“Im Moment herrscht hier Party ohne Ende”.  Temporal expressions and patterns between time reference and modal functions

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My talk deals with a specific type of lexicon entries namely binary preposition-noun combinations (PNC’s) like nach Jahren (after years), ohne Ende (without end) or im Moment (at the moment). The main characteristic of those combinations is the recurrent internal zero gap. Despite the fact that the omission of the determiner can often be explained by grammatical rules the zero gaps indicate a higher degree of lexicalization. Therefore, we interpret these expressions as minimal phraseological units with holistic meanings and functions. The corpus-driven exploration of typical context patterns (e.g. using collocation profiles and the lexpan slot filler analysis) shows that a) even such minimal expressions are based on semi-abstract schemes and models and b) temporal expressions can also fulfill modal or discursive functions, usually with fuzzy borders and overlapping structures. In case of modalization or pragmatization one can regard PNCs as single lexicon entries. After discussing some issues and examples concerning the functional change of PNCs, I go into the project PREPCON – Preposition+Noun+Combinations in context (cf. Steyer 2018). This project is focused on the bottom-up description of PNCs and their underlying patterns. A central component is a contrastive pilot study of PNC’s GERMAN – SLOVAKIAN – SPANISH based on our pattern-detecting methodology. All results are published in new forms of data-driven lexicographic representation.

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Reference

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Steyer, Kathrin (Ed.) (2018): Sprachliche Verfestigung. Wortverbindungen, Muster, Phrasem-Konstruktionen.  (Studien zur Deutschen Sprache 79) Narr: Tübingen.