct our analysis – something that may happen almost anywhere in a sentence. If sentences are not well formulated, we may spend much time and effort in finding out what the intended message was. This end may often be achieved only by integrating the results of our processing into what we already know from the context, throwing out all the interpretations that do not match the context. Sometimes, even this last step will fail. But in all cases which are not optimally formulated it will take an extra effort to overcome processing obstacles, sort out ambiguities and correct processing errors. As all these processes take up almost no time and seem to happen more or less behind our backs, we are hardly ever aware of any individual problem.

18

Setting the scene

What we do notice instead is a vague feeling of irritation and, perhaps, momentary disorientation. In any case, we have the definite feeling that whatever else the message may be, it is not well formulated. A translation that is not well formulated fails the Translation Maxim in two aspects: it does not meet the constraints of the target language which follow from the Principle of Optimal Relevance; and it misses the style of the original. Any reader of the translation will assume that the style of the original did meet the corresponding constraints of the source language (unless there is evidence to the contrary, relativizing optimality – a topic we will turn to in the last chapter of the Key.)

Considering selection restrictions and wrapping up The requirement ‘subject before verb’ is met by five of the paraphrases, including one, (b), which allows us to retain the original topic. If we could stay closer to the original this way, why do we not opt for (b)? The answer is that things begin to get better only when we use a verb that matches the type of elements it relates to each other. Creation and emergence are both conceived of as events or processes, but predicates like stand and be are more static than processual. Stand even involves the idea of an upright position, which can be metaphorically taken to signal stability as in the agreement stands, but it does not match processes. Although the beginning of events could be viewed as a point in time (that is, a time interval without duration), the concept of stand does not really go well with the concepts of creation and emergence. Be, if it is used on its own, is no better in this respect. It refers to the existence of things, and processes like the emergence of form are not normally conceived of as things. The paraphrases with stand or be are stylistically poor because they produce a mismatch between the meaning of the verb and the meaning of its ‘arguments’, the constituents related to each other by the verb. The fact that the violation of selection restrictions does not meet the Principle of Optimal Relevance is obvious. However, there is the German original, where the combination of stehen with Gestaltbildung and Anfang der Schöpfung does not violate any semantic restrictions. What this means is that semantic restrictions are language-specific. They are properties of the lexical elements of a specific language and cannot be predicted from our general knowledge about states and processes or the like. There may be something regular in the way selection restrictions are eliminated with the transfer of meaning from concrete to abstract areas, something that could be related to the parametrized properties of a language. We will return to this question at a later point, discussing the phenomenon of alternative perspectives. For now, we will turn our backs on such lexical problems, however predominant a challenge they may be in the real world of translations, and return to the domain of language-specific processing conditions which relate to any sentence.

Setting the scene

19

Let me recall the basic assumptions I have made in setting the scene. Choosing a non-historical perspective of translation, which views translations as contextualized instances of possible correspondences between languages, I have suggested focusing on a subset of translations following a translational norm that is linked to the Principle of Optimal Relevance. Felicitous translations will in this sense be translations that have found an optimal way to stay as close to the meaning and the style of the original as possible within the constraints of the target language. Using sets of control paraphrases (minimally varied paraphrases of the original structure), the method suggested appeals to our implicit knowledge about the appropriateness of paraphrases relative to each other within a certain context. Although this means abstracting away from the different knowledge bases of individual readers, the tight contextual and co-textual constraints placed on the paraphrases should secure a relatively high percentage of agreement among native speakers of a similar language competence. As the comparison is restricted to a certain set of paraphrases, we can never exclude the possibility that there are other paraphrases which may be even more optimal than those compared. Yet the decision about appropriateness would subject them to the same procedure of comparative assessment in context. Comparing the contextual appropriateness of a paraphrase relative to others in a certain context means first of all comparing the processing conditions of the paraphrase relative to others. Processing conditions are context dependent and language specific. Both aspects interact in the way in which the information is distributed onto the linguistic structures of original and translation. The next six chapters, focusing on word order, case frame and structural explicitness, will elaborate in detail the main assumptions of the book on the interaction between language-specific properties and discourse. Let me add to the scene a bird’s-eye view of the ideas involved. It is obvious that languages do not only differ in their vocabularies and grammars but also in the way in which those systematic options are used. There are a great number of cases where even similar means are used differently. Now, this book claims that the primary reason for the different uses lies in a small set of basic grammatical properties, which form something like a mould through which similar material may be shaped differently. Despite their many similarities in terms of word classes, syntactic functions or grammatical categories, English and German are quite impressive cases of such basically differing moulds. Irrespective of their different aspectual and numerical categorizations of events and things, they could form many similar sentence structures, using the same word order, parts of speech, active or passive perspectives, syntactic coordinations or subordinations, and the like. But there are a great deal of cases where they use a different word order, different parts of speech, the opposite voice, or a different linkage of clauses.

20

Setting the scene

If you ask native speakers why they do not make use of the structural options that would be closer to the other language, they can only tell you that it does not sound right. But the reason behind this vague feeling is the native speakers’ tacit knowledge about the way in which the basic features of their language interact with the general conditions of the discourse to which a sentence belongs. Spelling out the details of this interaction is a long and highly complex affair – as the discussion of the examples in this book will amply demonstrate – but the main idea is relatively simple. There are some basic parameters determining the special grammatical ‘mould’ of a language. The most important aspects distinguishing German and English are related to, firstly, the direction in which words, first of all verbs, are extended into groups of words and, secondly, the freedom with which we may deviate from this basic word order and ‘move’ parts of the sentence to other positions, as for example from a position after the verb to one before it. Borrowing a concept from molecular biology, we could say that English is a language with a rightward ‘spin’ – the direction of verbal extensions is to the right – and German is a language with a leftward spin – the direction of verbal extensions is to the left. On the other hand, English word order is relatively rigid and does not permit too many deviations from the basic order, while German may deviate from its basic word order in many ways. There are a few grammatical reasons for deviating from basic word order. For example, if we want to form a yes-no question, we have to exchange subject and auxiliary. But in most cases, deviations from basic word order are related to the integration of a sentence into its discourse. And this is where the interaction between grammatical features and discourse conditions comes in. The integration of a sentence into its discourse follows some universal rules of information structuring, which language-users adhere to in the interest of felicitious communication. Of the many ways in which we can formulate a thought, we will intuitively prefer those which transport our message most efficiently, which means that we will not only choose the appropriate words but also the appropriate sentence structure to allow addressees to link the message to their thoughts as required. However, the different moulds of English and German do not allow us to follow the same strategies in linking our sentences to the discourse, that is, we cannot but adhere to different discourse-linking strategies if we formulate a sentence in a language with a rightward spin and a relatively rigid word order or in a language with a leftward spin and a ‘free’ word order. The overriding difference is that the greater word-order freedom in German makes the impact of discourse linking much stronger in German than in English. It is to the most important area of this difference that we shall now turn.

2

Questions of order

There can be no doubt that questions of order have top priority. In processing messages, we have to submit to the White Queen’s remark: ‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards’ (Carroll 1968: 254). As Alice says, ‘We can’t remember things before they happen’. We can only interpret sentences against the background of what we know, or, more precisely, what we can think of at the time of processing a message. Some of the things we can think of at this very moment will be the things we were told before in the immediately preceding message, including all the thoughts that the previous sentence(s) had activated in our brains. Elements which have already been activated are, certainly, easier to identify than elements we have not yet thought of. Thus, it seems only natural to place the familiar before the new. But even if we ignore all those particular situations where we might want to deviate from this natural order of presentation, the natural, easy-to-process order of elements is a highly complex affair, subject to linguistic and extralinguistic constraints. It is clear that grammar plays a decisive role here and as languages differ in their grammars, we can expect grammatically based differences in the order of elements. But as we shall see soon, grammar has its repercussions at the level of style related to contextual appropriateness and conditions of optimal processing. The key concept for questions of order is that of information structure, which links word-order rules to discourse-structuring rules, that is, to the rules that control progress in discourse. As the following discussion of initially simple, then increasingly complex, cases will show, translations have to be reordered in many cases if they are to achieve contextual appropriateness and meet optimal processing conditions in the target language. As the grammatically determined order and its interaction with contextual aspects is no simple matter – its complexity being doubled by the fact that we are dealing with two languages – it will take us quite a while to get through the various aspects of order. But as questions of order are also dealt with in the subsequent topics of primary relations, structural weight, and all the others, the extra effort needed for the following sections will serve us well in more then one way. 21

22

Questions of order

Parametrized processing conditions General conditions for easy processing ought to be the same in all languages. The Principle of Optimal Relevance makes us prefer linguistic structures that enable us to quickly analyse the grammatical relations between the elements of a sentence which determine its meaning. But individual languages present different structural properties for these general processing conditions. The expectation of the subject-before-verb order and the special licensing conditions for its inversion relate to a feature of English not shared by German. When I say that processing conditions are parametrized, I refer to the fact that the grammatical parameters which determine the profile of a language determine the conditions for processing linguistic expressions in that language, too. Let me give you a first rough survey of what this means. As has already been pointed out, one of the most important parameters to distinguish is that of directionality, the rightward or leftward ‘spin’ of a language. It determines the direction of the structural extension which a categorial head, like a verb or a noun, can take. There are languages where this is a consistent cross-categorial property, as for example Japanese, which extends verbs, nouns and postpositions (the parametrized version of prepositions) to the left. English and German are more of a mixed nature. In English the dominant direction of verbs, nouns and prepositions is to the right. At first sight, it seems to be to the right in German, too, but if one takes translation as empirical evidence and is thus forced to include a wider variety of possible extensions, one will encounter very many examples where the different order of the elements points to an alternative directionality of the English and the German verb phrase. Thus, one can assume that, basically, the English verb phrase extends to the right and the German verb phrase extends to the left. There are other factors superimposed upon this basic difference, especially in German, which deviates from the basic word order for discourse reasons. English is much more constrained in this respect, because of the second important parameter distinguishing the two languages. This is the parameter of configurationality, which has its effect on word order, too, as it determines grammatical relations like subject or object by structural configurations (see below). However, word order is not only determined grammatically, it is also determined pragmatically by the context/discourse, in which the individual syntactic structure participates. In contrast to the grammaticalized properties, which are obligatory, the pragmatic conditions are binding only in the sense of optimal relevance. Yet if we ignore the pragmatic conditions and do not choose the structures which are in line with optimal relevance, we cannot help producing certain effects, too. These are, again, parametrized, that is, they differ according to the grammatical parametrization underlying them. (Control paraphrases, especially analogous translations, illustrate this extensively.)

Questions of order

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The interface between grammatical and discourse conditions is ‘information structure’. It is not only highly relevant for word order, but also for questions of structural explicitness and sentence boundaries, that is, for all the topics we are going to look at in the following chapters. It is one of the major claims of the Key that information structure is grammatically parametrized and that our understanding of felicitous translations can be enhanced greatly by making this type of knowledge explicit. We will now take a close look at the grammatical and pragmatic details of a pair of simple and, in the next chapter, a pair of complex sentences. We will use the method of control paraphrases and a magnifying glass to extract from the examples all the linguistic and psycholinguistic knowledge needed to describe, generalize and explain felicitous translation and word order.

Parametrized beginnings In German, the position of the finite verb, which is always in the second place in the main clause, can freely be preceded by any other constituent. This means also that the subject can occur in different positions in the sentence. Grammatically seen, the order: Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die Gestaltbildung. is just as normal as: Die Gestaltbildung steht am Anfang der Schöpfung. There is, however, a difference in the way in which these sentences link up with their surrounding context. The difference is very much like the difference between the paraphrases: (e) The emergence of form began with creation. and: (f) Creation began with the emergence of form. The contextual link belongs to one of the major criteria of optimal encoding and we will return to it shortly. What we should notice now is the grammatical difference between the German options (adverbial or subject) and the English option (only subject). This is no coincidence, but prototypical for the parametrized beginnings of German and English sentences. Although many sentences begin alike – for example with the subject – the examples above and most of those following show that there are different conditions in English and German controlling the initial position in a sentence.

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The difference between the English and the German conditions relate first of all to what is traditionally called free word order in German. While English has relatively tight grammatical restrictions on word order, which can be lifted only under very special conditions – as we saw with the subject– verb order – German is, grammatically seen, much more liberal. Although we can assume something like a canonical order of things in German, too, a basic word order, this basic order is given up much more often in German than in English. In contrast to the two or three special conditions requiring a deviation from the basic word order in English, German word order is regulated by a whole bundle of conditions, most of which are related to the integration of the sentence into its context. The difference between German and English initial positions belongs to one of the two basic grammatical differences between the two languages. In fact, each language belongs to one or another of an alternative pair of options, free or fixed word order, or a mixture of both. Languages with fixed word orders are mostly configurational languages, which means, as you will recall from above, that grammatical relations are expressed by certain structural configurations. An English subject, for example, is characterized by its preverbal position; nominal phrases in postverbal positions are complements to the verb, as for example, objects. German, on the other hand, is more of a non-configurational language. Subjects are not bound to a special position; they are not part of a special structural configuration. The difference may be connected to the difference between German and English word forms. Subjects are characterized by a different case form in German (nominative) as opposed to objects (dative or accusative) – a difference English can make only in the area of pronouns like ‘he’ and ‘him’, ‘she’ and ‘her’, but not with fully lexicalized noun phrases. The difference between German and English is enhanced by the fact that German has a grammatical gender, it has das Symbol (it), der Verlust (he) and die Tatsache (she), while English has ‘the symbol’, ‘the loss’ and ‘the fact’. The pronominal distinction helps to identify grammatical relations in German much more often than in English, where it neutralizes all these differences. We will look at such an example under another heading later on (p. 83). Whatever the internal relations between the parameter of configurationality and the different case forms may be, there can be no doubt about the importance of grammatical parameters for language-specific processing conditions, especially in regard to questions of order. We will have ample opportunity to study the repercussions of the grammatical difference, the most important one being its effect on the pragmatic, discourse-related role of the initial position.

Information structure: the point of departure If we have two elements to distribute within a sentence, we are, theoretically, free to order them either way. Grammatically seen, paraphrases (e) and (f) are equally acceptable.

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The emergence of form began with creation. or: Creation began with the emergence of form. Yet the message is clearly different. Although both sentences assert the simultaneity of the emergence of form and creation, the point of departure of the assertion is specified in the subject, which means that it is the emergence of form we talk about in the first sentence but creation in the second sentence. In one case we characterize the emergence of form by linking it to the beginning of creation, in the other we characterize creation by linking it to the emergence of form. The point of departure is traditionally called the ‘topic’ of a sentence, or ‘theme’, while the remaining part is called the ‘comment’ made about the topic. The grammatical relation between subject and predicate is a prototypical way of expressing this. The German original does not take the subject but the temporal adverbial as its point of departure: Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die Gestaltbildung. The subject is part of the predicate carrying the comment. The reverse: Die Gestaltbildung steht am Anfang der Schöpfung. turns the subject into the point of departure, with the temporal adverbial as its comment. In both sentences we seem to identify the initial part of the sentence with the topic and the part following it with the comment. The distribution of the elements into topic and comment is one way of structuring the information conveyed by a sentence. There is at least one more aspect constituting the information structure of a sentence. We will come to it shortly. As for the topic/comment distinction, however, we are faced with a difference between the original and the translational versions (e) and (f): (e) The emergence of form began with creation. (f) Creation began with the emergence of form. The concept of beginning is part of the German topic and part of the English comment in both versions. Does this mean that the messages of the translation and the original differ? If we look at the way in which the message presents itself at the surface of the linguistic structures, the original and the translation do differ. That is, they are not fully equivalent. Let us call this surface-based equivalence ‘surface equivalence’. With all the differences between languages, we can

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predict that surface equivalence is hardly ever possible. But if we stand back and look at the message from a greater distance, taking into consideration all the aspects we could expect the reader to associate with the surface-based interpretation, it will be enriched by many associations and implications, which could compensate for differences between the surface interpretations of the original and its translation. Thus, the concept of creation itself implies a beginning. It refers to something that was not there before. To say: Creation began with the emergence of form. localizes the implied beginning of creation and the emergence of form at the same time. Taking explicit and implicit elements together, the English and the German sentences have the same meaning – though it is distributed differently among the explicit and implicit components of the message. Yet even this global perspective cannot eliminate the difference in the information structures of the original and its translation. This is obviously part of the surface equivalence, which will mostly have to be sacrificed in the interest of grammatical acceptability and optimal processing conditions. And, in this case, the ‘loss’ boils down to almost nothing when we weigh it against the gains we have made with (e) and (f) as opposed to the other paraphrases with their processing disadvantages. Still, as (e) and (f) choose different topics, they cannot really be equally optimal translations. If we compare them with the German original, we could say that (f) is more optimal (in terms of the Maxim) than (e), since the topic of (f) is at least to some extent identical to the topic of the original.

Reordering information structures Let us now turn to the other aspect of information structure: the distinction between focus and background. While the topic – that is, the starting point, the element the sentence is about – is generally located at the beginning of a sentence, the focus – that is, the most important part of the information – is located at a later point, frequently at the end of the sentence. Thus, unless we have some contextual evidence to the contrary, we would consider the German original: Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die Gestaltbildung. and its translation: Creation began with the emergence of form. as examples of such canonical distribution of information. Irrespective of the difference in the topic, Am Anfang der Schöpfung/at the beginning of

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creation as opposed to creation, the distribution of topic and focus is the same here in German and English. The topic is located at the beginning of the sentences, and the focus, Gestaltbildung/the emergence of form, is at the end of the sentences. But this is not always the case. In fact, there are many examples where the position of the most important element of a sentence differs in German and English as well as many examples where the English focus occurs in topic position. Let us look at one of these examples. The text speaks about the attempt of physicists and chemists in the first half of the nineteenth century to apply Newton’s mechanics to the atomic structure of matter, introducing the problems they were bound to face with the sentence: Allerdings stand diesem Vorhaben ein schier unlösbares Problem im Wege. (EW 1983a: 165) This has been translated into English as: An apparently insurmountable problem, however, stood in the way of this effort. (EW 1983a: 143) If we ignore the sentence adverbial allerdings/however, we can say that the original order of topic and focus has been reversed in the translation. If we consider the definite noun phrase, diesem Vorhaben/this effort, to be the topic, and the indefinite noun phrase, ein schier unlösbares Problem/an apparently insurmountable problem, to be the focus of the sentence, then we can say that the topic precedes the focus in German and follows the focus in English. The grammatical reasons for the change are, at least to a certain extent, obvious. The syntactic properties of im Wege stehen/to stand in the way of are different in German and English. While German requires an indirect object, a dative object, English can only add this argument to way: in the way of this effort. The different syntactic integration of effort/Vorhaben into the sentence structure results in different conditions for the use of this element as topic or, more precisely, for its location at the beginning of the sentence. While German can say: Diesem Vorhaben stand ein unlösbares Problem im Wege. that is, prepose the dative object and leave the nominal extension of the verbal complex im Wege stehen at the end of the sentence, English can only prepose this effort together with its structural head, in the way of:

28

Questions of order *This effort stood an apparently insurmountable problem in the way of. In the way of this effort stood an apparently insurmountable problem.

However, the grammatically acceptable version not only has a different topic than the original, it is clearly not as good as the existing translation: An apparently insurmountable problem stood in the way of this effort. The reason for the preference of the latter is the condition of the preverbal position of the English subject, with which we are already familiar. But this time, the difference in the optimal distribution of information amounts to a difference in the overall distribution of information, and if we were to take position as the defining criterion for topic and focus, we would have to say that the original and its translation are different messages altogether. But intuitively we would like to say that the English and the German sentences are just different formal versions of the same message. If this intuition is correct what do we have to assume in order to account for it?

The most important element In its spoken form, the most important element is generally associated with the main stress in the sentence. If we were to read the German and English sentences aloud, we would place the main stress on unlösbares Problem/ insurmountable problem, which is the most important element of the sentence in either version. The technical term for the element carrying the main stress is ‘focus exponent’. It is our implicit knowledge about focus assignment that makes us stress a particular element in the sentence, that is, choose a certain element as focus exponent. But why should it be insurmountable problem/unlösbares Problem? If we consider something to be the most important element, it will be more important than all the others it is compared to, but only in relation to the specific aspect it is important for. For the most important element of a message, obviously, this aspect will be the purpose of the message, in its most neutral form the purpose of informing. In this case, the criterion determining the importance of a particular element will be the degree of novelty it has for the recipient. New elements will be considered more important than ‘old’ ones, the elements with which we are already familiar. The criterion of novelty versus familiarity/givenness requires us to take account of the context, whether immediate or wider, text or situation. It is a contextual criterion which helps us to determine focus by comparing the informational elements of a sentence with those of its context. In the end, the criterion of novelty does not suffice as there are, for example, sentences which have only new or only old information. But it will

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be enough to settle the question for the last example. The predicate stand in the way of relates two arguments, only one of which, an insurmountable problem, contains new information. The other one, this effort, belongs to the knowledge we have gathered from the context: the attempt of physicists and chemists to apply Newton’s mechanics to the atomic structure of matter in an effort to arrive at a unified description of all the characteristics of matter. That is, this effort is old, contextually given information, while everything else is new, the insurmountable problem as well as its relation to the effort: stood in the way of. The difference between given and new information is, to a certain extent, reflected in the difference between definite and indefinite phrases. In particular, if the predicate relates a definite phrase (like the beginning/this effort) and an indefinite phrase (like a problem/problems) to each other, we can expect the definite phrase to contain given information and the indefinite phrase new information. If we identify everything new with focus, everything but this effort would be part of the focus. This is a concept of focus common to many focus theories.1 Information structure is partitioned into focus and background, that is, in most cases new and given information. Seen this way, the focus of a sentence may extend beyond its focus exponent, the element that carries the main stress of a sentence. Focus theories speak of a ‘projecting’ focus whenever the focus is not restricted to a focus exponent.2 Now, if we compare the distribution of the focus exponents, we can say that the English version starts with the focus exponent: An apparently insurmountable problem, however, stood in the way of this effort. while German places the focus closer to the end of the sentence: (Allerdings stand) diesem Vorhaben ein schier unlösbares Problem im Wege. The difference between the two languages looks quite arbitrary, but it is the result of parametrical differences in either case. It is the subject-before-verb parameter which places the most important element at the beginning of this English sentence, and it is the directionality parameter which accounts for the final position of the verbal extension: im Wege. I will now address this, though not without summing up what we have seen so far. While the beginning of the English sentence is determined by grammatical principles, which can override the canonical distribution of information in the sentence, the beginning of the German sentence follows information structural aspects. It links up to the local context, resuming a given element.

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Structural focus It seems that the position of the most important element is variable. If we take our first two examples, we find that there are three different positions for the focus exponent: at the end of the German and English sentences in the first example, and in the middle of the German sentence and at the beginning of the English sentence in the second example. There is a structural regularity, however, underlying this distribution and all the other examples we have yet to look at. In a way, the distribution reflects the basic architecture of a message, which in its most elementary form links a subject and a predicate. The element which will always be present in the predicate is the verb, which as a rule relates one complement (for example, an object or a predicate) to the subject. It is this complement, namely the closest argument of the verb, which we can normally expect to contain the focus exponent of a sentence.3 If there is no focusable argument, it could also be the verb that serves as the focus exponent. Now, this concept of a focus exponent bound to a certain position in the structure of a sentence is purely formal. However, the idea that the verb attracts the focus seems to be quite ‘logical’. After all, it is the predicate which normally determines the comment we make about the topic of a sentence. The closest extension of the verb, the verb-adjacent phrase, is a structural criterion which may or may not coincide with the contextual criterion for focus. Normally, that is, in well-formed sentences, the contextual and the structural focus will identify the same element as focus, and, for the time being, we will simply presuppose the identity of structural and contextual focus. Thus, in: Creation began with the emergence of form. it is the emergence of form completing the verbal expression began with which we can identify as the structural focus exponent of the sentence. But with stand/stehen the situation is different. We can take stand in the way/im Wege stehen as a fixed verbal expression, where the local adverbial specifies part of the lexical meaning of the expression. Consequently, the subject, an apparently insurmountable problem/ein schier unlösbares Problem, is the closest argument to this complex verb and will contain the structural focus exponent. For reasons that will be given shortly, we can assume something similar for am Anfang stehen, and therefore expect the subject, die Gestaltbildung, to contain the focus exponent in the German original of the first example, too. Thus, English and German follow the same rule in selecting a structural focus exponent – each time it is the closest argument of the verb that will contain the focus exponent. But the difference between the English and

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German grammatical parameters causes the focus exponent to occur in different structural positions. While the subject is bound to the position before the verb in English, it may follow the verb in German – even at some distance, as the German original of the second example shows: Allerdings stand diesem Vorhaben ein schier unlösbares Problem im Wege. While the position of the English subject is determined configurationally – that is, purely grammatically – the position of the German subject varies according to its role in the information structure. If it is the focus exponent of the sentence, the subject, too, will be placed at the end of the German sentence. The prediction seems to be borne out in the first example: Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die Gestaltbildung. but not in the second, where the end of the sentence is occupied by part of the complex verb: im Wege. What is worse, we seem to have lost sight of the generalization that the focus exponent is the element closest to the verb. However, both objections can be dispersed by what may be considered the most important grammatical difference between the German and the English sentence structure, namely the basic position of the finite verb and the associated directionality of its structural extensions.

Basic verb positions While the finite verb precedes its complements in English, it appears in two alternative positions in German – it precedes its complements in the main clause: Am Anfang steht die Gestaltbildung but follows them in the subclause: daß die Gestaltbildung am Anfang steht. The verb thus appears at the left or the right periphery of the verb phrase. But if we have a complex verb phrase consisting of an auxiliary, like ‘be’, ‘have’, ‘will’, ‘could’. . ., which helps to express various grammatical aspects of the verb, and a main verb, the main verb will occur in the right peripheral position in main clauses, too. Compare the position of the finite verb, würde, at the beginning of the verb phrase, and the position of the main verb, stehen, at the end of the verb phrase: Am Anfang würde die Gestaltbildung stehen.

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Now, it is the main verb, the lexically meaningful verb, which takes complements, determining their number and form: begin with, stand in the way of . . .. It determines also the neutral order of these arguments if there are more than one. Although linguists still argue about the basic order of arguments for each individual verb, the assumption that there is a basic order is generally accepted. Today the idea of a basic order is even extended onto those extensions of the verb or verb phrase which are not predetermined by its lexical meaning, but added freely, that is, the various classes of adverbials. The interesting thing about the position of the focus exponent and the verb in German is that the basic order of the extensions of the verb is exactly the same in main and subclauses, irrespective of the position of the finite verb. And if we take the position of the closest argument of the verb as an indication of the basic position of the verb, we have to conclude that the final position, that is, the position of the verb in the subclause, is the basic position. The closest argument of the verb will always appear as the right-most extension of the German verb phrase whether it is followed by a verb or not. Thus, the basic order of arguments would be the same in both types of clauses: jemand gibt jemandem ein Buch /someone gives someone a book; daß jemand jemandem ein Buch gibt. Judging from the basic order of its complements, the German verb has its basic position at the end of the verb phrase, which is at the same time the end of the sentence.4 Comparing verb positions relative to their complements, we can say that English has a left-peripheral verb phrase, and German a right-peripheral verb phrase, with the complements of the verbs extending in alternative directions. With the left-peripheral position of the English verb and the rightperipheral position of the German verb, verb-adjacency of focus can mean different focus positions in English and German. In the case of several verbphrase internal constituents, the difference will become more noticeable and can amount to something we could, in a simplified way, call mid-focus in English and end-focus in German.5

Context sensitivity A number of other factors, especially information structural ones, are superimposed on the basic order. Thus, for example, if we have an indefinite and a definite argument, which amounts to a new and a given element, the definite argument will normally precede the indefinite: Der Mann gibt das Buch einem Freund./The man gives the book to a friend. This is what we have in our second German example:

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Diesem Vorhaben stand ein unlösbares Problem im Wege. If im Wege is part of the verb, we can say that the indefinite noun phrase ein unlösbares Problem is the focus exponent as it occurs in the right-most position, followed only by a part of the verb. English is less context-sensitive. Following the subject-before-verb rule, the translator has placed the indefinite subject, an insurmountable problem, at the beginning of the English sentence, producing a focused topic: An apparently insurmountable problem stood in the way of this effort. Still, we can identify the subject as the closest argument of the verb, which is a verbal expression, stand in the way of, that links its complement (here, this effort) to the subject. The lexical difference between jemandem im Wege stehen/stand in the way of someone amounts to a difference in the syntactic hierarchy of the structural extensions which allows us to identify the English subject, too, as the argument closest to the verb – closer than the postverbal extension, this effort, as this is only an extension of in the way of. Due to the different syntactic hierarchy, we can identify the subject as the focus exponent of the English sentence, too. This type of focused, ‘prominent’ subject occurs quite often in English,6 while the corresponding structure in German will be reversed whenever there is another, less ‘prominent’ extension of the verb. Concluding the discussion of our second example, then, we can now confirm our intuition that the English and the German sentences are just different formal versions of the same message. And if we assume that the structural focus indicates the contextual focus, we can say that the English and German versions secure optimal processing conditions for equivalent focus interpretations and, in this respect, can thus also be considered equivalent messages.

Hierarchies Why does the Key use all these highly abstract grammatical concepts to talk about the focused elements of a sentence? Can we not compare an original and its translations on the basis of our intuitions about what is more and what is less important in the message? After all, anybody could have identified the foci of the last two examples much more quickly without the criterion of verb-adjacency, which presupposes an entire theory of grammar. Certainly. But how would we generalize our observations? Meaning itself is nothing we can hold on to. It changes with each sentence. Position does not allow any simple generalization, either. You cannot, for example, say that the focus is at the end of a German sentence if you mean the orthographical end of the sentence. There are many sentences like the one

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with im Wege stehen where the focus is not localized at the end. Both in German and in English, it would be impossible to find a generalization related to punctuation. As the examples showed, the focus may be at the end, at the beginning, or somewhere in between. The grammatical concept of verb-adjacency allows us to generalize about all German and all English examples. The concept may not always be easy to apply (particularly in German, where the verb leaves its basic position when used in a main clause, but also in English, where we have so many focused subjects), but what should have become clear by now is that adjacency, or closeness, is not a linear, but a hierarchical concept. Let me demonstrate this with a few more examples. Take the following sentence where German and English use the same structure except for the difference in the predicate: Gestalt beruht auf Ordnung in Raum und Zeit . . . (EW 1983a: 88) Form is a product of order in time and space . . . (EW 1983b: 69) The closest extension of the German verb (beruhen/is based on) is the prepositional phrase, auf Ordnung in Raum und Zeit. It should contain the focus exponent. But why should we consider the prepositional phrase the closest extension of the verb? The verb is a predicate relating two arguments to each other, the subject and the prepositional object. Could we not consider the subject as closer to the verb than the object? After all, the two preceding examples had their closest argument in the subject. If we simplify things a great deal, we could explain this as follows – structural extensions of verbs can be either lexically predetermined ‘arguments’ or free modifiers (free adverbials). As a rule, arguments are ‘closer’ to verbs than adverbials, and within arguments objects are closer to verbs than subjects. The distance between the verb and the adverbial reflects the ‘scope’ of the adverbial, that is, the size of the phrase which is modified by the adverbial. This differs with different adverbials: modal adverbials specifying the way in which something happens belong to the inner layers; local adverbials are more distant, their scope including the modal adverbials; and temporal adverbials form part of the outer layers, their scope including those of the others. The details of the many different types of adverbials – some of which may even occur in several classes – are highly intricate and, of course, language specific. But the principle of hierarchical ‘layers’ surrounding the verb and its arguments according to their semantic-syntactic scope is the same. The hierarchy manifests itself in the linear order of adverbials, which is left- or right-centred according to the language-specific directionality.7 The hierarchy of arguments, on the other hand, is lexically based, that is, each verb determines the number, type and basic order of the phrases it

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accepts as its arguments.8 Some patterns occur very often and are seen as prototypical. For example, in most cases the subject is the highest argument of a verb with several arguments. While objects and predicates extend the verb into a verb phrase, subjects extend the verb phrase into a sentence. With certain verbs, however, as for example stehen, the subject is considered the closest argument of the verb. If we take all of this together, we can classify the prepositional object auf Ordnung in Raum und Zeit in: Gestalt beruht auf Ordnung in Raum und Zeit . . . as closer to the verb than the subject Gestalt, but the subject Gestaltbildung in the German original: Am Anfang steht die Gestaltbildung. as closer to the verb than the adverbial. Identifying the structural focus is not yet the end of the story. We still have to integrate the result of our formal analysis into the discourse the sentence belongs to. This may require an extension of the focus onto more elements or – in case of a mismatch – reanalysis. Let us take a look at these cases of contextual ‘adaptation’.

Focus projection Gestaltbildung is a word, though a complex one; the emergence of form is a phrase. Die Gestaltbildung is also a phrase. If a phrase contains the focus exponent, which of its elements is it? As function words, like articles, are normally unstressed, there is not much to choose from in the case of die Gestaltbildung. The focus exponent is the lexical element of the phrase, the noun: die GESTALTBILDUNG. But what about the phrase: the emergence of form? Following the idea that the focus exponent is mostly the element that is given the main stress in the sentence, linguists suggest going by stress rule. It is the last stressable lexical element in a phrase that receives the main stress in the phrase. Thus we get the emergence of FORM. But this is definitely not the focus we think of when we look at the entire example in its context. Even if, for the moment, we ignore the apparent paradox that the focus exponent is a given element, we would want the focus to cover, at least, the whole phrase, the emergence of form. This is where the concept of focus projection comes in. The focus feature is projected onto a larger part of the sentence; the extension of the projection is guided by structural constituency limited by contextual givenness. To a certain extent, givenness can be read off from definite articles, as we said. But unique concepts, like die Schöpfung, are used with a definite article

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also if they are not contextually given. Thus, the criterion is not very reliable and we do have to look at the context itself. The context of our first example is nothing but the title of the section introduced by this sentence. While it contains Gestalt (which is rendered as form), it does not contain any of the other elements of the sentence. We therefore have to conclude that the focus projection extends over the whole sentence: [Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die GESTALTBILDUNG]. We could also assume that Schöpfung/creation is a concept we are all familiar with, which may well have been the reason for the authors to choose it as their starting point. But the concept is certainly not present in our minds when we read the sentence. I will therefore consider it part of the focus projection, to be distinguished from the rest by its status as topic: [[TopicCreation] began with the emergence of FORM] The German original would be quite similar: [[Topic Am Anfang der Schöpfung] steht die GESTALTBILDUNG]. If we analyse our last example, the result is different. The last stressable element is the noun: Zeit in German or space in English. But coordinations relate phrases with similar properties, so I will assume the focus exponent to be identical with both conjuncts: RAUM und ZEIT ; TIME and SPACE. (The different order of the conjuncts is an intricate problem, which I will ignore for the sake of simplicity.) What about focus projection? A look at the context tells us that Gestalt/ form is given, but so is Raum und Zeit, time and space. The preceding sentence is: From this formlessness emerge the structures of time and space: light and darkness, day and night, heaven and earth, land and sea. (EW 1983b: 69) Thus, we have to assume that the focus projection excludes the structural focus exponent, shifting the focus onto the next focusable element: Gestalt [beruht auf ORDNUNG] in Raum und Zeit . . . Form [is a product of ORDER] in time and space . . . That is, the context tells us to ‘defocus’ the structural focus (whether this has any effect on the prosodic focus structure is an open question); structural and contextual focus do not coincide. We have to reanalyse the sentence when

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integrating its information structure into the preceding context. This is a processing disadvantage which can hardly be avoided. But as we have very much the same situation in both languages, this need not bother us too much.

Focusing elements There is one more formal aspect of the last example we should make a note of. The focus exponent, unlösbares Problem/insurmountable problem, is not the last stressable element of its phrase, ein schier unlösbares Problem/an apparently insurmountable problem. This would be only problem. But even if we do not know anything about the context, our native intuition tells us clearly that the focus falls on insurmountable, too. This time, our intuition is guided by our implicit grammatical knowledge not only about argument positions, but also about the focusing effect of certain lexical elements, as for example the adverb schier – a slightly oldfashioned expression, oscillating between degree and truth, something between ‘almost’ and ‘apparently’. Other focusing elements are ‘only’, ‘even’, ‘also’, ‘almost’, ‘already’ and many more. They all mark an element in their scope as focused. In contrast to structural focus, which can even project over the whole sentence, lexical focus does not project over more than its immediate constituent and it is always contrastive in its interpretation, that is, it excludes other possibilities. The contrastive nature of negated elements like unlösbar/insurmountable will thus automatically attract the focus which the focus element assigns to an element in its scope. In most cases, focusing elements are used to mark an extra focus, that is, there are sentences which have more than one focus and focusing elements will mostly indicate such cases. Take for example the German original: Eben diese MÖGLICHKEIT muß in den frühen Perioden der Evolution . . . von großer BEDEUTUNG gewesen sein. (EW 1983a: 309) where we have at least two foci: the lexical focus after eben and the structural focus at the end. In English, the focusing element itself is focused, but its meaning ‘passes’ the focus effect on: In the early periods of evolution, this VERY possibility . . . must have been of great IMPORTANCE. (EW 1983b: 276) As in this example, contrasted elements are in very many cases given elements, which means that focused and given need not exclude one another. Occasionally, lexical and structural focus seem to coincide, as is the case in our example with unlösbar/insurmountable. Structurally, the focus

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exponent is assigned to problem, but the lexically marked unlösbar/ insurmountable is focused, too. And as the adjective carries a contrastive focus, it seems to be even more important than the nominal head of the subject: Allerdings stand diesem Vorhaben ein schier Wege.

UNLÖSBARES

PROBLEM im

An apparently INSURMOUNTABLE PROBLEM stood in the way of this effort. We will see many more examples of multiple foci and also non-lexical means of marking them. But before we move on, let us once more recall the major lines of reasoning. With the necessary contextual constraints on our common basis of (implicit) knowledge, we share intuitions on the contextual appropriateness of systematically varied paraphrases. This depends upon the grammar of a language but also upon associated language-specific conditions for optimal processing. Major conditions for optimal processing are set by grammatical parameters like the directionality parameter (left-/right-directedness of verbal extension) or the configurationality parameter (for example, free vs. preverbal position of subject). Optimal conditions reduce undecidedness and ambiguities during incremental processing. This also applies to focus interpretation. As for the latter, we can distinguish contextually determined, pragmatic focus and linguistically determined focus, either lexically bound, contrastive focus or grammatically determined, ‘normal’ focus. The latter is bound to structural positions and projects from a focus exponent over other elements according to the contextually determined focus interpretation. In a paraphrase that meets optimal processing conditions, structural and contextual focus interpretations match each other. And this is one of the challenges in translation: if contextual and structural focus interpretations diverge in analogous translations between languages with alternatively set parameters, translations will have to be restructured so as to meet optimal processing conditions in the target language.

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So far, we have looked at very few and very simple examples, but have introduced a number of basic concepts which ought to apply to any example we might encounter, including more complex sentences. Focus theories, however, which we were able to exploit for translation problems of simple sentences, do not yet reach beyond clause boundaries.1 Yet if we study more complex examples, we can recognize the same patterns behind the structural changes of the translations. Although each of the examples has its individual properties, there are clearly parallels between the translation of simple and complex sentences in terms of information structure. Sentences can be complex in various ways: a verb can have one argument, or two or three arguments, a verb phrase can be modified by adverbials, one or several, a noun phrase can consist of nothing but a pronoun, or a nominal head with pre- and postnominal extensions: arguments and attributes, one or several, and so on and so forth – all variations in phrases. But sentences can also be complex in that they contain two or more clauses, including clause-like structures with infinitives, participles, gerunds, that is, non-finite phrases. It is the clausal aspect of complexity in which we are now interested, as we want to know whether language-specific conditions for focus interpretations can be extended onto sentences with more than one clause. What can we expect? Syntactically seen, clauses are sentences inside sentences, and share most of the properties possessed by autonomous sentences. But as a clause is part of a larger unit, it has a syntactic function within this unit. It can be a subject clause, an object clause, an adverbial clause and so on, when it has the function of subject, object, adverbial and so on in the clause it belongs to. Analogously, we can expect a clause to have its own information structure, with one or even several foci, and at the same time participate in the information structure of the sentence or clause it belongs to. If there is a structurally determined focus exponent in simple sentences, can we expect something similar in complex sentences? If this is the case, can we then expect something similar to the different focus positions in German and 39

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English in complex sentences, too? Something which might even lead to a different order of clauses in translations? Let us, again, proceed empirically, and look at the translation of complex sentences from German into English. Whereas, as a rule, most sentences retain the order of clauses in the translation, the internal make-up of clauses is changed. And the changes reveal very much the same pattern of languagespecific focus structures as the ones we know already from simple sentences.

A double-storeyed focus In talking about entropy, Eigen and Winkler argue against the uncritical use of average values: In jedem Einzelfall wird man sorgfältig zu prüfen haben, ob bei der Mittelwertbildung nicht gerade das Wesentliche verlorengeht. (EW 1983a: 172) This would be analogously (except for the insertion of process and elements): In each individual case one will have to determine carefully whether in the process of averaging the crucial elements are not lost. However, the existing translation has extended the structure further and reordered constituents in both clauses: It is important to determine carefully in each individual case whether the crucial elements in a problem are not lost in the process of averaging. (EW 1983b: 149) In a first comparison, we can, indeed, make out some similarities with preceding examples. If we look at the German original, we recognize some of the characteristics of the simple sentence in either clause and in the overall structure of the complex sentence. Let us first look at the contextual conditions. Talking about entropy as an average value (to be arrived at by a certain probabilistic formula), Eigen and Winkler, or rather, the translator, conclude their presentation of this expression for entropy with the sentence: We hope to have shown that its use is appropriate only in cases where average values convey meaningful information. and mention some legitimate cases in the following: This is clearly the case in speaking of the distribution of energy among the different quantum levels of a molecular system. Here the individual

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distribution is of little interest. The chemist wants to know, for instance, how much heat is produced in a reaction and what temperature is optimal for a technological process. A knowledge of entropy is equally useful in various aspects of communication science and technology. The sentence under discussion opens the next paragraph, which turns the discourse towards cases like information aesthetics, where the mere average does not suffice and much more detailed statements about distribution are necessary. Against this background, it is clear that the more important informational elements are localized at the end of either clause: sorgfältig prüfen, das Wesentliche verloren. The initial elements in jedem Einzelfalle, bei der Mittelwertbildung are less important or even given. But as we have a complex sentence, the information structures of the individual clauses are integrated into the information structure of the complex sentence as a whole. Are there any clues in the context as to which clause is to be interpreted as more important? As the preceding sentences elaborate the positive cases for the use of average values, the negative possibility of the interrogative clause establishes a contrast with the preceding passage, extending the discourse from the appropriate cases onto the inappropriate ones. The idea of losing the crucial elements introduces the subsequent topic of discourse and can thus be considered as most important in the sense of discourse progress. Contextually seen, we could say that the focus of the complement clause serves simultaneously as focus of the whole sentence. As the matrix clause and the complement clause each have their foci at the right periphery, the focus structure of either clause and of the whole sentence correspond to our structural expectations of end-focus in German. But let us look at the structural focus conditions more closely.

Scrambling The contextual analysis confirms what we can read off from the linguistic form of the sentence. The complement clause indicates the focus exponent, das Wesentliche, structurally, by its local adjacency to the verb, as well as lexically, by the focusing adverb, gerade: ob bei der Mittelwertbildung nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE verlorengeht. The use of an additional, lexical focus marker is especially welcome as the definite form of the closest argument to the verb may otherwise tempt us into restricting the focus to the verb: ob bei der Mittelwertbildung nicht das Wesentliche [VERLORENGEHT].

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What you may not have noticed is that in the original the adverbial has been moved (technically, ‘scrambled’) out of its basic position: ob bei der Mittelwertbildung nicht das Wesentliche _ verlorengeht. This leaves the verb-adjacent focus position to the subject. Thus, in addition to the focusing adverb, it is the extra order which contributes to a more efficient processing. We could also recognize the focus on the subject after the focusing adverb in a sentence with basic word order: ob nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE bei der Mittelwertbildung verlorengeht. But we might take everything else, including verlorengeht, as given, and interpret das Wesentliche as narrow focus: ob nicht gerade das [WESENTLICHE] bei der Mittelwertbildung verlorengeht. We could exclude this interpretation afterwards, by accessing our contextual knowledge, thereby investing additional processing effort. But the order of the original: ob bei der Mittelwertbildung [nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE verlorengeht]. with the focus exponent in its neutral, projecting position at the end of the sentence, secures the correct interpretation right away. The distribution of information in the German complement clause is optimal. But as this is a complex sentence, we have to look at the other clause, too, before we are really able to assess the translation. So what can we say about focus interpretation in the German main clause?

Focus spacing In the main clause: In jedem Einzelfalle wird man sorgfältig zu prüfen haben . . . there are two parts which are focused: in jedem EINZELFALLE, sorgfältig PRÜFEN. Let me begin with the predicate. There is no argument of the verb, thus it is the main verb itself in its basic position, at the end of the main clause, which will be identified as focus exponent of the main clause: wird man sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben . . .

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As sorgfältig is not given, focus projection will include it (but not man, which is generally given by the very nature of its meaning): wird man [sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben] . . . But if man is given and is the subject of the main clause, why does the original not begin with man? After all, the basic word order would localize the subject before the adverbial: Man wird in jedem Einzelfalle sorgfältig zu prüfen haben . . . The answer is that in jedem Einzelfalle extends the cases mentioned before onto all possible cases, that is, it expresses a topic shift which extends the discourse topic onto all elements that could be subjected to the process of averaging. In this sense, Einzelfalle introduces partly new information which means it is also focused, contextually. But is it also focused structurally? If the extended predicate is immediately preceded by in jedem Einzelfalle, that is, the prepositional adverbial is used in its basic position, things are unclear. In this position, after the finite verb and with no other nominal phrase following, the focus on the prepositional phrase and thus the topic shift may be missed altogether: Man wird in jedem Einzelfalle [sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben] . . . Processing would clearly be hampered, even if we made the right decision afterwards, recognizing that there are two foci in the sentence, namely on the prepositional phrase and on the predicate. In general, we can say that if there is more than one focus in a sentence, easy processing requires us to make each of them visible. Two foci following each other may be difficult to delimit as we could always content ourselves with one focus and defocus the other one. Obviously, the structure of the original helps to avoid the undecidedness. We can see that the main clause contains two foci, which are distributed evenly around less relevant information: [In jedem EINZELFALLE] wird man [sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben] . . . Preposing the prepositional adverbial to the beginning of the sentence marks the adverbial as focused and, by separating the two foci of the main clause, helps us to identify them both directly. We will call this stylistic device ‘focus spacing’. Focus spacing is also welcome in simple sentences, but particularly helpful in complex ones, where reanalysis may be more costly or not possible at all. Thus, even the overall structure of our complex example profits from the balance in the main clause. If we were to miss the focus on the final element

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in the main clause, we would process the complement clause with the faint feeling that something had gone wrong, perhaps without ever getting a second chance to correct ourselves. Altogether, the German original appears to be quite optimal in terms of processing conditions: [In jedem EINZELFALLE] wird man [sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben], ob bei der Mittelwertbildung [nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE verlorengeht]. What can we say about the English translation?

Dummies Let us look at the analogous version first: In each individual case one has to determine carefully whether in the process of averaging the crucial elements are not lost. The adverbial in the second clause, in the process of averaging, is squeezed in between the connector whether and the subject: whether in the process of averaging the crucial elements are not lost. We would not greatly appreciate the adverbial before the English subject if it initiated an independent sentence: In the process of averaging, the crucial elements are not lost. but with whether preceding, it is even worse. Everything is fine, however, if we follow the existing translation and ‘unscramble’ the adverbial, that is, place it at the right periphery of the sentence, where it has its basic position in the English sentence structure anyway: whether the crucial elements are not lost in the process of averaging. As the focus is locally associated with the left-peripheral verb, we are prepared to find less important elements at the end of English sentences. The definite adverbial itself suggests givenness, which is, as we know, in line with what the context says. As the subject is definite, too, we seem to be left with the negated predicate as focus exponent and focus projection: whether the crucial elements are [not LOST] in the process of averaging. But now the interpretations of the German and English complement clauses differ. In German, the focusing adverb suggested das Wesentliche as focus exponent of its clause with the focus projection including verlorengeht:

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ob bei der Mittelwertbildung [nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE verlorengeht]. As this interpretation was in line with our contextual analysis, something must be wrong with an interpretation where the focus is restricted to lost. Das Wesentliche has become part of the English subject, where it is tucked away as prenominal adjective. If we take a second look at the existing translation, we notice that the structure of the English subject is quite complex, with pre- and postnominal modifiers: crucial elements in a problem. In fact, the English subject is much more explicit than the German subject, das Wesentliche. Some of the structure has been added for grammatical reasons as English adjectives cannot be nominalized as freely as German adjectives. If it is to function as a nominal phrase, the crucial needs some dummy noun, as for example element or problem, after it. But the crucial elements in a problem adds more dummies than are needed for grammatical reasons. The second extension does not add much to the message, either – in a context of scientific reasoning problems are no less given than elements. In one respect, however, the extension opens a new possibility. The attribute of the subject is indefinite. Thus it localizes the crucial elements in a new information element which can be focused. But as crucial is the only really meaningful element of the subject, all the dummies will be defocused and the focus eventually shifted onto the adjective: the CRUCIAL elements in a problem. The processor can, as it were, identify the focused element only backwards when it attaches the indefinite prepositional phrase, in a problem, to its head the crucial elements. But the mechanism is basically the same as the one needed for the predicate where we have to subtract the definite adverbial, in the process of averaging, from the focus projection. Both cases are instances of defocusing strategies. While defocusing at the end of the sentence may here be triggered by the definite article, defocusing at the beginning could be triggered by the dummy nouns: problem, elements. If this analysis is correct, the structural properties of the existing translation can help us to identify two foci in the English complement clause, crucial and lost. The corresponding two elements of the German original are adjacent to each other, which means that they can be covered by one focus projection: ob bei der Mittelwertbildung [nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE verlorengeht]. But with the subject-before-verb condition in English, the subject and predicate become separated and need an extra focus each, which amounts to a ‘discontinuous’ focus: whether the CRUCIAL elements in a problem are not LOST in the process of averaging.

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Summarizing the discussion of the complement clause, we could say that: insertion of a focusing element (gerade) and scrambling secure easy focus interpretation in German, while insertion of an indefinite dummy noun and a return to basic word order serves to improve processing conditions for focus interpretation in English.

A difference in initial positions The English main clause, too, postposes the adverbial and rephrases the subject, together with the modal aspect of the predicate, in a more explicit structure. If we identify the last stressable element, case, as focus exponent, focus projection will include the entire clause except the pronominal dummy, the expletive it: it [is important to determine carefully in each individual CASE] . . . But could we not stay closer to the structure of the original? After all, the analogous version of the main clause would not be as bad as that of the complement clause. The initial adverbial is not squeezed in between a connector and a fully lexicalized subject. It just precedes a pronoun: In each individual case one will have to determine carefully . . . Basically, the analogous version does not present any processing difficulties and at first sight its focus interpretation seems to be the same as that of the original: In each individual CASE, one will have to determine CAREFULLY . . . The first focus is due to the fact that the adverbial has been moved out of its basic position to the front of the sentence, which is, in English, outside the sentence in its stricter sense – it forms a constituent of its own, separate from the rest of the sentence. Marking an element as focused by moving it out of its basic position is a possibility in both English and German, but the details of this process differ as the structural characteristics of the elements involved differ. (We will look at one of these differences directly.) The second focus is the structural focus on the verb-adjacent extension. Except for the final focus exponent sorgfältig prüfen (determine carefully), this is exactly the focus structure of the original: [In jedem EINZELFALLE] wird man [sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben] . . . So why did the translator not choose this analogous version? Neither the syntactic nor the information structures of the original and the translation are really equivalent despite their similar surface. We have, by

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now, seen enough empirical evidence for a grammatically based difference in the initial position of English and German sentences. While the initial adverbial in German is unmistakably part of the clause whose finite verb it precedes, the initial adverbial in English belongs to the complex sentence as a whole. Thus: In jedem Einzelfalle wird man sorgfältig zu prüfen haben, ob bei der Mittelwertbildung nicht gerade das Wesentliche verloren geht. localizes the initial adverbial in the first clause, while: In each individual case, one will have to determine carefully whether the crucial elements in a problem are not lost in the process of averaging. adjoins the adverbial to the sentence as a whole. That is, we have to process the whole sentence in English before we know what the initial adverbial refers to. Moreover, preposing the adverbial has a focusing effect in German and English, though the English adverbial is marked more strongly than the German adverbial. This can be seen as a result of the alternative directionality of English and German verb phrases, which orders adverbials and arguments differently. The basic position of this type of adverbial is before the object in German and after the object in English (unless the object is a clause and therefore extraposed, as is the case here). Fronting of the English adverbial (not of the German adverbial) changes the basic order of the internal constituents relative to each other. As the topic position is further away from the basic position of the English adverbial, processing of the topicalized adverbial requires a greater effort simply because we have to store the result for a longer period before we can interpret it in its proper hierarchical position. The greater effort would be legitimate if we wanted to emphasize the adverbial more strongly, for example, to contrast it. But although in each individual case is contextually focused, it is not contrasted. Thus, preposing of the English adverbial does not match the discourse conditions and we have to find a version which is less marked.

Another type of focus spacing By placing the adverbial after the first clause, we enable the processor to analyse the adverbial relative to the first clause: One will have to determine carefully in each individual case whether the crucial elements in a problem are not lost in the process of averaging.

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This is, obviously, a processing advantage. But it sacrifices processing ease in terms of focus identification as it lumps the two foci (carefully, in each individual case) together. Now that we have come quite close to the existing translation, improving parsing and focus identification in accordance with the specific English conditions, we are ready to admit that the translator’s idea of rephrasing the weak ‘onset’: one has to as it is important to merits some extra applause. The extension by another predicate introduces the option of a second focus in the first clause, making it in a way parallel to the second clause with its two foci. Without the extension, optimality will make us expect only one focus at the end of the main clause and thus content ourselves with a focused CAREFULLY or a focused CASE. But with the extension, we get a complex clause with an embedded information structure, interpreting CAREFULLY as focus exponent of determine and CASE as focus exponent of the main clause predicate, it is important . . .: It [is important to [determine CAREFULLY] in each individual CASE]. . . which is structurally just as nicely balanced as the original, though less concise: In jedem EINZELFALLE wird man sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben . . . The structural extension is just one of many similar (sometimes even grammaticalized) cases. We will take them up more systematically later on. The fact that the focus exponents are not exactly identical need not bother us. Equivalent information structures – that is, information structures that present the same elements as focused and the same elements as ‘unfocused’ (background) – will be reached via focus projection, which includes the element identified as focus exponent in the other language: sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN/determine CAREFULLY ; WESENTLICHE verloren/LOST. If we compare the original and its translation as a whole, we can confirm the initial impression that the differences between English and German information structures in simple sentences recur in the clauses and in the overall structure of complex sentences. German clauses and sentences end on focused constituents; other constituents, also focused ones, are moved to the left, including the left periphery. Thus, the complex sentence of the original starts with a focused topic and ends on the major focus of the sentence: [In jedem EINZELFALLE] wird man [sorgfältig zu PRÜFEN haben], ob bei der Mittelwertbildung [nicht gerade das WESENTLICHE verlorengeht]. In English, we get the verb-adjacent focus early in the clause, and other foci may be indicated by an additional degree of structural explicitness:

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It [is important to [determine CAREFULLY] in each individual CASE], whether [the CRUCIAL elements in a problem] are [not LOST] in the process of averaging. In both languages optimal processing promotes focus spacing, that is, the use of extra means to avoid focus ‘clusters’. In line with the language-specific conditions, these means are different, though they are taken from a universal repertoire, from which reordering and structural extensions are major candidates.

Generalizing the findings As the empirical approach presented individual trees, the overall view of the wood may have remained unclear. Before we face the next, even more complicated case let me summarize the findings in a more systematic way. There are two major lines of reasoning we follow in studying felicitous translations from the perspective of language processing in discourse. The first line considers information structure, in particular focus assignment relative to the discourse the sentence belongs to. The second line concentrates on the linguistic, and thus language-specific means, of expressing focus. Let us look at the basic assumptions about discursive and linguistic focus successively. For the time being, we identify focused elements with contextually new elements but also admit partly new elements – as in our last example, where in each individual case merely extended the number of cases talked about. The discussion of the last example shows also that we can decide about the status ‘new’ or ‘given’ only if we understand the relations between the sentence and its preceding context in all relevant aspects. This will as a rule involve more than just the immediately preceding sentence, and it will depend heavily upon the inferences we can draw from any of the things said explicitly. In our last example we had to go back five sentences to determine the discourse relations between the sentence under discussion and its context. It was the first of these sentences which set the discourse theme to be elaborated by the following passages, including our example. And it was the relation to the preceding four sentences that told us that we were turning from some cases where average values do convey meaningful information to the possibility of cases where average values do not convey meaningful information. But we needed a lot of inferring to get from the coarse-grained discourse structure to the detailed focus structure of our sentence. Conveying meaningful information implies that crucial elements are not lost only if we know that, first of all, averaging means losing information, and, secondly, averaging is meaningful only if it does not cause crucial information to be lost. Luckily, we have a strong intuition about contextual focus assignment in general, however difficult the inferencing process may be. To a certain extent our intuition is also guided by the information

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structuring, focusing devices of the linguistic forms. But the linguistic forms do not fully match the contextually determined focus structure, besides being vague or even ambiguous. Nevertheless, although English and German present different conditions for the linguistic encoding of focus, the mechanisms of assigning structural focus positionally, and of marking focus by changing positions, are to some extent similar. And the final strategy of adapting the linguistic focus structure to the discursively determined focus by defocusing and shifting the focus onto the proper element is similar, too. Yet the resulting structures can be rather different in their overall appearance due to lexical properties (including selection restrictions as in our first example) and syntactic properties (concerning subcategorization features as jemandem im Wege stehen/to stand in the way of someone), especially the major grammatical parameters distinguishing German and English word order and its variability. With the greater variability of the German word order reordering makes focus structures more visible, while the greater rigidity of the English word order allows for greater vagueness of focus structures (to be disambiguated contextually), and promotes a greater degree of structural explicitness to help identify additional foci. Most of the differences between the original and the target version were clause-internal, that is, they could have occurred in a simple sentence, too, but there are cases where informational elements are also distributed differently across clauses. It is to such an example that we will now turn.

Cross-clausal With all the different conditions for optimal processing of German and English sentences, a target version may deviate considerably from the original. However, if we add yet another observation to the preceding assumptions, we can even make out regularities in the following example: Erst mit der Vervollkommnung des Übersetzungsmechanismus konnte es mehr und mehr zu einer klaren Rollenaufteilung zwischen Geno- und Phänotypus kommen. (EW 1983a: 309f) While the analogous version would be something like: Only with the perfection of the translation mechanism could it come – more and more – to a clear role division between genotype and phenotype. the existing translation says: The gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype could come about only as the translation mechanism was perfected. (EW 1983b: 276)

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What we can recognize straight away is the initial position of the English subject, which has obviously swapped position with the adverbial. But the adverbial has not only been placed at the end of the English sentence, it has also been rephrased as a clause. And the subject, which was taken from what was a prepositional object in the original, has undergone some restructuring of its internal hierarchy as well as having the original adverbial of degree incorporated as an adjective. Though the analogous version is, no doubt, far from optimal, the existing translation seems to be unnecessarily distant from the original sentence structure. Judging by the Maxim, has the translator not taken too many liberties? Let us see if we could make do with less. Starting with the analogous version, there are some lexically based processing problems we will first try to get rid of. The adverbial more and more is inserted as a parenthesis, which requires an extra amount of processing effort. We could put its idea as eventual, gradual into a more natural position: Only with the perfection of the translation mechanism could it gradually come to a clear role division between genotype and phenotype. Yet there is still something odd in the combination of it comes to a clear division and the modifier gradually. It could come to a clear role division or to a gradual role division, that is we could have one modifier or the other, but both modifiers cause confusion. The oddity disappears if I make use of the paraphrase of the existing translation: It comes to a gradual clarification of role division between . . . It may be interesting to note that the German original does make use of the two modifiers in just this configuration without any difficulties. Since both aspects have to be expressed in an optimal translation as neither can be recovered from the context, the categorial change from adjective to noun (clear/clarification) and consequently from adverb to adjective (gradually/ gradual) offers a way out. We will register the difference as one of the many idiosyncratic combinatorial differences between the lexical items of English and German, and return to the parametrized grammatical differences we are already familiar with. We have definitely made some progress now: Only with the perfection of the translation mechanism could it come to a gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype. Yet the existing translation reverses the order of the original. Thus, the question is again: which paraphrase is more optimal? As questions of order are likely to relate to aspects of information structure, we should, again, turn to the context to see what the author must have meant, and, consequently,

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what focus structure needs to be expressed by the translation in line with the Maxim.

Degrees of accessibility Now, if we look for the two key words translation mechanism and role division, we find a reference to translation eight sentences back, and a reference to role division twelve sentences back. We have to read through almost the entire article to understand the concept of translation in genetics, but the sentence about role division provides much of the background for our example. It says: The division of roles between phenotype and genotype was evidently not so clearly fixed in the early stages of life’s development as it is now in the present-day products of evolution. (EW 1983b: 276) The paragraph separating this sentence from our example considers the possibility of a reverse translation, which is said to be highly unlikely. But while the transfer of information normally moves from DNA to RNA to protein, experiments have shown ‘that limited amounts of information can also be made available by proteins. In the early periods of evolution this possibility . . . must have been of great importance’. In the early periods of evolution, it seems, then, a limited amount of reverse translation was possible, genotype and phenotype not yet clearly divided. But now that the translation mechanism was perfected by evolution it has become irreversible, genotype and phenotype clearly fixed. If we apply our criterion of givenness to the sentence, we can say that role division as well as translation mechanism are given. From our general knowledge about evolution we can also conclude that the translation mechanism was perfected, and the role division eventually fixed. That is, directly and indirectly, we have access to all informational elements of the sentence. If we take an even closer look at the context, we can make out some difference between the given elements. While all these elements are given, their contextual antecedents are not equally accessible. If we go by local distance in the text, the previous reference to role division lies further back than the previous reference to translation. While the latter remains a discourse topic throughout the preceding paragraph, which considers the possibility of reversed translation, the difference between genotype and phenotype is returned to only in our example. If we measure the novelty of an element by the cognitive effort needed to retrieve it from memory, or by the inferential steps needed to derive it from previous knowledge, then translation mechanism is easier to access than any other information in this sentence.2

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But then Übersetzungsmechanismus/translation mechanism does not appear alone. It is part of an adverbial phrase whose head implies a contrastive relation: Vervollkommnung des Übersetzungsmechanismus/perfection of translation mechanism refers to the normal direction of informational transfer as opposed to that of a reverse translation, which was possible before the translation mechanism was perfected. Thus, Vervollkommnung carries a contrastive focus and is anchored to the immediately preceding context by its argument: translation mechanism. It provides a canonical starting point for a German sentence.3

The different ways to perfection What about the appropriateness of the linguistic encoding? While the prepositional object zu einer klaren Rollenaufteilung zwischen Geno- und Phänotypus is the closest extension of the verb kommen and will therefore automatically contain the focus exponent of the sentence, the definiteness of the initial phrase mit der Vervollkommnung/with the perfection does not allow us to recognize the initial focus at once. We would have to figure it all out contextually – if it were not for the focusing element, erst/only. In this way, the German original has two foci, one of which is indicated by its verb-adjacent position, supported by the intensifying adverbial, mehr und mehr, while the other is marked by the focusing particle erst: Erst mit der VERVOLLKOMMNUNG des Übersetzungsmechanismus konnte es mehr und mehr zu einer klaren ROLLENAUFTEILUNG zwischen Genound Phänotypus kommen. In English the way to perfection is different. That is, an analogous translation means different processing conditions. Introduced by only, the adverbial at the beginning of the sentence belongs to that class of elements that allow or rather require subject–verb inversion. In other words, it is one of those rare cases where we do not expect the English subject to precede the finite verb. Yet the inversion of the basic order affects the focus interpretation of the sentence. It indicates that the focus associated with only – the focus exponent of the adverbial phrase associated with only – is the focus exponent of the sentence. Everything else is given information. [Only with the perfection of the TRANSLATION mechanism] could it come to a gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype. But this is contextually inappropriate and not equivalent to the original. Embedding the processing result into the context, we may be able to correct ourselves afterwards, but considering the complexity of the text, we would certainly welcome a contextually appropriate encoding right away. (This

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argument would also apply if I were to assume that the backgrounding effect is only one of two or more possible focus interpretations – that is, that the information structure of the sentence is ambiguous and I would have to access the context to decide which of the possible readings is the appropriate one.) The fact that the initial position of the adverbial is subject to different processing conditions in English and German is a recurrent theme in our discussion. But the preceding examples were only bound to the subjectbefore-verb constraint in English, which pushes the topicalized adverbial into a position before the sentence proper, requiring additional processing effort. This time, the initial adverbial is not only marked by its topicalization, but also by the focusing adverb only and the following subject– auxiliary inversion. The marking is much stronger than in German, where there is nothing extraordinary about the topicalization of the adverbial. If we reverse the order, we get: It could come to a gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype only with the perfection of the translation mechanism. Or without the placeholder it, with come about instead of come to: A gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype could come about only with the perfection of the translation mechanism. The second version is better. With the alternative predicate, focus need not any longer be restricted to the focused elements after only. It is now the subject which is the closest argument of the verb and thus the structural focus of the sentence. The focus exponent is in its grammatically neutral position, where it can also project onto other elements. While the context restricts focus projection to the head of the subject and the prenominal adjective, the focusing element only marks the second focus of the sentence: [A GRADUAL CLARIFICATION] of role division between genotype and phenotype could come about only [with the perfection of the TRANSLATION mechanism]. But the existing translation differs from this version in two more aspects. First, there is the extension of the nominal form of the adverbial, the perfection of the translation mechanism, into a clause: only as the translation mechanism was perfected. The clause has a processing advantage over the phrase. Instead of having to decide which of the two definite noun phrases is the focus exponent of only, we can now identify the focus automatically, and correctly, with the verb.4

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Second, the existing translation uses a definite subject instead of the indefinite original. And it does so with good reason. Within the context of the modal verb could, the indefinite subject could be interpreted as a future possibility. This is, as we all know, contrary to facts, at least as long as we talk about the real world, in which phenotypes and genotypes are clearly distinguished. Thus, we can appreciate the translator’s move to the definite subject: The gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype . . . German can afford the indefinite reference as the modal verb konnte refers unambiguously to the past. However, by becoming a definite noun phrase, the initial element loses its focus status: The gradual clarification of role division between genotype and phenotype [could come about only as the translation mechanism was PERFECTED]. This looks like an unnecessary difference between original and translation. But as the idea of a clearly fixed role division was mentioned as much as a dozen sentences earlier, the difference is negligible. The context allows us to present the subject as given or as new, as we like, or rather, as is required by the pertinent conditions for optimal processing. In the end, we can say that the differences between the original and its existing translation were basically of the type we could observe in all the earlier examples. The initial adverbial is partly given and thus chosen as a focused topic in German. It is replaced in this position by the English subject. Yet this time, the English subject goes back to a prepositional object in German. This is a type of functional change we have not yet commented upon, although it may occur quite frequently in translations between English and German. And it is linked to the typological parameters determining the language-specific constraints on the position of adverbials and subjects in English. Let us now summarize what we know about questions of order so far, and extend the topic onto those functional aspects afterwards.

Reviewing and resetting the stage Except for the first example, where almost the same elements appeared in the initial and final positions of the German and English sentences, suggesting a similar distribution of topic and focus in both languages, we have looked at ever-more complex cases of a reversed distribution of initial and final elements. The inversion was accompanied by a number of other differences, including structural extensions from phrases into clauses.

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We have examined focus interpretation from two sides: using an ever finer-grained conception of contextual givenness, and using the theoretical concept of basic word order, which determines the structural position of the focus exponent. This position differs in languages with differing directionalities. We had found that the choice of initial elements was guided by the criteria of givenness or focus spacing in German, but by the grammatically determined order of subject-before-verb in English. Inversion of initial and final elements was accompanied by other changes, due to further differences between the two languages, concerning, for example, the use of definite and indefinite phrases in various positions. In all examples, the existing translation could be shown to be the preferred paraphrase of a set of systematically varied paraphrases. It was always the target version which succeeded in securing optimal processing conditions in English while staying as close to the original as possible. (This was a welcome feature of the data selected. Not all existing translations can be said to serve this purpose, for whatever reason.) All the changes we noted between the German original and its English translations were licensed by grammatical or grammatically based differences between the two languages. The most important differences were related to the grammatical parameters of directionality (left-/right-peripheral direction of verbal extensions in German and English respectively) and configurationality (especially, subject-before-verb in English). The two complex sentences we looked at in the end demonstrated these parametrized differences within and across clauses. The German clauses/ sentences began with adverbials (in jedem Einzelfalle; bei der Mittelwertbildung; mit der Vervollkommnung) which had been topicalized (that is, moved out of their basic positions within the verb phrase into the initial position of the sentence) in the interest of a clear focus structure, separating the focus in the comment (sorgfältig zu prüfen; das Wesentliche verloren; zu einer klaren Rollenaufteilung) from the focus in the topic (in jedem Einzelfalle; mit der Vervollkommnung). In line with its constraints on topicalization, English retained the corresponding adverbials (in each individual case; in the process of averaging; as the translation mechanism was perfected) in their basic, right-peripheral position at the end of the verb phrase, but added more structural weight to the focus that would otherwise be missed (it is important . . . in each individual case; the crucial elements in a problem; as the translation mechanism was perfected). The surface of sentences is linear but the blueprint behind it is hierarchical and multi-layered, so that a difference in the linear order of the original and its translation may have many facets. Although we have looked through a handful of examples at great length, the analyses were by no means exhaustive. This may be a discouraging statement for the exhausted readers, who have fought their way through long and complicated arguments on information structure and parametrized processing conditions, structural

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and contextual focus, basic verb positions, hierarchy and directionality of verb extensions, narrow and wide focus interpretations, marked word order and focusing particles, focus spacing and dummies, graded accessibility and idiosyncratic selection restrictions. But all these theoretical concepts suffer from two shortcomings: they are still much too fuzzy and they are not even sufficient to cover all aspects of the few examples we have been discussing. Walking the tightrope as a translator or interpreter, you may think, is bad enough, but reflecting upon the conditions of optimal translation is walking the tightrope as a centipede and thinking about the optimal use of each leg. Yet in this respect, thinking about translating and interpreting is no different from thinking about anything else we can perform optimally or not. The curiosity that has led you so far might help you through the next scene as well. We may refer to things in this order or in that without changing any of the other aspects of the referents. But this has to be considered the exception. None of the examples we have analysed at some depth were restricted to word order changes, but all of them involved changes in their grammatical relations, that is, in the syntactic functions which are carried by the constituents of a sentence. In some cases the changes were very subtle, like that between dative object and prepositional complement – diesem Vorhaben im Wege stehen/stand in the way of this effort – or they were structurally particularly complex, as with the clausal extension of the modal expression man wird zu prüfen haben/ it is important to determine. But a good deal of the reframing patterns can be summarized under one heading: perspective. This is closely related to the preceding topic of word order and presents another classical example of general transfer patterns based on parametrized processing conditions, which we will now address.

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In several of our examples, the English subject was not only moved into its proper preverbal position, but was recruited from some structural part of the German original that had a different grammatical function. The last case of such ‘reframing’ just occurred: the German placeholder es was dropped, or rather replaced by a subject that was an obligatory adverbial in the original: (kommt es . . .) zu einer klaren Rollenaufteilung . . . /the . . . clarification of role division came about . . . What is the reason for the adverbial-to-subject switch? What is its relation to the parametrized processing conditions of German/English we have noted so far?

Alternative perspectives Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts wird von jedermann intuitiv begriffen. (EW 1983a: 176) says the original, and the translator turns it into: Everyone intuitively understands the nature of equivalence. (EW 1983b: 152) The translation not only arranges the phrases of the original into a different order, it projects the informational elements of the statement onto different grammatical relations. The subject of the German original has become the object of the English translation, while the subject of the English translation goes back to an adverbial phrase with von in German. The shift in perspective is due to the verb form: passive in the original, active in the translation. We could have had a passive form in English, too: The nature of equivalence is intuitively understood by everyone. or an active form in German: 58

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Jeder begreift intuitiv das Wesen des Gleichgewichts. Yet either version would be considered less good than the ones we started with. To the extent that the change in perspective means a change in order, the difference may well involve aspects of information structure. However, there are also examples where only the grammatical relations change, while the order of the original remains. Concluding his description of a portrait of Cardinal Jules Mazerin, Horst Bredekamp begins his last passage about ‘the collector as Prometheus’ with the sentence: Damit ergibt sich ein Zusammenhang. (Bredekamp 1993: 33) which is translated into English as: This forms a framework. (Bredekamp 1995: 279) Here, too, we could make use of the other perspective: This way, a framework emerges. or in German: Dies ergibt einen Zusammenhang. But, again, the alternative perspective would be less good in either language. Still, there are enough translations like the following which retain the perspectives of the original, whatever else they may change: Für den Molekularbiologen unserer Zeit ist die identische Reproduktion einer Gestalt zweifellos das größere Wunder als ihre gelegentliche Metamorphose (EW 1983a: 96) For the working molecular biologist today, the identical reproduction of an organism is no doubt a greater miracle than the occasional metamorphosis of one. (EW 1983b: 77) So, the question is, when and why do we prefer alternative perspectives? As the examples illustrated, languages have different means for the expression of perspective. The most obvious device is the grammatical

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alternative between active and passive sentences, but there is also the different perspective of transitive verbs vs. intransitive or reflexive verbs. By choosing the one or the other perspective, we change the way in which the participants in an event are translated into syntactic functions. Seen through the medium of language, we can classify the concrete or abstract entities of our mental models of the world according to the roles they may play in the states of affairs talked about. Someone or something could have the role of the agent in an event, or that of a patient, of a goal, a place, an instrument, etc. The inventory of roles is mainly determined by the syntactic functions we can distinguish according to the case frames of predicates, whether these are determined morphologically – that is, by word forms – or structurally, by certain hierarchical configurations. Altogether, there are not too many cases to be distinguished since the formal repertoire of languages is limited. Although the number and type of roles distinguished varies slightly with the theoretical approach taken, the need to distinguish between roles and functions is not disputed. How else should we describe the shifts in perspective illustrated above? The idea of a shift in perspective presupposes something like an unshifted, canonical perspective in relation to which another perspective can be viewed as shifted. The assumption is that certain configurations are prototypical and more basic than others. Take for example, the link between agents and subjects as opposed to that between patients and subjects: the concept of an active individual causing something to happen is more likely to be grammatically encoded as subject of a sentence than the element that is subjected to the act. The two roles are sometimes referred to as ‘logical subject’ and ‘logical object’ as opposed to syntactic subject and syntactic object. According to their positions in the syntactic structure of a sentence, syntactic functions form a hierarchy in which the subject has the highest position. Objects have a lower position, and free adverbials still lower. Similarly, semantic roles are assumed to form a hierarchy in which agents have priority over patients, and patients are still higher than, for example, instruments. The normal perspective would thus be a case in which the hierarchical position of a semantic role corresponds to the hierarchical position of the syntactic function it is linked to. A shift in perspective is achieved by projecting a lower semantic role into a higher syntactic function. This happens visibly when we passivize the sentence, or, in a covert and less noticeable way, when we use certain classes of verbs that require a passivelike link between the semantic roles of their arguments and their syntactic realizations. ‘Emerge’, for example, assigns the role of a patient to the subject. There are many verbs that can be used transitively and intransitively, that means with both perspectives, as in: ‘I can open the door’, or ‘the door opens’. Languages may differ in their means of perspective. First of all, their

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vocabularies differ: there may not be the same verb, or the same verb may have a different range of options. Second, they may not have the same grammatical device, or the same device may be used differently. Thus German has a type of reflexive verbs, as for example sich ergeben aus/to result from, that does not exist in English. Or there are some uses of the passive in English which are not possible in German, and vice versa. The translational problem in these cases is to find an equivalent expression – provided we want to retain the perspective of the original. But as the examples show, this may sometimes not be the case even if the same means of expressing perspective are available. There are, again, different preferences we can observe in the language-specific use of perspectives, and they, too, can be shown to result from the grammatically parametrized conditions for easy processing. Here, the conditions for easy focus identification will again play a decisive role for the choice of a contextually appropriate perspective. But there is an even more elementary processing problem, which does not relate to (sentence-external) context. We will turn to this aspect first.

Placing a modifier Describing the way in which our brains interpret a form as an integrated whole, Eigen and Winkler write: Die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur werden von den Augenlinsen eingefangen und maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut abgebildet. (EW 1983a: 88) The existing translation reframes the passive original as an active sentence. (It drops the first of the coordinated predicates, eingefangen/caught, which – for the sake of simplicity – we will assume to be implied.) The lenses of our eyes transmit the contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions to the retina. (EW 1983b: 70) If we used a passive version instead, we could start the sentence with the original subject: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted . . . But how should we continue the sentence? In the order of the original, where the modal modifier precedes the arguments of the verb? The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted in their original proportions to the retina by the lenses of our eyes.

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Clumsy, you would say. But with the modifier between the arguments, the translation seems even worse: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted to the retina in their original proportions by the lenses of our eyes. And with the modifier at the end, we get: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted to the retina by the lenses of our eyes in their original proportions. which, no doubt, is the worst case as it attributes the original proportions to the lenses of the eyes. Each version is problematic in some way since it does not clearly show what belongs where. There are yet two more grammatical positions for the original proportions. First, the modifier could follow the subject directly: The contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions are transmitted to the retina by the lenses of our eyes. This, too, seems good for some processing confusion. Second, the adverbial precedes the subject in initial position: In their original proportions, the contours of a spatial structure are transmitted to the retina by the lenses of our eyes. This version is easier to analyse, but it seems to say something else than the original. All versions have one deficiency in common – their form is difficult to analyse or misleads us into a structural analysis that no longer conveys the message of the original, even if not altogether nonsensical. The existing translation avoids all these processing problems by shifting the perspective from passive to active: The lenses of our eyes transmit the contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions to the retina. There is now no structure intervening between their original proportions and the antecedent of the possessive pronoun their, namely the contours of a spatial structure and everything else is in its proper, easy-to-process position. As the correct analysis of the grammatical relations between the constituents of a sentence is a precondition for the interpretation of the sentence, all the passive versions are disqualified. Still, the German original is passive and has none of the English problems. Everything can be identified directly. Here it is once more (without the first predicate):

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Die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur werden von den Augenlinsen maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut abgebildet. Why should the syntactic analysis of active and passive sentences in English and German be subject to different conditions? After all, the shift from active to passive looks quite similar. The object of the active sentence is used as the subject of the passive sentence, and the original active subject may be added as an adverbial with by/von to the structural extensions of the verb. There are two sides to the coin: linguistic and psycholinguistic. Let us begin with the latter.

The parsing strategy of Minimal Attachment With each constituent we process we have to decide its place in the syntactic hierarchy of the sentence – that is, we have to attach the new element to the constituent we think it belongs to. Psycholinguists have a special term for the syntactic processing of structures, namely ‘parsing’. The processor is said to follow certain strategies in parsing. One is the strategy of Minimal Attachment (introduced into the literature by Lyn Frazier) that makes us choose the most economical possibility when we add a new element to preceding ones. For example, we could attach the modal modifier in: The lenses of our eyes transmit the contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions to the immediately preceding noun phrase: [[ a spatial structure][ in their original proportions ]]. But the clash in number – singular of structure and plural of their – requires us to correct the analysis and attach the modifier to the next higher noun phrase: [[ the contours of a spatial structure] [in their original proportions ]]. (‘Higher’ refers to the position in the syntactic hierarchy of the sentence structure; the more constituents a phrase comprises, the higher is its position as compared to the phrases it consists of.) Yet we could also parse the structure in another way, taking the verb and its object together: [transmit the contours of a spatial structure] and attach the modifier to this verb phrase:

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The higher the place of attachment is, the more effort we need to access it; the lower it is, the less energy we need to identify it. The Principle of Minimal Attachment makes us opt for the least effort possible (even if we have to correct ourselves afterwards). Thus, we would attach the modal modifier to the contours of a spatial structure in the active sentence, but to retina or the eyes in the passive versions: The lenses of our eyes transmit [the contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions] to the retina. The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted [to the retina in their original proportions] by the lenses of our eyes. The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted to the retina by the lenses [of our eyes in their original proportions]. It is only afterwards, when we try to interpret the structure, that we discover our processing error. To distinguish between a syntactic analysis and a subsequent interpretation of its result may seem an artificial distinction that is not very plausible when we think of the temporal conditions of language processing. But there is the striking evidence of so-called ‘garden paths’ – that is, the wrong tracks we cannot help getting onto even if we can afterwards identify the mistake we have made. Moving from left to right (in English or German), the parser will very often encounter syntactic ambiguities and, in opting for one possibility, perhaps, continue on the wrong track, from which it may or may not be able to get out after a while. For example, we will always fall for the instrumental reading of: He smashed the window with his sister. although we can almost simultaneously see that we need a non-instrumental reading of the adverbial. In psycholinguistics, there are two alternative models about the way in which the various components contributing to the understanding of linguistic structures work together.1 There is the ‘modular’ approach, which, if taken to its extreme, says that each component works for itself without ever noticing what the other components do. The only ‘interface’ between, say, the syntactic and the semantic component is their input and output: the output of the syntactic analysis is the input for the semantic interpretation. The alternative view is the ‘interactive’ approach, which says that the various components are continuously interacting.

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There is empirical evidence for both approaches: in particular, immediate and anticipatory understanding of linguistic structures, on the one side, and garden path sentences, on the other. Both sides can be reconciled if we assume that the formal (syntactic) analysis precedes the semantic analysis only by fractions of seconds.2 In: The woman asked the way laughed. we mistake asked for the finite verb of the sentence before we are able to identify it as the passive participle of an attributive phrase and laughed as the finite verb of the sentence. If all the information needed for the interpretation of the sentence were always accessible, we would not get onto the garden path. But as the occurrence of past participle phrases after subjects is less likely than that of finite verbs, we go by probability and parse the structure according to the ‘normal’ subject–verb order of an English sentence. Garden path sentences have been studied for many years in sophisticated experiments to unravel our processing strategies in detail.3 The result is an elaborate garden path theory, highly relevant for the questions we are interested in. But theoretical progress on the basis of experiments is slow, especially if results are falsified in subsequent experiments, and languagespecific conditions for optimal translations involve so many divergent factors that for the time being we have to skip experiments and trust our intuition when we try to explain translational data along the lines projected by promising linguistic and psycholinguistic assumptions. And this is what we can see in the different pre- and postverbal paraphrases of the example under discussion.

After the subject or before it In their original proportions is a free modifier, which can only be attached tentatively, before the ensuing semantic interpretation of the sentence tells us where the modifier really belongs. Easy processing of free modifiers is bound to the close vicinity of the modifier and its head. Closeness in itself does not yet, however, guarantee easy processing. If we place the modifier right after the subject, it seems to get attached to the indefinite noun phrase preceding it: The contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions are transmitted to the retina by the lenses of our eyes. We feel the clash between the singular structure and the plural possessive strongly, but if we were to reattach the modifier to contours, we would not be happy, either, as the modifier is an adverbial and should be attached to the

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verbal part of the sentence. It is only the close semantic relation between the contours of a spatial structure and the proportions (of these contours) which suggests an attributive relation between the modifier and its head. But while the attribute is part of the grammatical relation of its head, the adverbial is syntactically autonomous, which means, indeed, that there is a syntactic function intervening between the subject and the verb. Thus, the preverbal position of the adverbial violates the subject–verb parameter of English and, hence, the condition of optimal processing. There are, as always, exceptions. Some of the so-called sentence adverbials, like ‘certainly’, which modify the sentence as a whole, can be used in between subject and verb. And there are the local adverbials that could be considered a syntactic extension of the preceding noun phrase: Recent experiments in Ken Robinson’s lab show that . . . But the modal modifier in our example does not belong to those exceptions and has to be placed somewhere else. If we place the modifier at the beginning of the sentence, we produce no processing difficulty but a different sentence. In their original proportions, the contours of a spatial structure are transmitted to the retina by the lenses of our eyes. The position before the English subject is restricted to adverbials that can be attached to the whole sentence and do not depend on any detail of the internal structure of the sentence. These are for example elements expressing the speaker’s attitudes about the likelihood, desirability etc. of the state of affairs referred to by the sentence. Other elements like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘thus’, ‘however’, ‘on the contrary’, etc link the sentence to the preceding context. The only other adverbials that are quite natural in the initial position are temporal adverbials. If adverbials from classes that do not modify the whole sentence, but only part of it, are used initially, they take on something like a contrastive meaning. Thus, in a passage on symmetry, the local adverbial: In modern art, almost all directly perceptible proportion has disappeared. (EW 1983b: 120) is used in contrast to the subject of the subsequent sentence: Architecture . . . represents an exception in still using the cube as a basic unit. But the German original of our critical example:

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Die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur werden von den Augenlinsen eingefangen und maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut abgebildet. does not show the slightest trace of a contrast on maßstabsgetreu and when we look at the context, it does not contain anything the original proportions could contrast with. Thus, the initial position of the modifier is no solution, either.

Competing for attachment The attachment problems of the original proportions after the verb in the passive paraphrases are to some extent due to the fact that the adverb maßstabsgetreu has been rephrased as a prepositional phrase with a possessive pronoun, in their original proportions, which the strategy of Minimal Attachment mistakes for an attribute modifying the preceding phrase. This does not yield a semantically equivalent paraphrase if the preceding phrase is not the one the modifier belongs to, which is the case after the retina, respectively the lenses of the eyes. But if we place the proportions before the other extensions, directly after the passive verb, it seems to make attachment difficult for the phrases following it. We would have no difficulty in parsing the sentence if it had only one of the three extensions, as for example: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted in their original proportions. or: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted to the retina. or: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted by the lenses of the eyes. The moment we have two or even three phrases competing for attachment to the verb, we have to look deeper into the properties of the phrases that determine their grammatical relations to each other and to the rest of the sentence. This is in itself a processing disadvantage, but the passive perspective seems to make it an insoluble task. While we can perhaps still cope with the second extension: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted in their original proportions to the retina.

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In favour of primary relations The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted in their original proportions by the lenses of the eyes.

the third extension is too much: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted in their original proportions to the retina by the lenses of the eyes. The shift in perspective from passive to active eliminates the parsing problem; the modifier can be attached to its head right away and without any disadvantages for the processing of subsequent phrases: The lenses of our eyes transmit the contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions to the retina. But this is the case only in English, not in German, where the passive version does not present any attachment problems: Die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur werden [von den Augenlinsen [maßstabsgetreu [auf der Netzhaut abgebildet]]]. In German, the right-peripheral verb phrase makes us expect the head of the modifier after maßstabsgetreu, which is precisely what the order of the original offers. But as this could also be the order of things in an active version: Die Augenlinsen bilden die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut ab. the attachment problem alone does not exhaust the phenomenon of different perspectives. After all, the authors of the original have opted for a passive version. Why?

Different perspectives To focus on the question of perspective, we will now turn to a case without attachment problems. There was this remarkable sentence about the nature of equivalence: Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts wird von jedermann intuitiv begriffen. and its existing translation: Everyone intuitively understands the nature of equivalence. If we compare the active version with the passive version:

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The nature of equivalence is intuitively understood by everyone. we can see that there are no attachment problems in either version. Yet we would say that the translator was right in choosing the active version in spite of the passive original. What is it that has been improved by the change in perspective? We have not yet looked at the effects alternative perspectives have on information structure, though we are aware that they can be expected as long as the shift in perspective means a difference in order, too. The definite article of the nature of equivalence seems to signal its givenness. A look at the context confirms the assumption: equivalence has been the discourse topic for at least one paragraph. Thus we ought to identify the focus exponent with everybody in either version, which means that we get a focused subject in the active version and a focused adverbial in the passive version. But if we look at the German original: Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts [wird von jedermann intuitiv BEGRIFFEN]. the structural focus falls on the verb begreifen/understand, from where it can project onto both extensions of the verb, intuitiv, von jedermann, according to their contextual novelty. Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts could be seen as a background. Subtracting the nature of equivalence as given information we would end up with the same focus projection in the active sentence in English: [Everyone intuitively UNDERSTANDS] the nature of equivalence. But could the translator not have used a passive version in English, too? And why did the authors of the German original not use an active version? Traditionally, one says that the passive allows us to choose another role as topic of the sentence. In active sentences, the subject, especially that of transitive verbs, normally has the role of an agent, of someone/something that makes something happen. In the active sentence we take the agent as our starting point. In the passive sentence we take the element that is affected by the event as starting point. A look at German shows, however, that there must be more to it as the difference in topics can also be achieved by simply reordering an active sentence. Thus, the original could have been an active sentence with the object in topic position: Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts begreift jedermann intuitiv. But despite their identical topics, the active version and the passive original: Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts wird von jedermann intuitiv begriffen.

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are different and the difference lies at the end of the sentences. While the passive version has the main verb in the end position and hence in the canonical focus position of German sentences, the reordered active version ends on the modifier. This seems to have the same effect as an active sentence where the object and the modifier have been scrambled: Jedermann begreift das Wesen des Gleichgewichts intuitiv. as opposed to: Jedermann begreift intuitiv das Wesen des Gleichgewichts. The comparison clearly shows that if we deviate from the basic order, we get a marked focus interpretation: Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts begreift jedermann [INTUITIV].4 If we want a non-agentive topic, but do not want a marked focus, we have to use the passive in German. Things are different in English.

Contrasting the agent When German students are taught the use of the English passive, they are told not to use the ‘by-’ phrase unless it is really relevant. Unless we want to stress ‘someone’, we would rather say: The letter has been opened. and not: The letter has been opened by someone. Thus, if I say: The letter has been opened by Cleo. Cleo is the focus exponent of the sentence. But it is only a narrow focus, which does not project onto the other elements of the sentence. The letter has been opened by CLEO. presents the letter has been opened as background knowledge and asserts that it was Cleo who has done it as new information. This is not the only reading possible. A specific context could make us reinterpret the sentence and focus for example the letter (not the parcel) or

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opened (but not read). All of these foci are contrastive, as is the focus on the verb-adjacent extension, by Cleo. This will be the default reading that comes to mind first if we do not have any specific contexts. Yet the default reading, too, has to match its context. Thus, the analogous translation of our example is at first interpreted as: The nature of equivalence is intuitively understood by [EVERYONE]. and the question is: does the context of the sentence match a narrow focus on everyone? This is not the case. Though equivalence has been given as a discourse topic for some time, the idea that we can understand it intuitively is new. So what we need is a projecting focus that extends from everyone onto intuitively understand. This is what we get directly in the active version where focus projection is only restricted by the definite noun phrase in the end: [Everyone intuitively UNDERSTANDS] the nature of equivalence What made us look at the passive paraphrase in the first place was the German original. Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts wird von jedermann intuitiv begriffen. In contrast to the English passive, the German passive has a normal projecting focus. The difference is in line with the hierarchical distance between the agents of active/passive sentences in English and German. While the German agent does not change its basic position relative to the constituents that remain in the verb phrase, the English agent has to move to the other side of the verb phrase: _ . . . wird von jedermann intuitiv begriffen _ . . . is intuitively understood by everyone Again, as in the case of topicalization, it is the alternative directionality which marks the derived structure more strongly in English. However, let us stay with German for another moment, where not only the passive but also the active has a projecting focus. Could we not use an active version in German as in English? Jedermann begreift intuitiv das Wesen des Gleichgewichts. The active version presents the given information at the end of the sentence and not where we would expect it in German, namely at the beginning of the sentence. We could front the object:

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In favour of primary relations Das Wesen des Gleichgewichts begreift jedermann intuitiv.

but the resulting information structure would now be marked, as we know, with intuitiv as a narrow focus. Moreover, as the object happens to have the same form as the subject, we would run into processing difficulties right at the beginning of our parsing attempts.5 Using a passive sentence instead helps us to place the given information in topic position and avoid all processing obstacles in terms of parsing and focus identification. If we look back at the first example: Die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur [werden von den Augenlinsen maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut ABGEBILDET]. we can make out exactly the same motivation for the German passive. It secures topic position for die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur, which is the only contextually implied element. The corresponding active sentence would be misleading in this respect. The basic order uses a new element as topic and is thus not contextually appropriate: Die Augenlinsen bilden die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut ab. But if we topicalize the given element, it does not show that it is the object of the sentence and misleads us onto a garden path we can hardly correct: Die Konturen einer räumlichen Struktur bilden die Augenlinsen maßstabsgetreu auf der Netzhaut ab. All this is avoided by the passive version of the original. On the other hand, the existing translation into English as an active sentence: The lenses of our eyes transmit the contours of a spatial structure in their original proportions to the retina. avoids all the attachment problems of the various passive versions, but also their confusing and misleading conditions for a narrow focus interpretation: The contours of a spatial structure are transmitted in their original proportions to the retina [by the lenses of our EYES]. Thus, the alternative perspectives secure optimal processing under the language-specific conditions for parsing and focus interpretation in English and German.

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A covert shift The shift in perspective is not restricted to the difference between active and passive sentences and in very many cases it is not even associated with a difference in order. Thus, it may easily escape our attention in a pair like: Damit ergibt sich ein Zusammenhang. This forms a framework. It is the pseudo-reflexive verb in German which produces this undercover shift in perspective with the subject after the verb. In the English paraphrase, the verb is followed by the object. So it is in the German: Dies ergibt einen Zusammenhang But the order of the informational elements in the alternative versions is the same: it is the given element that starts the sentence, and the new element that ends it. So what is the shift in perspective good for? Now, in English the answer is again related to restrictions on elements in topic position. A version like: This way, a framework forms is more difficult to process due to the cluster of two noun phrases and no formal indicator which could give us a clue as to their syntactic relation to each other and to the rest of the sentence. Longer sentences do begin like that sometimes and can also have an indefinite focus subject before the verb, as we have already seen in some of our examples. However, with a short sentence like this one, the extra processing cost is not motivated, especially as there are other options securing easy processing without much ado. Instead of projecting the circumstances of an intransitive form into an adverbial, we can project it into the subject of a transitive verb form: This forms a framework. Except for some formally clear-cut cases of sentence adverbials or adverbs, adverbial phrases before the subject produce a processing obstacle in English as we have to tease the structure of subject and adverbial apart when we parse the beginning of the sentence. Although this is semantically possible, it means some extra effort. It is much easier to automatically identify the first phrase as the subject of the English sentence, all the more so since the subject phrase itself may already be very complex. German, on the other hand, has a free topic position admitting anything in the initial place before the finite verb. If we compare the two German

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versions, though, starting with the subject or the adverbial, it is the adverbial version which secures optimal processing. For an example starting with the demonstrative pronoun dies or the weaker form das, there is, indeed, a processing disadvantage we can make out easily. Dies could be the subject or the object of a sentence. Compare for example: Dies ist bekannt. Dies kennt jeder. Undecidedness, even if temporary, is a processing disadvantage. As dies ergibt vs. dies ergibt sich shows, there is also temporary undecidedness about which role the subject dies plays (cause or result). Dies by itself does not tell us. In the first case it would be the logical subject of the sentence, in the second something like a logical object. When the logical object is promoted to the syntactic subject of the sentence, it leaves the reflexive pronoun, like a trace of its original function, in the structure after the verb. In a language like German, in particular, where the final confirmation of parsing results may have to wait till the main verb at the end of the sentence, it is of advantage to know right away what role and what syntactic function we are dealing with. Shifting the perspective helps. In contrast to dies: Dies ergibt einen Zusammenhang. damit can be attributed its circumstantial function and role right away: Damit ergibt sich ein Zusammenhang. The shift between active and passive or passive-like perspectives occurs both ways between German and English, but the dominating direction tends to be German passive or passive-like sentences to active English sentences.6 German adverbials become English subjects, rising in their syntactic status from modifiers, secondary grammatical relations, to primary relations. The asymmetry is to some extent due to the different preverbal options in English and German. The subject-before-verb condition of English constrains further extensions to the left. Thus, the reasons for the shift we can make out at the end and at the beginning of sentences suggest that it is again the combination of grammatical parameters and optimal processing that promote the different preference. Interpreting information structures, identifying the semantic and syntactic role of initial elements, parsing syntactic structures quickly and correctly are universal goals of optimal processing that meet with different conditions in active and passive (-like) sentences in English and German.

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The morphological advantage In the preceding examples, the adverbials of the passive and passive-like versions impeded processing at the beginning of the analogous English translations due to the subject-before-verb condition, and at the end of the sentence due to the marked condition for focus interpretation. But sometimes adverbials that occur in internal positions do not fare any better. Thus the original: Gestalt wird in unserem Denkorgan als Ganzes reflektiert. which helped us to sharpen the Maxim in the first chapter, was not translated as: A form is reflected in our brains as a whole. in the existing translation, but reframed as: Our brains always interpret a form as an integrated whole. (EW 1983b:70) There is the shift in perspective as in the previous examples; as a consequence Gestalt has been individualized as a form and thus adapted to the individualizing context of brains and their individual reflections. Moreover, the structure is filled in by two additional modifiers. Integrated clearly reinforces the focus exponent. The function of always is less obvious, but it seems to enhance the relevance of the entire statement by emphasizing its general nature. Its position between the initial subject and the predicate might indicate the left peripheral border of the focus projection: Our brains [always interpret a form as an integrated WHOLE]. But why should we not use the more analogous version: A form is always reflected in our brains as a whole? If we ignore what we know about the meaning of the sentence from the existing translation, we can see that the analogous version contains a parsing problem concerning the attachment of the last phrase (which means that we need not even bother with the question of focus). Syntactically, as a whole could modify brains. As this would be the most economical way to build the structure of the sentence, we could expect this reading to come to our minds first, which would be a nuisance even if we correct ourselves afterwards. The parsing error is definitely excluded if we use the active version: Our brains reflect a form as a whole.

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In this version, the modifier is next to what it modifies, so that we get the correct interpretation right away. The attachment problem was imported from the German original, or rather by analogous translation of the German original. But a backtranslated version: Unser Denkorgan reflektiert Gestalt als Ganzes. would, among other things, not place the given information at the beginning of the sentence. However, if we move Gestalt to the beginning: Gestalt reflektiert unser Denkorgan als Ganzes. it would be interpreted as the subject of the sentence as there is no formal indicator of its object status. In contrast, the passive version of the original presents Gestalt in topic position and as syntactic subject of the sentence: Gestalt wird in unserem Denkorgan als Ganzes reflektiert. But it was the passive version which caused the attachment problems in English, placing the modifier after the ‘wrong’ noun. Should we not have the same attachment problems in German? The answer is that the passive version does not leave any doubt about where the German modifier belongs as it is clearly and unambiguously related to the subject by its morphological form Gestalt als Ganzes. If it were a modifier of the adverbial, it would take on the form of a dative, in correspondence with its nominal predecessor, in unserem Denkorgan als Ganzem. It seems, then, that parsing problems are more likely to occur in English where the absence of different word forms forces us to rely more on abstract parsing strategies in processing sentence structures. While German can make use of a passive perspective to secure a close contextual link between a given element and its antecedent in preceding sentences in order to avoid processing disadvantages of active sentences, English cannot afford to worry so much about a close contextual link of the initial element. It has to make sure that the more elementary conditions of parsing are not violated. This seems to lead to a preference of primary relations which includes the use of an active perspective, in which various types of adverbials (by everybody, in our brains) are reframed as subjects.

Lexical repercussions The difference in perspective has its impact even on the combinatorial possibility of lexical elements. There is the well-known difference in the selection restrictions of German and English verbs which do or do not admit inanimate subjects. Instead of:

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The seams of the sack split. English can say: The sack split its seams. which is a shift in perspective not available to German. In German, we can only say: Die Nähte des Sackes zerrissen. The sentence: *Der Sack zerriß seine Nähte. is ungrammatical. It has an odd personifying effect, which suggests that German zerreißen requires an animate subject for its transitive meaning, that is, it is restricted to what we could call the literal meaning of the verb. In English, the meaning of the verb is extended onto non-literal combinations with inanimate subjects.7 In many cases the role of the English subject is circumstantial and would be expressed by adverbials in German. A sentence like: Clinical experiments have compared . . . would for example be rendered by: In klinischen Experimenten wurde . . . verglichen. Although there are often no clear-cut selection restrictions, it seems that many of the examples with a shift in perspective get a personifying touch if back-translated into German. Borders between what may and what may not be used with an inanimate subject are, however, fuzzy. The brain, as a place of thinking, would in German, too, allow verbs like reflektieren/reflect, interpretieren/ interpret. Still, the active version is in German less neutral than in English or, as it were, in our passive original, which projects the brains onto an adverbial, in unserem Denkorgan. In English, the preference of primary relations seems to promote the elimination of selection restrictions in lexical transfer, that is, ‘historically’ in changing the combinatorial properties of English words. It may be interesting to note that psycholinguistic experiments point to a direct contextual influence on the interpretation of semantic roles at the beginning of English sentences, which may compensate, to some extent, the levelling effect of subject beginnings.8

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In translation, the way from the German adverbial to the English subject can lead to quite impressive shifts in perspective. To get rid of the conditional adverbial at the beginning of the German original: Unter Selektionszwang wird jedoch die bestangepaßte Sequenz ausgewählt. (EW 1983a: 308) the translation reframes the adverbial as subject and recategorizes part of the compound as a verb, down-toning the original meaning (-zwang/force): But a selection process sees to it that only the best-adapted sequence is chosen. (EW 1983b: 275)9 A back-translated version: Ein Selektionsprozeß sorgt jedoch dafür, daß nur die bestangepaßte Sequenz ausgewählt wird. is highly personifying, besides being unnecessarily explicit. Explicitness will be our topic in the next part of the book, but the recategorization option can also be used in an economical way, which we will turn to right now.

Revisiting the beginning Having made out the reasons for the preference of primary relations in English, we can now classify the very first example we looked at in some detail as yet another of such reframing cases. The head of the adverbial am Anfang was reframed and recategorized as a verb, transforming the original: Am Anfang der Schöpfung steht die Gestaltbildung. into: Creation began with the emergence of form. The undercover shift reminds us of the example with damit ergibt sich/this forms. But as neither of the verbs stehen/begin is transitive, the shift in perspective is not of the canonical type that characterized the previous examples. Yet it may be no coincidence that English has a stricter selection restriction with static, or less ‘active’, verbs, and is more at home with dynamic verbs. What we need for a simple shift is a verb to match the frame: The beginning of creation _ the emergence of form.

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But there is no element that could come close enough to the merely local meaning of the original – at least not as close as the existing translation, which restructures the original frame more radically. Let me summarize what we have seen. Parsing ease and easy focus identification were the reasons for a passive or passive-like perspective in the German original and for an active perspective in the English translation. The conditions for the alternative preferences included structural and morphological differences causing parsing problems in English or in German, topicalization constraints in English, and, in both languages, structural differences resulting in marked (narrow) focus interpretations. In the cases compared, German uses a passive version to achieve discourseappropriate distribution of information, localizing given elements at the beginning of a sentence with a normally projecting focus. As processing of an analogous structure in English would be hampered by parsing problems or misled into a marked focus interpretation, the passive sentences are reframed as active sentences in the English translations. (The fact that by-phrases are more strongly focused than the corresponding von-phrases was seen as resulting from the greater distance between the original position of agents as subjects and their ‘landing’ sites in passive sentences. The effect is comparable to the stronger focusing of most topicalized elements in English.) In some passive (-like) cases where German topicalizes material to avoid syntactic (subject/object) ambiguities at the beginning of sentences, the English translation reframes topicalized elements as subjects of active sentences to avoid parsing difficulties for clusters of phrases in preverbal position (as well as inappropriate focus interpretations). In spite of all these differences and their complex interactions, optimal processing is occasionally secured by analogous sentence structures. Thus, the analogous translation: For the working molecular biologist today, the identical reproduction of an organism is no doubt a greater miracle than the occasional metamorphosis of one. of: Für den Molekularbiologen unserer Zeit ist die identische Reproduktion einer Gestalt zweifellos das größere Wunder als ihre gelegentliche Metamorphose. illustrates what the sentence says about identical reproduction. In spite of the restrictions for the beginning of English sentences, the translation preposes a contrastively focused prepositional object just like the German original, and – except for the subject-verb condition – arranges everything else in the same way. Obviously, the topic position is an appropriate position for the prepositional object with for.

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That is, we can expect some verb patterns in English and German to permit similar word order variations. Unlike a version with basic word order, the English topicalization here does not present any greater processing obstacle for parsing and focus identification. Nevertheless, in translation, it is the ‘identical reproduction’ that will occur occasionally, while the ‘metamorphosis’ – reordering, reframing, recategorizing, etc. – is what we can generally expect. And optimal processing is in each case our guideline for natural selection.

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One of the most intriguing differences between original sentences and their translations concerns the degree of explicitness preferred under source language and target language conditions. Stylistic registers may be characterized by a higher or lower degree of economy, and the Maxim makes us expect a similar profile for the same register in the translation. A legal document will, certainly, be more explicit than a warning in both English and in German. Yet if we study translations more closely, we will find that a similar degree of explicitness is by no means the rule. Take the type of pragmatic, stylistically neutral register of popular scientific texts we have been looking at so far. There are minor differences, for example where pro-forms are replaced by fully lexicalized elements, compounds decomposed into phrases, or individual words filled in at various points of the original structure. But there are also quite extensive differences where phrases are extended into clauses, or clauses are inserted into the structure as if ‘out of the blue’. In discussing word order and grammatical relations, we have already come across an impressive array of such cases. Some were lexically based, for instance, lexical gaps filled in by phrases (Gestaltbildung/emergence of form), while some were due to grammatical differences, as for example conditions on nominalization of adjectives (das Wesentliche/the crucial element). The weightier differences, however, were related to information structure. There was the insertion of lexical elements (like schon, always) to mark or delimit foci, and there was the extension of phrases into clauses to disambiguate focus interpretations (mit der Vervollkommnung des Übersetzungsmechanismus/when the translation mechanism was perfected). As the difference in structural explicitness is no rare phenomenon, it is certainly worthwhile looking at these and other cases more systematically. The challenge will be to identify the language-specific conditions over and above the grammatically known cases for the use of clauses instead of phrases, phrases instead of words, and words instead of pro-forms. The answer will in most cases involve optimal processing in terms of information structure, which requires, again, a very subtle, if not empathic analysis of the individual example in its context. We will spend most of the 81

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following efforts in this field. There is one area of processing conditions, though, which relates to a difference between German and English we have not yet looked into. It is the area of referential relations, technically anaphoric relations (in their widest sense), which plays a decisive role in the choice between pro-forms and phrases. There is one major difference for the use of anaphoric relations in German and English, which we will turn to now.

Anaphoric ambiguities Linguistic elements refer to things or events, including the various aspects characterizing them. If a previous reference is resumed in a sentence, we speak of an anaphoric relation between the resumptive element, the anaphor, and its antecedent. As the interpretation of the anaphor, especially of pronominal anaphors, like it, depends heavily upon the meaning of the antecedent, optimal relevance requires us to identify the antecedent quickly. There are many ambiguities to be resolved, that is, there are many cases where there is more than one potential antecedent of an anaphor.1 In the interest of optimal processing referential ambiguities should be avoided. But the conditions for referential ambiguities may turn out to be different in different languages, which is only natural if we think of all the grammatical and lexical options of a language. One of the most striking differences in anaphora resolution between English and German is related to grammatical gender. An antecedent can be identified much more quickly if we can distinguish between potential candidates on the basis of their grammatical gender. This is the case in German, which means that there is also some advantage associated with the otherwise frustrating grammatical gender in German: der Satz, die Phrase, das Wort can be unambiguously referred to later in the discourse by er, sie, es. Except for natural gender, which could be referred to by ‘he’ and ‘she’, most English nouns are neuter and thus not to be distinguished by pronominal anaphors. To avoid the processing disadvantages arising from this, English uses fewer pronouns or other pro-forms than German, and does not mind repeating fully lexicalized noun phrases at relatively short intervals. By contrast, repeating words or phrases at short intervals is considered redundant and in most cases poor style in German. Pronouns are meant to reduce processing effort to a minimum and the Principle of Optimal Relevance requires us to make use of this option unless we have a special reason not to do so.2 Referential ambiguity is such a reason, and thus an original German sentence like: Der zweite Hauptsatz sagt aus, daß die Entropie eines abgeschlossenen Systems zunehmen muß, bis dieses im Gleichgewicht ist. (EW 1983a: 175)

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becomes more explicit in the translation: The second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of a system will continue to increase until the system achieves equilibrium. (EW 1983b: 152) In German, the anaphoric relation between the demonstrative pronoun dieses and its antecedent System is clear – the next potential antecedent, die Entropie, is feminine and requires a demonstrative pronoun in the form of diese. In English, the use of a pronoun instead of the system results in an anaphoric ambiguity: the entropy of a system will continue to increase until it achieves equilibrium. As System and entropy could both serve as antecedents of the pronoun, the full lexical form was preferred to the pronoun. Things are not always that straightforward, though. The discussion of the next example will illuminate a more complex case of anaphoric ambiguity.

The missing gender As it is such a beautiful example, we will look from English into German for this one case.3 Way out at sea and all on his own, Hemingway’s Old Man says to himself: If there is a hurricane, you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. (Hemingway 1952: 67) This is a comforting thought in view of the white cumulus and the ‘thin feathers of the cirrus against the high September sky’. The Old Man had: thought of how some men feared being out of sight of land in a small boat and knew they were right in the months of sudden bad weather. But now they were in hurricane months and, when there are no hurricanes, the weather of hurricane months is the best of all the year. If there is a hurricane, you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. The following translation into German reorders constituents in the way we are already familiar with. But it also reduces a phrase with a pronoun and a lexical head to a pronoun: Wenn es einen Orkan gibt, kann man das schon Tage vorher am Himmel sehen, wenn man auf See ist.

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The verb phrase in the main clause contains an object and two adverbials, which are ordered according to their syntactic-semantic hierarchy, extending from the left peripheral verb in English and the right peripheral verb in German. The original has the object closest to the verb, the signs of it, followed by the local adverbial in the sky, which in turn is followed by the temporal adverbial for days ahead. The order of the adverbials is reversed in German, in line with the alternative directionality: the temporal adverbial precedes the local adverbial schon Tage vorher am Himmel. As the (pronominal) object is definite it has been moved out of its basic position before the main verb, and as the topic position is already occupied by the conditional clause, the object is placed after the finite verb and the subject: kann man das schon Tage vorher am Himmel. The different order is grammatically determined; any other order would be marked and hence not equivalent to the original. There are three structural differences between the original and the translation producing a different degree of explicitness. There is, first, the insertion of the focusing element schon, assigning to the temporal adverbial a contrastive focus. As the elements following it – the local adverbial and the main verb – are not yet given, they participate in the main focus of the sentence. As the subject and object are given, schon marks the border between background and focus. Second, there is the insertion of the modal verb, kann, as a sort of verbal dummy, which secures final position for the main verb within a continuous focus projection: kann man das [schon TAGE vorher] [am HIMMEL SEHEN]. In English, the frequency adverb, always, also marks the beginning of the focus projection. But here, the object is included in the projection: you [always see the SIGNS of it in the sky for days AHEAD]. This is a consequence of the third structural difference between the objects of the original and of the translation: the signs of it vs. das. If the signs of it is translated analogously into German, it results in a structure which is only marginally acceptable: Wenn es einen Orkan gibt, kann man die Anzeichen davon schon Tage vorher am Himmel sehen. Even if we reduce the clumsy object to seine Vorboten, the object is unnecessarily ‘heavy’: Wenn es einen Orkan gibt, kann man seine Vorboten schon Tage vorher am Himmel sehen.

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This means nothing else but that the processing cost is too high for what is to be conveyed. The pronominal object is much better. On the whole, its interpretation does not really differ from that of the original. What could you see of a hurricane in the sky for days ahead if not its signs, whatever these may be for people like the Old Man who can read the sky? But surely Hemingway must have thought of something when he decided to use a fully lexicalized phrase rather than a pronoun. If you back-translate the German das as that or rather it – the demonstrative that is too strong for the anaphoric function of the object – you will get onto an anaphoric garden path. In: If there is a hurricane you can see it in the sky for days ahead. you will take the hurricane as the antecedent to it and not the future event, which is the referent of the conditional clause and the clear antecedent of the German das. Thus, Hemingway could not have made use of a pronominal version without creating a processing problem. Although we shall see in Chapter 7 that there may be stylistic reasons for deviating from the Principle of Optimal Relevance, the processing disadvantage of a pronominal version cannot be turned into anything advantageous. (But the replacement can! See below.) In German, the situation is different. If we wanted to resume the reference to the hurricane, the pronoun would have to agree with it in gender. Der Orkan is masculine: Wenn es einen Orkan gibt, kann man ihn schon Tage vorher am Himmel sehen . . . Now, the fascination of this example is due to the extra meaning of signs. While a mere repetition of a fully lexicalized form, as in the previous example with system, does not add anything new to the sentence – in very much the same way as a pronoun – a lexical element which has not yet been mentioned in the preceding context opens up new interpretational possibilities. It is the difference between the implied, the virtual meaning, and the explicitly expressed meaning which makes the insertion or deletion of dummies a sensitive strategy in translation. But if processing conditions require an additional element in target or source language, the Principle of Optimal Relevance tells us to restrict surface equivalence by the insertion or deletion of a dummy.

Tucked away Dummies disambiguating anaphoric relations may even take on the form of a clause. The translation of the following example:

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Structural weight Man kann sehr wohl als bloßer Teilnehmer an einem Spiel dessen Regeln begreifen. (EW 1983a: 296)

replaces the demonstrative dessen by a postnominal clause: As participants in a game we can certainly understand the rules by which it is played. (EW 1983b: 264) But could we not stay closer to the original? After all, the version: As participants in a game we can certainly understand its rules. is grammatically acceptable and says about the same. German uses dessen instead of seine to avoid anaphoric ambiguity: both Spiel and Teilnehmer could serve as an antecedent to seine. But it can only refer to game, not to participant. The ambiguity does not exist in English. What made the translator use the clausal paraphrase by which it is played instead of its? Now, there is again a difference in the position of an adverbial: als bloßer Teilnehmer an einem Spiel has been moved from its medial position, where it would be hardly acceptable in English, to the beginning of the sentence. This has increased the distance between the possessive pronoun and its antecedent, the game, considerably. In fact, the game, which is only a subordinated phrase within the adverbial, has been moved before the actual English clause, which begins – canonically – with a subject. While in German the anaphor and its antecedent are placed next to each other (Spiel dessen), it takes some processing effort to identify the antecedent of the shorter English version: As participants in a game we can certainly understand its rules. where game is tucked away into something like a parenthesis at the beginning of the sentence. But wait. The same situation holds true for the existing translation, where the pronominal subject, it, similarly relates back to the far away game: As participants in a game we can certainly understand the rules by which it is played. So where is the advantage of the clausal version? It lies in its structural explicitness. In contrast to the possessive its, the subject it is a primary relation, and the clause with its predicate played does not leave much choice for the interpretation of it. Thus the structural

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expansion of the pronominal attribute into a relative clause helps us to avoid the longer backtracking process that would otherwise be necessary. The last example differs from the preceding ones as the anaphoric disadvantage of the analogous translation is itself a result of additional changes that have become necessary for other reasons, as for example, the different position of an adverbial. But whatever it is that impedes anaphora resolution, if we adhere to the Principle of Optimal Relevance, optimal processing requires us to get rid of the obstacle – albeit at the cost of an extra clause.

Decomposing the unpredictable Leaving the clearly delineated topic of anaphora resolution, we may easily lose our way among the countless cases of structural extensions, so let me first draw some rough lines. We can distinguish three different types of extensions, all of which could be of a clausal or of a phrasal nature: first, the original phrase is expanded into a more complex structure; second, the original phrase is replaced by a more complex structure; third, an additional phrase or clause is inserted into the original structure. Though the changes can be triggered by a lexical gap, or by a grammatical gap (as in nominalization options), they can also occur where there are analogous target language means. The interesting question is when one would use phrasal, when clausal extensions if one has to fill in some gap, and why one would use extensions at all if there is no gap to be filled in. As there are just as many structural reductions in translations as there are structural extensions, we can ask all these questions once more ‘backwards’. We will look at some examples of one type or the other, preceding from simple examples to more complex ones in each case. There are many instances that do not allow any predictive generalizations, at least none that could be reached within the confines of the Key. There are, for example, those simple cases of structural extensions replacing a compound by a syntactic phrase made up of the components of the compound. Compare the following example: Schwer zu sagen, wie und wann sich die Idee der Sukzession geschichtsphilosophisch durchgesetzt hat. (E 1999: 11) It is difficult to say how and when the idea of succession caught on in the philosophy of history. (E 1997: 35) Although the expressions geschichtsphilosophisch/in the philosophy of history are not really equivalent, we can accommodate the success story of the idea of succession from the academic circles of the English version to the

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wider public of the German original. And if we are not very pedantic, we will not even notice the vicinity of a false friend. Anyhow, the translation could pass as one of the many cases of idiosyncratic lexical correspondences where the criteria of processing ease and contextual appropriateness, in themselves, are not very helpful. In most cases of decomposing we cannot stick to the original so closely: Gestaltbildung, Mittelwertbildung, for example, were turned into emergence of form, process of averaging, which leaves us without hope for a simple generalization about patterns of decomposing. And even the little we can trace back to the original may disappear. If we find: Er verfügt über ein beträchtliches Durchsetzungsvermögen. (E 1988: 67) translated as: He displays considerable determination in getting his own way. (E 1997: 281) we cannot identify any element of the English phrase with the components of the German compound. Capacity to get one’s own way has been replaced by intention/determination – a modal shift which is not predictable and has to be accepted as just another one of these idiosyncratic differences between German and English words. There are cases of decomposition, though, where considerations of language-specific processing conditions do play a role. They belong more often than not to the cases of structural extensions which involve aspects of information structure and are therefore promising objects for our studies. All of these extensions could be summarized under the heading of dummy elements – words, phrases, clauses – used in the interest of processing ease. I shall begin with the grammatically obvious, and turn to stylistic examples of ever greater complexity directly afterwards.

Grammatical dummies A number of structural extensions are necessary for grammatical reasons, as for example the dummy nouns needed to compensate for the English restrictions on nominalizations, or a structural anchor for complement clauses, which may be needed either in English or in German. In most of these cases, the grammatical dummy is easy to localize, as in the ‘crucial element’ or ‘the fact that’. But additional changes, as for example a shift in perspective, can make it difficult to trace a structural extension back to its grammatical reason. Compare the following example with its structural extension between the predicate of the main clause and the that-clause in English:

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Dagegen spricht, daß die ‘Überbleibsel der Vergangenheit’ ebenso unkontrollierbar zu wuchern scheinen wie die Fortschritte. (E 1999: 11) But that can be countered with the argument that these remnants of the past seem to proliferate just as uncontrollably as progress. (E 1997: 34) The subordinated clause in German is the subject of the sentence: Daß die Überbleibsel der Vergangenheit ebenso unkontrollierbar zu wuchern scheinen wie die Fortschritte spricht dagegen. In the original, the subject has been replaced by the prepositional object dagegen in the topic position. The pronominal form of the topicalized element tells us that it is given and hence requires reordering of the basic order. While the German original is an active sentence, the perspective is shifted to a passive in English: something speaks against something/dagegen vs. something (here: that) is countered with something. As that and dagegen have the same reference, the shift in perspective is covert, but it is due to the same difference between German and English topic possibilities we are already familiar with. In this case the passive perspective requires the insertion of a phrase to which the subordinated clause, which is not any longer the subject of the sentence, can be attached: the argument that. Although the argument seems to have more meaning than the previous dummies, things, elements, it does not really say more than what we can infer from the context: but that can be countered with . . . that remnants of the past seem to proliferate just as uncontrollably as progress. The dummy does not contribute anything to the meaning of the sentence that would not be there without it, but it is needed for structural reasons. Grammatical dummies can also serve as structural anchors for stylistic dummies, used to improve processing conditions, as in the following case: Das Abgetane feiert, im kleinen wie im großen, auf scheinbar wirre Weise seine Wiederkehr. (E 1999: 21) All the things we had settled and disposed of, the great as well as the small, are celebrating their tangled comeback. (E 1997: 44) The nominalized participle cannot be translated as a dummy noun with a prenominal modifier, but it could be translated as a dummy noun with a

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postnominal modifier, or with two modifiers as one may not be enough to cover the ambiguity of the original: All the things settled and disposed of, . . . But the actual translator has extended the postnominal modifier into a clause: All the things we had settled and disposed of, extending the structural explicitness more than would have been necessary for grammatical reasons. However, if the participles were not extended into a relative clause, they would present a canonical case of garden path structure. For the English reader who does not know the German original, the first participle at least could be mistaken as the finite verb of the sentence: All the things settled . . . And even if the parser began to realize its error when processing the second participle, disposed of, there is still the apposition: the great as well as the small, to get through before the finite verb, are celebrating, would really clarify the issue. The clausal extension of the modifier disambiguates the structure right away: the parser can avoid the garden path and will attach the specifying clause to its dummy head (things) without delay. In most cases, however, stylistic dummies improve processing conditions for focus identification. We have already looked at an example where the nominalization of an adjective served as a structural anchor for yet another dummy noun, the crucial element in a problem, which secured the right focus interpretation. But there are many more such cases of phrasal or clausal expansions contributing to a better understanding of information structure. We will now look at half a dozen different cases, each of which presents a unique set of conditions promoting the use of dummies. Grammaticalized options for structural extensions in the interest of focus identification will be discussed in the next chapter.

An extra clause for the second focus Occasionally, we come across structural extensions in translations which seem to be used per se, without any recognizable reason: Unübersehbar groß ist die Zahl von möglichen Satzkombinationen. (EW 1983a: 300)

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is translated with a dummy relative clause after the subject: The number of possible sentences we can form is astronomical. (EW 1983b: 267) The original uses a marked word order with a predicate in topic position. This tells us clearly that the predicate is focused. But how should we read the rest of the sentence? What about the structural focus exponent at the end of a German sentence? We can only decide on this with the help of the context. Having talked about the huge phonetic capacities of languages and the ongoing assignment of meaning to phonetic sequences, Eigen and Winkler turn to combining words into sentences, illustrating the astronomical number of possible sentences in the following with a simple example. As they use italics to mark new topics in this section, we know from the preceding context that combining sentences, and hence mögliche Satzkombinationen/ possible sentences in our example, is already given and thus defocused information. Zahl is the new information. It characterizes the new part of a discourse topic, which is already given, and need not be the sentence topic, as the example demonstrates. Structurally and contextually, we have a marked focus at the beginning of the sentence, the preposed predicate, unübersehbar groß, and a focus exponent right after the copula, die Zahl: Unübersehbar GROSS ist die ZAHL von möglichen Satzkombinationen. An analogous translation with a topicalized predicate would be interpreted differently: Astronomical is the number of possible sentences. It could be used as an answer to the question: what is astronomical?, which presents astronomical as given and therefore does not match the context of the original. If we use the basic word order: The number of possible sentences is astronomical. we can secure the focus on astronomical, but miss the additional focus on number. Now, if we use an additional relative clause, we have the possibility of a second structural focus in the sentence, which will be contextually shifted to the only new element of the subject, number: The NUMBER of possible sentences we can form is ASTRONOMICAL.4 As the number of possible sentences we can form is identical with the number

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of possible sentences (if we could not form them, they would not be possible, and if they were not possible, we could not form them), the meaning of the extended structure is equivalent to that of the original phrase. Thus, the clausal expansion of the subject is just another variant of focus spacing, which secures optimal focus interpretation.

Adverbial expansion The preceding expansion made use of a relative clause, and in particular a defining clause, which is an integrative part of the phrase it modifies. But other types, like for example adverbial clauses, may be helpful, too, as a language-specific guide to optimal focus interpretation. As a processing aid they play a different role than defining relative clauses as – in English – they present relatively autonomous informational units. Things are different in German, and the difference is again due to the alternative directionality, which may promote alternative processing strategies for the integration of clauses into the information structure of the sentence they belong to. In the following example, a phrasal adverbial in a German original is expanded into a clausal adverbial in the existing English translation to secure focus identification in the main clause. In German, the phrasal adverbial, im Hinblick darauf, contains a nominal dummy that is grammatically necessary as a structural anchor for the subclause: Eine Aufklärung dieses Sachverhalts ist vor allem im Hinblick darauf, welche Kräfte im Bereich der Lebewesen für Ordnung sorgen, von allergrößter Bedeutung. (EW 1983a: 175) The translation expands this adverbial phrase into a conditional clause and places the predicate before it: The elucidation of this point is of greatest importance if we want to understand what forces provide order in the animate realm. (EW 1983b: 152) If the translation were to use an analogous adverbial phrase, it could introduce the clausal argument of the original by something like, in regard to or, with another dummy noun, regarding/for the question: The elucidation of this point is of greatest importance for the question what forces provide order in the animate realm. But this is obviously less transparent than the existing translation. If we translated the English translation back into German, the result would also not be as perspicuous as the German original:

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Eine Aufklärung dieses Sachverhalts ist von allergrößter Bedeutung, wenn wir verstehen wollen, welche Kräfte im Bereich der Lebewesen für Ordnung sorgen. What is it that promotes the clausal version in English, and the phrasal version in German? Let us, again, determine the information structure of the example. We can read some of its properties off the sentence structure, although the sentence by itself does not tell us very much about what it refers to: Eine Aufklärung dieses Sachverhalts ist vor allem im Hinblick darauf, welche Kräfte im Bereich der Lebewesen für Ordnung sorgen, von allergrößter Bedeutung. If we look into the context, we can see that the point which is to be elucidated refers to an apparent contradiction in the statistical, mechanical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. But let us first analyse the sentence structurally. We can identify the focus exponent of the sentence by its final position and the superlative: allergrößter Bedeutung. Focus projection could theoretically include everything except the element, dieses Sachverhalts, which is clearly given. But there is a second focus marked by the adverbial, vor allem, which emphasizes the pronominal adverb, darauf, and through it the interrogative clause. Within the interrogative clause, the focus exponent would be the next argument to the verb, Ordnung: [Eine AUFKLÄRUNG] dieses Sachverhalts ist [vor allem im Hinblick DARAUF], welche Kräfte im Bereich der Lebewesen für [ORDNUNG sorgen], von [allergrößter BEDEUTUNG]. But when we consult the context to see which of the phrases are focused, it implies forces providing order elsewhere so that ORDNUNG has to be defocused in favour of a contrastive focus on Lebewesen: [Eine AUFKLÄRUNG] dieses Sachverhalts ist [vor allem im Hinblick DARAUF], welche Kräfte im Bereich der [LEBEWESEN] für Ordnung sorgen, von [allergrößter BEDEUTUNG]. The focus structure of the translation is similar except for the difference between the phrasal/clausal link between the matrix clause and the interrogative clause (and the indefinite/definite topic) – structurally: The elucidation of this point [is of the greatest IMPORTANCE] [if we want to UNDERSTAND] what forces [provide ORDER] in the animate realm. reanalysed contextually:

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Structural weight The elucidation of this point [is of the greatest IMPORTANCE] [if we want to UNDERSTAND] what forces provide order in the [ANIMATE] realm.

But what we wanted to study was the difference between the phrasal/clausal structure that links the interrogative to its matrix clause. The question was: what makes the clausal link better in English and the phrasal link better in German? This is the answer: if we use the phrasal version in English, the superlative will be defocused by the restriction following it. There is, after all, a difference between something is of the greatest importance and something is of the greatest importance for such and such. That is, in the phrasal version, we will miss the focus on greatest importance despite the superlative. In the extreme, this could mean that we take everything that precedes the interrogative clause and its focus as background: The elucidation of this point is of the greatest importance for the question what forces provide [ORDER] in the animate realm. But this would take many more steps to be fitted into the context and therefore not be equivalent to the original, either. To be able to identify the focus on greatest IMPORTANCE we have to recognize the first part of the sentence as an autonomous information unit containing a focus of its own before we integrate it with the other parts of the sentence. This is exactly what the introduction of the interrogative clause secures. Reaching the conditional clause, we will stop to identify the focus of the preceding clause before we continue to process the remaining structure: The elucidation of this point [is of the greatest IMPORTANCE] [if we want to UNDERSTAND] what forces provide order in the [ANIMATE] realm. But this is the effect of the conditional clause in English. If we were to use the back-translated version in German: Eine Aufklärung dieses Sachverhalts ist von allergrößter Bedeutung, wenn wir verstehen wollen, welche Kräfte im Bereich der Lebewesen für Ordnung sorgen. we would relativize the superlative by the following conditional clause in very much the same way as it was relativized by the phrasal version in English. Relativizing the superlative by the following condition not only makes us miss the main focus of the sentence, it produces a somewhat strange reading. The conditional clause is now informationally more relevant than the preceding main clause, which suggests something like: if you want to understand the forces, the elucidation is important, if we do not want to understand the forces, elucidation is not important.

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Why should there be such a difference in the interpretation of English and German conditional clauses following their main clauses? A plausible answer could be this: in a language with a right-peripheral focus expectation our processing strategy will subordinate preceding clauses informationally to subsequent ones, unless there is some indicator telling us that we should not do this. But in a language where we are used to less relevant information following the focus of the sentence, which is left peripheral within the verb phrase, our processing strategy will be alternative. We will subordinate the subsequent clause to the preceding one. But as this means that we could expect the focus in the preceding clause, we have to check the preceding clause for a possible focus before we go on processing the subsequent structure. Of course, there could be formal indicators telling us to drop the default strategy. Some of the elements connecting clauses – as, for example, defining relative clauses – will certainly do so. But the default interpretations as well as the ‘exceptions’ are in many cases language-specific, that is, they may differ with the type of clause and between source and target language. A systematic description of the differences between information structures in German and English clauses is still missing, but translational evidence of the ‘controlled’ type we have been studying could definitely improve our understanding.

Too short So far, the structural extensions helped us to identify a focus we might have missed otherwise. The major problems limiting easy focus identification in translations with similar word order were again due to the alternative directionality of German and English (simple and complex) sentences and the stricter constraints on topicalization in English. The structural extension identified a focus in the translation that corresponded to a focus in the original. If the focus exponents happened to be different elements, equivalence was secured by focus projection (as in the case of stört auf unerträgliche Weise/presents an insufferable disturbance), or by contextual defocusing (Zahl/form). Sometimes the relationship between the original focus and that of the translations is less transparent and it takes us quite a while to figure out the information structural equivalence between such obviously divergent surface structures. Compare the following example, where the German original: Damit ist die Grundlage für eine Evolution geschaffen. (EW 1983a: 97) has been translated as: This is the fundamental process that makes evolution possible. (EW 1983b: 78)

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We can recognize a covert shift in perspective, something like This makes evolution possible/by this evolution has become possible. We assume that this and damit refer to the same antecedent, which is confirmed when we look into the context. The process referred to is the selection of advantageous mutations, ‘misreadings’, in the reproduction of an organism. The anaphoric reference to it is grammatically encoded as an adverbial in German, and as a subject in English. Additional differences, however, are clearly superimposed on the simple paraphrase shifting the perspective. One of these is the structural expansion of Grundlage für eine Evolution/basis for an evolution into fundamental process that makes evolution possible. The clausal expansion is accompanied by a structural extension of the syntactic head, which is made more dynamic by the insertion of a dummy noun, process. These are altogether quite massive deviations from the original structure. What is their basis? The shift in perspective, which may be licensed along the lines we have worked out before, would also be achieved by the simple sentence: This is the basis for evolution. But there are two aspects of the German original which are not expressed explicitly in this version, namely, that the basis is a result of what has been described before – ist geschaffen/has been created – and that evolution is indefinite: This has created the basis for (an) evolution. Evolution is normally conceived of as uncountable in both languages, but English may be more sensitive, here, and resent the idea of several evolutions more strongly. Without the indefinite article, everything but the predicate seems to be given. There is nothing in the form of the sentence that would attract any attention, and the statement with the copula seems even less significant. If we put the simple sentence into the context it belongs to, it is definitely ‘weaker’ than its complex paraphrase: As we have already mentioned, conservative structures, particularly at the subcellular, molecular level, play a major role in morphogenesis. The molecular make-up of the entire information storage system, the double helix, the spatial placement of functional groups in biocatalysts, such as enzymes, indeed, the entire structures of organelles and cells make use of conservative forces that precisely determine the location of every detail. The invariance of the genetic program is a concrete expression of these rigid conservative forces. And occasional variations, or mutations, are nothing more than ‘misreadings’ that occur as the result of thermal fluctuations on this level. These misreadings are preserved by means of

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identical reproduction, and if they prove to be advantageous, they will be selected. This is the basis of evolution. versus: The invariance of the genetic program is a concrete expression of these rigid conservative forces. And occasional variations, or mutations, are nothing more than ‘misreadings’ that occur as the result of thermal fluctuations on this level. These misreadings are preserved by means of identical reproduction, and if they prove to be advantageous, they will be selected. This is the fundamental process that makes evolution possible. Although the messages of the two sentences will become more equivalent if we spell out all the contextual implications, we may all share the feeling that the simple sentence is too short and does not really match the context. So what is it that could make one prefer the more explicit structure over the less explicit one within the context? My claim is that one needs more structural weight to show the significance of the sentence for the discourse. The next section will spell out what this means in regard to this and other cases.

Textual relevance As a rule, progress in discourse structures the information of each sentence into focus and background relative to the immediate context, but there are also discourse relations that encompass larger segments of a text. That is, the information of a sentence can participate in macrostructural relations and therefore be of higher relevance than the elements surrounding it. Relevance is always relevance relative to something. When we talk about focus as the most relevant element of a sentence, we think of it as being more relevant than the other elements of the sentence relative to the cognitive gains made at a certain stage of the discourse. In most cases this amounts to new elements versus contextually given ones. If givenness refers to immediately preceding elements, the concept of relevance is mainly of local significance. But givenness can also relate back to something that can be considered a major topic of the text, in which case the relevance of an element will, of course, surpass local significance. Let us speak of textual relevance in the latter case. It is the concept of textual relevance that can explain our preference for the structurally more explicit translation above. This becomes clear when we try to determine the meaning of the first element in the sentence. The first element of this sentence is the demonstrative pronoun this, which can only be interpreted via its antecedent in the preceding context.5 If we take the closest candidate possible, we will identify this with the process of selection mentioned in the last clause:

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Structural weight they will be selected. This is the basis of evolution.

But the antecedent could also be the last couple of clauses: if they prove to be advantageous, they will be selected. This is the basis of evolution. or the entire complex sentence preceding our example: These misreadings are preserved by means of identical reproduction, and if they prove to be advantageous, they will be selected. This is the basis of evolution. Or even more sentences? As we have already mentioned, conservative structures, particularly at the subcellular, molecular level, play a major role in morphogenesis. The molecular make-up of the entire information storage system, the double helix, the spatial placement of functional groups in biocatalysts, such as enzymes, indeed, the entire structures of organelles and cells make use of conservative forces that precisely determine the location of every detail. The invariance of the genetic program is a concrete expression of these rigid conservative forces. And occasional variations, or mutations, are nothing more than ‘misreadings’ that occur as the result of thermal fluctuations on this level. These misreadings are preserved by means of identical reproduction, and if they prove to be advantageous, they will be selected. This is the basis of evolution. If we study the whole paragraph more closely, we can discover something like a contrast between rigid conservative forces and occasional variations, with the sentence about evolution wrapping up the part about variation. The subsequent paragraph is opened by a question about the ontogenetic development of an organism: But how then are we to explain the ontogenetic development of an organism that begins its life as a single fertilized egg cell and will grow into a mature individual made up of billions of somatic cells with different specific functions? Thus, the idea of variation is continued, but it is no longer related to the development of species, that is, to evolution. The contextual analysis reveals that the antecedent of this is determined by the two complex sentences which precede it and form a contrastive relation to the previous part of the paragraph:

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As we have already mentioned, conservative structures, particularly at the subcellular, molecular level, play a major role in morphogenesis. The molecular make-up of the entire information storage system, the double helix, the spatial placement of functional groups in biocatalysts, such as enzymes, indeed, the entire structures of organelles and cells make use of conservative forces that precisely determine the location of every detail. The invariance of the genetic program is a concrete expression of these rigid conservative forces. And occasional variations, or mutations, are nothing more than ‘misreadings’ that occur as the result of thermal fluctuations on this level. These misreadings are preserved by means of identical reproduction, and if they prove to be advantageous, they will be selected. This is the basis of evolution. Rigid conservative forces block variation, and thus secure identical reproduction – a process that is occasionally interrupted by misreadings of the genetic code, which makes philogenetic variation, that is evolution, possible. The textual relevance of a sentence which sums up a major idea of a paragraph is quite high. As this itself does not tell us anything about its textual range, we need other means to help us grasp this macrostructural discourse relation.

Making it visible By replacing basis with fundamental process and for evolution with makes evolution possible, the translator has succeeded in capturing the textual relevance of the sentence about evolution. This is how it works: by means of the extensions, we can place a focus on possible, which, in combination with make, is something like a predicate to evolution: This is the fundamental process that makes evolution POSSIBLE. The focused possible helps us see the contrast between identical, invariant reproduction, where evolution is impossible, and reproduction of occasional variants, where evolution begins. Now, nobody could prevent us from making out the textual relevance of the simple version: This is the basis of evolution. within a passage that presents all the information needed for the conclusion. But in contrast to the extended version there is nothing in the form of the sentence that could help us along.

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The processing advantage of the more explicit English version with its text structuring clues is so obvious that we can only wonder why the German original is less explicit: Damit ist die Grundlage für eine Evolution geschaffen. But there is one more element in the German original we have not yet looked at, the main verb geschaffen/created. It refers to an achievement, that is, to something that cannot be reached without effort. Together with the indefinite form of evolution, the predicate contrasts the achievement to possible failures. Contrast in this context means leaving the genetic code unvaried. This takes us back to the conservative forces of the passage, securing adequate textual embedding of the message. The German original can thus afford to be more economical than the English version and is therefore more in line with optimality than a backtranslated form: Dies ist der grundlegende Prozeß, der Evolution möglich macht. which suffers also from the ‘wrong’ perspective. The reframed version: Damit ist die Grundlage geschaffen, durch die eine Evolution möglich wird. is unnecessarily explicit, that is, it requires more processing effort (than the original) without any additional gains. As English constrains the indefinite use of evolution, the discourse structuring effect of the predicate in an analogous translation: This has created the basis for evolution. is weaker than that of the original or that of the target version: evolution will be interpreted as given and not contrasted with other possibilities. Once more the difference in the explicitness of original and the translation can be said to secure processing ease according to the specific conditions of source language and target language. Not all extensions can, however, be licensed by language-specific processing conditions.

A comment With all the structural expansions, insertions and replacements in the interest of optimal processing, we may eventually cross the border from translating to commenting.6

Structural weight 101 Leicht vergessen Kritiker, daß Gesetzmäßigkeiten immer zwischen den Ereignissen liegen. (EW 1983a: 303) in its brevity an almost cryptic sentence, has been translated as: Critics forget too readily that while laws explain how events occur, they cannot explain specific events themselves. (EW 1983b: 269) Following the Maxim, this is clearly a comment on what the German original means and not a translation restructuring the original in line with the Principle of Optimal Relevance. However, an analogous translation leaves many questions open: Critics forget too readily that laws always lie between the events. The sentence refers to critics of Chomsky’s linguistics, and Eigen and Winkler say in the following that this type of linguistics applies to language: in the same way as thermodynamics does to the weather. Weather is determined by a certain condition of temperature and pressure that follows laws of thermodynamics. Although we have long understood these laws, long term weather predictions still depend on luck because the boundary conditions affecting weather are so complex and so difficult to ascertain. (EW 1983b: 269) Now, this example differs from all the preceding ones as the processing obstacles in the translation are not presented by the different properties of the English language, but are already there in the German original, which we can only understand when we read through the comparison following the sentence. What we can understand from the ad hoc metaphor of the original may be something like: laws are never identical with events. Instead of offering an explanation for the meaning of the original, one could demetaphorize it: Critics forget too readily that laws are never identical with events. and wait for the clarifying exemplification. The criterion of processing ease allows improving upon analogous translations only when the improvement is licensed by the different processing conditions of the target language. The example about evolution has shown the importance of discourse relations for the question of explicitness and its language-specific nature. If

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the textual relevance of an element is to become more visible one ought to find a form that helps the reader identify the macrostructural discourse relation in which the element participates. Clausal extensions with material that is contextually implied may provide the appropriate information structural frame. What in particular one can use to this effect depends upon the special properties of each individual case, but there are a handful of lexical and structural means in English and German which follow grammaticalized patterns whose special function it is to signal textual relevance of focused elements. Let us take a closer look at these focusing devices.

6

Grammaticalized clues

The classical focusing devices are what grammar books call ‘cleft sentences’, which ‘cleft’ a clause into two clauses, making use of the copula ‘be’ and some pronominal dummies like ‘it’ and ‘what’.1 Extending a simple sentence like: One goes by the face, generally. into: The face is what one goes by, generally. we get Alice’s polite answer to Humpty Dumpty’s reproach: I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet. You are so exactly like other people. (Carroll 1968: 282) Alice’s answer presents one type of cleft, namely the inverted pseudo-cleft. Without the inversion, she could have said: What one goes by, generally, is the face. which is considered the basic form of a pseudo-cleft. But she could even have used a third type of cleft: It is the face you go by, generally. which is the prototypical cleft, mostly referred to as it-cleft. However, within the context the sentence is used in, there is only one optimal cleft: the one used by Lewis Carroll, although until today it is an issue of debate to say what makes the one or the other cleft a better match for a certain context.2 Regarding translations, the issue becomes more complicated. Even if the 103

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other language, as for example German, offers similar structures in many cases, they will not always be used. Thus, many of the clefts occurring in English translations will not have been clefts in the German original. But as clefts are focusing devices, their use in translations between German and English is likely to be controlled by the same set of language-specific processing conditions that played a role in the previous cases of structural extensions. Let us again proceed empirically and look at some examples. Talking about television, the ‘zero medium’ as he calls it, Enzensberger presents a sample of typical television programmes and resumes the medley with the sentence: Neu an den neuen Medien ist die Tatsache, daß sie auf Programme nicht mehr angewiesen sind. (E 1982: 95) What’s new about the new media is that they no longer depend on programs. (E 1997: 309) There was, he says, already a similar tendency in the printed media: Den entscheidenden Fortschritt haben jedoch erst die elektronischen Medien gebracht. (E 1982: 95) However, it was only with the electronic media that the decisive advance was made. (E 1997: 310) Yet, the viewer knows ‘that he is dealing not with a means of communication but with a means for the refusal of communication’ and: Gerade das, was ihm vorgeworfen wird, macht in seinen Augen den Charme des Nullmediums aus. (E 1982: 100) In his eyes, it is exactly what it is accused of that constitutes the attraction of the zero medium. (E 1997: 315) In all three examples the translator has introduced ‘cleft sentences’.

It-clefts The main reason for the introduction of cleft sentences is a difference between German and English with which you are, by now, already quite familiar: the restricted options of English for topicalizing an element from its

Grammaticalized clues 105 basic position inside the sentence. As in the first example, German can topicalize the object to secure focus for the topicalized phrase as well as for the verb-adjacent subject: Den entscheidenden FORTSCHRITT haben jedoch erst die elektronischen MEDIEN gebracht. Let us first look at the context to see that this is indeed a case of focused topic. Describing the condition of the zero medium as the true destiny of the new media, Enzensberger mentions a similar tendency of the old printed media, especially the tabloid press, picture novels, and illustrated magazines. Thus, we have to defocus the structural focus exponents and place a narrow focus on the adjective entscheidend/decisive in the object and on electronic in the subject: Den ENTSCHEIDENDEN Fortschritt haben jedoch erst die Medien gebracht.

ELEKTRONISCHEN

But irrespective of this contextual reanalysis we have a focus in the topic and a focus in the verb-adjacent argument at the end of the sentence, and we have two linguistic means of indicating these foci in German: topicalization of the object, and the focusing element, erst/only, before the subject, which, being definite and contextually given, might be otherwise defocused. As the focusing element, however, marks the subject as contrastively focused and it is normal to expect the contextually determined focus in the classical, verb-adjacent position at the end of the sentence, the basic order could have been used for this focus structure, too, if it had not been for the textual relevance of the sentence. The contrast established by this sentence reaches back across the entire preceding passage, shifting the discourse topic from some advance to decisive advance. It is this contextual relevance that is captured by the focusing effect of topicalization in German. English cannot topicalize the object: *However, the decisive advance only the electronic media have made. But sticking to the basic order will yield all sorts of translational or processing problems. The active version: However, only the electronic media have made the decisive advance. puts the definite subject in the background and alters the semantics of the sentence – advancing are patients and not agents of an event. If one corrects the perspective: However, the decisive advance was made with the electronic media.

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the additional focus in the topic may be missed. The translation gets no closer to the original if we add the focusing adverb: However, the decisive advance was made only with the electronic media. Still, one could topicalize the adverbial, which is one of the subject–verb inverting adverbials. But the inversion marks a contrastive focus structure: Only with the electronic media was the decisive advance made. which places everything but the first argument in the background. This is definitely not what the original says. And fronting the adverbial without an inversion: Only with the electronic media the decisive advance was made. produces a very much lop-sided, difficult-to-process structure with two foci before the finite verb (without anything to mark the second focus) and nothing after the verb to balance the information structure. Thus, the cleft which offers a clause for each focus is a welcome expansion: However, it was only with the electronic media that the decisive advance was made. Linguistically seen, clefts can have a focus in either clause. Whether or not this is used, each clause has a grammatical focus exponent which is determined in exactly the same way as in all other clauses with focus, the extension of focus by projection – that is, wide or narrow focus – included. Either clause offers one verb-adjacent focus exponent, and restricts the focus contextually to the respective adjectives: However, it was only with the advance was made.

ELECTRONIC

media that the

DECISIVE

Focusing a clausal subject The second it-cleft is a little more complex since it contains a clausal subject. The focusing element gerade indicates a focused subject, which leaves room for another focus – that is, the focus exponent at the end of the sentence: Gerade das was ihm VORGEWORFEN wird, macht in seinen Augen den CHARME des Nullmediums aus. This time, the focused topic of the original is the subject of the sentence, and it is only the particle gerade that indicates its focused status.

Grammaticalized clues 107 Reviewing various complaints about television and its development into a perfect zero medium that no longer depends upon programmes, Enzensberger contrasts the idea of the manipulated viewer with the one who manipulates the medium in order to enforce his own wishes. Of all the things that could constitute the attraction of television for the viewer it is exactly its lack of content which the viewer enjoys, despite all critical theories about the stupefying effects of television. The interpretation of the focused topic relates back to all the complaints about television presented at the beginning of the essay, which according to its subtitle tells us ‘Why all complaints about television are pointless’. That is, the contrast expressed in our example is the main contrast of the essay, which associates the sentence with a particularly high contextual relevance. An analogous, non-cleft translation: Exactly what it is accused of constitutes in his eyes the attraction of the zero medium. (what incorporates the pronominal head of the German version: das, was), or one which avoids the usual attachment problems with the medial adverbial: In his eyes, exactly what it is accused of constitutes the attraction of the zero medium. is not only relatively difficult to process with its structural overload before the finite verb of the main clause, but does not give us any chance to recognize the textual relevance of the sentence. With the focused subject exactly what it is ACCUSED of we may see no need to look for yet another focus and interpret the rest of the sentence as background, missing the key contrast and thus the high discursive significance of the sentence. Again, clefting is a solution: In his eyes, it is exactly what it is ATTRACTION of the zero medium.

ACCUSED

of that constitutes the

Pseudo-clefts Referring to ‘medium’ or ‘program’ as ‘anachronistic concepts’, which no longer apply to the mixture of features announced as ‘programs’ (of which the preceding passage of the essay presents an impressive sample), Enzensberger contrasts the new media to the old concept of the medium as a mediating means, and the original concept of programme as spoken of in public life ‘when the principles of intended action are announced in advance in more or less binding form’ (E 1997: 309). While the old concept of mediating media involves the idea of programme,

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the new media no longer depends upon programmes. The contrast is formulated as a conclusion from the striking illustration in the preceding passage, but it relates back three passages, to the beginning of this section: The concept of the medium is an old one; . . . Thus, the local contrast within the sentence itself participates in a wider contextual contrast, and the topicalization signals textual relevance of the contrasted topic as in the other two examples: NEU an den neuen Medien ist die Tatsache, daß sie auf Programme nicht mehr ANGEWIESEN sind. An analogous translation with the predicate in initial position could be interpreted as contrastive, too, but as the following considerations will show, the contrast: New about the new media is that they no longer depend on programs. misses the textual relevance of the original. Needless to say the basic order: That they no longer depend on programs is new about the new media. places the clausal subject in the background, missing the focus structure of the original. But the reversed order in the cleft does capture the focus structure of the original with a contrast on new and a focus on the negated predicate no longer depend: What’s new about the new media is that they no longer depend on programs. Unlike the first two cleft examples, there is no lexical focusing element (such as only, exactly) that would push everything but its own focus into the background in a non-cleft version. Yet the cleft is more in line with optimality. But why? What is it that the cleft adds to the focus structure of the sentence?

Presupposing and contrasting Clefts are assumed to presuppose the meaning of their sentence – except for the focused element which is specified by the cleft.3 For our example, this means that the meaning, there is something that is new about the new media, is presupposed, with something being specified by the cleft as they no longer depend on programs.

Grammaticalized clues 109 As the focus is contrastive, the specification contrasts with alternative possibilities, saying that it is this and nothing else (that is new about the new media). And the specification of the cleft is, indeed, in contrast to what we would expect, all the more so as the author had reminded us of the fact that ‘the concept of the medium . . . indicates first of all simply something middling, mediating’ (E 1997: 308) and the concept of programme is meant to announce future actions in more or less binding form. Surely, everybody expects all media, whether printed or electronic, to depend on programmes, and nobody would expect the novelty of the new media to consist in a lack of programmes. But the lack of programmes is the defining discourse theme of the essay about the ‘zero medium’. Thus the specification of what it is that is new about the new media, namely their independence from programmes, does, indeed, carry the highest textual relevance imaginable. Despite their explicitness, clefts offer a very economical device to highlight the textual relevance of a discourse element for they add no more content than the identifying relation expressed by the copula ‘be’ and the pro-forms – a classical structural dummy. With the constraints of a configurational language on focusing by word order, clefts are particularly welcome in English. No wonder that there are many more cleft-like structures securing easy focus identification,4 as for example this very sentence, with the copula after there and an -ing-complement after the predicate noun. Some of these devices exist in German, too, but they are subject to different conditions of use, and the translator has to decide when to take which cleft or cleft-like structure and when to make use of marked word order or of a focusing particle. But the main line is clear, isn’t it? And what Alice would say is this: processing ease is what one goes by, generally. In addition to clefts, there are also certain lexical elements that offer grammaticalized, and in particular lexicalized, means to indicate textual relevance. All these means constitute a subclass of what I would like to call ‘discourse relators’ (with or without macrostructural relevance). Lexical discourse relators exist in both English and German, but in contrast to clefts, they are used more often in German. As this may lead to structural reductions in translations from German into English, we will now turn to examples illustrating the other side of the structural weight coin.

Dispensable information As the following examples will show, there are lexical elements which are semantic dummies, but which may indicate additional foci in a sentence. The fact that they are used more frequently in German than in English can, again, be explained by the parametrized processing conditions of focus identification. There are basically two classes of such elements, which will be taken up in this section and the next: first, modal particles, which underline the segmentation of a sentence into focus and background; and second, focusing particles, which assign a contrastive focus to an element in their scope.

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The first type are ‘particles’ like ja, denn, eben, eigentlich, nämlich, durchaus, for which there are hardly any lexical correspondences in English. Take, for example, the notoriously empty particle, ja, which adds no more to its sentence than a cooperative nod. A sentence like: Vielleicht ist er ja nie etwas anderes gewesen . . . (E 1999: 160) sounds very much like: Vielleicht ist er nie etwas anderes gewesen . . . and its translation into English as: Perhaps it has never been more . . . (E 1997: 338) does not appear to miss anything. But ja cannot appear in a question: *Ist er ja nie etwas anderes gewesen? which means that it does have a meaning, incompatible with that of questions (which have an open epistemic meaning). We can explain the constraint of ja against questions if we assume that ja presupposes that the attitudinal object in its scope, that is, the thought it is associated with, had existed before.5 Ja marks the information of its sentence as something that is already known, even if it is presented as a mere possibility: Vielleicht ist er ja nie etwas anderes gewesen . . . At the same time, ja indicates that the element following it carries a focus, which is obviously an additional focus emphasizing nie in addition to whatever is presented as focus exponent in the predicate. Now, we could paraphrase ja by something like: As we know, it has perhaps never been more . . . But this would not indicate a focus on never and as such an explicit appeal to hypothetical knowledge feels definitely redundant, we will readily accept the translator’s decision to drop it. In contrast to the little ja, the parenthetical clause is heavily explicit. While ja leaves everything underspecified – except for the presupposed assumption – the clausal paraphrase cannot but spell out the predicate and the subject of the attitude with all their grammatical features: tense, aspect, mood, number, person. Thus, the clausal paraphrase

Grammaticalized clues 111 is naturally overspecified, fixing all sorts of discourse values that are left variable by ja. And while the reader can easily process the vague and underspecified particle, (s)he has to invest more effort into processing the phrase than the cognitive gains of the discourse relator are worth. The greater explicitness, which retains the semantic function of the particle in English, but misses the focusing effect, is a processing disadvantage which is not counterbalanced by any real gains. This was different with all the previous cases of greater structural explicitness, where the extra effort helped to avoid anaphoric or information structural garden paths. In general, it is the attitudinal form of particles for which there are no corresponding forms in English, and the syntactic paraphrases that could be used instead will often appear disproportionate. There are other uses of ja for which there are corresponding expressions in English, as for example: Sie waren vielmehr verpflichtet, ja gezwungen, der Welt um jeden Preis . . . ein exorbitantes Schauspiel zu bieten. (E 1999: 151) . . . the rich and powerful were obligated, even forced, to offer the world an exorbitant spectacle at any cost. (E 1997: 330) Even, like ja, is used as a focusing particle of degree here, establishing a hierarchical relation between the element in its scope and a predecessor. Even has the same (contrastively) focusing function as ja in this context, which means that English uses lexical discourse relators, too, although more rarely. Eben is another prototypical case of the author’s covert dialogue with the reader. Eben surpasses ja in its discourse relating function as it establishes a more specific discourse relation. While ja presupposes the meaning of its sentence as known, eben presupposes the meaning of its sentence as known in a concluding justification of what was said before. In an essay on the pastry dough of time – Enzensberger’s ingenious explanation of anachronism – we can read: Der Blätterteig enthält eben alle Möglichkeiten . . . (E 1999: 25) There are no difficulties identifying the justifying discourse relation between all possibilities and the preceding context: The temptation to judge anachronism on moral grounds is difficult to resist. But perhaps its actual scandalousness lies precisely in its indifference to such judgements. The pastry dough contains all possibilities. (E 1997: 48)

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Demonstrating the wanderings of any given point during the formation of a pastry dough, Enzensberger shows that a point will always: land in a transformed context. Thus, the contact between different layers of time does not lead to a return of the same, but to an interplay that produces something new each time . . . It is because of time’s complex layering that every day surprises us with good and evil . . . (E 1997: 46) In using eben, the German author appeals to the reader’s knowledge about the sheer potential of the pastry dough that makes it indifferent to moral verdicts. At the same time, eben indicates a focus on the object following it, which is shifted to the quantifier alle by graphic means. (The original sentence continues with a series of attributes, containing more foci.) Dropping eben, or rather its disproportionate paraphrase in English, the translator relies on the reader’s knowledge, too. Knowing the context, as we do when we read the sentence about all possibilities, we can easily reconstruct the justification from our discourse knowledge: this is so because – as you know – The pastry dough contains all possibilities. The focusing effect is retained graphically. Eben can be used in other functions, too, for which lexical correspondences in English may exist – as for example the same, which replaces eben jenes: Der Apologet des Luxus beruft sich auf eben jenes Gleichheitspostulat, das seine Kritiker gegen ihn ins Feld zu führen pflegten (E 1999: 147) The apologist for luxury calls upon the same notion of equality used by his critics to attack him. (E 1997: 326)

The great variety Particles with a lexical equivalent in English are used less often in English than the corresponding particles in German. Again, requirements can be shown to differ according to the language-specific aspects of the contextual conditions. However, a systematic comparison of the different particles which exist in both languages suggests that the interaction of the various components promoting or restricting the use of a special particle does not admit simple generalizations.6 Schon, for example, means something like ‘earlier than expected’ (also in relation to a scale). It could be retained in the English version as already, as in:

Grammaticalized clues 113 Verdacht der Dekadenz, der schon den Römern nicht fremd war (E 1999: 145) traditional notions of morality, which were already old news during Roman times (E 1997: 325) or be paraphrased as something with a similar meaning as in: Schon den Biologen des 19. Jahrhunderts war aufgefallen (E 1999: 148) As early as the 19th century biologists noted (E 1997: 328) or be replaced by something with a similar discourse function as in: Nun ist es schon aus statistischen Gründen unwahrscheinlich (E 1999: 108) Now, on the basis of statistics alone, it is improbable (E 1997: 197) or be dropped altogether: Schon wegen der schieren Menge dieses Materials ist . . . jede andere Lektüre ausgeschlossen (E 1999: 111) The sheer volume excludes any other reading. (E 1997: 200) The variety of different correspondences is amazing and some of it is certainly due to the translator’s endeavour to stay very close to the original. That is, original texts in English will have fewer discourse relators than English translations from German – a well-known phenomenon of source language interference, which can be observed in any area.7 The cases of deletion should be all the more revealing. Here, too, the different focus conditions can explain translations that might otherwise appear quite arbitrary. Let us look at the last two relatively similar cases. While the translation of: Nun ist es schon aus statistischen Gründen unwahrscheinlich replaces schon by alone:

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Grammaticalized clues Now, on the basis of statistics alone, it is improbable

the translation of: Schon wegen der schieren Menge dieses Materials ist . . . jede andere Lektüre ausgeschlossen drops the particle: The sheer volume excludes any other reading. Schon focuses the first referent of either sentence: in the original, an adverbial in the form of a prepositional phrase. That is, we have the same structural conditions in both German sentences – a focused adverbial very early in the sentence. The initial now of the first sentence can be ignored as it could be added to the second sentence without altering the conditions: Now, the sheer volume excludes any other reading. But there is a decisive difference in the translation of the prepositional phrases. While the prepositional phrase of the first sentence is retained in the translation, the prepositional phrase of the second sentence is reframed as a subject: wegen der schieren Menge . . . ist ausgeschlossen/the sheer volume excludes . . .. The shift in perspective optimizes processing conditions for the preverbal position in English. It provides us with a subject, which we can easily identify as focused. Sheer is sufficient as a focus indicator for the English subject. The initial adverbial on the basis of statistics, on the other hand, needs an extra focus indicator. Focused subjects which do not yet contain a focused specifier may yet need a focusing particle in English, too, or even more structural weight. Thus, we find a sentence like: Gerade der Tatsache, daß er gegen alle Normen des Alltags verstieß, verdankte der Luxus seinen Eklat und sein Prestige. (E 1999: 155) translated as: It was precisely the fact that luxury broke with all the norms of everyday life that gave it brilliance and prestige. (E 1997: 334) If we ignore the translating ‘liberty’ (Eklat is something like notoriety and not brilliance), we can appreciate the optimal information structure of the translation, which makes use of a cleft in addition to the particle precisely.

Grammaticalized clues 115 Particle and cleft help us to identify the focused subject despite its definite nature (the fact that). If the focusing particle itself is not sufficient and has to be strengthened by a cleft, the extension indicates a macrostructurally relevant contrastive focus. Which we find confirmed – luxury, we read in the preceding context: took an unexpected and fatal turn. It conquered the field and, in so doing, dug its own grave. . . . In every society of the past, waste and excess were rare exceptions to the rule. It was precisely the fact that luxury broke with all the norms of everyday life that gave it brilliance and prestige. Luxury, which is today the rule, used to be the exception in the past. The textual relevance of the focus of the matrix clause is high enough to warrant a cleft in English. There was no cleft in the German original, though. Still, if we take a closer look at the focused beginning of the German sentence, we find a dative object topicalized: Gerade der Tatsache, . . . verdankte der Luxus . . . sein Prestige. which is, as we remember, a typical way of marking an extra focus in German. Nevertheless, macrostructural relevance promotes a focusing particle in German also, over and above the syntactic focus marking. However, we are back here to examples which are structurally extended in the translation, while what I promised to concentrate on was: what are the language-specific conditions for structural reductions?

Processing aid or processing burden One answer to this is simply a reversal of the answer to the question: what are the language-specific conditions for structural extensions? If only the source language needs a full lexical form to optimize anaphora resolution, we can reduce the corresponding elements, for example by pronominalizing them, in the target language. You will, certainly, remember the difference between the signs of it and das in the German translation of the Old Man’s reflections about hurricanes. If a dummy is needed for grammatical or stylistic reasons in one language, it will hardly ever be needed in the other language. ‘Stretching’ subjects, predicates, attributes and adverbials will be welcome in different places due to different grammatical parameters: what functions as a processing aid in the source language will often turn out to be a processing burden in the target language. The critical point here is that the translator can never tell in advance whether a linguistic element has been used mainly for reasons of optimal

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processing or whether it is an indismissable element of the message itself. The question of whether something can be dispensed with in the interest of processing ease or is indispensable, irrespective of any processing costs, can only be decided individually by assessing its relevance relative to the discursive context. Now, indicators of focus, of discourse relations and textual relevance, that is, particles, clefts and the like, may seem especially relevant as contributions to successful discourse.8 There is but one disadvantage associated with them: they have to be processed, too. Thus, they are themselves subject to the Principle of Optimal Relevance, requiring a sensible proportion between cognitive gains and processing effort. Whenever the effort noticeably surpasses the gains, we try to get along without the extra amount of structural explicitness. The cognitive gains of focus indicators or discourse relators are measured in terms of easy processing of focus and discourse relations. In many cases, both aspects of focus and discourse relations can be computed from the contextually embedded linguistic structures themselves, without the help of focus indicators and discourse relators. It is the author’s decision to indicate foci and discourse relations or leave it to the readers to figure out for themselves. The author can even choose between more or less explicit forms: full clauses, phrases, longer or shorter words, such as du weißt schon/you know, nichtsdestoweniger/nonetheless, überhaupt/after all, also/thus, etc. Furthermore, instead of asking a question directly, the author can say: this raises a question; it is by no means clear whether . . .. The decision is very much a matter of personal style, but if we hold on to the Maxim, we are ready to respect the author’s decision – relative to the target language conditions. However, it may not always be so easy to distinguish between the author’s personal style and the special conditions of the source language. Let me illustrate this by a more complex example, where the translation has reduced the original quite radically.

Ambiguities Es ist nämlich keineswegs klar, wer in Zukunft eigentlich zu den Nutznießern des Luxus zählen wird. (E 1999 : 160) says the author and the translator turns it into a mere question: Who will count among the beneficiaries of luxury in the future? (E 1997: 338) dropping eigentlich in the interrogative clause, nämlich in the matrix clause and with it the entire matrix clause. Let us ignore the deletion of the matrix clause for the moment and

Grammaticalized clues 117 concentrate on the particles. Nämlich and eigentlich are discourse relators of the attitudinal type, that is, they relate the meaning of their sentence to other attitudes or attitudinal objects. Nämlich tells the reader that this (the message containing nämlich) is what he has to know to understand a previous claim. There is no correspondent element for nämlich in English, and if it is substituted by a clausal paraphrase, it would have to be something like: One has to know that it is by no means clear who . . . But the extended matrix clause is overspecified and disproportionate in English; the clausal paraphrase of nämlich cannot compete with the concise and cordially vague German particle. Dropping nämlich or, rather, its awkward paraphrase from the translation is thus licensed by the Principle of Optimal Relevance. We are left, then, with eigentlich in the subclause. Eigentlich has also been dropped from the translation, but it could have been retained in English, at least for one of the two interpretations it admits. The ambiguity resides in the focus structure of the sentence. The example belongs to a longer passage about future luxury, which says that the priorities will shift to the ‘elementary necessities of life . . .: quiet, good water and enough space’ (E 1997: 335). Talking about the future continuation or disappearance of various aspects of luxury, such as its ‘withdrawal from reality’ or its ‘role in representation’, the essay turns to yet another aspect arising from the reversal of priorities: New and bewildering, however, is another question that must be posed in light of future prospects: Who will count among the beneficiaries of luxury in the future? or in the original: Neuartig und verwirrend ist eine andere Frage, die sich bei solchen Aussichten stellt. Es ist nämlich keineswegs klar, wer in Zukunft eigentlich zu den Nutznießern des Luxus zählen wird. Now, there are basically two focus interpretations of the interrogative clause, in addition to the inherently focused question word. If the reader recalls what (s)he knows about the beneficiaries of luxury in the past and the present, it will more or less coincide with what (s)he has read in the essay. It was the rich and the powerful, who could or even had to ‘put on orgies of extravagance’ (E 1997: 330). But since the question implies the possibility of an alternative, namely, that there are other beneficiaries than those of the past and the present, it could suggest a contrastive focus on eigentlich: Es ist nämlich [keineswegs KLAR], WER in Zukunft Nutznießern des Luxus zählen wird.

EIGENTLICH

zu den

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This interpretation would need something like an extra real in English that could attract the contrastive focus: WHO will count among the REAL beneficiaries of luxury in the future? Obviously, the translator has decided against this option (which the author tells me would have been his option). On the other hand, there has been no explicit reference to the rich and powerful in the context for quite a while. The readers could therefore consider the beneficiaries as a new aspect of the reflections about luxury in the future and hence as focused information. Thus, they could also interpret the sentence as: Es ist nämlich [keineswegs KLAR], WER in Zukunft eigentlich zu den NUTZNIESSERN des Luxus zählen wird. This interpretation is not possible for the English version with real, but it is possible for the English version without a corresponding element for eigentlich, which is the one the translator has opted for. Structurally, this version offers only the question word as focus: WHO will count among the beneficiaries of luxury in the future? Almost everything else could be given due to its definiteness. In contrast to the German original, the English version does not offer any processing aid, hence the focus interpretation has to be figured out contextually. If one used a subclause without a particle in German: Es ist nämlich keineswegs klar, wer in Zukunft zu den Nutznießern des Luxus zählen wird. one would have the same problem. The processor would take the definiteness of the internal argument as an indicator of given information and restrict the focus to the question word: . . . WER in Zukunft zu den Nutznießern des Luxus zählen wird. The interpretation has to be reanalysed contextually.

The domino effect While the particle of the matrix clause was ‘dropped’ in the translation because English lacks a lexical correspondent, and the clausal paraphrase violates Optimal Relevance, the particle in the subclause has disappeared because the translator has opted for the non-contrastive interpretation of

Grammaticalized clues 119 eigentlich. But he has deleted the matrix clause, too, and reduced the complex sentence of the German original to a mere question. Instead of the analogous sequence: New and bewildering, however, is another question that must be posed in light of future prospects. It is by no means clear who will count among the beneficiaries of luxury in the future. we read: New and bewildering, however, is another question that must be posed in light of future prospects: Who will count among the beneficiaries of luxury in the future? Now, if I pose a question, something is in need of clarification. That is, in asking the question: Who will . . .? I imply that it is not known who will . . . , which, in turn, implies that it is not clear who will . . .. Would the semantic repetitiveness not be reason enough to translate the question without the matrix clause? The first answer is ‘no’. The semantic relations are the same in the German original, and they did not prevent the author from using the matrix clause. But then the German matrix clause contains a particle telling us why the question that must be posed is new and bewildering. Without this discourse link, the English matrix clause is indeed reduced to a trivial aspect of questions, which may have prompted the translator to drop the matrix clause altogether. Raising the status of the interrogative clause from a subordinated clause to an independent sentence, the translation may even help us to recognize the focus on beneficiaries, though we could have solved this problem more elegantly by choosing the contrastive version: New and bewildering, however, is another question that must be posed in light of future prospects: Who will count among the real beneficiaries of luxury in the future? However, clarifying focus assignment for the question does not change the situation for the matrix clause. Missing the explanatory link, the matrix clause feels redundant: New and bewildering, however, is another question that must be posed in light of future prospects. It is by no means clear who will count among the beneficiaries of luxury in the future. and the translator’s deletion of the matrix clause justified by the domino effect. German indicates and spells out discourse relations more often than

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English. Should we consider German speakers as being more cooperative than English speakers? Or as being more in need of processing aid? And only therefore, in line with Optimal Relevance, more cooperative? If we think of the basic difference of a subject-verb-object language, like English, and a subject-object-verb language, like German, we can make out a processing disadvantage for German which does not exist in English. The left-peripheral English verb phrase can rely on the verb as a natural, early clue to the semantic and pragmatic relationships in which the elements of a sentence participate, including questions of focus. In German, the processor has to wait till the end of a sentence before it really knows all about the semantic and pragmatic functions of its constituents and can identify the structural focus exponent. Thus, additional clues which indicate discourse relations and the beginning of focus – that is, the border between focus and background (or mark additional foci) – are welcome in German. But as they carry their lexical meaning, however faint it may be, retaining/substituting or deleting them is again an act on the tightrope. Spelling out the discourse relations and contextual foci in each individual case may be just as difficult as finding an appropriate substitute, if this is necessary. Achieving a balanced proportion between ‘cognitive gains’ and ‘processing effort’ presupposes a great deal of highly sophisticated linguistic knowledge, whether intuitive or ‘learned’. Some general typological insights into the language-specific, parametrized processing conditions might at least point the way.

7

Shifting boundaries

Reordering, reframing, extending, reducing – so far we have encountered an impressive variety of structural changes which were licensed by parametrized processing conditions determining optimal relevance in German and English. But even if these changes were cross-clausal, they occurred within the borders of sentences. It was only in the last example, with its ‘liberal’ deletion of the matrix clause, that sentence boundaries were affected. The result of the reduction, the question, had been adjoined to the preceding sentence by a colon. Sentence boundaries are determined by full stops. Between two full stops, linguistic structures contribute to a simple or complex information unit. Inside this unit, punctuation marks may delimit subunits with different degrees of cohesion. Commas indicate the highest degree of cohesion, dashes, colons, semicolons and brackets a much lower one, though colons and semicolons are punctuation marks signalling a closer relation between the structures they separate than a full stop.1 Now, it is the authors’ decision to present their thoughts in one way or another, but the Principle of Optimal Relevance restricts their freedom, and the constraints controlling punctuation are to a certain extent language specific. Some of the differences between the punctuation of an original and its translation will merely result from the structural changes necessary in the interest of easy processing. The last example could have been such a case if it had not started from the wrong premises. Convincing examples of different sentence boundaries are by no means rare, however. Basically, we can distinguish three types of boundary shifts: linking of independent sentences into more complex sentences, separation of clauses into independent sentences, and the shift of sentence boundaries which combines linking and separating. All three types occur in translations from German into English, and the following examples of each of the three types clearly result from optimizing processing conditions under the specific constraints of the target language.

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Linking Sometimes we may share the feeling that a sentence does not merit being a sentence in its own right. Consider for example the sequence: The names of producers have become a universal code. The label replaces the object. This has gone so far that customers routinely offer the companies their bodies as advertising space. which could leave us a bit breathless around its chopped up appearance in the middle. This must have prompted the translator to spell out the relation between the first and second sentences as causal (or temporal) and link the corresponding clauses accordingly: The names of producers have become a universal code, as the label replaces the object. This has gone so far that customers routinely offer the companies their bodies as advertising space. (E 1997: 334) But the German original consists of three independent sentences: Die Namen der Hersteller sind zu einem universellen Code geworden. Das Etikett vertritt den Gegenstand. Das geht soweit, daß die Kundschaft ihren Körper den Lieferanten als Werbefläche zur Verfügung stellt. (E 1999: 155) And for good reason: if we were to link the first two sentences in German, we would assign too much relevance to the second clause and present it as the main information of the entire sentence. This applies to the causal link: Die Namen der Hersteller sind zu einem universellen Code geworden, da das Etikett den Gegenstand vertritt. as well as to the temporal link, which fares even worse because the focused position turns it into a conditional link: Die Namen der Hersteller sind zu einem universellen Code geworden, wenn das Etikett den Gegenstand vertritt. The interpretation with a focused, second clause is a possible view, but it is definitely not the author’s view. In the original, the second sentence mentions only another aspect of the same state of affairs. If one were to insist on the clausal status of the second aspect, one would have to lower the relevance of the subclause. One could use another connector, marking the discourse relation as an elaboration:

Shifting boundaries 123 Die Namen der Hersteller sind zu einem universellen Code geworden, wobei das Etikett den Gegenstand vertritt. Here, however, the resultative aspect of the main clause does not go too well with the dynamic nature of wobei. Not only does the last version miss the original idea, it violates selection restrictions. The comparison shows that in German, separation of the two clauses is much better: Die Namen der Hersteller sind zu einem universellen Code geworden. Das Etikett vertritt den Gegenstand. As English expects the focus near the main verb of the main clause, there are no difficulties in subsuming the informational value of the second clause to the first (and interpreting the subclause temporally): The names of producers have become a universal code, as the label replaces the object. For a new sentence, however, less relevance is unexpected and would be legitimate only if the information could not be incorporated in the preceding sentence, perhaps on account of its structural length or for other reasons. For a short and transparent sentence like: The label replaces the object. there are no reasons for it to be used independently.

Linking by resumption Sometimes two sentences can only be linked by taking an element of the first sentence as a structural anchor for the second sentence. With a sequence like the following it is unclear how to interpret the second sentence: The modern concept of time runs aground when confronted with the most obvious of data. It is almost embarrassing to mention it. Our genetic code originated billions and billions of years ago; . . . The major problem is posed by the two its of the second sentence, which could be anaphors with various antecedents in the first sentence, or – in the case of the first it – expletive, without any reference. But even if we take the first it to be an expletive pronoun, we will be at a loss as to the antecedent of the second it. What in the sentence: The modern concept of time runs aground when confronted with the most obvious of data.

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is referred to by the pronominal object of the second clause: It is almost embarrassing to mention it? Yet in terms of punctuation, the English version would be an analogous translation of the German original: Das scheitert schon an den unvermeidlichsten aller Gegebenheiten. Man geniert sich fast, sie zu erwähnen. Unser genetischer Code ist vor Milliarden und Millionen von Jahren entstanden; . . . (E 1999: 13) Now, the existing translation avoids the anaphora problems of the analogous version by linking the second sentence to the first: The modern concept of time runs aground when confronted with the most obvious of data, so obvious that it is almost embarrassing to mention it. Our genetic code originated billions and billions of years ago; . . . (E 1997: 37) Repeating the adjective of data and extending it by a connector, so obvious that, disambiguates the reference. And as an independent version: it is so obvious that it is almost embarrassing to mention it, is too repetitive even for English ears, linking the second sentence to the first is a welcome way out. One can even avoid the explicit relative clause: The modern concept of time runs aground when confronted with the most obvious of data, which is so obvious that it is almost embarrassing to mention it. by an apposition: . . . when confronted with the most obvious of data, so obvious that it is almost embarrassing to mention it. The anaphoric problem does not exist in German whether one interprets the pronominal object sie as a plural or as a singular – the latter in cataphoric anticipation of the genetic code specifying the unvermeidlichsten aller Gegebenheiten/the most inevitable of all conditions (the most obvious of data). Thus, one does not have to link the sentences in German in order to disambiguate the referential relation. Nor would we want to link the sentences in German. Even if we accepted the semantic compromise needed for the link and replaced unvermeidlich/ inevitable by offensichtlich/obvious, we could not like the result as much as the original. The sentence:

Shifting boundaries 125 Das scheitert schon an den offensichtlichsten aller Gegebenheiten, so offensichtlich, daß man sich fast geniert, sie zu erwähnen. fails to meet German focus expectations. This is so because the second clause is of little relevance compared with the first clause. It could be deleted without any effect whatsoever on the cohesion of the remaining discourse: The modern concept of time runs aground when confronted with the most obvious of data. Our genetic code originated billions and billions of years ago; . . . Placing an informational element of such little relevance in the canonical focus position of a German sentence violates the Principle of Optimal Relevance. The processor may mistake the focus of the complement clause: so offensichtlich, daß man sich fast geniert, sie zu erwähnen. for the focus of the whole sentence, and will have to correct this afterwards. It is clearly the superlative, den offensichtlichsten/unvermeidlichsten aller Gegebenheiten, which is the contextual focus. Linking the first and the second sentence produces an informational unit with decreasing informational values. While this is a distribution to which English – with its left-peripheral verb phrase and corresponding focus expectations does not object – it will in most cases be restructured in German; if reordering with or without reframing cannot be used, one will rather separate the discursive structure and use independent sentences as the original does.

Separating While lower relevance of a subsequent sentence in the German original may suggest the linking of two independent sentences in the English translation, an alternative distribution of informational values, that is, a steady increase of relevance, may create exactly the opposite condition for sentence boundaries. The following two sentences: On the other hand, the unemployed, the elderly, and refugees, who in the future will make up the majority of the world’s population, usually dispose of their time as they like. But it would be sheer mockery to call that a privilege. (E 1997: 338) go back to one sentence in the original:

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Shifting boundaries Umgekehrt können Arbeitslose, Alte und Flüchtlinge, die zusammen in naher Zukunft die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung ausmachen werden, in der Regel beliebig über ihre Zeit verfügen, aber es wäre der blanke Hohn, darin ein Privileg zu sehen. (E 1999: 160)

If we translated this as one sentence in English, too, it would not only be difficult to process, but the contrast in the end would be devalued: On the other hand, the unemployed, the elderly, and refugees, who in the future will make up the majority of the world’s population, usually dispose of their time as they like, but it would be sheer mockery to call that a privilege. The main focus is expected earlier in the sentence and assigned to the finite verb of the previous clause and its argument. If one wants to assign more relevance to the last clause under the condition of a left-peripheral focus structure, the final clause has to be separated. In German, the situation is the opposite. Separating the last clause from the sentence attributes a higher value to the preceding clause. This would make it difficult to recognize the real importance of the second sentence: Umgekehrt können Arbeitslose, Alte und Flüchtlinge, die zusammen in naher Zukunft die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung ausmachen werden, in der Regel beliebig über ihre Zeit verfügen. Aber es wäre der blanke Hohn, darin ein Privileg zu sehen. The original attributes the highest value to the last clause, which distributes the relevance of the contrastive clauses optimally: Umgekehrt können Arbeitslose, Alte und Flüchtlinge, die zusammen in naher Zukunft die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung ausmachen werden, in der Regel beliebig über ihre Zeit verfügen, aber es wäre der blanke Hohn, darin ein Privileg zu sehen. Separation alone is not enough if the critical segment is no clause. Thus, the second sentence in: What began as a struggle between the ancient and modern ages grew into a protracted battle between the inherited past and the revolutionary new, between tradition and the modern, and finally became a given. It has survived into the present as an either/or, first in cultural setting, and then in the political arena. (E 1997: 35)

Shifting boundaries 127 corresponds to a nominal apposition after a dash: Was damals als Streit zwischen Antike und Neuzeit thematisiert wurde, hat sich dann immer weiter entfaltet, bis der Kampf zwischen dem Althergebrachten und dem umwälzend Neuen, zwischen Tradition und Moderne, zur Selbstverständlichkeit wurde – einem Entweder-Oder, dem zunächst in der Kultur, bald aber auch in der Politik eine lange, bis heute andauernde Karriere beschieden war. (E 1999: 11) The nominal head of the phrase is a nominalized compound of two connectors: Entweder-Oder, with a long and highly involved attribute clause. The phrase has been extraposed behind the finite verb due to its sheer length. It is part of the prepositional phrase, zur Selbstverständlichkeit, and shares its preposition; zu einem Entweder-Oder is formally the last and most important argument of the verb within the temporal clause that spells out the development of the protracted battle between the inherited past and the revolutionary new. Besides rephrasing the matrix clause and the adverbial of the first sentence, English separates the postposed apposition into a second sentence. This requires filling in the subject and the verb of the original apposition. The translator has opted for a wider paraphrase, replacing dem eine bis heute andauernde Karriere beschieden war by it has survived into the present. The changes secure easy focus identification in both sentences. If the second sentence were linked to the first, for example as a relative clause, or as a participle phrase, we might not be able to grasp the discursive relevance of this attribute. There are two possibilities. With a restrictive clause for the specification of the survival, the preceding information, the head of the attribute, will be devalued: What began as a struggle between the ancient and modern ages grew into a protracted battle between the inherited past and the revolutionary new, between tradition and the modern, and finally became a given which has survived/surviving into the present as an either/or, first in cultural setting, and then in the political arena. With a non-restrictive clause, the attribute itself will be devalued: What began as a struggle between the ancient and modern ages grew into a protracted battle between the inherited past and the revolutionary new, between tradition and the modern, and finally became a given, which has survived/surviving into the present as an either/or, first in cultural setting, and then in the political arena. Separating the attribute from its head as an independent sentence allows us

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to assign an adequate focus to both sentences and express the progressive discourse at the same time. What began as a struggle between the ancient and modern ages grew into a protracted battle . . . and finally became a given. It has survived into the present as an either/or, first in cultural setting, and then in the political arena.

Felicitous contrasts The different word order conditions in English and German may dictate further structural changes of the segments separated into independent sentences. Thus: Fast cars and gold watches, cases of champagne and perfume are available on every street corner; they are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism. Instead, it is the elementary necessities of life that come at a great price: quiet, good water, and enough space. (E 1997: 335) has reordered the first sentence in line with the subject-before-verb principle. The German original begins with the predicate: Knapp, selten, teuer und begehrenswert sind im Zeichen des wuchernden Konsums nicht schnelle Automobile und goldene Armbanduhren, Champagnerkisten und Parfums, Dinge, die an jeder Straßenecke zu haben sind, sondern elementare Lebensvoraussetzungen wie Ruhe, gutes Wasser und genügend Platz. (E 1999: 157) But then the apposition to the subject things which are available on every street corner has been syntactically and informationally raised to replace the original predicate of the sentence. The latter is separated into a clause of its own after a semicolon: Fast cars and gold watches, cases of champagne and perfume are available on every street corner; they are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism. If one contented oneself with reversing the subject and predicate of the original, one would get: Fast cars and gold watches, cases of champagne and perfume, which are available on every street corner, are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism.

Shifting boundaries 129 By subordinating the availability of the traditional luxury goods in a preverbal position, one spoils the author’s point because it is the general availability that explains why those goods are no longer rare and desirable. The German original has this information at the end of the first contrastive segment and thus in its focus position, whose value is only surpassed by the subsequent element of the contrast: nicht . . . Dinge, die an jeder Straßenecke zu haben sind, sondern elementare Lebensvoraussetzungen . . . But this is the optimal form of the contrast in German, and it requires much restructuring to become optimal in English, too. The predicate and the apposition of the original are in a contrastive relation to each other, the negated part of which is normally used first, the affirmative part afterwards. Exactly this is secured in German by using the negated predicate in topic position and the affirmative part in form of an apposition after the subject at the end of the first clause. The subject-before-verb principle does not allow the same solution in English, but one could achieve a similar effect by using the normal order within the predicate: Fast cars and gold watches, cases of champagne and perfume are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism, but are available on every street corner. Why did the translator not make use of this option, but reversed the normal order of the contrast, referring to the availability of fast cars before negating their scarcity? Fast cars and gold watches, cases of champagne and perfume, which are available on every street corner, are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism. The answer is that the first sentence with its contrast is embedded into another contrast with the second sentence. It is not the availability of the traditional luxury goods, but the negated scarcity and expensiveness which is contrasted with the elementary necessities of life that come at great cost. That is, the second clause contrasts with the predicate of the first clause and not with the apposition. This means that the content of the first clause should be easily accessible when we reach the second clause, which will not be the case if we use the first contrast in its normal order. The solution in the translation is the separation of the negated phrase of the contrast into an independent clause after a semicolon, where it becomes immediately accessible to the successive contrast. But as the semicolon has already reached the highest level of internal separation, the subsequent

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contrast needs an even higher level of separation. It is thus used as an independent sentence, marking the contrastive topic at the beginning of the sentence by a cleft. This cuts out a bigger chunk of the preceding context as the domain of its contrast: Fast cars and gold watches, cases of champagne and perfume are available on every street corner; they are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism. Instead, it is the elementary necessities of life that come at a great price: quiet, good water, and enough space. If the last clause were not separated from the clause it contrasts with, it would not show its hierarchical level despite the cleft: Fast cars and gold watches, . . . are available on every street corner; they are not scarce, rare, expensive or desirable in this age of raging consumerism, but it is the elementary necessities of life that come at a great price: quiet, good water, and enough space. It is more difficult in a clause to find one’s way back to the fast cars, which form the contrast with the elementary necessities of life, than in an independent sentence. The problem does not arise in German, where the contrastive topics follow each other directly. The intervening apposition is itself a part of the contrasted discourse topic: Knapp, selten, teuer und begehrenswert sind . . . nicht schnelle Automobile und goldene Armbanduhren, . . . Dinge, die an jeder Straßenecke zu haben sind, sondern elementare Lebensvoraussetzungen wie Ruhe, gutes Wasser und genügend Platz.

Shifting sentence borders Sometimes both operations are combined, that is, clauses are separated into an independent sentence and a clause which is linked to a subsequent sentence. The following is a relatively transparent example, although it involves a change from a declarative to an imperative sentence at the end. Both the original and the translation consist of two sentences, but the separation occurs in different places. The translation reads as follows: What would happen if we were to apply this simple mathematical model to time or, more precisely and more modestly, to historical time? Just out of curiosity and, if you like, for entertainment, as an alternative to the linear model of time used in classical physics, let’s do the experiment. (E 1997: 39)

Shifting boundaries 131 Except for the final part, it has stayed very close to the original: Wie wäre es, wenn wir dieses mathematische Modell auf die Zeit, genauer und bescheidener gesagt, auf die historische Zeit anwenden würden – vorerst nur aus Neugier und meinetwegen zum Vergnügen, als Alternative zum linearen Zeitmodell der klassischen Physik? Es käme auf den Versuch an. (E 1999: 15) The postverbal adverbial after the dash has been adjoined in the translation to the second sentence – an imperative – as an adverbial onset. As the experiment in the imperative refers to the application of the mathematical model to time, which was mentioned in the first sentence, the adverbial modifies the same event whether we use it in the first sentence or in the second. The translation can therefore be considered equivalent. But why did the translator shift the sentence boundary at all? What does one get if one translates the sentence analogously? What would happen if we were to apply this simple mathematical model to time or, more precisely and more modestly, to historical time – just out of curiosity and, if you like, for entertainment, as an alternative to the linear model of time used in classical physics? Let’s do the experiment. The end of the first sentence seems awfully long. It is rather difficult to sort out all constituents of the adverbial and integrate them adequately into the matrix structure. Now, the original matrix sentence presents an idiomatic request in form of a question: wie wäre es, wenn/how about . . . which is very similar to the imperative: let’s do it. But reformulating the real question: what would happen if . . .? as an indirect request would not alter the different conditions for sentence boundaries too much: How about applying this simple mathematical model to time or, more precisely and more modestly, to historical time – just out of curiosity and, if you like, for entertainment, as an alternative to the linear model of time used in classical physics? Let’s do the experiment. Although this version is better than the previous one as the affirmative nature of the adverbial no longer clashes with the interrogative nature of the matrix structure, one might easily miss the textual relevance of the last part of the sentence. Another short look at the original: Wie wäre es, wenn wir dieses mathematische Modell auf die Zeit,

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Shifting boundaries genauer und bescheidener gesagt, auf die historische Zeit anwenden würden – vorerst nur aus Neugier und meinetwegen zum Vergnügen, als Alternative zum linearen Zeitmodell der klassischen Physik? Es käme auf den Versuch an.

tells us that the alternative between the simple mathematical model and the linear model of time is of textual relevance, and the final position in the German original helps us to realize it directly. In fact, the interpretation of the conditional is not different if we take the extraposed information back into its basic position: wenn wir dieses mathematische Modell – vorerst nur aus Neugier . . . – auf die historische Zeit anwenden würden . . . provided the parenthetical character of the information is signalled by dashes. In English, the focus of the conditional (or gerund phrase) is restricted to the verb and its internal argument – that is, the matrix structure establishes a contrast between apply to historical time/not apply to historical time. The adverbial extensions after the dash do not participate in this alternative: How about applying this simple mathematical model to time or, more precisely and more modestly, to historical time – just out of curiosity and, if you like, for entertainment, as an alternative to the linear model of time used in classical physics? The focus interpretation is restricted to the focus exponent and does not include the focus projection after the dash, although the structure after the dash covers contextually new information, too. In German, the parenthetical nature of the information does not prevent the processor from identifying the extraposed, right-peripheral material as an important part of the entire sentence, participating in the contextual focus projection. However, if we use the German structure in English, there is nothing to tell us that all this, after the dash at the end of the sentence, is of textual relevance. Except that the mere quantity of the information, which contradicts the weak position, will cause a processing confusion. In separating the modifiers from the first sentence, one can avoid this confusion. However, unlike previous cases, the adverbial phrase need not be extended into a clause, because it can adjoin the next, rather short sentence. The price for the boundary shift is the use of an imperative instead of the declarative sentence since only the former can counterbalance the complex modifying phrase and secure equal relevance to the modifier and the main clause: What would happen if we were to apply this simple mathematical model

Shifting boundaries 133 to time or, more precisely and more modestly, to historical time? Just out of curiosity and, if you like, for entertainment, as an alternative to the linear model of time used in classical physics, let’s do the experiment. In an English sentence, as you know, the left-peripheral position is much more prominent; thus, the shift secures an adequate degree of relevance to the contrasted models of time.

Extrasentential reordering Shifts of sentence boundaries can be directed backwards, too, and can come as a consequence of changes which are necessary for other reasons – for example those of filling a lexical gap. Earlier on in the Key (p. 8), there was an extreme example of structural extension confronting us with the question of whether such a deviation from the original did not mean a change of style altogether: Mittelwertbildung ist gleichbedeutend mit Informationsverlust. was translated by: Whenever we represent a system by an average we necessarily lose some information about the total system. that is, by clausal extensions of the subject and the predicate and a conditional relation instead of the equivalence relation expressed by ist gleichbedeutend/ means the same. Having gathered so much evidence about language-specific processing conditions in English and German, we may now be ready to cope with the example. What we can see straight away is that there is a lexical gap which the translation has tried to fill. Actually, Mittelwertbildung is a discourse topic of the chapter the sentence belongs to, and thus the term occurs quite frequently in the text. It is translated in various ways depending upon the particular context it occurs in. We have already looked at one of these translations (the process of averaging) some time ago. Now, an analogous translation of the original would be something like: Forming an average means losing some information. How would this version fit into the context? Entropy, which is complementary to temperature, is a measure of information. It tells us how the total energy is distributed among the various quantum states of the system. Forming an average means losing some information.

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The idea of forming an average may seem to occur somewhat abruptly, but as the sentence opens a new paragraph, we can accept a shift in topic. Actually, the idea of an average was a recurring theme in the last but one paragraph, explicitly mentioned in four of its nine sentences. Thus, the focus is the predicate of the sentence, and the focus exponent Informationsverlust/ losing information. There are apparently no problems, then, with the analogous translation. So why did the translator think it necessary to put so much structural weight into his version? Perhaps we find a clue in the subsequent context. How does the paragraph initiated with the sentence continue? Mittelwertbildung ist gleichbedeutend mit Informationsverlust. Wo immer man mittelt, bedarf es einer Spezifikation, auf welche Detailzustände sich die Mittelung erstreckt, das heißt einer Zahl, die angibt wieviel Information bei der Mittelwertbildung verloren gegangen ist. Relatively close to the second sentence of the original would be the English version: Whenever we form an average, we need a specification of how many individual cases are included in the average, that is, a number which tells us how much information was lost in the process of averaging. This version may be a bit too nominal for the parsing strategy of a language with left-peripheral verb phrases, and one could recategorize some of the nouns as verbs to avoid attachment problems: Whenever we form an average we have to specify how many individual cases are included in the average and determine how much information was lost in the process of averaging. Now, if one adds a textual link between the first and the second sentence, the resulting paragraph is not too bad: Forming an average means losing information. Thus, whenever we form an average we have to specify how many individual cases are included in the average and determine how much information was lost in the process of averaging. or, dropping one of the repeated averages: Forming an average means losing information. Thus, whenever we form an average we have to specify how many individual cases are included and determine how much information was lost in the process of averaging.

Shifting boundaries 135 When we look at the different beginnings of the first and second sentence, we get the feeling that the translator resented the repetition of the phrase form an average. The phrase got into the translation in the first sentence by recategorizing Mittelwertbildung as a non-finite phrase. To avoid the repetition the translator simply replaced the non-finite subject of the first sentence by the conditional clause of the second sentence. If we apply the same to our even more economical version, we get: Whenever we form an average, we lose some information. Consequently, we have to specify how many individual cases are included and determine how much information was lost in the process of averaging. So far, we can follow the translator. And one thing is already quite clear – although we still lack an explanation for the remaining extensions, the difference between the original and the translation is definitely much less striking now than when we compared the sentences first. The translation no longer suggests a deviation from the stylistic register of the original. What appeared to be a structural extension, the conditional clause, is in reality a case of extrasentential reordering, which not only filled the lexical gap of Mittelwertbildung, but allowed the number of unnecessary repetitions to be cut down. What about the remaining differences between the more analogous paraphrase and the existing translation: Whenever we form an average, we lose some information. Whenever we represent a system by an average, we necessarily lose some information about the total system. The translator relates the average and the loss of information to a system and makes the loss a necessary consequence of the average. The first extension signals the textual relevance of the topic, by underlining the shift from the particular to the general, that is from the specific system of temperature, which was the discourse topic of the last two paragraphs, to any system whatsoever (the subsequent example speaks of jetliners and average weight for passengers). The second extension, the modal adverb, necessarily, has an information structuring function. Necessarily indicates that there is a focus in the main clause, which is something that might be missed otherwise, since whenever is one of those focus attracting elements which could push everything else into the background. As the modality of necessity is implied in the original by ‘ist gleichbedeutend mit’, the messages of the original and translation are equivalent. Having looked at differences in linearization, syntactic relations, structural explicitness and sentence boundaries which distinguish English

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translations from German original sentences in line with the languagespecific conditions for optimal processing, we have concentrated on a basic but tiny set of translation ‘problems’ between two alternatively parametrized languages. The only excuse for dealing with such a small subset at all is its general character. Questions of word order, grammatical relations and structural explicitness are part of any linguistic encoding. Nevertheless, there are many more differences between the systems and uses of languages to deal with, even if one ignores the all-pervasive question of lexical differences. What most translation scholars will have missed in the previous chapters is a reference to the great variety of translational problems and translational norms which are not controlled by the criterion of optimal processing. Although I have used existing translations to demonstrate the language-specific conditions for optimal processing in discourse, I did not access the vast reservoir of existing translation which does not, for whatever reasons, follow the translational maxim of the Key. Although the Principle of Optimal Relevance says that language is perceived normally as if it were optimally relevant for the perceiver, we know that there are very many ways of violating this principle – including the alternative presumption that something which is directly addressed to me is totally irrelevant for me. But even if we ignore all sorts of interactive idiosyncrasies, there are quite enough cases of conventionalized constraints on the Principle of Optimal Relevance. Translational norms themselves could be among them. Does this mean that I have to surrender the criterion of optimal processing or the concept of optimal translation based on it? Let us take a closer look at some examples illustrating such cases.

8

Relativizing optimality

When we set out walking the tightrope, we agreed to close our eyes to any special uses of language we might encounter in translating. Even so, the examples we have been looking at were colourful enough. They were all subject to the default version of the Principle of Optimal Relevance, however. That is, linguistic means were used so as to optimize processing conditions in the original as well as in the translation. The use of language, though, can also be subject to other principles, which may in one way or another relativize optimality. It may be the characteristics of individual style or of whole genres that cause the conditions of optimal processing to be flouted, but even in such cases, enough remains coherent to safeguard comprehension – unless a message is emotional or dadaistic or whatnot almost to the exclusion of everything informative. In general, stylistic peculiarities may be characterized by the nature and extent of deviations from optimal processing conditions.1 Two alternative cases of such special uses of language may suffice to illustrate the consequences for translation: first, a typical example of legal language and, second, some classical examples of literary translation. Both cases demonstrate the limits of translatability, when differences between target and source language cannot be compensated for by any redistribution of information.

A preamble Special purposes generate special discourse conditions. They will in many cases appear as arbitrary as last year’s fashion, yet they may be strictly conventionalized, and the conventions of target and source language may or may not coincide. Even when they do coincide, the specific properties of source and target language will promote variations within otherwise similar patterns. The conventional discourse patterns of legal texts in English and German are not so far apart in their ‘macrostructural’ architecture. Compared with 137

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the default type of language use, legal texts are in both languages strongly marked as text types for which the principle of optimal processing is lifted more than once. Thus, if we have a sentence starting with a participle adverbial which has four infinitive complements between one and four lines long and afterwards only a three-word subject and a two-word predicate, normal processing conditions for English and German sentences are violated alike. But as an opening statement to a treaty, we will consider even a lop-sided structure such as the following as stylistically well formed, and think of all the articles after it as holding it in balance: Based on the intention to reduce the state’s commercial activity as quickly and extensively as possible through privatization, to make as many businesses as possible competitive, thus protecting existing jobs and creating new ones, to provide real estate for economic purposes, to make it possible, after taking stock of state property, its productivity, and after its prior use for structural adaptation of the economy and stabilization of the national budget, to grant investors a vested right to shares in state property for a sum reduced through the monetary conversion of July 2, 1990, the following law is passed: Article 1: . . . (Jarausch and Gransow 1994: 165) The fact that we are accustomed to the sight of such stylistic figures does not take away anything of the processing burden. The preamble is after all intended as one, however complex, information unit. Without the graphic aid cutting the whole into relatively autonomous subsegments, we would hardly be able to process it. The internal structure of the long final segment is particularly difficult as it does not profit from the graphic layout. But this difference is a matter of the microstructural distribution of the information, which we will look at in more detail later on. As long as we stay with the macrostructural aspect, the German and English conventions are surprisingly similar. Except for the parametrization of the left- and right-peripheral verb positions and the left- and rightdirectional structural extensions of the verbs, the German version is built up very much in the same way as the English version:

Relativizing optimality

139

Getragen von der Absicht, die unternehmerische Tätigkeit des Staates durch Privatisierung so rasch und so weit wie möglich zurückzuführen, die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit möglichst vieler Unternehmen herzustellen und somit Arbeitsplätze zu sichern und neue zu schaffen, Grund und Boden für wirtschaftliche Zwecke bereitzustellen, ... wird folgendes Gesetz erlassen: §1

(Gransow and Jarausch 1991: 185)

Although topicalization is normal in German, it is not only the solemn nature of the participle phrase getragen von der Absicht, but also the complexity of the topicalized series which makes it an extraordinary beginning in German, too. Processing ease is clearly not the dominating criterion when conceiving a law.

No liberalism If we look at the microstructural architecture, we can see that the subsegments carved out by the layout are structurally supported by the syntactic parallelism between the segments. However, the English version is here more consistent than the German version, where the fourth segment is presented as a clausal complement: daß nach einer Bestandsaufnahme des volkseigenen Vermögens und seiner Ertragsfähigkeit sowie nach seiner vorrangigen Nutzung für Strukturanpassung der Wirtschaft und die Sanierung des Staatshaushaltes den Sparern zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt für den bei der Währungsumstellung am 2. Juli 1990 reduzierten Betrag ein verbrieftes Anteilsrecht an volkseigenem Vermögen eingeräumt werden kann, . . . Despite all its complexities, this segment is easier to process in English than in German, which may come as a surprise seeing that the German version – as you may have noticed from the content – is the original. When we think of what may have prompted the additional complexity in German, we can make out a language-specific difficulty in the verbal part of the infinitival alternative. It is the right-peripherality of the German verb structure which results in an additional constraint on the use of the modal verb. By itself, the complement:

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is a grammatically perfect version, but not in the intentional context: *getragen von der Absicht, den Sparern ein verbrieftes Anteilsrecht an volkseigenem Vermögen einräumen zu können. Grammatically seen, the situation would be somewhat better with möglich machen: Getragen von der Absicht, es möglich zu machen, den Sparern ein verbrieftes Anteilsrecht an volkseigenem Vermögen einzuräumen but stylistically, things have become even worse – especially if we think of the many additional conditions yet to be integrated into the segment. One could, of course, avoid the entire problem by dropping the modality: getragen von der Absicht, den Sparern ein verbrieftes Anteilsrecht an volkseigenem Vermögen einzuräumen but that would promise the investors more than the legislator has intended. The difference may be negligible in the everyday use of language, but not for the degree of commitment adhered to in legal texts. For legal texts are not only peculiar in that they follow certain formal conventions requiring an extra amount of processing effort, but also they are less tolerant in terms of specificity as the legislator cannot afford potential ambiguities or merely rely on the readers’ inferential capabilities. Still, you could suspect the legislator of overdoing it. After all, the intention of doing something does not entail its success – the intention of granting a right does not entail the fact of granting it, but it should entail trying to create the possibility of granting it. So, why mention the possibility at all? Obviously, jurisdiction is not going to let us off with this sort of everyday reasoning. However difficult the formulation may be, if the legislators decide upon it, they will claim to have had reasons for doing so. No liberal deletion of information in the interest of easy processing!

Quite normal In general, however, the Principle of Optimal Relevance is valid even in a legal text. It goes without saying that the grammatical parameters are not floated in the translation, even if they are stretched to their extremes as in the original. Let us begin with the normal cases, such as the microstructural view of the simpler segments. In the original, all three start with the object, but each of the objects is

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located in a different configuration. The differences between German and English secure adequate processing conditions for a normal focus projection. The simplest case is the third complement: Grund und Boden für wirtschaftliche Zwecke bereitzustellen where the prepositional object has been placed in the position of the focus exponent, near the verb. The idea of real estate/Grund und Boden is implied by the concept of state property referred to in the title of the law. The order of the two objects is exactly what we expect it to be in a discourse-sensitive language. In the English translation, the verb-adjacent focus position is filled by the direct object: to provide real estate for economic purposes. The translation unscrambles the German original in line with the English grammar and equivalence is achieved via a discursive reanalysis identifying the prepositional object as focus, as in any normal text. The first complement is not much more complicated than the third: die unternehmerische Tätigkeit des Staates durch Privatisierung so rasch und so weit wie möglich zurückzuführen, to reduce the state’s commercial activity as quickly and extensively as possible through privatization, . . . It is merely a question of locating the adverbials according to their scope, which is nothing but the verb in the case of the modifying adverbial, but the verb with its modifier in the case of the causal adverbial – causal before modal in a left-branching language, and modal before causal in a rightbranching language. Things are less simple with the second complement: die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit möglichst vieler Unternehmen herzustellen . . . where the first predicate is in the original more nominal than in the translation. The head of the German object is a nominalized adjective, which is translated as a predicate adjective in English: Wettbewerbsfähigkeit/(make) competitive: to make as many businesses as possible competitive . . . The recategorization has its effect on the grammatical realization of the arguments associated with the syntactic heads. There is the attributive

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genitive of the German noun, (Wettbewerbsfähigkeit) vieler Unternehmen, while in English, the underlying subject of competitive is at the same time the overt object of the predicate, (make) . . . many businesses . . . (competitive). Both versions secure an adequate focus interpretation. Unternehmen/ businesses can be contextually inferred from commercial; thus, there is a focus on competitive, in addition to the lexically inherent focus of the superlative möglichst viele/as many . . . as possible. Formally seen, these are, again, cases where both languages have both options. That is, we could have an analogous form of the English version: möglichst viele Unternehmen wettbewerbsfähig zu machen as well as an analogous translation of the German original in English: to achieve/warrant competitiveness of as many businesses as possible. Yet in German, the nominalized version of the original: die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit möglichst vieler Unternehmen herzustellen . . . could present another case of focus-spacing, taking the intended quality and quantity of businesses apart. English achieves the same effect with its smallclause version of the predicative adjective: to make as many businesses as possible competitive . . . which puts a syntactic border between the predicate and the matrix structure. The verbal frame blocks this possibility in the analogous German structure, calling for a different means of focus spacing, while in English, the nominal form seems to carry one focus only – perhaps due to the weight of the as-many-as-possible structure. Whatever the precise differences between the focus structures of English and German noun phrases may be, they belong to the general properties of both languages and are not text-typespecific. As a rule, nominalization in itself is no processing obstacle. It can help improve processing through focus spacing, as was the case in the example about competitive businesses. Nominalization may even be necessary in a left-branching language, to secure contextual appropriateness of the structural focus itself. Thus, the English version: The Council of Ministers appoints the Trusteeship Agency to implement the necessary measures. ends on an infinitive complement that goes back in German to a prepositional phrase with a deverbal noun:

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Der Ministerrat beauftragt mit der Durchführung der entsprechenden Maßnahmen die Treuhandanstalt. The direct object is the focus exponent, and it is the contextual focus because the law refers to the Trusteeship Agency here for the first time after the title, which is separated from this sentence by the whole of the preamble and the first two sentences of article 1. The Council of Ministers and the necessary measures are given or entailed by the immediately preceding sentence. Thus, the prepositional object mit der Durchführung der entsprechenden Maßnahmen is of lower relevance than the direct object, and the order of the two objects is contextually adequate. If we were to use an infinitive instead of the deverbal noun – that is, a structure analogous to the English version – we would get the wrong focus structure: Der Ministerrat beauftragt die Treuhandanstalt, die entsprechenden Maßnahmen durchzuführen. English, on the other hand, needs just this order to get the Trusteeship Agency into the structural focus position after the verb: The Council of Ministers appoints the Trusteeship Agency to implement the necessary measures. But in English, a nominal version would not allow any other order, either: The Council of Ministers . . . the Trusteeship Agency with the implementation of the necessary measures. Yet as the nominal version is a derived structure, it is more difficult to process than the verbal structure, and as there are no other gains associated with the difficulty it is felt to be unnecessary and clumsy. In German, the nominalized version improves processing in terms of focus structure, but this is as far as the legal text goes in optimizing processing conditions.

Statuesque and dense In an everyday text of German, one might find a more balanced distribution of information, using a concave pattern with the partitive topic: Mit der Durchführung der entsprechenden Maßnahme beauftragt der Ministerrat die Treuhandanstalt. In the legal example, however, except for the preamble, all sentences begin

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with the subject. That is, the stylistic principle of a balanced focus structure with an even distribution of the more relevant elements around those of lowest relevance is flouted in a legal text. The statuesque impression of the genre is clearly due to the rigid handling of the topic position in a language which is normally highly discourse sensitive. The effect is reinforced by the repetitive nature of the initial subjects, which the Principle of Optimal Relevance would normally require to be pronominalized: Das volkseigene Vermögen ist zu privatisieren . . . Volkseigenes Vermögen . . . Der Ministerrat trägt . . . Der Ministerrat beauftragt . . . die Treuhandanstalt. Die Treuhandanstalt wird . . . The unnecessary explicitness adds an extra weight to each subject. The rigid and repetitive nature is all the more remarkable as the high degree of explicitness can fill the verbal frame with much information, which would be easier to process in a more balanced form. Thus, the English version: In certain cases to be determined by law, state owned property can also be conveyed to the ownership of local governments, cities, districts, and states, as well as to the public. is in the German original: Volkseigentum kann auch in durch Gesetz bestimmten Fällen Gemeinden, Städten, Kreisen und Ländern sowie der öffentlichen Hand als Eigentum übertragen werden. With the adverbial squeezed into the middle field and its specifier in prenominal position, in durch Gesetz bestimmten Fällen, the German version makes for tough reading, which may demonstrate to the legal subject that the assertion of the law is no matter of discourse. The sentence would be easier to process if the adverbial were topicalized and the prenominal attribute spelled out postnominally: In bestimmten Fällen, die durch Gesetz festzulegen sind, kann volkseigenes Vermögen Gemeinden, Städten, Kreisen und Ländern sowie der öffentlichen Hand als Eigentum übertragen werden.

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This is very much the form of the English version, which does not try to reproduce the authoritarian, statuesque style of the original. A translation that merely informs us about a law regulating affairs in another country can afford a greater degree of processing ease. The result is still bad enough, though, where the original is as crammed full with information as in our fourth complement of the preamble. Concentrating on a particularly ill-shaped original is really no fun, yet we cannot close our eyes to what translators have to cope with. Let us approach the fourth complement in its ‘liberalized’ English form. Here is the translation once more: to make it possible, after taking stock of state property, its productivity, and its priority usefulness for structural adaptation of the economy and stabilization of the national budget, to grant investors a vested right to shares in state property for a sum reduced through the monetary conversion of July 2, 1990, . . . Indeed, one could easily choke on the amount of information squeezed into what is, after all, just an infinitive complement. But it is an infinitive complement with an infinitive complement inside, with a seemingly endless number of modifiers and arguments of arguments of arguments . . . The density of the structure can become even worse, as the German original demonstrates: daß nach einer Bestandsaufnahme des volkseigenen Vermögens und seiner Ertragsfähigkeit sowie nach seiner vorrangigen Nutzung für Strukturanpassung der Wirtschaft und die Sanierung des Staatshaushaltes den Sparern zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt für den bei der Währungsumstellung am 2. Juli 1990 reduzierten Betrag ein verbrieftes Anteilsrecht an volkseigenem Vermögen eingeräumt werden kann, . . . While the English version has at least two finite and two non-finite verbs distributed over the whole passage, which is in this way subdivided into several clause-like segments: to make it possible after taking stock . . . to grant investors . . . a sum reduced . . . the German original is nominal almost throughout. Unlike the English postnominal participle, even the prenominal present participle shortly before the end is of no help. The German participle closes a complex prenominal phrase consisting of two prepositional phrases which are embedded into yet another prepositional phrase:

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The entire prepositional object is, in turn, squeezed between a temporal adverbial and a complex direct object before the predicate: zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt für den . . . Betrag ein verbrieftes Anrecht an . . . eingeräumt werden kann . . . and the temporal adverbial is preceded by as many as twelve noun phrases, which together constitute a short direct object and another, ‘endless’ temporal adverbial.

Overspecifying The second temporal adverbial seems redundant since the first temporal adverbial specifies the preconditions for the right to shares in state property extensively, namely in two coordinated prepositional phrases, where each nominal head is again extended by a coordinated complement: nach einer Bestandsaufnahme des volkseigenen Vermögens und seiner Ertragsfähigkeit sowie nach seiner vorrangigen Nutzung für Strukturanpassung der Wirtschaft und die Sanierung des Staatshaushaltes . . . As the implementation of all these conditions will take time, the next step can only take place at a later point of time. That is, the meaning of the second adverbial is implied by the meaning of the first adverbial. In the interest of optimal processing, one could simply leave the second temporal adverbial implicit – which is what the translator has indeed opted for. This would, in German, also allow us to prepose the direct object as it is no longer needed to cover up the redundancy of the second temporal adverbial by putting some distance between the first and the second adverbial: daß den Sparern nach einer Bestandsaufnahme des volkseigenen Vermögens und seiner Ertragsfähigkeit sowie nach seiner vorrangigen Nutzung für Strukturanpassung der Wirtschaft und die Sanierung des Staatshaushaltes . . . But the density of the structure is still so high that the processing advantage is hardly noticeable. In any case, we can be sure that the legislators did have second thoughts about the temporal specifications. Just as they insisted on adding the modal verb to the predicate, they had their judicial reasons for making the temporal implication explicit. We, the legal subjects, should not get the wrong idea and claim our right to shares in state property too early. It is clear that the legislators are, again, overspecifying their case to be on the safe side, fending off unjustified claims right from the beginning.

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Now, the translator has decided against overspecification, which is understandable in view of the informationally overloaded complement, but the reduction is not licensed by our Translation Maxim. As the discussion of this example shows, the convention of a special register may demand relativizing the Principle of Optimal Relevance, that is, the optimal proportion between processing ease and cognitive gains may deviate from the default case of discourse. In our case, the judicially motivated degree of specification, combined with a low degree of discourse sensitivity in terms of topicalization and pronominalization, restricts processing ease in a genre which is characterized by a high degree of informational density, that is, by passages where one discourse segment may comprise an extreme amount of information. The constraints are a mixture of rational and arbitrary, or irrational, conditions, with the latter dominating. While the trend to overspecification may be understandable from the legislator’s point of view, the constraints on the discourse-sensitive use of language, on topicalization and pronominalization, and on a lower degree of information density seem to be arbitrary. However, there is one common denominator to all three constraints – they all guarantee a very low degree of context dependency. That is, a discourse segment in a legal text has a high degree of contextual autonomy. Its interpretation does not depend upon the preceding context, in contrast to the easier-to-process alternatives. It is clear that anaphors are by definition context-dependent, and an even distribution of information according to its discourse relevance is highly context-dependent, too. For a lower degree of informational density we would have to use several sentences that would depend upon each other for their interpretations. After all, if we think of the function of laws as regulating social matter, we can recognize some rationale behind the trend towards context independency. But the desired self-sufficient, unambiguous and firm declaration is, as the example demonstrates, easily in danger of becoming an overburdened, indigestible piece of discourse.

Normalizing the extraordinary Optimality can be relativized for various reasons, whether general or individual and idiosyncratic. Individual reasons are accorded high regard when they can be attributed to the characteristics of a writer’s literary style. To the extent that literature wants to inform, its special use of language is also governed by the Principle of Optimal Relevance, but as we all know, it is the artistic use of language which accounts for much of the literary fascination, and processing ease may well be sacrificed for it. Yet whenever a literary style stretches the potential of its language, violating the default conditions of optimal use, the translator faces a real problem. Would

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stretching the target language in an analogous way merely be ‘blamed’ on the translator, who will be assumed to have failed optimality under target language conditions? The Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard is not only famous for his deepblack irony, but also for his endless variations and repetitions of thoughts, which only gradually make way for new thoughts. His sentences can be said to have a very low degree of informational density. We have to process a great number of nearly equivalent sentences, in which Bernhard approaches his object slowly and stubbornly, very much like a painter who draws ever new lines around his figures. Even the title of a whole book may be subjected to this procedure. The following examples are taken from the novel, Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall, which is something like Extinction. A Case of Dissolving. The double title emphasizes the destructive nature of the book by a near tautology. (The English translator makes use only of the first concept, already demonstrating outside the text his readiness to ‘normalize’ the author.) This is what we find at the beginning of the English version: On the twenty-ninth, having returned from Wolfsegg, I met my pupil Gambetti on the Pincio to discuss arrangements for the lessons he was to receive in May, writes Franz-Josef Murau, and impressed once again by his high intelligence, I was so refreshed and exhilarated, so glad to be living in Rome and not in Austria, that instead of walking home along the Via Condotti, as I usually do, I crossed the Flaminia and Piazza del Popolo and walked the whole length of the Corso before returning to my apartment in the Piazza Minerva, where at about two o’clock I received the telegram informing me that my parents and my brother, Johannes, had died. (B 1995: 3) Except for the position of the parenthetical clause, writes Franz-Josef Murau, the English version does not differ from any other beginning of a story, working its way step by step, clause by clause towards the climax at the end of the sentence. This is by no means the case with the German original. While the translation uses parallel structures: . . ., having returned . . . and impressed once again . . ., I was so refreshed and exhilarated, so glad . . . the original coordinates two conjuncts within a relative clause, and intersects the first and the second part of the passage with unusually located parenthetical clauses: Nach der Unterredung mit meinem Schüler Gambetti, mit welchem ich mich am Neunundzwanzigsten auf dem Pincio getroffen habe, schreibt

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Murau, Franz-Josef, um die Mai-Termine für den Unterricht zu vereinbaren, und von dessen hoher Intelligenz ich auch jetzt nach meiner Rückkehr aus Wolfsegg überrascht, ja in einer derart erfrischenden Weise begeistert gewesen bin, daß ich ganz gegen meine Gewohnheit, gleich durch die Via Condotti auf die Piazza Minerva zu gehen, auch in dem Gedanken, tatsächlich schon lange in Rom und nicht in Österreich zuhause zu sein, in eine zunehmend heitere Stimmung versetzt, über die Flaminia und die Piazza del Popolo, den ganzen Corso entlang in meine Wohnung gegangen bin, erhielt ich gegen zwei Uhr mittags das Telegramm, in welchem mir der Tod meiner Eltern und meines Bruders Johannes mitgeteilt wurde. (B 1989: 7) The sentence is extremely difficult to parse for there is no formal indicator that would help the parser recognize the structural attachment of the two conjuncts in the relative clause. Let me present it once more in a segmented format to help you get through: Nach der Unterredung mit meinem Schüler Gambetti, mit welchem ich mich am Neunundzwanzigsten auf dem Pincio getroffen habe, schreibt Murau, Franz-Josef, um die Mai-Termine für den Unterricht zu vereinbaren, und von dessen hoher Intelligenz ich auch jetzt nach meiner Rückkehr aus Wolfsegg überrascht, ja in einer derart erfrischenden Weise begeistert gewesen bin, daß ich ganz gegen meine Gewohnheit, gleich durch die Via Condotti auf die Piazza Minerva zu gehen, auch in dem Gedanken, tatsächlich schon lange in Rom und nicht in Österreich zuhause zu sein, in eine zunehmend heitere Stimmung versetzt, über die Flaminia und die Piazza del Popolo, den ganzen Corso entlang in meine Wohnung gegangen bin, erhielt ich gegen zwei Uhr mittags das Telegramm, in welchem mir der Tod meiner Eltern und meines Bruders Johannes mitgeteilt wurde. The sentence would be easier to process if the two parentheses were in a grammatically normal position (and the name not in its bureaucratic form):

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But Bernhard wants his readers to get out of breath, lose their bearings, when walking with Murau through Rome in an elevated mood before the bad news hits. It is the linguistic obstacles to comprehension, the exhilarated but bumpy road into the story, which is missing in the translation. But what, indeed, could the translator do, in a language that depends upon configurationality and cannot stretch its positional variability as much as the nonconfigurational German?

Artistic redundancies Normalizing the author in questions of order, a sensitive property of the English language, is necessary. Normalizing violations of optimal relevance which would not result in grammatically unacceptable translations is not to be excused – at least not under the Translation Maxim we have chosen. The elimination of a whole clause, for example, is not justified even if the clause is the umpteenth repetition of preceding thoughts. The following translation not only reorders the original in the interest of focus structure, but it also drops the last subclause of the original: The thinking person who is idle appears as the greatest threat to those for whom idleness means simply doing nothing, who actually do nothing when they are idle. (B 1995: 24) Der Nichtstuer als der Geistesmensch ist tatsächlich in den Augen derer, die unter nichts tun, tatsächlich nichts tun verstehen und die als Nichtstuer auch tatsächlich gar nichts tun, weil in ihnen während des Nichtstuens gar nichts vorgeht, die größte Gefahr und also der Gefährlichste. (B 1989: 39) Now, the German original is heavily marked by its repetitiveness, and by the fact that the heavy and complex relative clause has not been extraposed. It would also be more normal in German, too, to have the predicate before the local adverbial:

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Der Nichtstuer als der Geistesmensch ist tatsächlich die größte Gefahr und also der Gefährlichste in den Augen derer, die unter nichts tun, tatsächlich nichts tun verstehen und die als Nichtstuer auch tatsächlich gar nichts tun, weil in ihnen während des Nichtstuens gar nichts vorgeht. In English, however, we have to adapt the linear order to the grammatical constraints of a configurational language. However, not being Thomas Bernhard, we could be tempted into ‘normalizing’ the sentence further, cutting down on the merely repetitive parts of the structure. We would then, for example, replace at least one of the three tatsächlich by some other adverb, and we would definitely drop the highly synonymous conjunct of the predicate, also der Gefährlichste, and if we can help it, pronominalize at least one of the references to Nichtstun/being idle: Der Nichtstuer als Geistesmensch ist tatsächlich die größte Gefahr in den Augen derer, die unter nichts tun wirklich nichts tun verstehen, und die, wenn sie nichts tun tatsächlich nichts tun, . . . This is what the translator has done in English (besides reordering the structure and bridging lexical gaps). The translator has also dropped the last clause, which is in fact a third repetition of the very same idea within half a page or so. Talking about his parents, Murau says that: they hated idleness . . . because . . . they did not know what to do with it, for when they were idle there was actually nothing going on . . . My parents’ idleness was of course genuine idleness for when they did nothing there was nothing going on in them . . . weil sie mit ihrem tatsächlichen Nichtstun gar nichts anfangen konnten, weil in ihrem Nichtstun tatsächlich gar nichts vorging . . . ihr Nichtstun war ein tatsächliches Nichtstun, denn es tat sich in ihnen nichts, wenn sie nichts taten . . . ‘Repetitiveness’ is, as both passages of the original show, a major characteristic of Bernhard, and if we want to render Thomas Bernhard in English, we ought to retain his characteristic relativizations of optimality: The thinking person who is idle appears indeed as the greatest danger and the most dangerous person in the eyes of those for whom idleness means really doing nothing, who when they are idle do nothing at all because there is nothing going on in them when they are idle.

No choice What if a writer’s style is mainly marked by violations of optimal relevance which are simply not possible in the target language? Writing about Sunday,

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13 August 1961 in East Berlin, Uwe Johnson says about his heroine in Two Views: Before going to work she took the nearly one-hour walk to her room. The street did not have a Sunday air; no radio music came from the windows, balconies protruded emptily. More strollers than usual seemed to be waiting for an event that rumor anticipated, like fireworks, a thunderstorm. (Johnson 1967: 38) But this is, of course, what Johnson’s translator says. In the original, we read: Vor dem Dienst noch fast eine Stunde lang zu Fuß lief sie zu ihrem Zimmer. Die Straßen waren nicht sonntäglich, aus den Fenstern kam nicht Radiomusik, die Balkons hingen leer. Mehr als sonst Spaziergänger schienen zu warten auf ein Ereignis, das gerüchteweise ausstand, wie auf ein Feuerwerk, ein Gewitter. (Johnson 1965: 50) The German original describes the same situation as the English translation, but while the English version reads quite normally, the German original is marked heavily, mainly by extreme word order deviations. The first sentence: Vor dem Dienst noch fast eine Stunde lang zu Fuß lief sie zu ihrem Zimmer. has three adverbials in topic position, before the finite verb, specifying the modality, duration and point of time of the event. This is a violation of the grammatical rule that normally restricts the topic position to one part of speech. The sentence sounds highly manneristic, and the effect is to some extent kept up in what follows. Instead of the nominal negation, keine Radiomusik, Johnson uses sentence negation, aus den Fenstern kam nicht Radiomusik, attributing thereby a strong, contrastive focus to the negation; uses hängen without its obligatory local adverbial; uses the obligatory postnominal complement to mehr prenominally – Mehr als sonst Spaziergänger instead of Mehr Spaziergänger als sonst; and places a predicate after the comparative and thus in its contrastive scope, which should not be interpreted contrastively. The prenominal position of the complement can be seen as a means of structurally separating the subject from its finite verb, which would otherwise demand something like Mehr Spaziergänger als sonst waren auf den Straßen, so as to separate the subject from the following predicate and avoid the erroneous implication that at other times fewer strollers were expecting such an event. Normalized, the sentence would have to be extended into something like:

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Mehr Spaziergänger als sonst waren auf den Straßen, sie schienen auf ein Ereignis zu warten, das . . . Nor is the predicate ‘harmless’. The prepositional object is extraposed together with its relative clause: schienen zu warten auf ein Ereignis, das gerüchteweise ausstand, . . . which is modified by an ad hoc adverb, gerüchteweise, and followed by a comparative phrase with two asyndetically coordinated noun phrases, whose attachment – to the prepositional phrase before the relative clause – requires yet more processing effort: schienen zu warten auf ein Ereignis, das gerüchteweise ausstand, wie auf ein Feuerwerk, ein Gewitter. Except for the somewhat unusual statement about the balconies, balconies protruded emptily and the asyndetic sequence at the end, for an event that rumor anticipated, like fireworks, a thunderstorm which would be more normal with an or in between: for an event that rumor anticipated, like fireworks or a thunderstorm, none of the peculiarities of the German original can be found in the English translation. (One of the consequences is that it is more difficult to avoid the unintended implication of the last sentence.) The translator really does not have any choice if the author’s style offers no peculiarities which can be recreated in the target language. We can only stretch the potential of a language as far as it goes. Relativizing optimality is parametrized, too. And, surely, no violation – say, redundancy instead of word order – is an adequate substitute for any other violation.

Leaving the tightrope for the trapeze In one respect the tightrope is similar to firm ground: it does not swing. But parametrized processing conditions are only one set of the linguistically controlled differences between target and source language. There are also all those innumerable idiosyncratic conditions of the lexicon, and then, of course, the many cultural differences that leave less ground under our feet than a swinging trapeze. There are no parameters to hold on to, just individual problems of translations to be solved individually. A few examples

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may suffice to remind you of what you already know only too well, namely that any attempt at predictive generalizations along the lines of the Key is futile, but each individual case can boost our expertise as translators.2 Explaining the applicability of entropy as a measuring tool, Eigen and Winkler suggest considering ‘a printed passage consisting of one hundred symbols’: By symbols, we mean the twenty-six letters of the alphabet plus three punctuation marks and the space between words. We are using, then, a total of thirty different symbols. (EW 1983b: 145) But in reality they said: Unter Symbolen verstehen wir die neunundzwanzig Buchstaben unseres Alphabets (unter Einschluß der Umlaute Ä, Ö, Ü) sowie ein Abstandssymbol, einen Zwischenraum, der zur Abgrenzung von Wörtern dient. Insgesamt benutzen wir also dreißig Klassen von Symbolen. (EW 1983a: 168) It is clear that the translator has adapted the statement about the German alphabet to the English alphabet, which needs some topping up, being three symbols shorter than the German alphabet. The compensation is necessary as the thirty symbols provide a relevant referent for the ensuing discourse. What the English version does not need is an extra explanation for the space between words, which is quite an affair in the German original: ein Abstandssymbol, einen Zwischenraum, der zur Abgrenzung von Wörtern dient. In German, however, the space between words is not normally conceived of as a symbol, and the strict logic of physicists cannot ignore the contextual inadequacy, however small it may be for the layman. Thus, they compose an Abstandssymbol and explain it afterwards. In English, though, where the translation has extended the symbols of the alphabet by punctuation marks, the conceptual class has already been shifted to the general domain of graphic elements. Thus, the list can include the space between words without any further comment. Illustrating the future of luxury regarding time, Enzensberger talks about some professions subjected to ‘regulations that limit their temporal sovereignty to a minimum’: Workers are tied to the pace of their machines, housewives (in Europe) to absurd shopping hours, . . . (E 1997: 336)

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But, of course, the German original did not have to restrict the geographical domain of the housewives: Arbeiter hängen von Maschinenlaufzeiten, Hausfrauen von absurden Ladenschlußzeiten . . . ab, . . . (E 1999: 157) as it is in Europe, especially Germany, where shopping hours are absurd. Comments like the above are necessary to secure adequacy and equivalence; without them the translation would carry a different message for the English readers. Comments like these are not to be confused with paraphrases of an original which fill no linguistic or cultural gap between source and target texts, as was the case with an example way back in the Key (p. 101), where the translator offered his interpretation of an, admittedly, nebulous original instead of translating it.

Pre-programmed losses If we can fill a linguistic or cultural gap as left-handedly as in the examples above, we are lucky. Often enough, we have to sacrifice some feature of the original because there is nothing to compensate it with. We have frequently touched upon the limits of translatability, but before we mounted the trapeze, we had always been able to rescue the really relevant features. Extraordinary use of word order was the first feature we could not rescue in the translation, but there are, as everybody knows, many more aspects of an original which are relevant but not fully translatable – such as metaphors, puns, regionalisms, etc. There is, for example, no hope for the Pomeranian dialect bringing Grass’ personae alive; when Kriwe, the ferryman in Dog Years, shows the village mayor Amsel’s exhibition of scarecrows, he says: There you are, friend. See what I mean. (Grass 1989: 37) But what Grass really made him say was: Liebärchen. Daas send se nu, wo ech häd gemaint. (Grass 1963: 47) which is in German/English something like: Mein Lieber, das sind sie nun, (die Vogelscheuchen,) die ich gemeint hatte./ Here they are, the scarecrows I had told you about. But the original is, of course, much more than this. It represents a whole

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world, bygone yet still encapsulated in the dialect. Although the book provides us with a detailed account of this world and its people in the translated version, too, its readers can never participate in the homely beauty of the regional way of speaking. The fate of puns, or the play on words, is in most cases similar. In his nightmarish poem Security Considerations, placed between the ninth and the tenth Canto of his poem sequence The Sinking of the Titanic, Enzensberger presents himself as trapped in a crate with a heavy lid, which he eventually manages to open by a chink, but only for a brief moment. In the translation the first verse starts with the neutral I am trying to lift the lid, the third verse accelerates into: . . . I knock, I hammer against the lid I call out More light, I gasp, logically, pounding away at the hatch. which is once more intensified in the seventh verse: Thus I break my very own back against the lid. Now! A chink, a narrow gap! Ah! Marvelous! The open country outside, . . . to culminate in the ninth, the last verse: And hence I cry: I express my regrets, woe to me, my very own regrets, while with a hollow plop the lid, for security reasons, comes down again over my head. (E 1989: 30f) But in German the ninth verse is: Also, Ich drücke, rufe ich mein Bedauern aus, wehe mir! mein eignes Bedauern, während mit dumpfem Pflupp

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der Deckel sich wieder, aus Sicherheitsgründen, über mir schließt. (E 1978: 41) Ich drücke mein Bedauern aus draws the reader into a lexical garden path as drücken, which we encounter first without its affix aus-, seems to continue stemmen, pressen gegen/press against, before the next line turns it into ausdrücken/express. It is the poet with tongue in cheek, the playful philosopher, who balances the nightmare with his witty reflections and plays on words. Yet not even the poet himself – who happens to be the (muchadmired) translator – could get the pun across. Intended ambiguity, redundancy, repetitiveness – there are as many ways of relativizing optimality as there are different ways of using a language over and above the default use of conveying a message. Multiplied by the different concepts and images associated with the lexical elements of the languages, the number of translational problems awaiting us beyond the grammatically parametrized differences between source and target language grows exponentially, keeping up tension for the rest of our professional lives. Where idiosyncrasies dominate, the translator seems doomed to the life of Kafka’s trapeze artist: A trapeze artist – this art, practiced high in the vaulted domes of the great variety theaters, is admittedly one of the most difficult humanity can achieve – had so arranged his life that, as long as he kept working in the same building, he never came down from his trapeze by night or day, at first only from a desire to perfect his skill, but later because custom was too strong for him. And although: he drew a stray glance here and there from the public . . . the management overlooked this, because he was an extraordinary and unique artist. (Kafka 1988: 231) Generally, though, conditions are mixed and parametrized optimality offers a hold that is relatively firmly rooted in the typological characteristics of the languages translators work with. Reordering, reframing, reducing, extending, recategorizing, relexicalizing and so on and so forth, they can, often enough, get quite close to the original: Ein Trapezkünstler – bekanntlich ist diese hoch in den Kuppeln der großen Varietébühnen ausgeübte Kunst eine der schwierigsten unter allen, Menschen erreichbaren – hatte, zuerst nur aus dem Streben nach

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and although: hie und da ein Blick aus dem Publikum zu ihm abirrte . . . verziehen ihm dies die Direktionen, weil er ein außerordentlicher, unersetzlicher Künstler war. (Kafka 1970: 155) Agreed?

Flouting the Maxim Whatever the conventionalized or individual constraints on optimal processing of the original were, the translations were more or less in line with the Maxim of Translation, as set out in the Key, securing optimal processing within the constraints of the corresponding target language options. However, the maxim of staying as close to the meaning and style of the original as is possible within the constraints of the target language can be flouted either partly or altogether – which is by no means a rare case in existing translations. Although optimal processing may also play a role in the final product, tight bonds to the original may be loosened or severed for reasons other than processing ease. Thus, for example, as Toury (1995) demonstrates, adaptations to certain literary norms may become a controlling factor and this could result in a relativized optimality which was not present in the original. The history of translation abounds with examples where the ties to the meaning and style of the original were cut more radically than would have been necessary for optimal processing in the target language. Many of the more drastic cases cited in the literature present obvious violations of the default Maxim of Translation – however justified their own codex may be within the discourse norms of the time. But these are clearly topics of descriptive/historical translation studies and their fascinating aspects lie beyond the domain of processing conditions. With the exponential growth of pragmatic translations and the advent of machine (-aided) translation, the Maxim is flouted for practical reasons: lack of time or technical capacities. ‘Quick and dirty is better than perfect and too late’ (quoted in Stoll 2000: 250) is the slogan that replaces the Maxim for texts which are ‘ephemeral . . . no more than transitory manifestations . . . of a temporally bounded social relationship. When the “social moment” of such a text passes, its . . . significance . . . dissipates’ (Shreve 2000: 219). Nevertheless, all the culture-specific conventionalized or idiosyncratic deviations from the original which are not in line with the default Maxim will always, to a greater or lesser extent, be embedded in linguistic encodings

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of the more general type, where the yardstick of parametrized processing could determine the starting point for an assessment of the problems and solutions of an existing translation. The Maxim can also be used successfully if the purpose of the original has been changed in the translation3 as long as the skopos is associated with a conventionalized form of linguistic encoding and/or a characteristic type of relativized optimality. Flouting the Maxim will in these cases simply mean replacing the original subcode by a subcode appropriate to the new purpose. At the level of abstract models this presents no problem, but, as the Key has shown, we still have a long way to go to fill in the language-specific details.

9

Reviewing the scene

Having looked at several dozens of examples, interpreted the original in its context and compared systematically varied translation versions with regard to their contextual appropriateness, we have reached a point where we should step back and review our findings. The crucial question I asked at the beginning of the Key was: which paraphrases should be chosen to overcome the differences between the languages? What I wanted to find were predictive statements, lending themselves to empirical verification. That is, I was looking for statements of the type ‘if x then y’, and the question I have to answer now is: have I come anywhere near this goal? I had asked you to agree on a default Maxim of Translation, against which we could measure the quality of a translation; the Maxim required the translation to retain as much of the meaning and style of the original as was compatible with an appropriate use of the target language. I had suggested basing appropriateness on the Principle of Optimal Relevance as a universal principle governing the use of language through the presumption of an optimal trade-off between cognitive gains and processing effort. This tradeoff was claimed to be controlled by language-specific conditions on optimal processing. Three major areas of language-specific differences were thematized in the Key: order, within the sentence and beyond it; perspective (the projection of semantic roles onto syntactic functions); and explicitness (the use of overt linguistic structures versus implications or implicatures). The analyses of the examples revealed a high degree of interdependence between order and explicitness, but also some interdependence between order and perspective.

Parametrized focus structures and theoretical implications The general result of the analyses confirmed that, despite innumerable idiosyncrasies, the linguistic structures in source and target language that are related to each other through optimal translation differ in regular ways which can be explained by parametrized processing conditions. In particular, two grammatical parameters were identified with alternatively set values underlying such observed preferences as an alternative order of 160

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elements in English and German, and different degrees of structural explicitness and/or different perspectives. They are the parameters of directionality and configurationality, which jointly constrain the freedom of word order and the language-specific ways of compensating for the processing disadvantages arising from these constraints. Processing ease in identifying focus structures emerged as the dominating aspect, unifying most of the differences. There were two more aspects that played a major role, preconditions, as it were, for focus interpretation since they belong to the more basic stages of language processing – parsing (structural attachment) and anaphora resolution (identifying referential antecedents). Concentrating on focus interpretation, I suggested adopting the linguistic assumptions about a syntactically determined, neutral focus position for German and English. Although a sentence may have several foci, the main focus is assumed to be prototypically associated with the position of the verb: it is, as a rule, verb-adjacent. Due to the different directionality of German and English, verb-adjacency can entail different positions within the sentence as a whole. In contrast to traditional assumptions (as for instance in Quirk et al. 1985) and in a very much simplified way, English was characterized as a mid-focus language, the focus being expected close to the beginning of the verb phrase. German is an end-focus language, the focus being expected at the end of the verb phrase (with or without verbal elements after it). With regard to the semantic-pragmatic side of focus, the structurally focused elements were interpreted as the most relevant elements relative to their sentence-internal context. In a well-written text, including translations, the sentence-internal interpretation was said to match the one following from the sentence-external context. But due to the parametrical differences between left- and right-peripheral verb phrases, analogous translations can result in a mismatch between the structural focus and the contextual focus. The typologically determined processing difficulties of analogous translations were shown to carry over from the simple to the complex sentence and even beyond sentence boundaries to sequences of sentences. A main psycholinguistic assumption in the Key was that focus interpretations are first read off from the linguistic form of a sentence before they are integrated with the information of the preceding discourse. If an analogous translation results in a mismatch between structural and contextual focus, the processor will find itself, at least temporarily, on a garden path regarding information structure. Although the interpretations can still be adapted, that is, reanalysed in line with contextual conditions, the need for such reanalyses violates the Principle of Optimal Relevance and hence also the Maxim of Translation pursued in the Key. Meeting the Maxim of Translation means restructuring the analogous version into a paraphrase which secures optimal processing conditions, especially for structural focus identification. The same applies whenever there are two foci in a sentence which are not

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clearly separated from one another. The processor, by default, expects only one focus and will miss the other focus unless there is an extra formal clue. Garden paths are avoided by focus separation (or additional lexical means). In general, the parametrized processing conditions of German and English promote different solutions in many cases. Here are some of the differences we have encountered: (a) Material that has been topicalized (or scrambled) in German in the interest of end-focus is presented in its basic position in English (even if this results in the order focus-background; recall the examples in Chapters 2 and 3). (b) Sentences that are used in a passive (-like) perspective in German to secure neutral focus interpretation or focus separation are presented in an active structure in English, and initial adverbials may be reframed as subjects (with associated changes in the entire case frame and the predicate) to secure easy parsing as well as neutral focus interpretation (examples in Chapter 4). (c) Material that has been topicalized (or scrambled) in German in the interest of focus separation is presented in its basic position in English but at the same time extended by a dummy structure, for example, by clefts (compare examples in Chapters 5 and 6). (d) If reordering, reframing or extending/reducing of structure cannot secure focus identification, sentence boundaries are re-set. A sequence <2,1>, with 1 as the higher value, which is a classical focus structure of end-focus German, will be avoided in ‘mid-focus’ English by reordering or, if need be, by separating. If the alternative case, <1,2>, is separated in German, it may be linked in English. Each version secures the presentation of focus in its classical position in English/German (compare examples in Chapter 7). The first group of changes serves to secure grammatical acceptability in English. It places elements of lower relevance in final position, ignoring discourse appropriateness in the sense of end focus, which governs topicalization and scrambling in German. The other groups of changes serve to optimize discourse appropriateness in English, too. The changes in perspective help to avoid attachment problems and narrow focus interpretation in left-peripheral, right-branching English, while the choice of passive (-like) structures in German helps to avoid case-ambiguities and narrow focus interpretation under alternative conditions. Structural extension in English serves to indicate additional foci, especially in cases of greater textual relevance. The differences are mere trends, subject to the idiosyncratic conditions of each individual case. Although the generalizations suggested here are supported by a wide variety of similar cases, they all require further research. As the discussion of the individual examples shows, there are basically two lines of research

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which ought to be pursued. There is, first, the discourse-based analysis of information structure which should enable us to identify the contextual foci of sentences and their significance relative to each other and to the sentenceexternal context. The second line of research has to identify the languagespecific means of formally indicating these foci, including the constraints limiting the use of similar means in translations and promoting or blocking the use of substitutes. Both lines of research are, of course, interrelated. Let me point out two cases. First, we need a better understanding of the various types of foci that can be distinguished on the basis of discourse relations like parallelity or contrast. For example, different discourse topics may constitute alternative sets excluding each other but forming no contrast. Thus, a shift from one element to another would be assigned neutral focus but no contrastive focus. But if such an element is presented in topic position, its focus cannot project – unlike a non-contrastive focus in the comment. Only contrastive foci justify the use of marked focus structures in English. Do we then have to distinguish between a projecting and a non-projecting neutral focus? Second, we have seen that new information can be interspersed with given information. When do we speak of a discontinuous focus, when of several foci? Focus-spacing or additional focus-marking devices are only appropriate in the case of several foci. There are many more questions like these concerning the linguistic and psycholinguistic assumptions needed for predictive generalizations of the individual analyses. As each assumption has to fit in with all the other assumptions covering related ground, we need the patience of a chess player for each move. And as all of these questions concern the system and use of languages, should we not just lean back and wait for the linguists and psycholinguists to come up with answers? Moreover, if we think of all the translation problems we have ignored, focusing on questions of information structure and optimal language processing, we may wonder whether the approach is worth the effort. After all, when there are so many more discourse functions other than informing, why restrict attention to the latter? The answer to the last question is rather simple: informing is a most basic discourse function and of prime importance for a wide range of texts. Thus, if we can identify the basic strategies and language-specific conditions of informing, we should have access to a wide variety of frequently occurring phenomena, strengthening the predictive potential of the generalizations we are searching for. The concentration on information structure does not deny that there are other important topics of relevance to translation, but the findings about information structure may to some extent even influence the questions asked elsewhere. On the other hand, information structure is, indeed, a major topic for linguists studying the use of language in discourse, and processing of information structure could be a major topic for psycholinguists, no less fascinating than parsing or interpreting semantic roles. Both disciplines

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could also study information structure contrastively, which might even include comparisons of original and translated texts. Yet so far, translations tend to be avoided as an empirical basis in (psycho-) linguistics (except, perhaps, in corpus linguistic studies) as there are too many additional factors involved in the data – not the least being ‘translationese’, that is, poor translations due to source language interferences. But then any research has to come to terms with the problem of ‘impure’ data, and translations are, in essence, no different from other data of language use – they, too, can be subjected to any control procedure necessary. Still, whatever their attitudes towards translations as an empirical basis, linguists and psycholinguists can afford to ignore translations and concentrate on their traditional data. Translation studies, however, cannot ignore translations. And as the basic principles controlling the distribution of information are involved in any use of language, whether neutral or marked, original or translated, translation studies also has to attend to the issue of information structure, even if possible generalizations look like nothing in comparison to the translational idiosyncrasies (of half a million words alone in English). But if typological properties of a language set the frame for an optimal distribution of information, research into the special conditions obtaining in source and target language can help us understand some of the more basic, intuitive strategies of language use at work in felicitous translations, or in felicitous stylistic encoding in general. And this, I believe, is worth the effort.

Glossary Technical terms seen through the Keyhole

Acceptability grammatical correctness. It is you, the speaker of the language, who decides what is acceptable and what is not relative to, say, standard English. Although there is a great deal of agreement among speakers concerning the form of words, phrases and clauses, judgements may vary – there are different degrees of grammatical acceptability, and the border between grammatical and stylistic aspects is fuzzy; languages consist of a great variety of subcodes; and languages change, with words taking on new meanings and thus opening up new combinatorial possibilities. In everyday life we need not worry about grammatical acceptability. All those sentences that linguists mark with asterisks or question marks as grammatically more or less deviant do not occur in written texts, and if they occur in oral speech we ignore them as speech errors. However, there are, of course, situations in which we do worry about the acceptability of linguistic structures, as for example when we learn a new language, including variants of our own language which we do not master. Unless we do this at a very early stage in our lives, our automatic language acquisition capacities will have dwindled away, leaving us at the mercy of other people’s explicit knowledge about grammatical acceptability. We are grateful for any grammatical regularities that can be pointed out to us, helping us to avoid the production of grammatically unacceptable forms. But how do those other people know what is grammatically acceptable and what is not? If it is their own language, their implicit knowledge is just as intuitive as our own, but any explicit knowledge, whether native or non-native, presupposes linguistic research, which is at its best when it draws upon the implicit knowledge of native speakers. So here we are back full circle. It is you, the native speaker of a language, who decides grammatical acceptability. This view is, as we know, too liberal for authoritarian or pedantic people, but you and I, who are interested in stylistic appropriateness, are willing to base our translation studies even on the stylistic intuitions of 165

166 Glossary native speakers tested by the method of systematically varied control paraphrases. Adverbials mostly parts of speech modifying adjectives, verbs, verb phrases or clauses. Some verbs take adverbials as arguments. These adverbials are necessary and can be distinguished from free adverbials by the criterion of deletability. If a necessary argument is deleted, the sentence becomes grammatically unacceptable. For example, the introductory sentence to chapter VIII in Alice in Wonderland could not be used without its local adverbial (the asterisk within parentheses is meant to symbolize this): A large rose-tree stood (*near the entrance of the garden). Most adverbials, however, are free extensions of a verb, verb phrase or sentence. Like all other parts of speech, adverbials can consist of one word only – even of a pronominal form – of simple and complex phrases, and of clauses. Adverbials could be adverbs: ‘perhaps’, ‘thoroughly’, ‘most’, ‘always’, ‘apparently’, ‘necessarily’ and so on; they could be noun phrases or prepositional phrases: ‘last week’, ‘by an average’; or they could be clauses: ‘as the mechanism was perfected’. Adverbials play a special role in translations between English and German because there are systematic differences between their positions in both languages, which are subject to the parameter of directionality, and also because of the English preference for primary relations (see Perspective). Adverbials are ordered according to the position of the constituents they modify, or the heads they belong to. What constituent they modify is determined by the meaning of the adverbial: manner before place before time is a well-known pattern resulting from this. Adverbials are not only reordered in the translation, but very often ‘reframed’ as other parts of speech, especially as subjects. (See examples in Chapter 4.) Analogy similarity of forms in terms of word class, word forms, word order, grammatical relations, structural explicitness, number and type of clauses, number and order of sentences, and so on. Grammatically acceptable analogous or near-analogous translations are the starting point in our search for an optimal translation. Anaphors, anaphoric relations referential identity between a referent and a contextually preceding element. The latter can be considered the – Antecedent to an anaphor. The element which refers to or specifies a subsequent referent, as for example the hurricane which specifies it in the signs of it in Hemingway’s sentence: If there is a hurricane you always see the signs of it in the sky (discussed in Chapter 5). Appropriateness fitting the context, locally and ‘globally’. Major factor for an appropriate use of language is the Principle of Optimal Relevance.

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Special uses of language are characterized by constraints on this principle (see Chapter 8). Argument The meanings of words open up positions which are to be specified by the syntactic context of the word. Most variable in this respect are verbs, which can take up to three or even four arguments, directly or via prepositional mediators: ‘someone gives someone something’, or ‘someone gives something to someone’. But such meaningbased ‘valency’ is not restricted to verbs. Nouns and adjectives, adverbs and prepositions show the same combinatorial effect, though their variability is somewhat restricted in comparison with verbs: ‘a book about something’, ‘a challenge for someone’, ‘an interest in something’, ‘to be similar to something’, ‘to be tired of something’, ‘to be far off something’ etc. What arguments are filled into the slots is also predetermined by their syntactic heads or ‘governors’: phrases with or without prepositions, clauses, animate or inanimate elements, agents or patients, etc. And as all this may be different in different languages, including additional formal distinctions in the forms of words expressing case, the choice of the grammatical head predetermines the linguistic structure of a sentence to a great extent. Attachment adding a structural element to the ‘partial current phrase marker’, which is built up when parsing sentence structure. The Principle of Minimal Attachment makes the processor choose the lowest node possible, that is the most immediate syntactic phrase admitting attachment (see the corresponding section in Chapter 4). Attributes modify noun phrases; they may consist of a word or a phrase or a clause, used before or after their heads. Their positions relative to their heads and to each other is predetermined by the class they belong to, very much as the position of adverbials is predetermined by their relations to each other and their common head. Background complementary to focus, limits the extension of focus projection. The part of the message that is presented as if it were already known to the addressee. As definite phrases signal givenness, the author can present something as background in the very first sentence of a story. Thus, for example, the first sentence in Iris Murdoch’s novel The Sacred and Profane Love Machine: The boy was there again this evening. refers to a time, a place and an individual as if we were already familiar with them. The only new element, again, refers to a recurrence of an event, presupposing at least one similar event preceding it – the boy had already been there some other time – which means that everything but the recurrence of the event belongs to the background of the sentence. Case the syntactic role of arguments within the structural hierarchy of a

168 Glossary sentence. Often expressed by certain word forms (as for example by German nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) or by certain structural configurations of the syntactic hierarchy. In the latter sense, case corresponds to syntactic functions or grammatical relations (like subject, object). Category word class; the major (lexical) categories are nouns, verbs, adjectives/adverbs and prepositions. They determine their ‘argument structure’; minor (grammatical) categories are articles, pronouns, auxiliaries and the like. Clefts syntactic focus indicators with specific structural characteristics compensating for topicalization restrictions in English. There are three canonical types of clefts: it, wh-, inverted wh-clefts and many more cleftlike structures. Most of them mark a second focus by doubling the clausal structure. A sentence like: It is the context that fixes the meaning allows a focus on meaning or on context or on both, depending upon the context – as the sentence says. The prototypical cleft is characterized by a presupposition with a variable which the cleft specifies by a contrastive focus, that is, a focus that rejects any alternative specifications of the variable. For our example this means the presupposition – there is an x which fixes the meaning – and the assertion – x is the context (compare Chapter 6). Comment part of sentence meaning commenting upon the topic. Compound complex words, particularly frequent in German, for example, Bestandsaufnahme, Ertragsfähigkeit, Strukturanpassung, Währungsumstellung, Anteilsrecht. Most of them are decomposed in the translation. Configurationality grammatical parameter of languages, determines case by structural configurations; for example, in English, object as verb phrase internal constituent, subject as verb phrase external constituent; restricts positional variations. Constituent structural part constituting the syntactic hierarchy of a sentence. Constituent hierarchy syntactic architecture of sentence structure, groups words into ever larger phrases, with at least one noun phrase and one verb phrase constituting a sentence. The entire structure can be viewed as a tree with phrasal branches (a so-called phrase marker). Each phrase consists of a lexical category specifying the head of the phrase plus structural extensions, especially complements, filling in the structural slots (arguments) predetermined by the meaning of the head, and specifiers like articles (compare section ‘Linguistic knowledge’ in Chapter 1). Modifiers may be added freely, at various hierarchical levels without raising the level of hierarchy. The properties of constituent

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structure are universal – that is, they determine the architecture of sentences in all languages – but on them are superimposed parametrical variations, as for example the parameters of directionality (determining the direction of the structural extension of the head) and configurationality (constraining deviations from the basic word order). Context surrounds an element in discourse, ‘locally’, within the same or the preceding sentence, or ‘globally’, in preceding and subsequent passages of a text, within the situation in which the text participates, and within the cognitive model we have gained from the text and from all the knowledge we can bring to bear upon it. The big theoretical question is how the various contextual factors interact with each other and the element for which they form the context. Contrast discourse relation between features excluding each other. Contrastive focus contrastively interpreted focus. One of the two or three major types of focus interpretation (see also ‘narrow focus’) Copula ‘be’ used as a main verb, yielding syntactically somewhat puzzling structures, especially in a language like German where the subject is identified by its nominative case and is not bound to the position before the verb. Thus in a sentence like: Der Gärtner ist der Mörder. The gardener is the murderer. we cannot really say which of the nominative cases is the subject of the sentence. Frequent reorderings in translations suggest that the initial elements in German sentences are often predicates topicalized for discourse reasons. Consider for example the German translation of: The Moon is the natural object as our first source of space materials. as: Unsere erste Rohstoffquelle im Weltall ist natürlich der Mond. where English uses a predicational sentence, predicating of the moon that it is our first source of space materials, while German uses a specifying sentence, saying that there is a first source of space material which is the moon. In a context about space materials, reference to the moon has to be considered new information and is used in a structural focus position in German, while English prefers the predicational view in favour of primary relations. Decomposing translating compounds as syntactic phrases making use of their morphological or semantic build-up.

170 Glossary Definiteness reference to a certain set of one or more elements; in opposition to indefinite. Prototypically expressed by articles: the for definiteness and a or a bare noun for indefiniteness. A boy, the boy, boys, the boys, three boys, the three boys . . . Definiteness signals givenness, but not necessarily when used for concepts referring to unique objects, as the moon; indefiniteness signals novelty, except, perhaps, for cases referring to abstract objects, like evolution or creation. Both exceptions are cases of underspecification, which can only be decided with the help of context. Defocusing reinterpreting the structural focus as background. Definite noun phrases in canonical focus positions will have to be reinterpreted as background if there is another element marked as focus. Consider: There are a number of arguments that support this hypothesis, which marks its subject as focused by there are, suggesting that we should defocus the object after the main verb. The definiteness of the object reaffirms the decision because it signals givenness (see background). Diachronic refers to the development of languages, complementary to synchronic. Directionality grammatical parameter determining word order to a large extent, by the position of categorial heads at the right or left periphery of their structural extensions. While verbal and prepositional phrases are left-peripheral in English, German phrases are less consistent: verbal phrases are basically right-peripheral, prepositional phrases are basically left-peripheral. The different directionality is associated with different focus expectations (see structural focus). Discourse usually a longer text about a major topic, addressed to a real or virtual partner, if need be to oneself. A discourse is structured into larger segments with relations to each other, constituting the macrostructure of the entire unit. Macrostructural units are made up of sequences of sentences, which in turn are characterized by the microstructural relations between their elements. While written forms of discourse develop their topic in an orderly fashion, oral forms of discourse are more likely to progress in an erratic way. Although literal translation involves much of the erratic type of discourse, holding one’s balance on the tightrope is difficult enough with the more orderly type of discourse. Thus, the Key focuses on written discourse. As the last chapter shows, there are many ways of relativizing optimality, yet processing in discourse can be an enlightening concept for special uses of language, too. Discourse relations semantic or pragmatic relations between discourse segments, like contrast, continuation, elaboration etc. Of utmost importance for optimizing discourse linking (in terms of information structure, anaphoric relations and the like).

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Dummies elements with little meaning used to fill a syntactic structure for grammatical or stylistic reasons. For example, to disambiguate anaphoric relations or to promote a correct focus interpretation. Equivalence similarity of meaning and style despite different linguistic encodings in different languages or within the same language (see Paraphrase). If there is an additional formal similarity, the Key speaks of ‘surface equivalence’. Surface equivalence is mostly sacrificed in the interest of grammatical acceptability and optimal processing. Equivalence in the wider sense, including implicit meaning based on the mental model built up from linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge associated with a message, is a defining criterion of translations. The fact that surface equivalence has to be given up in the interest of contextual appropriateness makes the overall equivalence depend upon a wide range of contextual factors related to the various text types, stylistic registers and translational purposes. This can even lead to the apparent paradox that formal analogy will be given priority over equivalence to some extent (as when translating poems, for example). The different nature of contextual factors made translation theorists come up with various concepts of equivalence (for an exhaustive survey, see Koller 1992). Eventuality cover term for any type of event or state. Explicitness the part of a message encoded linguistically. Only part of what a message says is said explicitly, that is, with the lexical and grammatical means of a language. Quite a lot of what is said is said between the lines, implied, suggested, presupposed. Some of this indirect meaning is associated with the linguistic meaning; it is ‘conventionalized’. A great deal of the implicit meaning is added on the basis of what we know about the states of affairs referred to, knowledge which – ideally – is shared by those participating in the exchange of a message. Focus presented as most relevant for the further progress of discourse. Theoretically, we are free to choose any element as focus, but practically we are constrained by the context and the language-specific conditions for focus assignment – at least, as long as we heed the Principle of Optimal Relevance. It is mostly the preceding context which decides upon the relevance of an element, as new versus given information or as contrasted information, excluding alternative possibilities. Focus assignment should be in line with the contextual conditions. Focus assignment is, as a rule, realized prosodically: one word, or rather syllable of the focus is marked by pitch accent. If the focus is restricted to this word, that is, to the focus exponent, it is a ‘narrow’, restricted focus and can be interpreted contrastively; if the focus consists of more than the focus exponent, it is a wide, projecting focus. The extension of the focus projection is determined by the context (see Background). Written texts require reconstructing the prosodic accent. Psycholinguists speak of phonological coding (‘silent voice’).

172 Glossary There are two formal devices that help us to identify the focus at an early stage of sentence processing: lexical elements (focusing elements) which, by their meanings, focus an element in their scope, and certain structural configurations, including the position of an element relative to its syntactic head. There are certain grammatical rules governing the assignment of focus or pitch accent to a certain element of the sentence. The main focus of a sentence is normally associated with a focusable element in a verb-adjacent position. See the sections from ‘Structural focus’ to ‘Focus projection’ in Chapter 2 for a more detailed presentation. A sentence may contain more than one focused element. If there is more than one focus in the sentence, the Principle of Optimal Relevance requires us to use additional marking devices and distribute the foci evenly in the sentence, i.e. to make use of focus spacing. Gap lexical or grammatical element of the original missing in the target language. Garden path processing error by taking the wrong ‘path’ when analysing (parsing) or interpreting linguistic structures, including erroneous discourse linking of anaphors and focus identification. Generic complementary to particular, referring to all possible, i.e. also virtual, instances of eventualities talked about. Grammar language competence, in its widest sense comprising lexical knowledge, that is, knowledge about the meanings and forms of words and their syntactic properties that permits them to be inserted into the constituent hierarchies and structural derivations (transformations) available to a particular language. Illocutionary, illocutive part of sentence meaning determining the speech act in which a proposition can be used. Implication strongly implied meaning. Implicature weakly implied meaning. Information structure discursive partioning of sentence structure into two or more, bi- or tripartite layers: topic and comment, focus and background, corresponding to two or three subsegments with different information values. Informational density proportion between total meaning and explicit information. Distributing the same amount of information onto more linguistic elements (for example onto more clauses) lowers density; vice versa, distributing the same amount of information onto fewer linguistic elements (for example onto more deverbal nouns) increases density (compare section ‘Statuesque and dense’ in Chapter 8). Interpreting oral form of translating, where the Principle of Optimal Relevance is heavily constrained by the lack of control phases during perception and production. (Lambert and Moser-Mercer 1994 present an impressive collection of psycholinguistic and neurophysiological studies on the effects of these constraints.) Language processing the process of perceiving and producing linguistically

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encoded messages. The Key concentrates on the former perspective. (For a comprehensive presentation of the latter cf. Levelt 1989). The linear structure of a message is processed incrementally, that is, step by step. All the various layers constituting the message on the syntactic and semantic levels of the linguistic structure are processed in a parallel way. When we perceive a sentence, the semantic and the pragmatic interpretation lag slightly behind the syntactic analysis. The integration of the message into the context is performed at certain wrapping-up junctures (for example, at full stops and semicolons, but also at shorter intervals). The processing mechanism is carried out by a specialized component of our mind, the processor, which follows its own strategies determined by the specific nature of language and the general principle of economy. As languages differ in their forms and the way they are used, processing strategies meet with language-specific processing conditions. The basic requirement for stylistic appropriateness takes account of the languagespecific conditions for efficient processing. If the first-pass analysis breaks down (see Garden path), the structure is reanalysed. Language-specific characteristic of an individual language. There are innumerable features distinguishing individual languages in terms of syntax, semantics and phonetics. The basic architecture of languages, however, varies only in a few grammatical parameters, like those of directionality and configurationality. These have far-reaching consequences for questions of style because they determine optimal processing conditions in discourse. The fact that German contrasts here with most European languages, including English, makes it a rewarding object of contrastive and translation studies. Linearization order of linguistic elements, ‘word order’. Determined by syntactic features of the individual lexical elements: category (word class), argument structure of the word, scope. The universal principle of ‘lexical projection’ is parametrized by basic grammatical properties of the individual language (directionality, configurationality), determining the basic linear order of sentence structure and transformational options. Languages differ not only in their grammatically obligatory transformation (as, for example, moving the verb into second position in German main clauses), but also in their discourse-based transformations (scrambling or topicalization of given elements in German). Constraints on word order variability may be compensated to some extent by a greater lexical variability (see perspective). Modifier complementary to argument (see Adverbials, Attributes). Optimal relevance an optimal proportion between cognitive gains and processing efforts. Cognitive gains are made on the basis of existing assumptions, which can be confirmed, rejected or extended by new information. Processing effort is determined by the difference between the linguistically encoded input and background knowledge available to the processor (that is, the background knowledge needed for the

174 Glossary interpretation of a message), but also by the general processing conditions of the particular situation and the processing conditions of the linguistic coding. Parameters basic grammatical properties of languages determining their typological characteristics in regard to a small set of alternative possibilities (see Directionality and Configurationality). Parametrical variations are highly relevant for the language-specific processing conditions. Paraphrase contextually equivalent sentence but rarely equally appropriate sentence. In its wide sense determined by the overall interpretation of a message within a certain context, irrespective of the amount of temporary undecidedness and reanalyses necessary to get there. Systematically, that is, minimally, varied sets of paraphrases – ‘control paraphrases’ – are used as an empirical method of controlling the contextual appropriateness of linguistic encodings in discourse. Parsing processing of syntactic structure. Building up the constituent hierarchy of a sentence, it is necessary to hypothesize about the syntactic category of an element and its syntactic relation to preceding elements, as well as about possible future elements of the linear chain of words processed incrementally (that is, step by step). The processor has to attach incoming material while anticipating its syntactic position and its syntactic function within the entire constituent hierarchy of the sentence. There is some evidence, such as garden path effects, that the processor follows certain strategies like Minimal Attachment in solving structural ambiguities, and in reanalysing the outcome should the analysis break down, that is, make no sense at some later point. Particular complementary to generic, referring to a specific instance. Perspective relation between the semantic roles and syntactic functions of constituents; compare for example the difference between an active and a passive perspective, where the role of an agent or the role of the patient is projected onto the subject: Someone is translating the book. The book is being translated. or the transitive/intransitive difference: Someone opened the door. The door opened. or ‘middles’ like: The book sells well.

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and some other verb classes, all of which raise lower roles to the highest rank in the syntactic hierarchy, thus shifting the perspective of the eventualities presented. Languages differ in their lexical possibilities for such a shift in perspective. Thus, for example, many of the intransitives projecting the role of the patient into the subject in English are reflexives in German. Compare: Die Tür öffnet sich. The door opens. Das Buch verkauft sich gut. The book sells well. In many cases, the projection of the lower role into the subject is blocked by selection restrictions. Consequently, circumstances and causes are projected into adverbials rather than subjects. With English preferring primary relations, German adverbials may be reframed as English subjects and vice versa to improve processing conditions on either side. Phrase marker constituent hierarchy of sentence structure. At any stage of parsing, the processor proceeds from the ‘partial current phrase marker’ it has built up so far, attaching incoming structures according to expectation. Pitch accent stress associated with a shift in pitch level, for example, from high to low level or low to high level, signalling focus. The assignment of pitch accent to a constituent of a sentence is determined by grammatical rules concerning the position of the element in the constituent structure of the sentence or with respect to a focusing lexical element. If we assign pitch accent to any other constituent than the grammatically predetermined one, we will get a marked focus interpretation. Postponing moving an element to a position after its head; for example, placing the relative clause of a subject at the end of the sentence. Presuppositions implicit meaning exempt from speech act performance. Thus: Why didn’t you tell him? presupposes that you didn’t tell him and asks for the reason; that is, the negated proposition is presented as a fact and is not included in the question. Primary relations syntactic functions of arguments; complementary to secondary relations, that is, modifiers. English prefers primary relations as it is a configurational language. Processing see Language processing. Pro-forms grammatical words with little meaning of their own, replacing meaningful words, phrases or clauses, whose referential properties they inherit (for instance, ‘it’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘there’, ‘one’) (see also Anaphors).

176 Glossary Proposition semantic unit consisting of at least an argument and a predicate related to it. Propositions are objects of operators quantifying, negating, modalizing them, as well as of attitudes, evaluating them and transforming them into objects of illocutions. Prosody intonation and stress patterns associated with utterances (also by the ‘inner voice’ of silent reading); particularly important property: pitch accent. Psycholinguistics discipline studying the acquisition and use of language, in particular, first language or second language acquisition, language processing in perception and production, and deficient language use, like speech errors and aphasia (linguistic pathology). There are various schools of thought with extremely divergent theoretical positions aiming to explain the empirical (as a rule, experimental) data gathered by strictly controlled methods, including neurophysiological measurements of brain potential – a more recent development – testing theoretical assumptions about the cognitive aspect of language use. Reanalysis adjusting grammar- or discourse-incompatible results of processing. Pursuing processing strategies like Minimal Attachment, the processor may be led up the garden path by temporary ambiguities of the incoming elements, which it has to identify and integrate into the syntactic hierarchy under construction (the ‘current partial phrase marker’). In its attempt to adjust problematic structures, the processor checks our grammatical (including lexical) and discursive competence for alternative analyses that would avoid the garden path. It works along the lines of grammatical dependencies and discourse linking and is controlled by the economic Principle of Optimal Relevance as any first-pass analysis. Minimizing processing effort in translations means reducing the need for reanalyses. (Compare Fodor and Ferreira 1998, for a representative range of current approaches to reanalysis.) Referent individual or eventuality identified by linguistically encoded concept. In line with the many different encodings (for example as noun phrase, non-finite verb phrase, that-clause etc.), there are many different types of referents, including all sorts of abstract objects. Relevance importance for progress in discourse, relativized to effort in the Principle of Optimal Relevance. Role semantic or thematic role of referents in the event they belong to, as agent, patient, instrument, place, time etc. The projection of roles into syntactic functions determines the perspective of a sentence. Scope domain of quantifying or modifying elements, determines which elements are affected by the quantifier or modifier and thus, to some extent, the basic order of these elements. Scrambling deviating from basic word order by swapping positions. In German quite freely, in the interest of discourse linking; much more constrained in configurational English. Selection restrictions semantic constraints on the combination of words.

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Violations of these constraints may be intentional, as in the literary use of language or in translations extending the expressive potential of the target language, but in most cases they will be unintentional, resulting in semantic mismatches of a more or less distorting nature. Semantics the meaning of linguistic structures. Although we have given priority to pragmatic concepts like optimal relevance and contextual appropriateness, semantic aspects are highly relevant for translations since translations are by definition characterized by (a certain degree of) equivalence between the meanings of the original and the translation, and a large part of equivalence is determined semantically. There are various layers of semantic meaning to be distinguished. The inner core of the various layers is the referential meaning of all, at least potentially, referring elements. It consists of two basic types: individuals or events (called eventualities to cover states, too) and predicates, which take us from individuals to eventualities. On the side of the semantic form we speak of arguments and predicates forming propositions, which can, in turn, be used as arguments to form more complex propositions. The basic semantic types are subjected to all sorts of additional specifications and modifications, determining among other things the quantity of the reference and the modality of the predication in terms of truth or likelihood. On the layer of quantified and modified propositional meaning is superimposed the layer of propositional attitudes, expressing the speaker’s opinions, often relative to other opinions; the attitudinal meaning includes emotional evaluations of the eventualities referred to. The layer of evaluated propositional meanings is overlain by the layer of illocutionary, performative meaning, determining the type of speech act (like question, order, assertion etc) performed by the utterance of the linguistic forms carrying all these meanings. Some of the linguistically carried meaning is expressed explicitly, some implicitly through implications or presuppositions. But the meanings of sentences are not only determined linguistically by the semantics of the words and their syntactic relations to each other, but also by our common knowledge about the individuals and eventualities talked about and the discursive context, situational or textual, to which the sentence belongs. This includes all the inferences we can draw on the basis of our knowledge, presuppositions, implications and implicatures (the weak type of implications, based only on likelihood). In translations, we can compensate for the differences between the linguistically determined meanings not only by composing meaning through different combinations of the means of the target language, but also by redistributing meaning between the explicit and implicit, linguistic and nonlinguistic components of knowledge. (For a theoretically comprehensive and ‘hard’ approach to the vast area of semantics cf. Wunderlich and Stechow 1991.) Speech acts acts performed by uttering sentences; determined by the

178 Glossary illocutionary meaning of a sentence and the context. Thus, for example: Can you tell me the time? can be a real question to a child, asking about its cognitive capacities, but a request to someone whom we can expect to have these capacities. Style conventionalized or individual variety of language use. Lexical or grammatical options are either ‘neutral’ or marked for special stylistic levels (casual, substandard, etc) and registers (literary, academic, etc), including regional, social or aesthetic variants. The Principle of Optimal Relevance, together with the parametrized grammatical conditions of a language, determines the general stylistic profile that distinguishes a language from other languages (as for example the greater positional freedom or discourse sensitivity of German word order versus the greater lexical and prosodic freedom of English subjects, as discussed in Chapter 4). Synchronic at one and the same stage of development. Syntax grammatical component determining the combination of words in word groups, clauses and sentences. There is a universal inventory of categories (word classes), and universal principles for the extension of these categories into phrases and their completion into clauses or independent sentences. Languages differ in the basic direction of the structural extensions, requiring the categorial head at the left or right periphery of its phrase. According to the position of the verb – the dominant category in sentence structure – English can be said to be a left-peripheral language, extending its verb phrase to the right, while German extends its verb phrase to the left, whether the verb is in its basic right-peripheral position as in the subclause, or in the left-peripheral position of the main clause. The latter has to be seen as derived from basic structures. There are universal and language-specific constraints in the derivation of sentence structures, concerning, for example, the particularities of what can move where. Moving elements to the beginning of sentences, for example, is much more constrained in English than in German. But the greatest difference in the syntactic options of languages are the particular constraints laid down in the syntactic properties of the individual lexical element. There is the set of major categories, such as verbs, nouns, adjective, adverbs and prepositions, which determine the types of arguments they are used with, their number, case and order. Then there is the set of grammatical word forms, inflections, carrying the grammaticalized meanings of tense, mood, voice, gender, number and person, which differ greatly from language to language. Text linguistically formed unit of discourse; written or oral whole of varying length unified under one major topic. Textual relevance relevance of individual elements beyond the immediate, local context; determines the importance relative to each other of

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elements participating in discourse relations, structuring the text into larger segments. Topic (of sentence or discourse) the element the sentence or discourse is about, which need not be the same. Topic in the sentence is the element that the sentence comments upon. Together, topic and comment constitute one layer of information structure. Although topics may have their own focus, the main focus of a sentence will mostly reside in the comment, so that topic is often simply juxtaposed to focus. Topicalization moving an element into structural topic position, which amounts to the initial position of a sentence. Initial position can, however, mean different things in terms of the syntactic hierarchy of sentence structure, as, for example, a sentence-internal position in German versus a sentence-external position in English, where the subject-before-verb condition pushes the landing site for topicalization further out. The difference makes itself felt in the greater markedness of the topicalized element in English. Transformations structural changes turning basic syntactic structures into derived structures, mostly by moving elements to other positions (see also Topicalization, Scrambling, Postponing). Translation studies, translation theory discipline focusing on translation and translating, often including interpreting. Compared to genetics, computer linguistics, biochemistry and other more recent disciplines, translation studies is quite of age now, but much less accepted in academic circles. For most of the time, theories on translation have focused on literary translation, including bible translation, where linguistic aspects of translation are heavily dominated by aesthetic and cultural aspects. Thus, although translation studies has largely followed the developments in linguistics, starting with a transformational approach (Nida, Catford), via a communicative approach (for example Kade, Neubert, Reiß and Vermeer) towards a cognitive, psycholinguistic approach (Gutt), linguistic issues have been increasingly neglected or explicitly rejected as genuine topics of translation studies. The major tendency today places translation studies among cultural studies and looks for the special norms controlling translations or even influencing the target language/target culture through translations (see for example Toury, Snell-Hornby). Yet whatever the merits of the cross-cultural approach may be or will be in the future, there are vast areas of translational problems, including those of machine translation (as spelt out in Kay et al. 1994), that cannot be tackled, theoretically or practically, without recourse to linguistics – as the Key amply demonstrates.

Notes

1 Setting the scene 1 A high degree of equivalence will thus come very close to the concept of ‘optimal equivalence’ as defined – and strikingly illustrated – in Toury 1983: 117. 2 This contrasts with Baker 1992, who discusses many of the aspects to be taken up in the Key and often in a similar vein, but who says: ‘It is in fact virtually impossible . . . to draw a line between what counts as a good translation and what counts as a bad one’. House 1997, on the other hand, vigorously advocates the possibility of quality assessments, albeit in a much wider sense of the conventionalized properties of source and target texts. 3 Comprising all the aspects spelled out in Speech Act Theory; cf. Searle 1969. 2 Questions of order 1 Whether they are of the more traditional type, like Rochemont and Culicover 1990, or of the strictly generative type like Rosengren 1993; whether they take ‘given’ as the basic semantic concept, like Schwarzschild 1999, or ‘new’, like the above and, in fact, most linguists. There are, however, not a few linguists, like Lambrecht 1994, or Vallduví and Engdahl 1996, who warn against a simple identification of focus and new. 2 Compare Selkirk 1984, for a standard approach. 3 Abraham 1992 presents this idea in a unified generative account, extending it onto non-verbal categories. 4 Bierwisch 1963 was the first to make this assumption. 5 An aside for the observant reader: the analogous order of the objects in the examples above is not representative of the alternative directionality and has made many theoretical linguists miss the basic difference in the direction of the structural extensions which is so manifest in the more complex translational data. If one compares predicates, obligatory and free adverbials, the parallel directionality of the objects has to be seen as the exception – very much like other irregularities found with frequently used elements. The particular role of the complementary prepositional objects, pointed out by Collins 1995, is an additional argument in favour of the alternative-direction hypothesis. 6 See Lambrecht 1994, for a renowned expert on information structure, who supports this idea, too. 7 Applying half a dozen syntactic and semantic tests, Frey and Pittner 1999 distinguish five classes of adverbials linearized alternatively in English and German. For a corpus-linguistic study of English adverbials in Swedish translations on the basis of Quirk et al.’s comprehensive subclassification from 1985, which illustrates the right-directional trend of English adverbials extensively, cf. Lindquist 1989.

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8 For a detailed account of the interaction between syntax and the lexicon, the ‘lexical projection’, see Bierwisch, for example, 1996. 3 Complex sentences 1 Except for some sporadic comments, as in Rosengren 1993, and some cases of syntactic focus structures as for example, cleft-sentences, which we will turn to in Chapter 6. 2 Chafe 1987 distinguishes between active, semi-active and inactive information, which would allow us to classify role division as inactive, translation mechanism as semi-active. 3 Büring, for example, 1998, speaks of a ‘partitive topic’ in a case like this, which we may expect to be quite frequent considering the processing advantage of focus spacing. 4 It may be interesting to note that the clausal version meets the Principle of EndWeight, although in a wider sense than traditionally seen. Hawkins 1991–2 considers it to be one of the basic principles of linearization, but this is a generalization which has to be relativized by a wide range of restructuring patterns, like the one illustrated above. 4 In favour of primary relations 1 Cf. Altmann 1989, or Tanenhaus 1988, for concise surveys of psycholinguistic research in the last decades. 2 In fact, the difference has been measured by neurophysiologists (as A. Friederici 1998: 180), who say that we may discover a grave syntactic error up to 200 msec faster than a lexical-semantic error. Compare also Crocker 1996 for a computational model on incremental processing. 3 See Frazier 1988, 1999, or Frazier and Clifton 1996, on the garden path theory. 4 We have already encountered the effect in topicalization and scrambling; in general, this is a well-known phenomenon in focus theories; see for example Stechow and Uhmann 1986. 5 For the impact of morphological case on processing, compare for example Bader 1998. 6 See Doherty 1996, which reports on a two-year research project on this topic. 7 Hawkins 1986 suggests that this is one of the many cases of a general difference between English and German, where the nature of the relation between syntax and semantics is more homomorphous in German than in English. 8 See Tanenhaus et al. 1989. 9 Halliday 1985 speaks of a grammatical metaphor in such cases. 5 Structural weight 1 For a systematic presentation of the various factors involved in the resolution of anaphoric ambiguities, cf. for example Preuss et al. 1994; for a general theory of referential movement in discourse Klein and Stutterheim 1991. 2 Fabricius-Hansen 1999 formulates this as a principle constraining the introduction of new referents and new conditions in a text. 3 A major example in the German forerunner to the Key; cf. also Doherty 1999c, for an English presentation. 4 Defining relative clauses are likely to be relatively autonomous information units, which may promote contextual integration right away. Compare Marcus and Hindle 1990, for the impact of sentence-internal boundaries on processing. 5 Asher 1993 presents an elaborate theory on the various types of abstract objects

182 Notes constituted by anaphoric relations, which could provide the semantic-pragmatic frame for the following observations. For first applications to problems of translation, cf. Fabricius-Hansen 1996, and Behrens 1998. 6 Kade 1968 referred to the latter as a case of heterovalente Übersetzung, contrasting it with equivalent translation. 6 Grammaticalized clues 1 For more detailed linguistic presentations of English clefts, see for example Prince 1978; Declerck 1988; Collins 1991; Delin 1995. A comparative study of English clefts and their German translations is presented in Erdmann 1988, 1990. 2 For a suggestion explaining Carroll’s preference, see Doherty 2001a. 3 Rooth 1999 says that it is an existential presupposition which is associated with clefts. 4 A very productive pattern with dummy head nouns are sentences like: The main purpose behind the development of these techniques is to study how the activity of genes is controlled. which often correspond to simple sentences with marked topics in German: Die verschiedenen Verfahren der Genübertragung wurden vor allem für die Erforschung genetischer Steuerungsmechanismen entwickelt. (cf. Doherty 2001b) 5 Cf. Doherty 1987, for a detailed semantic analysis of a handful of German particles. 6 For a comparative study of focusing particles, cf. König, for example, 1991. 7 Cf. for example, the corpus-linguistic findings in Johansson and Oksefjell 1998. 8 Together with marked word order they belong to the linguistic clues which psycholinguists like Flores d’Arcais 1988 expect to promote processing in a language-specific way. 7 Shifting boundaries 1 For a generative approach to the linguistics of punctuation, see Nunberg 1990. 8 Relativizing optimality 1 As Grice 1975 demonstrated in his seminal paper on logic and conversation. 2 Some of the ‘individual’ cases may, however, belong to conceptual differences of a more general nature, which can play a role in a wide variety of contexts. For an impressive collection of such culture-specific perspectives, as for example the different concepts associated with left and right in German and English, compare Schmitt, for example, 1998. 3 In the sense of the ‘skopos’ theory by Reiß and Vermeer 1984.

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Index

acceptability 7, 26, 162, 165–6 adverbials 34, 47, 60, 66, 74, 78, 162, 166, 175 analogy 79, 101, 161, 166, 171 anaphors 82, 87, 147, 161, 166, 170–1 antecedent 52, 76, 82, 161, 166 appropriateness 16, 20–1, 160, 162, 166, 171, 173–4 argument 30, 32, 34–5, 166, 167, 168, 173, 175–6 attachment 63–4, 67, 161–2, 167, 174–5 attributes 39, 66, 167 background 16, 29, 97, 109, 120, 167, 169, 172 Carston, R. 10 case 24, 60, 162, 167–8, 169, 178 category 14–15, 80, 141, 168, 173–4, 178 Catford, J.C. 178 clefts 103–4, 106, 108–9, 116, 162, 168 comment 16, 25, 30, 168, 172, 179 compound 81, 87, 168, 169 configurationality 22, 24, 38, 60, 109, 161, 168, 172–3, 175–6 constituent 15, 37, 46, 63, 166, 168, 175 constituent hierarchy 168–9, 174–5 context 2–3, 15–16, 23–4, 28, 147, 161, 166, 169, 171, 177 contrast 37–8, 66, 108, 169, 170, 171 contrastive focus 38, 106, 109, 115, 163, 168–9 copula 103, 109, 169 decomposing 81, 88, 168–9

definiteness 29, 32, 56, 167, 169–70 defocusing 36, 43, 45, 50, 95, 169 Delisle, C. and Woodworth, J. 51 directionality 20, 22, 31, 38, 56, 92, 161, 170, 173 discourse 20, 23, 109, 116, 137, 147, 163, 170, 170–1, 178–9 discourse relations 97, 101–2, 111, 116, 119–20, 169–70 dummies 46, 85, 88–90, 109, 115, 162, 171 equivalence 9, 25–6, 48, 155, 171, 174, 177 eventuality 171, 176–7 explicitness 14, 16, 81, 100–1, 116, 160–1, 171–2, 177 focus 38, 45–6, 49–50, 95, 120, 161–2, 167, 169, 171–2 Fodor, J.D. and Ferreira, F. 176 Frazier, L. 63 gap 6, 81, 87, 133, 155, 172 garden path 64–5, 161–2, 172, 176 grammar 21, 38, 172 Grice, P. 16 Gutt, E.-A. 179 illocution 172, 176–8 implication 16, 26, 172, 177 implicature 16, 172, 177 information structure 23, 25–6, 31, 39, 48, 163, 170, 172, 179 informational density 147–8, 172 interpreting 2, 172, 179 Jakobson, R. 3

189

190 Index Kade, O. 179 Kay, M. et al. 179 Koller, W. 171 Lambert, S. and Moser-Mercer, B. 172 language processing 17, 64, 161, 172–3 language-specific 18, 38, 61, 95, 115, 160, 173–4 Levelt, W. 173 linearization 34, 151, 173–4 modifiers 14, 34, 65–6, 74, 166–8, 173, 175–6 optimal relevance 10, 13, 22, 121, 136, 147, 166, 172, 173, 178 parameters 20, 22, 29, 31, 38, 115, 160–1, 168, 170, 173–4 paraphrase 6, 12–13, 15–16, 38, 174 parsing 63, 74, 76, 79, 161, 172, 174–5 perspective 57, 59–61, 74, 76, 160–1, 162, 174, 176 phrase marker 167–8, 175–6 Pinker, S. 2 pitch accent 171–2, 175–6 postponing 175 presuppositions 16, 108, 111, 168, 171, 175, 177 Preuss, S. et al. 181 primary relations 14, 74, 76–7, 175 pro-forms 81–2, 109, 175 proposition 15, 176, 177 prosody 36, 171, 176 psycholinguistics 17, 63–4, 161, 176, 179

Quirk, R. et al. 161 reanalysis 36, 43, 161, 174, 176 referent 82, 166, 175, 176–7 Reiß, K. and Vermeer, H.J. 179 relevance 10, 97, 116, 125, 171, 176, 178 role 60, 77, 167, 174–6 scope 34, 37, 109, 172–3, 176 scrambling 42, 46, 162, 173, 176 selection restrictions 18, 76–8, 175–6 semantics 15, 64–5, 120, 170, 173, 176–7 Shreve, G.M. 158 Snell-Hornby, M. 179 speech acts 172, 177–8 Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. 10 Stoll, K.-H. 158 style 6, 8–9, 18–19, 21, 81, 137, 144, 147, 171, 173, 178 syntactics 60, 63–4, 167–8, 172–4, 176, 178 text 28, 140, 163, 169–70, 178 textual relevance 2, 97, 99, 102, 105, 109, 116, 162, 178 topic 16, 25, 27, 69–70, 73, 91, 152, 163, 170, 172, 178–9 topicalization 56, 95, 105, 162, 179 Toury, G. 1, 158, 179 transformations 173, 179 translation studies 3, 158, 164–5, 173, 179 Wunderlich, D. and Stechow, A. von 177