Contragram

Newsletter 5

No 5
March - 1996


CONTENTS

On the form of French, English and Dutch object complements

Bart Defrancq

0. Introduction

Judging by the number of articles that have been written on the subject, one of the more popular issues in syntactic and valency studies (at least in the French tradition) is the status of the object complement (attribut de l'objet) i.e. the constituents in bold type in the following sentences:

(1)
a. Nous trouvons la chambre propre.
b. Nous regardons cette évolution comme un progrès.
c. Nous tenons le gouvernement pour responsable.

However, it is striking to find that nearly all the literature is concerned with only one structure, the one we will call 'bare object complement' (BOC) (for instance in Nous trouvons la chambre propre) and this with only one purpose: how are we to distinguish the two interpretations the above example can have (the room is clean when we find it or we think that the room is clean)? Naturally, this striking ambiguity drew the attention of the supporters of TG, who considered it to be the result of underlying structures with a different embedding of a clause containing the verb être. Even outside the framework of TG, the fact that BOC structures can be decomposed into two clauses (for a detailed study on French BOCs, see Olsson 1976) has been fairly popular. This 'compositional' approach has been criticized and alternatives have been found in which the BOC is integrated in the valency pattern of the verb (Ruwet 1982: 147-171 and Blanche-Benveniste 1988).

The popularity of the BOC in the linguistic literature has left other forms of the object complement somewhat in the dark. I will call these other forms 'introduced object complements' (IOC), because they are introduced either by a preposition (voor-pour-for among others) or the morphemes als-comme-as whose word class status is not really clear (see the contribution by Dirk Noël in this Contragram). This lack of attention for the IOC is easy to explain. A sentence like: Nous regardons cette évolution comme un progrès seems to be undecomposable in different clauses (although a suggestion to this effect is made by Gross 1975) and because of its form the IOC is likely to be considered a less nuclear element in the sentence. Yet there is reason to believe BOCs and IOCs are closely related, many verbs allowing both forms, wavering between the two options. Consider the following French examples:

(2)
a. (...) cette affaire est considérée comme close. (LeMonde)
b. A la direction des NMPP on considère ces accusations injustifiées. (LeMonde)

(3)
a. Je tiens le gouvernement central pour entièrement responsable. (LeMonde)
b. Des événements que nous tenons très importants leur paraissent négligeables. (Barrès, quoted by Grevisse 1993: §302.)

Cases like this have received a fair amount of attention in the French grammatical tradition. Grevisse (1993 §302) devotes three pages to a few salient cases of uncertainty about the choice between bare and introduced object complements. The general tendency in Grevisse consists in treating the BOC in such cases, either as a recent phenomenon ("cherche a s'introduire" for considérer and designer) or as a relic of an older construction found mainly in classical literary and legal texts (for qualifier, reconnaitre and tenir). The BOC is, therefore, supposed to be the exceptional form. In the case of considérer, for instance, the BOC is regarded by Grevisse as the result of an analogy with croire "et d'autres verbes" or, alternatively, as an imitation of English (although English consider takes both BOCs and IOCs) and Grevisse states that it occurs more often with adjectives and participles. According to Grevisse the BOC of tenir is a characteristic of literary French and has its roots in the classical period. In the case of tenir there is no reference to English, which would, in a sense, be logical since hold normally takes a BOC:

(4) They hold him responsible for the bombing of two railway stations.

Within the, of course, limited framework of this short contribution I will report, somewhat sketchily, on the testing of some of the hypotheses we can formulate on the basis of the remarks made by Grevisse (for a fuller report, see Defrancq (to appear)). Since the more elaborate remarks concern a case where the IOC is introduced by comme, I will focus on this type of IOC, putting the kind introduced by pour aside. Three hypotheses will have to be checked. First of all, can the deletion of comme be explained by an analogy with verbs having only a BOC structure, and what explains this analogy? Secondly, is an English verb historically related to the French verb likely to influence its syntactic behaviour, and, more generally, what does the situation of the OC look like in other languages? Finally is it true that there is a relationship between the form of the OC and the nature of its head (BOC --> Adj), as Grevisse seems to suggest?

1. Analogies in French

Let us first face some facts. When we look up the verb considérer in the Petit Robert, we find considérer comme near the end of the entry (meaning 4.). The verb is "explained" with the verbs estimer and juger. In the synonym list (behind the arrow) we are offered prendre (pour), regarder, réputer, tenir (pour). I checked the verbs that do not take pour in corpus extracts ranging from 200 to 250 occurrences for the presence of comme introducing the OC, and this is what I found (the figures are to be read as "1 such case to X other cases"):

estimer: never comme
juger: rarely comme (1/60)
regarder: always comme
réputer: never comme (always passive)

The grammatical status of the complement with réputer is uncertain, since the verb in the complement structure always occurs in the passive or simply as an adjective (only the Petit Robert provides an example of the active sentence: S'il est chaste, on le répute pédéraste; c'est la règle (Flaubert)).

Since Grevisse suggested croire as analogous to considérer, I tested it too and added penser and trouver, because most dictionaries consider them to be synonymous with croire. I only considered cases where these verbs were followed by a direct object. Other cases will be dealt with in Defrancq (to appear):

croire: never comme
penser: rarely comme
trouver: never comme

The use of penser with comme is found in (...) nous nous devons de penser le génocide juif comme l'événement central de l'histoire contemporaine (Le Monde).

Nevertheless, the element comme seems to be only scarcely represented among the synonyms of considérer. In the semantic vicinity of regarder, on the other hand, I only found comme with voir (which prefers the BOC structure: for every occurrence of an IOC there are five occurrences of a BOC) and very occasionally with envisager(which does not allow the BOC structure). As consider itself prefers the IOC structure (98% of all cases), the following scale can be drawn up:

estimer
penser                                (envisager)
croire   juger   voir   considérer     regarder
réputer
trouver
0%        ±2%    ±15%      ±98%          100%

Figure 1. Share of IOCs compared to total number of OCs

It seems that, even though Grevisse's statement about a possible analogy between considérer, on the one hand, and croire "et d'autres verbes", on the other hand, is correct, this is a judgement by appearances. As many transformational and non-transformational grammarians have pointed out, there is a close relationship for these verbs between the BOC structure and the structure with a subordinate clause (according to Ruwet (1982) the first proposal for deriving the BOC from an underlying structure with a subordinate clause in French go back to Gross (1968)). It appears indeed that in the above scale the crucial point where the BOC becomes impossible coincides more or less with the point where the direct subordinate clause with indicative becomes impossible:

penser que, croire que, trouver que, juger que, voir que, considérer que + ind.
vs.
*regarder que + ind. (regarder can take an indirect (à ce que) subordinate clause with subjunctive), *envisager que + ind. (according to the Petit Robert, envisager can only take a subordinate clause with subjunctive)

This relation between BOC and subordinate clause could suffice to explain why considérer in some cases drops comme. In fact, the exceptional form, from a purely transformational point of view, would be the object complement with comme, but it would lead us too far to examine this issue in detail here. Let us just conclude by saying that, given the relationship between the subordinate clause and the BOC, a hypothesis based on an influence from English, which is always difficult to prove, would be unnecessary. However, because this matter is inherently interesting from a contrastive point of view, let us nevertheless examine what the situation is in English and Dutch.

2. English and Dutch

At first sight the situation in English is very similar to the French one. When we pick out the equivalents of the French verbs, dropping réputer and envisager, this is the corpus image (based on 200 to 250 occurrences) we obtain when we check the presence of as introducing the object complement:

believe: never as
think: never as
find: never as
judge: (rare) never as
see: less often as (1/5)
consider : less often as (1/4)
look upon: always as
regard: always as

Figure 2. Corpus: use of as. English

These tendencies seem to be more or less the same as the ones we could observe in French. Also, just as in French, the possibility of a BOC coincides with the possibility of a subordinate clause:

believe (that),think (that), find (that), judge (that), see (that), consider (that) vs. *look upon (that), *regard (that)

It seems that for both French and English the BOC can be regarded as normal syntactic behaviour for verbs that allow a subordinate clause. In the case of considérer-consider this possibility appears to be exploited on a larger scale by English than by French. The possible influence of an English lexeme on a French one can therefore only be situated on a statistical level and not on the level of syntactic properties. But as the occurrence of the BOC in French can be regarded as only marginal (slightly more than 2%), a statistical influence seems improbable.

The situation in Dutch is radically different in that not many verbs allow a BOC. Those that do are the proto-equivalents of voir: zien, trouver: vinden and juger: oordelen and the verb achten. On the other hand, the proto-equivalent for regarder: kijken does not accept the IOC, but the derived form bekijken does:

geloven: neither BOC nor IOC
denken: neither BOC nor IOC
vinden: never als
oordelen: never als (rare)
achten: never als
zien: more often als (2/1)
beschouwen : almost always als (200/1)
kijken: neither BOC nor IOC
bekijken: always als

Figure 3. Corpus: use of als. Dutch

The relationship we found in French and English between the BOC structure and the subordinate clause is absent, since verbs like geloven and denken allow finite subclauses without allowing the BOC structure, and a verb like achten, which is almost always used in a BOC structure, does not allow the subordinate clause:

We achten veranderingen noodzakelijk.
*We achten dat veranderingen noodzakelijk zijn.

The verb beschouwen, which takes a BOC in only 0.5% of all cases, does not take a subclause either, unlike its French and English proto-equivalents (considérer and consider):

We beschouwen deze verkiezingen als een eerste stap naar democratie.
*We beschouwen dat deze verkiezingen een eerste stap naar democratie zijn.

In fact the parallelism between the BOC and the subordinate clause only exists on a regular basis for vinden (we found only very few examples of the BOC with oordelen) :

We vinden veranderingen noodzakelijk.
We vinden dat veranderingen noodzakelijk zijn.

It is clear that the BOC structure in Dutch cannot merely be regarded as a reorganisation of the subordinate clause. Instead, it seems to be a special feature of a specialised part of the lexicon.

3. Bare adjectives and introduced nouns?

Grevisse suggests that with considérer the bare form is more likely to appear with an adjective and a participle than with a noun: "Malgré les condamnations répétées (...) la construction a la caution de plus d'un excellent auteur, surtout quand l'attribut est un adjectif ou un participe" (§302, the emphasis is mine).

The examples we can find in the Le Monde corpus confirm these findings more or less: the majority of the examples of a BOC have an adjective or participle (I considered them together and excluded cases where a "participe présent" was found) as an object complement. In a minority of cases we find a prepositional phrase (the introductory preposition of which is not dependent on the verb, but on the noun it introduces, so that these cases still qualify as BOC rather than as IOC). The object complement is never bare when it is a noun phrase:

(AdjP)
-Faute d'instance de recours du point de vue diplomatique, cette affaire est considérée comme close. (LeMonde)
-A la direction des NMPP on considère ces accusations injustifiées. (LeMonde)

(PP)
-Un hasard qui se transformera en collaboration avec deux artistes considerés (...) comme en marge. (LeMonde)
- Mais que dire, alors, des musulmans pratiquants qui, eux, se considèrent à la mi-1414(...)?(LeMonde)

The question now is whether this correlation (BOC --> AdjP) also applies to the other verbs and to the other languages we have examined and if, conversely, verbs that do not have the BOC will more often have a NP as an object complement (IOC --> NP). In fact, this would only be normal, since in cases where two NPs follow each other there is a greater risk of functional confusion than in cases where an AdjP follows a NP. The presence of comme prevents the ambiguity that could arise with sequences of two NPs.

The solidarity between the BOC and the AdjP on the one hand, and the IOC and the NP on the other, is clear for French (for cases where BOC and IOC are both possible, the interaction of the IOC, which is easier to retrieve from a corpus, with the nature of the OC's head was examined systematically):

croire: never comme, never a NP
penser: never comme, never a NP
trouver: never comme, never a NP, although it is not exluded
juger: comme only with NP, bare form only with AdjP, rarely a NP (1/60)
estimer: never comme, rarely a NP (1/25)
voir: comme almost only with NP, bare form with AdjP and NP, less often a NP (1/3)
considérer: comme with AdjP and NP, bare form only with AdjP, more often a NP (3/1)
regarder : always comme, mostly a NP (10/1)

These are only rough data, of course. I did not take into account any semantic differentiation between IOC and BOC structures, which would lead me too far, and will not do so either for the other languages. Since we found analogies beween French and English as far as the form of the object complements is concerned, we could expect to find the same kind of relationship (BOC --> AdjP and IOC --> NP) in English. We could also expect consider to differ from considérer, since in English it is mostly followed by a BOC. The above relationship predicts that consider will be followed by an AdjP in a majority of cases. The results for English show that this is true (as in the case of French I considered adjectives and participles together and excluded gerunds):

believe: never as, rarely a NP (1/6)
think: never as, less often a NP (1/2)
find: never as, rarely a NP (1/25)
judge: never as (rare), never a NP
see: as with NP and AdjP, bare form only with AdjP, less often a NP (1/5)
consider: as with AdjP and NP, bare form with AdjP and NP, less often a NP (1/2)
look upon: always as; mostly a NP (6/1)
regard: always as; more often a NP (2/1)

Even in Dutch we find a relation between the 'form' and the 'nature' of the object complement:

geloven: neither BOC nor IOC
denken: neither BOC nor IOC
vinden: never als, rarely a NP (1/10)
oordelen: never als (rare), never a NP
achten: never als, rarely a NP (1/15)
zien: als almost only with NP, bare form only with AdjP, more often a NP (2/1)
beschouwen: als with AdjP and NP; mostly a NP (6/1), bare form only with AdjP
kijken: neither BOC nor IOC
bekijken: always als, always a NP

4. Conclusion

My aim here was to find empirical evidence for the three hypotheses which I distilled from the observations made by Grevisse on the use of the BOC with a verb like considérer. It seems that the first hypothesis (about the analogy with semantically related verbs like croire) was correct but incomplete and that the second one (about influence of English on French) is probably wrong, since the syntactic properties of semantically related French verbs followed by a subordinate clause can account for the observations. The third hypothesis (on the relationship between the nature of the head of the OC and its form) proved to be correct as well, although in many cases this relationship is not exclusive. It would be interesting, in this respect, to examine whether there is a way in which the first and the third hypothesis can be linked.

On the contrastive level we have noticed that the relationship between the nature of the head of the OC and its form is a property that French, English and Dutch have in common. Dutch differs substantially from French and English, since the BOC does not seem to be linked to a subordinate clause.

References

  • Blanche-Benveniste, C. (1988) "Laissez-le tel que vous l'avez trouvé": propositions pour l'analyse du fameux "attribut du complément d'objet". In: Travaux de linguistique 17, pp. 51-67.
  • Defrancq, B. (to appear) Constituents introduced by comme (French), as (English) and als (Dutch): status and form. In: Studia Germanica Gandensia 39.
  • Grevisse, M. (1993) Le Bon Usage. 13e édition revue par A. Goosse. Paris- Gembloux: Duculot
  • Gross, M. (1968) Grammaire transformationnelle du français: Syntaxe du français. Paris: Larousse
  • Olsson, K. (1976) La construction verbe + object direct + complément prédicatif en français. Stockholm
  • Ruwet, N. (1982) Grammaire des insultes et autres études. Paris: Seuil.

[table of contents]

English as, French comme and Dutch als introducing object complements: contrasting grammatical traditions

Dirk Noël

1. As/comme/als: prepositions, conjunctions, or what?

As Bart Defrancq describes in his contribution in this Contragram issue, the three languages involved in the research of the CONTRAGRAM team, Dutch, French, and English, all allow a certain group of verbs - incidentally, a semantically similar group of what could very broadly be termed 'opinion' verbs - to take an 'introduced' - or 'indirect' or 'oblique' (cf. Huddleston 1984: 203) - kind of object complement, introduced by as in English, by comme in French, and by als in Dutch. Further examples are:

(1)
a. Norwegian and Danish players have had an increasing effect on the Premiership, even if we do seem to consider them largely as cheap imports. (COBUILD on CD-ROM Word bank, henceforth 'COBUILD')
b. Their 'rationalisations' (ie pursuance of larger profits) mean that any band perceived as a loss-making venture will be dumped. (COBUILD)
c. Though the deportees were never directly accused of taking part in these operations, they were branded as criminals by implication. (COBUILD)
d. Another denounced Reumann as an 'extreme re-educator' and 'ruiner of youth' and said his respected newspaper was 'infested with Jews.' (COBUILD)

(2)
a. Leur stérélité était alors considérée comme une maladie. (Le Monde sur CD-ROM, henceforth 'Le Monde')
b. Le lendemain, Itzhak Rabin signe la lettre par laquelle son pays reconnaît l'OLP comme le représant du peuple palestinien. (Le Monde)
c. Historiquement, rappelle Jeannine Kohler, présidente de la FPE, l'école publique fut perçue comme une garantie de liberte'. (Le Monde)
d. ... le premier bâtiment culturel contemporain que l'on regarde aussi comme un monument. (Le Monde)

(3)
a. Ze maakten daar meteen duidelijk, elkaar niet als rivalen te beschouwen. (5 Miljoen Woorden Corpus of the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie, henceforth 'INL')
b. Ik kan mij niet herinneren zijn leeftijd ooit als een barrière gevoeld te hebben. (INL)
c. Die verhoudingen worden als een gegeven verondersteld. En zij worden verondersteld als stabiele, slechts langzaam veranderende verhoudingen. (INL)
d. Daardoor bekeken de andere partijen in de gemeenteraad ons zo'n beetje als 'die zielige oudjes'. (INL)

In all of these sentences the introductory words are followed by noun phrases, which is unmistakable prepositional behaviour, given that prepositions are usually defined as prototypically preceding noun phrases (cf. Crystal 1991 s.v. "preposition(al)" and Trask 1993 s.v. "preposition"), or as words that link noun phrases to other words like verbs, adjectives, or other nouns (cf. the 'traditional' definition discussed by Huddleston 1984: 336). However, in all three languages the introductory words do not merely occur before object complements in the form of NPs, but also before object complements that have an adjectival or clausal form.

Examples of as/comme/als introducing adjectival object complements are:

(4)
a. Tokyo has informed Mr Dunkel of its doubts about the North American Free Trade Agreement, which it considers as possibly inconsistent with Gatt rules. (COBUILD)
b. The Government insist we should bale out their environmental account through punitive taxes collected by the National Rivers Authority-but in the next breath we're branded as unfit to claim any of the £45m of grants available for sport. (COBUILD)
c. Yet these women - perhaps because they class themselves and their partners as heterosexual and therefore not at risk - apparently had no idea that one form of sexual activity can be more dangerous than another. (COBUILD)

(5)
a. Ce mélange n'est pas toxique, mais ne peut être considéré comme totalement inoffensif. (Le Monde)
b. L'idée est donc d'atteindre le plus grand nombre possible de navires marchands, au risque de faire entrer les Etats-Unis en guerre, ce qui est alors vu comme négligeable, étant donné la faiblesse militaire du pays. (Le Monde)
c. ... et, depuis, le droit de la concurrence, importé des Américains, est regardé comme salutaire. (Le Monde)

(6)
a. Zowel de Palestijnen als de Amerikaanse minister Baker beschouwen de toespraak van Rabin als belangwekkend. (INL)
b. Het tweede geniet zijn voorkeur, omdat het eerste nu wel als bekend mag worden verondersteld. (INL)
c. Toch heet de eerste nog altijd progressief en is het CDA als conservatief bestempeld. (INL)

Examples of as/comme/als introducing clausal object complements are:

(7)
a. It is illegal for a man to make any contact with another in a public place which could be considered as making an arrangement to have sex. (COBUILD)
b. But he also brought us the glad tidings that the County Council has certified, or is prepared to certify, our New Forest (East) Local Plan as being in general conformity with the Structure Plan. (COBUILD)
c. Senior trade unionists and opposition politicians yesterday denounced the German government's latest spending cuts package, including reductions in unemployment benefit, as threatening economic, social and political stability. (COBUILD)

(8) Traditionnellement considéré comme pouvant offrir un emploi "pour la vie", le secteur bancaire... (Le Monde)

(9) De manifeste erotiek van de sculptuur wordt immers door de meesten begrepen als zijnde in tegenspraak met de sacraliteit van onderwerp en plaats. (INL)

In English and French as and comme can occasionally even precede a prepositional object complement:

(10)
a. He regarded the unequivocal recognition by the civilised world of Jewish national rights in Palestine as of greater value than the immediate establishment of a Jewish state. (LOB)
b. Every adult - defined as over fourteen years of age - except the beggar, was to pay a groat (4d) to the Royal Exchequer. (LOB)
c. Valéry is at least consistent: having defined the work of art as "une machine destinée à exciter et à combiner les formations individuelles de ces esprits" (the public), he rejects such an activity as beneath him, as time-wasting when he has more important things to do. (LOB)

(11) Un hasard qui se transformera en collaboration avec deux artistes considérés à l'époque comme en marge. (Le Monde)

In Dutch als is normally dropped before a prepositional object complement:

(12) Mazda beschouwt de relatie met Ford van strategisch belang. (INL)
(13) ? Mazda beschouwt de relatie met Ford als van strategisch belang.

The question now is: Do these non-nominal oblique object complements pose a problem for an analysis in these cases of as/comme/als as prepositions? Let's have a look at what grammarians have to say about the status of as/comme/als as introductory elements of oblique object complements, and about prepositions in general.

2. What do the grammarians say?

In the English grammatical tradition, the authoritative Quirk et al. (1985) have no qualms about calling as a preposition in such cases. Under the heading "Object complement following prepositional verb" we can read that

"The preposition as designates a copular relation, particularly in specifying a role or status associated with the direct object: The church condemned the relic as a fraud. Following a complex transitive verb and a direct object, the prepositional complement of as functions semantically as an attribute, and may be termed a 'prepositional object complement' in the same way as the noun phrase following a transitive prepositional verb is called a prepositional object" (p. 1200)

and a bit further on we can read that most complex transitive verbs that take as "can also introduce an adjective phrase in the function of prepositional object complement" (p. 1200), though they do add that

"[t]he construction is exceptional in allowing an adjective phrase to occur after a preposition. A more orthodox construction is obtained by adding the word being before the adjective phrase, and thereby converting the prepositional complement into a nominal -ing clause" (p. 1201, my emphasis)

and that "[a]lthough as is classed as a preposition in [this] pattern, it in some ways resembles the conjunction as which introduces clauses of comparison" (p. 1201, note b). In the chapter on prepositions, however, as is recognized as an item that, like after, before, since and until, can function both as preposition and conjunction (p. 660).

Another authoritative English grammarian, Huddleston (1984), is of the same opinion, analyzing as stupid (so as + AdjP) in They regarded him as stupid as an 'oblique objective predicative complement', "where by 'oblique' we mean that the syntactic relation between the element and the verb is not a direct one, but is rather mediated by the preposition" (p. 203, my emphasis). In his chapter on "Adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions" he, too, remarks that "[a] number of words enter into construction with either an NP or a clause and are therefore traditionally analysed as belonging to both classes [i.e. the preposition and conjunction categories, DN]: after, before, some, as, etc." (p. 339, my emphasis), but argues that "[t]here is much to be said for conflating prepositions and conjunctions into a single class, which would then similarly [to verbs, for instance] be classified according to the kind of complements permitted" (p. 340).

As far as cases like those in (10) are concerned, both Quirk et al. and Huddleston allow prepositions to precede other prepositions. Quirk et al. state that "[p]repositional phrases can themselves act as prepositional complements, so that two prepositions may occur in sequence" (p. 658, note d), as in He picked up the gun from under the table, We didn't meet until after the show, and The weather has been fine except in the north. Huddleston paraphrases this, saying that one PP can be "embedded as complement within a larger PP" (p. 345), adding examples like from inside the building, until just before the meeting and a decision as to whether it would be cancelled. (For a transformational analysis of such PPs, see Radford 1988: 251.)

In the French grammatical tradition, on the other hand, comme is always analyzed as a conjunction. Grevisse (1993: 464-470), for instance, distinguishes between three kinds of 'attribut du complément d'objet': direct ones (e.g. Certifier une copie conforme), those introduced by a preposition (e.g. Il tient ce propos à injure), and those introduced by comme, the examples of the latter type including both nominal (e.g. Regarder un travail comme une corvée) and adjectival complements (e.g. Je considère cette promesse comme sacrée). In the index this kind of comme is called an 'introducteur' (a kind of word that is defined as "un mot invariable qui sert à introduire un mot, un syntagme, une phrase: VOICI votre journal. - VOICI qu'il revient. Il se distingue de la préposition ou des conjonctions en ceci qu'il ne sert pas à unir" (p. 1558)), but in the chapter on the 'introducteur' comme is listed under the heading "Conjonctions jouant le rôle d'introducteurs" (p. 1561). In spite of its potential for nominal complements, comme is not mentioned in the chapter on the preposition and does not form part of the "Liste des principales prépositions" (p. 1476). It does occur in the "Liste des conjonctions de subordination", of course, and it is striking that unlike in the English grammars, there is no overlap between the two lists. Apparently, in the French tradition an element cannot belong to both classes, and since comme clearly functions as a typical conjunction in most of its uses, it is said to just BE a conjunction (in addition to an exclamative adverb, of course). Significant as well seems to be the observation in Grevisse that the use of comme introducing object complements "est issu de comme conjonction introduisant des propositions de comparaison, lesquelles sont souvent averbales" (p. 468). In other words, the past, exclusively 'conjunctional', behaviour of comme still has its effect on its present official word class membership.

Interestingly, a grammar of French published in England, Judge and Healey (1983), is completely in line with this, discussing comme only as a subordinating conjunction and an exclamative adverb, not as a preposition. The functional definition it offers of the preposition does not, however, preclude comme from membership of the class:

"The main function of the preposition is to introduce nouns (as in la maison de mon père), but it may also introduce verbs, adjectives and adverbs: for example utile à savoir, passer pour intelligent and revenir de loin. The introduced element may also be a clause, as in nous parlions de quand nous étions enfants (= de notre enfance)." (p. 321)

The Grevisse grammar does not mention adjectives in its discussion of the "nature du régime de la préposition" (pp. 1480-1483), but does make mention of adverbs and clauses ("proposition") in addition to nouns, pronouns and infinitives, and also states that "[l]a préposition peut avoir pour régime un groupe de mots déjà précédé d'une préposition" (p. 1482, original emphasis), e.g. La très célèbre cathédrale, dès en arrivant, elle s'indique and Elle paraissait surgir de sous un rideau.

In the Dutch grammatical tradition als receives pretty much the same treatment as comme. The most authoritative work here is Geerts et al. (1984), which states explicitly that als is considered as a conjunction in cases like Hij is benoemd als burgemeester because it clearly is a conjunction in all its other functions (p. 631). At the same time it states that this kind of als is only followed by words or (word) groups, not by clauses (p. 666). In the chapter on prepositions we learn that Dutch prepositions can not only be combined with noun phrases, but also with prepositional phrases (e.g. Wacht nou even tot na het eten! and Dat is lekker voor op de boterham), adverbs, or clauses (e.g. Ik ben het helemaal eens met wat je zegt and Dit is een cadeautje voor als je jarig bent).

Den Hertog (1972), another major representative in the Dutch tradition, also treats als exclusively as a conjunction. The functionally-oriented De Schutter and Van Hauwermeiren (1983), on the other hand, are prepared - for convenience's sake - to accept als in sentences like Ze bestempelden de Belgische ploeg als de underdog van het tornooi and We hebben hem altijd beschouwd als wat al te lichtzinnig as a preposition (p. 130), but at the same time recognize that it is very difficult to decide on a word class for this kind of als and therefore propose to put it in a separate category (together with two other words: dan and behalve) which they term 'vergelijkingswoorden' ("words of comparison") (p. 56).

3. Conclusion

This little meta-grammatical comparison of the treatment of as/comme/als introducing object complements is far from exhaustive, of course, and we cannot glean a definitive answer from it about the status of these words as either prepositions or conjunctions. It does suggest, however, that adjectival, prepositional and clausal object complements following as/comme/als do not have to pose a problem for an analysis of these words as prepositions, because in all three languages typical prepositions can do more than just precede noun phrases. But since there is no clear-cut distinction between prepositions and conjunctions anyway, the choice should perhaps not be made: in all three languages as/comme/als could constitute a very similar subcategory of a word class in which prepositions and conjunctions are conflated. A very interesting bonus of the comparison is that it has revealed that different grammatical traditions vary with regard to the flexibility with which they assign words to classes (the French and Dutch traditions being characterized by an either/or categorization) and with regard to the influence analyses of earlier stages of the language concerned have on synchronic descriptions (the English tradition not being troubled by the fact that the preposition-like behaviour of as only seems to have developed in the 17th century).

References

  • Crystal, D. (1991) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 3rd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Den Hertog, C. H. (1972) Nederlandse Spraakkunst: Derde stuk, de leer van de woordsoorten. 3rd edition. Amsterdam: Versluys.
  • De Schutter, G. and P. Van Hauwermeiren (1983) De Structuur van het Nederlands: Taalbeschouwelijke Grammatica. Malle: De Sikkel.
  • Geerts, G., W. Haeseryn, J. de Rooij and M. C. van den Toorn (eds.) (1984) Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen/Leuven: Wolters-Noordhoff.
  • Grevisse, M. (1993) Le Bon Usage: Grammaire française. Refondue par André Goosse. Treizième édition revue. Paris: Duculot.
  • Huddleston, R. (1984) Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Judge, A. and F. G. Healey (1983) A Reference Grammar of Modern French. London: Arnold.
  • Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
  • Radford, A. (1988) Transformational Grammar: A First Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Trask, R. (1993) A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. London: Routledge.

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IDS- und Partner-Projekte zur Valenzlexikographie

Helmut Schumacher

0. Vorbemerkungen

Im folgenden wird ein kurzer Überblick gegeben über die Projekte zur lexikographischen Beschreibung des Deutschen auf der Grundlage der Valenztheorie, die am Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS) durchgeführt wurden bzw. werden. Ferner werden die lexikographischen Projekte ausländischer Sprachwissenschaftler angesprochen, bei denen zweisprachige Valenzwörterbücher ausgearbeitet werden, deren deutscher Teil auf den IDS-Projekten beruht.

1. KVL und seine Filiation

Das "Kleine Valenzlexikon deutscher Verben" (KVL), 1976, ²1978 ist ein Produktions-wörterbuch mit syntaktischen Informationen zu ca. 460 Verben des Grundwortschatzes. Adressaten dieses Lexikons sind primär Lehrer und Lehrbuchautoren, die für den DaF-Unterricht auf der Grundstufe arbeiten.

Da für Studenten auf der Grundstufe die Benutzung einsprachiger Wörterbücher der Fremdsprache i.d.R. zu schwierig ist, wurden zweisprachige Versionen entwickelt. Die Übersetzung der Beispiele und die Angabe der entsprechenden Verben in der Muttersprache der Studenten können diesen den Zugang zum Lexikon wesentlich erleichtern. Ein Beispiel für solche Hilfsmittel ist das Deutsch - Spanische Valenzlexikon, 1980, das in Mexiko für hispanophone Deutschlerner verfaßt wurde.

Ein kontrastives Verblexikon ist das Deutsch - Rumänische Valenzlexikon, 1983, das teilweise in Rumänien und teilweise am IDS erarbeitet wurde. Dieses Lexikon enthält zusätzlich zum KVL eine semantische Beschreibung der spezifischen Verbumgebung mit Angabe der Kasusrollen. Die syntaktische und semantische Beschreibung wird auch auf die rumänischen Verben bezogen, sofern sie den deutschen Verben entsprechen. Nach diesem Vorbild ist auch das Deutsch - Italienische Valenzlexikon DELIT entwickelt worden, das 1996 erscheint und als erstes Valenzlexikon voraussichtlich auch in einer Diskettenversion zugänglich sein wird. In Arbeit befinden sich weitere kontrastive Valenzlexika zu Deutsch - Urdu und Deutsch - Arabisch mit der gleichen deutschen Basis. In derselben Filiation stehen wahrscheinlich auch die projektierten Lexika zu den Sprachenpaaren Deutsch - Polnisch, Deutsch - Portugiesisch und Deutsch - Serbokroatisch.

Ergänzend zum KVL wurden am IDS syntaktische Analysen an ausgewählten Ausschnitten des "Mannheimer Korpus I" durchgeführt und in Registern dokumentiert. Dieses Valenzregister, 1980, ermöglicht Aussagen über die Häufigkeit von Satzbauplänen in bestimmten Textsorten und über die Struktur des Verbalkomplexes.

2. ViF

"Verben in Feldern"(ViF), 1986, ist ein Produktionswörterbuch mit semantischen und syntaktischen Informationen zu ca. 1000 Verben und verbalen Ausdrücken der allgemeinen Wissenschaftssprache. Das Wörterbuch beruht auf einer logisch-semantischen theoretischen Grundlage und ist nach onomasiologischen Kriterien aufgebaut. Die semantischen und syntaktischen Regeln werden durch relativ viele Beispiele illustriert. Adressaten des Wörterbuchs sind primär Lehrer und Lehrbuchautoren, die DaF-Unterricht für fortgeschrittene Lerner geben, bzw. Lehr- und Übungsmaterial für das PNdS-Niveau erarbeiten.

Es ist geplant, dieses Wörterbuch in eine Datenbank zu implementieren, die im Projekt "Grundlagen eines grammatischen Informationssystems"(GRAMMIS) am IDS aufgebaut wird.

3. VALBU und seine Filation

Gegenwärtig wird ein neues "Valenzwörterbuch deutscher Verben" (VALBU) erarbeitet, das ca. 600 Verben des Grundwortschatzes umfassen wird. Anlage und Beschreibungstiefe ähneln ViF, die Abfolge der Lemmata ist jedoch alphabetisch. Das Wörterbuch bezieht sich primär auf den DaF-Unterricht auf der Grundstufe. Der Abschluß des Projekts ist für Ende 1996 vorgesehen.

Es gibt z.Zt. sechs Projekte ausländischer Partner, die VALBU zu zweisprachigen Versionen, teilweise zu kontrastiven Valenzwörterbüchern, erweitern wollen. Es handelt sich um die Sprachenpaare Deutsch - Slowakisch (Bratislava), Deutsch - Chinesisch (Tianjin), Deutsch - Hindi (Varanassi), Deutsch - Spanisch (Havanna), Deutsch - Englisch (Manchester), Deutsch - Koreanisch (Seoul). Diese Partner-Projekte sind zwischen 1991 und 1995 begonnen worden. Fernziel ist der Aufbau einer kontrastiven Valenzdatenbank mit den Daten von allen beteiligten Sprachen. Eine Verknüpfung mit der Datenbank von GRAMMIS wird angestrebt.

4. PROCOPE

Während sich alle bisher beschriebenen Projekte ausschließlich auf die Valenz der Verben beziehen, zielt das 1994 abgeschlossene PROCOPE-Projekt auf die Nominalvalenz. Es handelt sich um ein kooperatives Projekt des IDS mit dem LADL (Paris) und der Universität Aix-en-Provence. Es wurden sehr detaillierte Musterartikel zur Beschreibung deutscher und entsprechender abstrakter französischer Nomina ausgearbeitet, die an Übersetzer und Dolmetscher adressiert sind. Die Projektergebnisse sind in Druck. Diese Materialien werden auch von einer ungarischen Gruppe (Budapest/Szeged) genutzt, die ein Deutsch - Ungarisches Wörterbuch zur Nominalvalenz erarbeitet.

Helmut Schumacher
Institut für deutsche Sprache
Postfach 101621
D-68016 Mannheim
Telefon 0621/1581-421
Telefax 0621/1581-200
E-Mail:

Literatur

  • Bassola, Peter (1996): Arbeitsbericht: Das Projekt "Erstellung eines deutsch-ungarischen Substantivvalenzwörterbuches". In: D. Bresson/J. Kubczak (Hg.), Abstrakte Nomina. Tübingen. (erscheint 1996)
  • Bianco, Maria Teresa/Di Maio, Francesco (1991): DELIT: dizionario elettronico italiano-tedesco. Un progetto applicativo nell'ambito della teoria della valenza. In: Studi Italiani di Linguistica teorica ed applicata 20/1, 103-133.
  • Bresson, Daniel/Kubczak, Jacqueline (Hg.) (1996): Abstrakte Nomina. Vorarbeiten zu ihrer Erfassung in einem zweisprachigen syntagmatischen Wörterbuch. (= Studien zur deutschen Sprache). Tübingen (erscheint 1996).
  • Engel, Ulrich/Savin, Emilia u.a. (1983): Valenzlexikon deutschrumänisch. Dicionar de valen german-román. (= Deutsch im Kontrast 3). Heidelberg.
  • Engel, Ulrich/Schumacher, Helmut (1976, ²1978): Kleines Valenzlexikon deutscher Verben. (= Forschungsberichte des Instituts für deutsche Sprache 31). Tübingen.
  • Han, Wanheng (1994): Zur theoretischen Grundlage und Konzeption eines deutsch-chinesischen kontrastiven Valenzwörterbuchs. Vortrag auf der IDV-Regionaltagung, Peking 8. 1994. Tianjin (Manuskript).
  • Kubczak, Jacqueline/Costantino, Sylvie (1996): Das PROCOPE-Projekt: Kontrastive Lexikographie - Syntagmatisches Wörterbuch der Nomina deutsch-französisch/französisch-deutsch. In: D. Bresson/J. Kubczak (Hg.), Abstrakte Nomina. Tübingen (erscheint 1996).
  • KVL = Engel/Schumacher (1976, ²1978).
  • Rall, Dietrich/Rall, Marlene/Zorilla, Oscar (1980): Diccionario de valencias verbales. Alemán-Español. [Wörterbuch der verbalen Valenzen. Deutsch-Spanisch]. (= Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 134). Tübingen.
  • Schumacher, Helmut (1982): Zur maschinellen Erstellung eines Valenzregisters. In: H. Fix/A. Rothkegel/E. Stegentritt (Hg.), Sprachen und Computer. Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Hans Eggers 9. Juli 1982. (= Sprachwissenschaft- Computerlinguistik, Band 9). Dudweiler. S. 129-148.
  • Schumacher, Helmut (Hg.) (1986): Verben in Feldern. Valenzwörterbuch zur Syntax und Semantik deutscher Verben. (= Schriften des Instituts für deutsche Sprache 1). Berlin/New York.
  • Schumacher, Helmut (1995): Kontrastive Valenzlexikographie. In: H. Popp (Hg.) Deutsch als Fremdsprache. An den Quellen eines Faches. Festschrift für Gerhard Helbig zum 65. Geburtstag. München, S. 287-315.
  • Schumacher, Helmut (1996): Satzbaupläne und Belegungsregeln im Valenzwörterbuch deutscher Verben. In: G. Gréciano/H. Schumacher (Hg.), Lucien TESNIERE-Syntaxe structurale et opérations mentales. Akten des deutsch-französischen Kolloquiums anläßlich der 100. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages, Strasbourg 1993. (= Linguistische Arbeiten 348). Tübingen. S. 281 - 293.
  • VALBU = Valenzwörterbuch deutscher Verben (Arbeitstitel).
  • ViF = Schumacher (Hg.) (1986).

 

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