Contrasting Valancy in English and German - Essay Example

Contrasting Valency in English and German 17th January Introduction Valency in a linguistic concept isbasically seen as a lexicological phenomenon which is of relevance to syntax. The valency theory deals with an approach of analyzing sentences and focuses on the roles of certain words in sentences, with respect to the necessity of occurrence of some other language elements. In languages like English and German, Most times, this tends to coincide with complementation in linguistics. There is also a valency theory which primarily addresses this matter, although there is no claim of a comprehensive account of both English and German syntax, as attempted in grammars of both languages. Thus, valency in English and German can be understood at lexicological level, although a lot of language scholars prefer to think of valency as another way of describing the phenomena of complementation. The term valency has its origins in the subject of chemistry where valency is used to describe the ability of atoms to take up or shed some electrons during the formation of chemical compounds. “The French linguist Lucien Tesniere was the first to use this term in the field of linguistics, in the context of his Dependency Grammar developed in ‘Ele-ments de syntaxe structurale’. Syntactic valency is seen as the ability of lexemes (the atoms of syntax) to bind a number of certain other elements in a grammatical construction” (Matthias Bethke, 2002). In both English language and German, this ability is noticeable in nouns, verbs and adjectives and also in other word classes, to a lesser degree. Certain concepts developed for analyzing a language (in the case of valency, often German) can also be applied to the English language “currently, there are no lexicons for some languages like Russian, but in German and English language, much more is available, but still little that ties the lexicons to corpus evidence. Multi-lingual resources are very rare outside specialized domains, substantially because of the lack of theoretical understanding of how they might be coherently organized.” (Thomas Herbst 1973) A major reason for the contrasting valence between English and German is contact-rich history of English, which has also lost its inheritance of Germanic grammar. “In recent years, research on valency has led to important insights into the nature of language. Some of these findings are published in this volume for the first time with up-to-date accounts of language description and new reflections on language, above all for English and German. The volume also presents examples of contrastive analysis, which are of use for all those who deal professionally with these two languages. Furthermore, the articles in the psycholinguistic and computational linguistics section demonstrate the applicability and value of valency theory for these approaches and shed light on a fruitful cooperation between theoretical and descriptive linguistics and applied disciplines.” (Thomas Herbst and Katrin Gotz-Votteler 2007) In English language, engineering, lexicons are needed ideally to specify the thematic roles of verbs, and the feasibility of subcategorizing the verbs. These specifications are intended to match the patterns of verb usage in text. Language engineering in the German language needs multilingual resources, where information for the language can be expressed in a coordinated manner. In English, it is possible to relate sentence patterns to specific functional meanings that can be described independently of verbal lexemes. In this instance, “the functional meaning of the sentence pattern coordinates with verb valency in such a way that it either corresponds with a part of the verbal meaning or adds to the compatible meaning of the verb.” (Ickler, Irene 2007) Although it is possible for verbs to be compatible with various sentence patterns, this is not surprising, because sentence patterns in English and German are linked and related to each other. In both languages, verbal formation of words can reflect the functional meaning of sentence patterns and types, thereby making the verb to correspond with it. In the germen language, case-marked noun phrases contain information that are not seen in caseless nouns in the English language. This indicates semantic transparency/over specification, which refers to the degree of explicit expressions that can be decoded contrary implied information that can be inferred Usually, a language can make distinctions that another language does not have, and when a person is learning the language he might fail to detect these distinctions initially. For example, Germans who are learning the English language may simply learn that the word clock means Uhr in German, and can very easily make a sentence like ‘I’m sorry that I cannot tell you what time of day it is, because I’m not wearing a clock’. This is because, unlike English in the German language, there is no differentiation between the type of timepiece a person wears (i.e. clocks and watches). Also, if a learner of the English language is told that the German word for live is leben, the learner might say Ich lebe in der Frankfurter Straue, which sounds odd, as German, unlike the English language, will normally distinguish between being aliveor existing (i.e. leben) and wohnen (i.e. dwell). “In all languages most words, especially the most frequent ones, covera wide range of possible related senses (this is known as polysemy), and it is very rare for apparently equivalent words in different languages to cover exactly the same range. German kochen, for example, can be used to refer to `boiling (in general, of liquids, e.g. das Wasser kocht), to `cooking by boiling (e.g. Ich habe ein Ei gekocht), or to `cooking in general (e.g. Mein Bruder kocht gern). This covers at least the range of senses of the two English words cook and boil (with the result that unwary Germans may say something like Do not cook this shirt in English), but other equivalents (e.g. simmer) may be used in other contexts” (Durrell, Martin 2000) The German language also distinguishes between different types of pleasure, and in English, disgust is usually associated with how one feels about decaying matter, and also feelings of with moral indignation. Thus, foreign language learners should learn the semantic distinctions between various words that have related meanings, as well as learning the individual words of the language, in order to be able to use appropriate words in any given situation, thereby ensuring that they communicate effectively. It is a fact that the lexis or vocabulary of each of these languages consists of thousands of unrelated, isolated words/ elements, as well as a complex, coherent structure. The meaning of individual words can in part be particularly determined by different words which have similar meaning. According to Martin Durrell, “If the English word street does not mean quite the same as German Straue, this is because we make a difference, which does not exist in the same way in German, between street and road, so that what we call a road is usually different from what we call a street. There is a close semantic relationship between these words, they are used in similar contexts and refer to similar things, but they are distinct, in that street usually refers to a thoroughfare between buildings in a built-up area but a road to a highway between built-up areas.” (Durrell, Martin 2000) Conclusion It can be deduced that valency in both German and English is to be viewed as a phenomenon that should be accounted for within the lexicon of both languages. Valency in English should be as a property of lexical units, as varying valency structures can be opened up by various senses of a word. In assessing the contrast in valency between English and German, it is believed that the German language is more overly specified or transparent than English. The German language may also have preserved more of its grammatical complexity, and so is seen as a grammatically superior language by some linguists. Bibliography Durrell, Martin (2000). Using German Synonyms Cambridge University Press Ickler, Irene (2007) Valency; Theoritical, Descriptive and Cognitive issues Matthias Bethke (2002) Valency Theory Thomas Herbst and Katrin Gotz-Votteler (2007) Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg,.Walter De Gruyter Thomas Herbst (1973) English valency structures; a first sketch Read More