Harald Weinrich

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Harald Weinrich (born September 24, 1927 in Wismar ) is a German Romance scholar , Germanist , linguist and literary scholar . His two text grammars for French (1982) and German (1993) are considered standard works.

Live and act

After serving in the war and being a prisoner of war, Weinrich studied Romance studies , German , Latin studies and philosophy in Münster, Freiburg, Toulouse and Madrid. He received his doctorate in 1954 in Münster under Heinrich Lausberg and received his habilitation there four years later.

Weinrich received his doctorate with a thesis on "Ingenium Don Quichotes" and submitted his habilitation thesis on "Phonological Studies in the History of Romance Language" at the University of Münster. Weinrich received his first professorship as Romance studies at the age of 32 in Kiel and was later appointed to Cologne , to Bielefeld , where he was also director at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research from 1972 to 1974 , and to Munich . In 1992 he was appointed professor at the Paris Collège de France , where he taught until 1998. He was visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan and Princeton and a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin . At the Scuola Normale in Pisa he held the Galileo chair.

Together with Irmgard Ackermann, he initiated the literary reception of German-language migrant literature during his time as a full professor at the Institute for “German as a Foreign Language” at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (from the winter semester 1978/79) , which among other things 1985 led to the establishment of the annual Adelbert von Chamisso Prize for German-writing authors of non-German origin.

Weinrich is a member of several national and international academies, including the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome) since 2003 and the Accademia della Crusca in Florence since 1977, as well as the PEN Center Germany . As a member of the German Language Association , he supports the Lebendiges Deutsch campaign . 1949 Weinrich was a student member of the Catholic Student Association Hansea Hall to the Cathedral, in KV . The Romance languages left in May 2013 his archive by way of premature legacy to the German Literature Archive in Marbach .

stylistics

“There is the famous Weinrich sound, his style that sets him apart from so many other German-writing scholars. He writes clearly, gracefully, even cheerfully relaxed, but this relaxedness is always restrained by seriousness, the Roman male virtue of gravitas. […] Weinrich was already a professor at the age of 32 - in Kiel. Then it went to Cologne, to Bielefeld, where he co-founded a university of a new type (the magic word at the time was 'interdisciplinarity'), to Munich. Yes, and then I was offered a full professorship in Romance studies at the legendary 'Collège de France' in Paris. A German professor in this institute founded by Franz I in 1529 is sensational: 'an important event in European science policy', wrote Wolf Lepenies . The now double emeritus has received all prizes that come into question in his area. And he created an important one himself: the 'Adelbert von Chamisso Prize' from the Robert Bosch Foundation for foreigners who write in German. "

- Hans-Martin Gauger : Our time is short. For the 80th birthday of the great linguist and literary scholar Harald Weinrich. In: Tagesspiegel, September 24, 2007.

In 1992 he received the Bavarian Literature Prize (Karl Vossler Prize) for scientific representations of literary rank.

Weinrich's text grammar

Weinrich (1993) presented his own attempt with his text grammar . This is not a matter of text grammar in the sense of a linguistic discipline, but of the attempt to write a grammar from a perspective that is different in comparison to other approaches - from the perspective of the text or its cohesive means that interweave the text.

Weinrich deals in large parts with the classic topics of grammar: morphology and syntax, but also assumes dialogical texts, which is particularly clearly expressed in Chapter 8: Syntax of Dialogue . Accordingly, he also describes his work as dialogue grammar .

Tempus theory in narrative texts

Temporary groups

For Weinrich, three pairs of opposites are decisive in explaining the entire tense system of a language. Weinrich's endeavor is to develop completely different categories for the tense systems, which led him to consider the tenses as communicatively oriented categories. Additional terms required for understanding are:

  • Speech posture as well as the posture generated by the posture of the speaker in the recipient or listener, the
  • Tense Register: Discuss vs. Tell
  • Speaker or tempo perspective: review vs. preview
  • Tense relief: foreground vs. Background.

Through his speaking posture, his attitude to the action or the event, the speaker signals to the listener either that he should adopt an attitude of tension at reception or that he should adopt an attitude of relaxedness. The two different tense registers concern the speaking posture that the speaker adopts or the reception posture that is expected from the listener. The tense attitude is the world being discussed and contrasts with the relaxed attitude of the world being told. In the German language, the tense register of the world under discussion primarily includes the compound perfect, the present and the future, while the narrated world includes the past perfect, the past tense, the simple perfect and the conditional.

The tempo perspective is divided into a neutral perspective and a difference perspective. The latter is in turn divided into a rear perspective and a forward perspective. The tense perspective corresponds to what is called simultaneity in traditional grammar . In Weinrich's work, the perspective of difference is further subdivided into a retrospective or post-timeliness and a preview or prematureness .

With the tempo perspective, Weinrich differentiates the speaking time or text time from the act time or action time . To a certain extent, the speaker instructs the listener to look back at the act time or to look ahead to the act time. Weinrich concludes from this that in addition to the tenses of the retrospective, there are also tenses of the foresight. As indicated by the term text time, this is understood to mean the time that represents the text and its passages in its complete chronological sequence. A narrative text is shaped by its actions and events, these are in a temporal order, such a temporal sequence of actions and events marks the action time. At these passages in the text, the recipient recognizes the clues that can provide information about the differences between the text time and the action time and whether the action time is before or after the text time. If the action time lies before the text time, the recipient is now able to look back on the action communicated or read as a piece of the past. According to Weinrich, this perspective is the rear perspective or the retrospective tempo . But if the action time is after the text time, the recipient is forced to see the action as an expression of an expected future. Weinrich calls this view forward perspective or preview tempo .

Weinrich divides the different tenses in narrative texts into two groups, one group are the discussing tenses , including the present tense (fr. Présent, span. Presente), the perfect tense (fr. Passé composé, span. Pretérito perfecto), future tense I and II (span. Futuro simple, Futuro perfecto) and the narrative tenses , the past tense (fr. Imparfait, span. Pretérito imperfecto; fr. Passé simple , span. Pretérito indefinido), the plus quamperfectum, (fr. Plus- que-perfait, span. Pretérito pluscuamperfecto ), subjunctive I and II (fr. Conditionnel I and Conditionnel II, span. Condicional simple and Condicional perfecto).

Text examples for the tenses to be discussed are speeches, pronunciations, surveys, announcements , confessions , consultations, debates , radio plays , legislation, interpretations , comments , criticisms , minutes , statements of accounts, stage directions , verbal reports, résumé , lessons, negotiations , contracts, advertising.

Text examples for narrative tenses are ballads , experience reports , fables , historiography, memories of youth, résumés, fairy tales , memoirs , myths , retellings , novellas , travelogues, written reports, novels , crime reports, utopias, written witness reports, newspaper reports .

Among the mentioned tenses of the world under discussion, the compound perfect in German would be a review tense and the future tense would be a preview tense . Of the tenses of the narrated world, the past perfect would then be a retrospective tense and the conditional a preview tense .

Independently, a speaker can also tell the listener that the relationship between speaking time and act time is of no importance. This category of the world under discussion, referred to by Weinrich as zero tenses , is the present tense and the tenses of the narrated world are the simple perfect and the imperfect. Both tenses differed in terms of the relief . The simple perfect would be the tense of the foreground of the action, the past tense that of the background of the action.

Verbalizations that are made in these two different speaking positions stand for a tense or discussing tense as well as a relaxed or narrative tense. In a tense or discussing tense, the speaker wants to act on a listener, he wants to discuss the past, because although the event or action is past, it is closer to the present than the present. What the tense refers to is relevant to speaker and listener alike.

In contrast to the relaxed or narrative tense through the choice of the tense and the resulting distance to what the speaker is referring to, the direct connection between the speaking situation and the event or action is lost.

Weinrich thus changes the classic concept of tense insofar as the (classifiable) tense forms are signs that require the listener to adopt a specific attitude in the act of communication. The tenses give expression to a speaking posture, i.e. how the speaker stands or should stand about a text, either discussing / tense or narrating / relaxed. The speaker's perspective is a linear sequence of tense signs related to a text.

The textual foreground or background is described with tense relief.

His hypothesis is that the tense has nothing to do with the time levels of traditional grammars - the tenses for the time levels past, future and present. It would be the past tense not with the past, the present is not with the present and the future tense is not with the future in direct connection. According to his considerations, the tenses refer neither to natural, physical time nor to a fictional time in literary texts.

Characteristics of the narrative tense, structure of a narrative

According to Weinrich, stories are ideally described by a general construction. It is the level of the tense relief . At the beginning of the story it is necessary to expand the content to be described, this introduction is in the background tense, for the Romance languages ​​( using the example of French and Spanish, these would be the tenses for. Imparfait and Spanish. Pretérito imperfecto ). The conclusion often seeks an explicit derivation, which is also often in the background tempora. In the actual narrative core one finds the tenses of the background (fr. Imparfait, plus-que-parfait; span. Pretérito imperfecto and pluscuamperfecto) in the secondary circumstances, i.e. descriptions, remarks, reflections and descriptions of objects or circumstances that the narrator has pushed into the background want to see. As for the background, there is also a certain margin of discretion for the foreground, but the foreground tense often reports on that for whose sake the story is told, what would be shown in a summary or what makes a listener listen (the tenses of the foreground are in the Romance languages ​​fr. passé simple and span. pretérito indefinido). From this point of view, the background would be that which would not induce anyone to listen continuously, but which would make it easier for the listener to orientate himself in the narrated text.

Weinrich calls this textual distinction between a foreground and a background relief . In addition, the sequence of tenses in a text is to a certain extent ordered, so one very often finds clusters of one and the same tense, Weinrich speaks of tense nests in immediate context.

Awards

Weinrich is an honorary doctor from the Universities of Bielefeld , Heidelberg and Augsburg .

Harald Weinrich visiting professor

At the end of June 2015, Bielefeld University announced that it was setting up a guest lecturer's position from the 2016 summer semester, which had been named after Weinrich. The first lecturer will be Claire Kramsch from the University of California at Berkeley.

Fonts (selection)

  • 1956: The Ingenium Don Quixote
  • 1958: Phonological studies on Romance language history
  • 1964: Tempus. Discussed and told world . New edition: CH Beck, Munich 2001 ISBN 3-406-47876-X
  • 1966: Linguistics of Lies
  • 1971: Literature for Readers
  • 1982: Text grammar of the French language
  • 1985: Paths of language culture . Stuttgart: German publishing company. ISBN 3-421-06283-8 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988. ISBN 3-423-04486-1 )
  • 1993: Text grammar of the German language with the collaboration of Maria Thurmair, Eva Breindl, Eva-Maria Willkop. Dudenverlag, Mannheim / Leipzig / Vienna / Zurich 1993. ISBN 3-411-05261-9 .
  • 1997: Lethe. Art and criticism of oblivion
  • 2001: A Little Literary History of Merriment
  • 2001: Language, that is, languages. With a complete list of the author's publications 1956–2001. Tübingen, Narr Verlag.
  • 2004: short time. Art and Economy of the Temporary Life
  • 2006: Quante lingue per l'Europa? Cagliari, CUEC Editore (with list of publications up to 2006).
  • 2007: How civilized is the devil? Brief visits to good and bad
  • 2008: From the life and reading of animals. A bestiary . ISBN 978-3-406-57822-9
  • 2012: About having. 33 views . ISBN 978-3-406-64094-0

literature

  • Annegret Bollée : Aspects of Contemporary Italian II: Structures. Lecture held in summer semester 2001 Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, p. 64f.
  • Laura Drößler: Harald Weinrich's tempo theory. A comparison of the categories and tenses in French and German. Term paper, University of Kassel, Grin Verlag, Munich 2012
  • Gianni Sammarro: The simple past as the zero tense of the narrated world. Seminar paper, Grin Verlag, Munich 2001
  • Gerold Hilty: tense, aspect, mode. Vox Romanica Band (Year): 24 (1965)
  • Hans-Martin Gauger: A true grammarian. Harald Weinrich on his ninetieth birthday . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 222, September 23, 2017. Features p. 12.

Web links

Wikiquote: Harald Weinrich  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.bosch-stiftung.de/content/language1/html/14796.asp
  2. ^ Membership list of the Crusca
  3. ↑ Academic Monthly Bulletin 2014, p. 275
  4. ↑ Marbach as a destination in FAZ from May 31, 2013
  5. ^ Winner of the Karl Vossler Prize ( Memento from June 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture, Science and Art
  6. ^ Katrin surcharge: Narrative and literary translation: narrative features as invariants of translation. Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-8233-5889-8 , p. 161
  7. ^ Lutz Danneberg; Jürg Niederhauser: Forms of presentation of the sciences in contrast: Aspects of methodology, theory and empiricism. Gunter Narr Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-8233-5345-4 , pp. 375-376
  8. ↑ Harald Weinrich: Tempus. Discussed and told world. HC Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47876-X , p. 110 f.
  9. ↑ Harald Weinrich: Tempus. Discussed and told world. HC Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47876-X , p. 118 f.
  10. ↑ Harald Weinrich: Tempus. Discussed and told world. HC Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47876-X , p. 28
  11. ^ Robert Bosch Foundation: Weinrich, Harald .
  12. ^ Joseph Breitbach Prize: 2003 Prize Winners: Harald Weinrich, Herta Müller, Christoph Meckel
  13. ^ Fondation Charles Veillon: " Harald Weinrich: Prix Européen de l'Essai Charles Veillon 2013, pour l'ensemble de son œuvre ( Memento of October 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive )", March 23, 2014.
  14. ↑ New guest chair honors linguistics pioneer Weinrich. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of June 30, 2015, p. 31
personal data
SURNAME Weinrich, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Romanist
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Wismar