The Dutch verb schijnen exhibits a similar (but by no means

Different ways of seeming: the German ‘evidential’ verb scheinen and its Dutch cognate schijnen
The constructional variability associated with the German verb scheinen has been described by
Askedal (1998), Diewald (2000, 2001), Diewald & Smirnova (2010) and Vliegen (2011), among
others. Apart from occurring as an inferential evidential in combination with a zu-infinitive (see ex. 1),
German scheinen can function as a copula (ex. 2), can be complemented by clauses introduced by dass
and als (ob) (ex. 3-4), occurs in parenthetical constructions (ex. 5), as the matrix verb followed by a
so-called dependent main clause (ex. 6) and as a particle scheints (see Van Bogaert & Leuschner,
forthc., ex. 7).
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
Der Abschied
von der Glühlampe
scheint den Deutschen schwer zu
fallen
the farewell
of the light bulb
seems the Germans
heavy to
fall
“The Germans seem to find it difficult to say goodbye to the light bulb.”
Die
Hamburger
Polizei scheint machtlos. (HMP)
The
of.Hamburg
police seems powerless
“The police of Hamburg seems powerless.”
Vor Gericht
schien es so, dass
er
Demjanjuk
auf den Bildern […]
in court
seemed it so
that
he
Demjanjuk
on the photo’s
sofort
erkannt
hatte.
immediately
recognized
had.
“In court it seemed that he immediately recognized Demjanjuk on the photo’s.”
Es
schien fast
so,
als
könne
Porsche
it
seemed almost so
as.if
can.SUBJ
Porsche
das
Geld
selbst drucken, mit dem
es
VW
kaufte. (Z)
the
money itself
print
with which
it
VW
bought
“It almost seemed as if Porsche were able to print the money itself with which it bought VW.”
Das Netz,
so scheint es ,ist zum
Instrument
der
Freiheit geworden (Z)
the internet
so seems it is to.an
instrument
of
freedom become
“The internet, so it seems, has become an instrument of freedom.”
Mir
scheint, ich habe eine
andere
Leseart
für
dieses Buch
to.me
seems I have a
different
interpretation
for
this
book
anzubieten (DWDS)
to.offer.
“I think I have a different interpretation for this book.”
die haben’s halt scheints angebetet oder so (DGD_1.0: ZW879)
“they adulated it it seems or something” (example and translation taken from Van Bogaert & Leuschner,
forthc.)
The Dutch verb schijnen exhibits a similar (but by no means identical) constructional
variability. In my presentation, based on a corpus analysis of both spoken and written German
and Dutch language material, I will try to show that a) the constructional variability of
German scheinen and Dutch schijnen is crucially linked to the meaning of both verbs (contra
Lampert & Lampert 2010); b) register is important to the extent that particular construction
types can be shown to be typical of spoken language. More in particular, it will be argued that
reportive uses of schijnen/scheinen (in which the verb refers to hearsay) are typically found in
syntactic patterns with an impersonal subject (e.g. het schijnt dat/es scheint, dass ‘it seems
that’), in which the verb unambiguously scopes over a proposition. Such uses are relatively
rare in German (in which scheinen is mainly used as an inferential evidential), but much more
frequent in Dutch, especially in spoken Belgian Dutch.
References
Askedal, J.O. 1998. Satzmustervariation und Hilfsverbproblematik beim deutschen Verb
scheinen. In Deutsche Grammatik - Thema in Variationen, K. Donhauser and L.
Eichinger (eds), 49-74. Heidelberg: Winter.
Diewald, G. 2000. Scheinen als Faktizitätsmarker. In Wortschatz und Orthographie in
Geschichte und Gegenwart. Festschrift für Horst Haider Munske zum 65. Geburtstag.
M. Habermann, P. O. Müller and B. Naumann (eds.), 333-355. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Diewald, G. 2001. Scheinen-Probleme: Analogie, Konstruktionsmischung und die
Sogwirkung aktiver Grammatikalisierungskanäle. In Modalität und Modalverben im
Deutschen, R. Müller and M. Reis (eds.), 87-110. Hamburg: Buske.
Diewald, G. and Smirnova, E. 2010. Evidentiality in German. Linguistic realization and
regularities in grammaticalization. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lampert, G. and Lampert, M. 2010. Where does evidentiality reside? Notes on (alleged)
limiting cases: seem and be like. In STUF Akademie Verlag 63(4): 308-321.
Van Bogaert, J. and Leuschner, T. to appear. Dutch (‚t) schijnt/German scheint(‚)s: On the
grammaticalization of evidential particles. Studia Linguistica.
Vliegen, M. 2011. Scheinbar identisch: niederländisch schijnen, deutsch scheinen In Neue
linguistische Perspektiven, W. Kürschner, R. Rapp, J. Strässler, M. Vliegen and H. Weber
(eds.), 231-244. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.