Es regnete Anfragen und ehe er sich's versah, schneite ihm eine Überraschung ins Haus. Zur synchronen Variierbarkeit der Valenz der Witterungsverben / Es regnete Anfragen und ehe er sich's versah, schneite ihm eine Überraschung ins Haus. The synchronous variability of the valence of ‘weather’ verbs
DOI: 10.23817/bzspr.7-7 (published online: 2021-04-02)
pp. 121–144
Keywords: weather verbs, primary valence, valence enhancement
As a result of grammaticalisation processes, within various constructions the pronoun es could establish itself as the subject of these constructions. Amongst them, verbs describing the weather constitute a rather small and semantically defined verb subclass. The es-subject is regarded as a peripheral subject realisation with an abstract meaning. Since the ‘weather’ verbs are a verb group firmly anchored in the German verb system, analogous to other constructions, their primary valence varies too. The valence enhancement, i.e. the two- or multi-digit usage, allows the ‘weather’ verbs to be used as verbs of visual perception, verbs of movement, and verba dicendi. Based on the verb regnen ‘to rain’, the article more closely examines the synchronous variability of its valence.
Texts published in the ‘Beiträge zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft / Contributions to General and Comparative Linguistics’ are available in the Open Access on the basis of the CC BY-SA license.
