Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

158 Workshops
Anscheinend ‘apparently, seemingly’ vs. scheinbar ‘seemingly,
at first sight’ in German:
apparently only some people care
Ammann, Andreas
University of Bremen
aammann@uni-bremen.de
The German verb scheinen ‘seem’ has been placed into the context of German modality by
several linguists (e.g. Diewald 2001). My focus will be on two modal expressions derived
from it: anscheinend and scheinbar. Conservative descriptions of German grammar assign
slightly distinct meanings to these modal adverbs. While both express that something seems
to be the case, scheinbar carries an additional counterfactual element: in reality it is not the
case (Zifonun et al. 1997: 1133). I argue that it is most feasible to paraphrase the textbook
definition of anscheinend as in (1a) and that of scheinbar as in (1b):
(1a) it seems that p holds
(1b) it only seems that p holds
The counterfactual reading of scheinbar is entailed in (1b), but not part of the encoded
meaning.
It is well known that the distinction between (1a) and (1b) is not consistently observed in the
spoken language, but the details are controversial. Some sources state that anscheinend and
scheinbar alternate freely (e.g.Scholze-Stubenrecht et al. 1997). A more precise claim is made e.g. by
Bierwisch et al. (s.d.), an online dictionary based on contemporary spoken and written data. It ascribes
both the meanings in (1a) and (1b) to anscheinend, and to scheinbar as well, but in its case only for the
spoken register. The entry suggests that scheinbar is still restricted to (1b) in written German.
My paper tackles the following questions:
• What can we say about the distribution of the two adverbs in journalistic texts? How
does this compare to the use in online message boards – a genre that is written, but
comes very close to colloquial speech in terms of informality?
• Assuming that the adverbs, as well as scheinen, can be interpreted as inferential
(=indirect evidential) or epistemic qualifications (=not stated as factual by the
speaker): are there contexts in which evidential meaning components are prominent,
or epistemic ones?
• What is the place of expressions of (1a) on an epistemic scale between weak
possibility and strong probability?
• appear to /seem to and apparently/seemingly in English?
References
Bierwisch, Manfred et al. (s.d.): Das digitale Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache des 20. Jh.
http//:www.dwds.de (consulted in June 2006)
Diewald, Gabriele (2001): “Scheinen-Probleme: Analogie, Konstruktionsmischung und die
Sogwirkung aktiver Grammatikalisierungskanäle”. In: Reimar Müller & Marga Reis
(eds.) (2001): Modalität und Modalverben im Deutschen. Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 87-
110.
Scholze-Stubenrecht, Werner et al. ( 4 1997): Duden Richtiges und gutes Deutsch: Wörterbuch
der sprachlichen Zweifelsfälle. Mannheim: Dudenverlag.
Zifonun, Gisela et al. (1997): Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Band II. Berlin /New York:
de Gruyter.