Volumes

Journal for German and Scandinavian Studies, Volume 4, 2024

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Editors: Ivan Tenev, Maria Endreva

Publikation date: 26.11.2024

ISSN: 2815-2867

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.

Contents

Author List

Foreword

LINGUISTICS

Chronology, discourse structure and change of stance adding to communicative projects with turn-initial sen in talk-in-interaction (in Swedish)

Viktoria Strandberg University of Gothenburg (Sweden)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.14-34

Swedish syntax normally allows only one constituent before the finite verb in a main clause. This is captured by the so called V2 rule. Main clauses with two constituents before the finite verb are referred to as V3 structures. These are often described as a feature unique to urban vernacular Swedish. In this article, I show that this is not the case. Drawing on Interactional Linguistics, I investigate the interactional function of 206 V2 and V3 structures initiated by the adverb sen ‘then’ in ten different conversation podcasts. The canonical V2 structure is by far the most common one for sen, but one fifth of all turn-initial sen are V3 structures. Regardless of the syntactical structure, sen always creates an addition to a previously initiated communicative project. In this addition, sen can have three different meaning potentials. First, sen can add to the communicative project chronologically by emphasizing the temporal relations between different events. Second, sen can structure the discourse by dividing a communicative project in smaller parts, without chronological emphasis. Third, sen is used when speakers change their stance on a subject or introduce a counterargument. All three meanings of sen occur in V2, but the chronological meaning is very rare in V3. Initiating V3, sen is mostly used to structure the discourse and tends to be less prominent prosodically. This suggests that sen in V3 behaves much like a conjunctional discourse particle.

Keywords: sen, Swedish syntax, V3, Interactional Lexicology, talk-in-interaction

The Diderichsen model as a surface linearisation apparatus for x-bar grammars (in Bulgarian)

Konstantin Radoev Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.35-53

The article presents a theoretical comparison between the descriptive force of two models of the Mainland Scandinavian sentence (focusing in particular on Swedish and Danish) – the traditional functional model by Paul Diderichsen, split into a front, center, and final field, and the tripartite generative X-бар model, split into a complementiser phrase (CP or CvP for the purposes of the article, also called the contextual phrase f. p. a.), an inflectional phrase (IP or IvP f. p. a.), and a verb phrase (vP or LvP f. p. a.). The text will focus on the left periphery. Based on previous research, the article puts forward the hypothesis that such a comparison could serve as the starting point for the construction of a surface-level linear model of the Bulgarian sentence, similar to the Diderichsen model. Such a model can have potential application as a tertium comparationis in the teaching of Mainland Scandinavian languages to students with L1 Bulgarian, and for foreigners learning Bulgarian as an L2.

Keywords: sentence structure, Diderichsen sentence model, left periphery, Swedish, Danish, Bulgarian

Nina Grønnum’s model of Danish intonation from an autosegmental-metrical perspective

Maria Bakalova Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.54-71

The purpose of this article is to present an overview of Nina Grønnum’s model of Danish intonation and discuss its central assumptions from the perspective of the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory of intonational phonology. An attempt is made to outline key differences between Grønnum’s model and AM models, as well as summarize the findings from recent empirical investigations of intonation in Danish spontaneous speech and discuss their implications for phonological modeling. Based on that, the article argues that AM theory is not incompatible with the data for Danish intonation (as has been previously claimed by Grønnum). Rather, it is hypothesized that an AM model for Danish would be able to provide a more accurate account of melodic variation in Danish spontaneous speech.

Keywords: Danish intonation, phonological modeling, autosegmental-metrical theory, accent, stress

On the possibilities of subject indexing in complement infinitive clauses (based on material from German and other related languages)

Emilia Dencheva Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.72-90

The article deals with ways of encoding the subject of infinitive clauses in a number of Indo-Germanic languages. There are claims that infinitive clauses never have their own subject, but that this is implied by a part of the main clause. What infinitive clauses don’t actually have is their own syntactic position for the subject. Because with them the verb phrase is formulated in infinite terms and the congruence between subject and verb cannot be established. However, the loss of the infinite verb’s ability to exercise direct control over the carrier/recipient of the action expressed by it is not accompanied by a loss of the logical-semantic connection with it. The results of the study make it clear that this relation is always present, i.e. the subject of the infinitive is always referentially clear. The only difference is that in the Germanic languages, but also in the Romance and Slavic languages, which have an infinitive with clearly defined verbal behavior, there are complex sentence structures whose infinitive complement contains an implicit subject and those which contain an explicit subject. In the first case, it is a PRO subject that is lexically suppressed and is signaled by a referentially identical subject or object noun phrase in the superordinate structure (= antecedent). In the second case, however, the subject of the infinitive appears to function on a morphosyntactic level as a constituent (subject or object) of the main clause, but is logically and semantically connected only to the subordinate infinitive and is accordingly explicitly signaled. These are the so-called aci-, nci– and dci-constructions.

Keywords: subject of the infinitive, PRO subject, implicit subject of the infinitive, infinitive constructions with an explicit subject, aci-, nci- and dci-constructions

LITERARY STUDIES

Judith Hermann’s early stories – description of subjective sensitivies or a critical diagnosis of the time? (in German)

Svetlana Arnaudova Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.92-107

After the publication of Judith Hermann’s first volume of short stories, Summerhouse Later, literary criticism attested to Hermann’s characters’ aloofness and lack of ambition and initiative and placed them in a Berlin artistic scene that lives without major goals or projects and is hardly touched by the outside world. The article puts forward the thesis that this reception of Hermann’s early texts has changed over time and that today one can place her stories in a broader political and historical context. Against the background of advancing globalization, Hermann’s texts prove to be a subtle diagnosis of the times and a criticism of the negative consequences of globalization.

Keywords: aloofness, artistic scene, globalization, cultural industry

Vienna as one of Paul Celan’s first publication places (in German)

Tymofiy Havryliv National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Ukraine)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.108-116

This article is focused on the publications of the German-speaking poet Paul Celan, who comes from Černivci in Bukovina, during his stay in Vienna. “Viennese” publications are treated in the context of the poet’s stay in Vienna and in the context of his oeuvre. Inasmuch as the period before Celan’s stay in Vienna found its way into his early work, it is also taken into account. Although the Vienna period marks the end of the first period of Celan’s life, it is anticipated and influenced by the events that preceded it as well as by the cultural and historical situation. With the arrival in Vienna, the dilemma of the German mother language versus the murderer’s language was sealed once and for all. The themes of the mainly lyrical texts published during the stay in Vienna will then be further developed. The Shoah experience, which was already discussed in early lyrical work, brought about a radical rethinking of the role of poetry and its formal parameters.

Keywords: Shoah, periodization, fact, interpretation, compression of lyrical speaking

Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutics: identity and biography as construction (in German)

Andreas Chetkowsky Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.117-129

Writing one’s own life story on the basis of one’s memories has the risk of falsification due to unreliable memory. Memory plays a decisive role in Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutic concept and his idea of life history as a whole. For Wilhelm Dilthey, the autobiographical genre is best suited to applying his method of understanding in the humanities. In the context of the subjectivity discourse of the 1970s and psychoanalytical findings, many writers had doubts about the truthfulness of a hermeneutic representation of remembered life. Using the example of Elias Canetti’s autobiographical writing, it is shown that, despite psychoanalytic theories, he follows the hermeneutic approach by adhering to Dilthey´s life-historical-biographical concept of wholeness. His conviction of an unbroken memory enables him to express his identity as an author in his autobiography.

Keywords: hermeneutic, autobiography, humanities, coherence of life, memories

H. C. Andersen’s fairy tales as a possible source for the genesis of “A Dream Play” by A. Strindberg (in Bulgarian)

Elizaria Ruskova “Lyuben Grois” Theatre College (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.130-144

The article compares Strindberg’s “A Dream Play” with two tales by H. C. Andersen – “The Galoshes of Fortune” and “The Nightcap of the Pebersvend” – focusing on the concepts of space-time and the function of the stage or narrative object. Central to the analysis is the category of the “uncanny”, defined by Tsvetan Todorov as “experience of the borders”. The emphasis on spatial motifs and their dynamics creates the effect of “the uncanny”, which becomes an aesthetic category connecting Andersen’s Romanticism with Strindberg’s Modernism.

Keywords: the “uncanny”, Andersen, Strindberg, the functions of a narrative/stage object

CULTURAL AND COUNTRY STUDIES

The encoding of names with letter notation in the German musical tradition. B-A-C-H as an idea, ideal and ideology (in Bulgarian)

Iliya Gramatikov National Academy of Music “Prof. Pancho Vladigerov” (Bulgaria)

doi: https://doi.org/10.60055/GerSk.2024.4.146-169

Тhe present study examines several compositions representative of the German musical tradition, wherein the basic musical material has been derived through the cryptographic procedure of encoding names with the letter designations of the pitches (i.e. letter notation). Three main thematic lines are highlighted in the research: the possible meanings embedded in the works by means of the applied cryptographic compositional approach; the tradition among German composers of inlaying tone monograms in their works of significance; the application of musical cryptographic procedures as a strategy of artistic legitimation. The starting point of the analysis is the idea of Bach’s personality and music as an enduring ideal that remains relevant – a foundation of a creative ideology that evolves over time.

Keywords: musical cryptography, composers’ monograms, Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Arnold Schönberg

TRANSLATIONS OF PROSE AND POETRY

Translations of poetry from Danish and Norwegian

Mihail Baykov

The selected poems here introduce the Bulgarian reading audience to both well-known and lesser-known representatives of contemporary Norwegian and Danish poetic art.

Poems from the Poetry translation competition from foreign languages into Bulgarian, titled “The world within us through language and writing”

Radost Yovkova, Ivaylo Aleksandrov, Yoan-Konstantin Velkov

On the occasion of the Day of Bulgarian Language and Culture 24th of May and as part of the St. Kliment’s Days, the Faculty of Classical and Modern Languages at Sofia University organized a poetry translation competition from a foreign language into Bulgarian under the title “The World is Within Us Through Language and Writing.”

The lecturers in Norwegian at the Scandinavian Studies Programme provided one of the most lyrical poems by the renowned Norwegian poet, writer, and translator of poetry and drama, Inger Hagerup, for the competition. The poem, Two Tongues (To tunger), is from the collection Stanza with the Wind (Strofe med vinden, 1959).

Translations of excerpts from the late works of Knut Hamsun

The translations were created by third-year students of the Scandinavian Studies program, who show a particular interest in Scandinavian literatures, the complete works of Knut Hamsun, and other Scandinavian authors.

AWARD-WINNING TEXTS FROM UNIVERSITY AND SCHOOL STUDENT COMPETITIONS

Texts awarded in the third edition of the Prof. Boris Parashkevov student competition for translation from German

Nia Spasova, Veronika Delcheva

In the third edition of the Student Translation Competition from German, participants had the opportunity to choose between working on an excerpt from the latest novel by contemporary German writer Jan Peter Bremer, Nachhausekommen (Berlin/Munich: Berlin Verlag, 2023), and a passage from Juliane Rebentisch’s monograph Der Streit um Pluralität. Auseinandersetzungen mit Hannah Arendt (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2022), dedicated to Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy on pluralism.

Prof. Vera Gancheva competition for translation from Scandinavian languages

Nikol Stamenova, Gergana Vaseva, Radost Yovkova, Lora Angelova, Nia Spasova, Tsvetina Kirilova

At the beginning of 2024, the Scandinavian Studies Programme at the Department of German and Scandinavian Studies at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski held the 3rd edition of the translation competition for literary prose and poetry for university and school students learning Scandinavian languages. The competition is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Vera Gancheva, a distinguished Scandinavianist, translator, teacher, publisher, and scholar. A total of 21 participants took part in the third edition, submitting 31 translations overall.

Annual Danish language essay competition

Yoan Ivanov, Gergana Vaseva, Aglaja Bineva

Since 2015, the Hans Christian Andersen Centre for Research and Information at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski in collaboration with the Embassy of Denmark in Sofia and the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces (Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen), has organised the Annual Danish Language Essay Competition.

STUDENTS PROJECTS

Didactic change through podcasts in foreign language teaching – a student project (in German)

Jacqueline Dyballa

This article presents the podcast project to honor the 100th anniversary of German Philology at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. After a brief overview of the advantages of using podcasts in foreign language teaching, the project is presented in more detail. The individual phases are described: Preparation and planning, as well as production and publication. This is followed by an evaluation of the project from the perspective of both the participants and the teacher. At the end, an idea is given as to the general ways in which podcasts should be given more attention in foreign language teaching and what extensions or follow-up projects can be created with the podcast produced. The main aim of the article is to encourage project-oriented forms of teaching.

Keywords: podcast, project-oriented teaching, new media.

Felix Lobrecht’s novel „Sonne und Beton“ in the context of German as a foreign language (in German)

Angel Boyanov, Jacqueline Dyballa, Maria Nikolaeva, Ivan Stoyanov

In this article, the results of the book review of the novel “Sonne und Beton” by Felix Lobrecht are recorded. In addition to a brief author profile, the four main characters are examined and compared with each other. In addition, the language of the novel, which is characterized by the youth language and the Berlin dialect, is analyzed. Finally, the Gropiusstadt, where the novel is set, is discussed and what role the place plays not only in the novel Sonne und Beton, but also in the novel “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” by Christiane F.

Keywords: contemporary literature, youth language, dialect

My first experience with academic research (in German)

Viktoria Atanasova

The subject of the research was the German phraseme construction [von A (N1) so viel verstehen wie X von Y (N2)]. Fixed realizations of this construction include, for example, von A so viel verstehen wie der Hahn vom Eierlegen/ wie die Kuh vom Radfahren/ wie die Kuh vom Sonntag/ wie die Kuh vom Schachspielen.

REVIEWS

Radoslava Minkova, Diana Stantcheva, Ewa Wojno-Owczarska, Alexandra Preitschopf, Stanislava Ilieva (Hrsg.): „Wendezeiten: Erfahrungen – Ewartungen – Erzählugen“. Plovdiv: Universitetsko izdatelstvo „Paisii Hilendarski“ 2023, 353 S.

Marie-Christin Lercher, Annegret Middeke

Der Sammelband „WENDEZEITEN: Erfahrungen – Erwartungen – Erzählungen“ vereint wissenschaftliche Beiträge, die im Rahmen der 7. Internationalen Konferenz des Bulgarischen Germanistenverbandes (BGV) präsentiert und diskutiert wurden. Ein zentraler Anlass der Konferenz war unter anderem das Ende der langen, durch die Covid-19-Pandemie bedingten Online-Phase, die sowohl Tagungen als auch den Unterricht an Schulen und Universitäten stark beeinflusst hatte.

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