Some Remarks on the Generic Use of the German Definite Article from Cognitive Point of View.

The German definite article is considered as one of the problematic areas by Polish learning German. The semantic description of that grammatical category as a language expression of the definiteness, for example in the case of the anaphoric or cataphoric use can be based on the textual context, but the generic use can be explained by the frame concept. The present paper attempts to apply the concepts “definiteness” and “uniqueness” for that use in terms of the cognitive frame, the author focuses on finding a common denominator for all types of using the definite article in the German.

Some remarks about the theory and method of comparativist imagology and of the study of strangeness in literary works

The paper is an attempt to present my own complementary hermeneutic conceptions of the interpretation of strangeness in literary works comparativist imagology and the two concepts of strangeness, based on Paul Ricoeur's and Bernhard Waldenfels’s hermeneutic phenomenology, which I apply in three short interpretations of Heimito von Doderer’s story Das letzte Abenteuer. Ein Ritterroman (the third version of 1936).

Cognition-Emotion-Volition. Fritz Hermanns’ contribution to linguistic discourse analysis

The article discusses Hermanns’ three-dimensional concept of meaning. According to this concept, based on Bühler`s model of signs, meaning exhibits cognitive, emotive and volitive, i.e. deontic components. Lexical meanings have to be determined by means of linguistic discourse analysis since they are conceived as the cognitions, emotions and volitions of social groups, i.e. as mutual knowledge and the expression of a collective mentality.

Why everyone is the Smith of their own happiness: The origin of one german proverb

The article looks into the etymology of the German proverb Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied (Every man is the smith of his own happiness = Every man is the architect of his own fortune). The analysis of the proverb is linked to Keller’s “Der Schmied seines Glückes”, where the phraseological unit in question is applied to the author’s text in reverse order – from a vague concept to a concrete meaning – thus, acting as a means of text organization and revealing the idea that the protagonist found his happiness in making nails.
The undertaken linguistic study is based on the etymologization of the nominal components, a comparative historical and structural semantic analysis of the proverb as well as phrases semantically related to it.
The analysis brings to the surface the fact that the phraseological unit is motivated by its mythological background. Historically, the lexical unit Schmied (Smith) acquired a special meaning, whereas within the phraseological unit it actualizes the original idea of “creator, master”. It is through historical and etymological study that this semantic motive becomes obvious, thus explaining the ability of the word Schmied to coexist with the semantically related word Glück within one proverb.
 

The regional varietz of German als a cultural phenomenon with examples of the Austrian German

Until recently the German language of Germany was the main language taught as a foreign language. Other varieties as e.g. the Austrian German were devaluated as regional or as a dialect. in this essay the author wants to underline that there is a tendency (as well in the European language politics as well as in the linguistic sciences) that the pluricentricity is accepted as a cultural phenomenon. But this fact should have consequences in the field of translation (studies), in the field of research of languages for specific purposes and also in teaching foreign languages.

In the footsteps of Nelly Sachs. Rosi Wosk's collection in the German Literature Archive in Marbach

Rosi Wosk, née Press, was a Hungarian Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust, who was transported in one of the white buses to Sweden after the liberation. She lived with her husband, Henry Wosk, a Polish Jew, and their son in Stockholm in an apartment next to Nelly Sachs, a German Jewish Nobel Prize winner poet from Berlin. Over time the two women became friends and Rosi Wosk became a kind of personal assistant and housekeeper. Nelly Sachs entrusted all her treasures from the past to Rosi Wosk. The treasures included her last will and testament, letters, postcards, photographs, manuscripts, a hand-made album, drawings of flowers, prewar newspaper cuttings with poems, notes from Sachs' stay in a psychiatric hospital, and small scraps of paper with shopping lists or things-to-do lists for the housekeeper, collected by Rosi Wosk.
The collection also contains four notebooks with Rosi Wosk's notes in Hungarian, German and Swedish in which she describes meetings and conversations with Nelly Sachs. On the one hand, the content of the three notebooks expresses Wosk's sympathy with Sachs' suffering, friendship, love and helpfulness, and on the other hand, fatigue, exhaustion and helplessness. It would be worth asking why and for whom Nelly Sachs' neighbour made notes in a language which she had only basic knowledge of.
Rosi Wosk's collection wasn't purchased from her son, Bertil Wosk, until 2007 by the German Literature Archive in Marbach.