Tense, Modality and Polarity: The Finite Verbal Group

in English and German Newsgroup Texts

Anke Schulz

Abstract
This paper describes work in progress on a corpus-based study, comparing seemingly similar
registers in two languages: English and German newsgroup texts, collected in the Bremen
Translation Corpus. Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG, Halliday 1994 [1985]) provides a
theoretical framework for categorizing empirical findings. I will focus on three systems of the
finite verbal group, i.e. tense, modality and polarity, to describe these registers on the textual
and the interpersonal metafunction levels.
The use of tense, apart from its logical function, can also reflect the textual
metafunction, since different tenses are preferred in spoken and written discourse (see Biber
et al. 1999 or Duden 2005). Do newsgroup text authors favour one tense over the other? And
is tense choice the same in both languages? On the interpersonal metafunction level, I
analyse the form and function of modal auxiliaries, and look at how modal auxiliaries
combine with process types. I then investigate the position of the syntactic negation markers
in English and German clauses.
My aim is to provide a thorough description of the realization of finite verbal groups
in English and German newsgroup texts as a preliminary step towards research on variation
in parallel translations using the Bremen Translation Corpus.

1. Introduction and theoretical background

1.1 Introduction
My research project has several purposes. The first and most central is to describe original
texts of naturally occurring English and German language so that later on I can investigate
variations in parallel translations on the basis of the similarities and differences between
English and German language systems. An interesting by-product of my research is the SFG
description of a relatively new register, asynchronous computer-mediated communication
(CMC) or, more precisely, newsgroup discourse. These newsgroup texts are collected in the
Bremen Translation Corpus (BTC). The third aim is to add to the SFG description of German,
to see whether and in how far English categories, e.g. modality and process types, can be
transferred to an analysis of German.
Nina Nrgaard (ed.) 2008. Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use.
Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication vol. 29
(ISSN 0906-7612, ISBN: 978-87-90923-47-1)

The theoretical background provided by SFG is explained in the next section. Section
2 will give a description of the design and purpose of my corpus, the Bremen Translation
Corpus (BTC), which consists of newsgroup texts in English and in German and five parallel
translations of each text into the other language. In that section I also give a brief outline of
how I processed the data.
In section 3, some first exploratory results will be presented. Part 3.1 focuses on the
frequency of different tense forms in the original newsgroup texts. I will argue that, apart
from the logical function of tense forms, the frequency of tense forms reflects to a certain
extent whether we are dealing with written or spoken texts, making tense a feature of the
textual metafunction as well as of the interpersonal metafunction. As a ground for transfer
comparison of the distribution of tense forms in different registers, I refer to the Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English (LGSWE) (Biber et al. 1999). The LGSWE uses a 40
million word corpus, the LSWE corpus, to compare tense form distribution in different written
and spoken registers. With an investigation of the tense form distribution in my corpus of
newsgroup texts I hope to show the affinity of these texts to either written or spoken
discourse.
Section 3.2 then is dealing with modality, more specifically with the function of modal
auxiliaries in my English and German texts, comparing the results from the two language
corpora. Do English and German authors express modality by the same means, i.e. modal
auxiliaries, and to the same extent? I will also look at the kind of process types (following the
Cardiff Grammar categorisation) that occur in combination with a modal auxiliary.
In section 3.3 I am concerned with the position of syntactic negation markers in the English
and German clause complexes. Where in a clause are negation markers typically placed in my
newsgroup text corpus?
A conclusion is provided in section 4, with an evaluation of the work presented here as
well as an outlook into future work following in section 5.

1.2 Theoretical background

Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday 1994 [1985]) provides the theoretical framework for
this study. The value of SFG as the underlying theory for the description and comparison of
different languages has been shown, e.g. in Caffarel et al. (2004) on a number of languages
ranging from French and German to Chinese, Vietnamese and Telugu, or in Teich (2001),

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comparing English and German. Following Caffarel et al. (2004: 15), I will take the practical
heuristic approach in applying the method of transfer comparison:

However, the type of approach where no assumptions are made based on other
languages and where the description of the lexicogrammatical system is built up
from observations of discursive instances takes a considerable amount of time, so
as a practical heuristic, it may be helpful to model the description of one language
on the description of another this is the method of transfer comparison [].
(Caffarel et al. 2004: 15)
I will describe the realization of finite verbal groups in the corpus of English and German
newsgroup texts, taking descriptions of English as the starting point. The focus will be on the
textual and interpersonal metafunctions of SFG.
Traditional grammars, e.g. Biber et al. (1999) or Duden (2005), see tense as being
used differently in spoken and written discourse. In addition to their function on the ideational
and interpersonal levels, we can therefore consider finite verbal groups as a component of the
textual metafunction in SFG. Among other things, the interpersonal metafunction is reflected
in the use of modal operators and negation markers. With these the authors of the newsgroup
texts reveal their stance towards the problems they discuss. Due to limitations of space the
ideational metafunction will not be considered in this paper.
In their paper Metafunctional profile of the grammar of German, Steiner & Teich
(2004) describe modality and polarity in German, though they only dedicate one page to it.
Still they postulate a difference in the realization of modality between English and German:

[] meanings of phase and modality are typically realized in prepositional

phrases and adverbial groups in German, rather than within the verbal group. We
shall not have the space here to go into this very interesting area, as we will focus
on the clause, rather than on the verbal group. (Steiner & Teich 2004: 144)
The present research, however, will focus only on the verbal group. It can be valuable to test
how far modality is realized within the verbal group in German, and how the realization of
modality, polarity and tense differs from English.
The present research will also be a small step towards a more comprehensive description of
German which may finally serve to evaluate the validity of SFG categories for describing this
language and language in general, as suggested by Caffarel et al. (2004):

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Whether or not such descriptive categories can be applied in the description of

several languages (or even all languages) is an empirical question, not a
theoretical one; and it is a question to be decided only after the categories have
been independently motivated in comprehensive descriptions of every language.
(Caffarel et al. 2004: 11)

2. Corpus design and processing

2.1 Corpus design
The research uses the Bremen Translation Corpus (BTC) to investigate finite verbal groups,
focusing on the use of tense, modal auxiliaries and syntactic negation in naturally occurring
language. The corpus was collected at Bremen University, Germany, in 2004-5. It consists
entirely of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC), i.e. newsgroup texts,
where users do not have to be online at the same time to communicate (Beiwenger &
Storrer to appear: 2). Synchronous CMC, e.g. chats or Instant Messaging, is not included in
the BTC at the moment. The part consisting of original newsgroup texts from the internet has
about 16,000 words. The choice of topics follows a vertical design (Zitzen 2004), i.e. two
topics only are covered: eating disorders and relationship problems. Half of these texts are
taken from newsgroups in English, the other half from newsgroups in German. Each one of
these texts, approximately 250 words in length, has then been translated by five different nonprofessional translators who were native speakers of the target language, German or English,
respectively. The translated part of the corpus amounts to approximately 80,000 words,
meaning that the entire corpus consists of approximately 96,000 words. Figure 1 below shows
the structure of the BTC.

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Original
German
Eating
Disorder

Original
German
Relationship
Problems

Translation 5
Translation 4
Translation 3
Translation 2
Translation 1
Translation 5
Translation 4
Translation 3
Translation 2
Translation 1

Translation 5
Original
English
Eating
Disorder

Original
English
Relationship
Problems

Translation 4
Translation 3
Translation 2
Translation 1

Translation 5
Translation 4
Translation 3
Translation 2
Translation 1

Figure 1: Structure of the Bremen Translation Corpus

The need for a corpus of parallel translations has been expressed before, e.g. by Mauranen
(2002: 166):

One problem with translation corpora that has been pointed out by Malmkjr
(1998) is that they only provide one translation solution for every SL instance,
which conceals the variation in translations that would ensue if we had available
versions of the same source text by different translators.

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With a corpus of just one translation of one original text, as for example in the EnglishNorwegian Parallel Corpus (see Johansson & Hofland 1994), it is not possible to answer
questions such as: how much variation occurs when different people translate the same text?
Where in the text/sentence/clause does the variation occur? Can variation in parallel
translations be explained by differences in the language systems, or is it due to differences in
language use? The BTC was built to make possible linguistic research of all these aspects
(and more). The following examples (1, 2) show two sentences from the corpus and the five
corresponding parallel translations:

1 Ich denk-e
mir
halt,
I think-1SG.PRS.TR me-PRON.1SG.DAT just-ADV,
I just think,
jed-e
bereits vergeben-e
Frau
every-DET.3SG.F already spoken_for-ADJ.3SG.F.NOM woman-NN.NOM
every woman who is already spoken for
msste
bei mein-en
Annherungsversuch-en
should-AUX.SBJV at my-DET.DAT.PL advances-NN.DAT.PL
should immediately put a stop
sofort
Einhalt gebieten.
immediately put_a_stop_to-VB
to my advances.
A I just think that this woman has to reject my advances
B I just think that every unavailable woman must immediately stop my approaches
C I had thought that every already-taken women must immediately back off at my
attempts to get closer
D I think that every woman who is already attached should react to advances
immediately
E I think every woman whos spoken for has always left me hanging when I tried
something.

2 Yeah, I'd love to give up the negative behaviours someday.

A Ja, ich wrde
die
negativ-en
Yes, I would-AUX.SBJV the-DET.ACC.PL negative-ADJ.ACC.PL
Verhaltensweise-n
lieben-d
gerne
eines Tages ablegen.
behaviours-NN.ACC.PL loving-ADJ like_to-ADV one day
throw_off-VB.
Yes, I would really love to throw off the negative behaviours someday.

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B Ja, ich wrde

lieben-d
gerne
Yes, I would-AUX.SBJV loving-ADJ like-to-ADV
mein-e
schlech-ten
Angewohnheit-en
my-DET.ACC.PL bad-ADJ.ACC.PL customs-NN.ACC.PL
eines Tages aufgeben.
one day
give-up-VB.
Yes. I would really love to give up my bad customs someday.

C Klar
will
ich die
negativ-en
Of_course want_to-AUX.IND I the-DET.ACC.PL negative-ADJ.ACC.PL
Gewohnheit-en
irgendwann mal aufgeben.
habits-NN.ACC.PL sometime or other give_up-VB.
Of course I want to give up the negative habits sooner or later.

D Ach ja,
ich mchte
schon
gern
Well yes, I
want_to-AUX.IND certainly-ADV like_to-ADV
eines Tages die
negativ-en
Gewohnheit-en
one day
the-DET.ACC.PL negative-ADJ.ACC.PL habits-NN.ACC.PL
aufgeben.
give_up-VB.
Well, certainly I want to give up the negative habits someday.

E Ja, ich wrde

gerne
eines Tages
Yes, I would-AUX.SBJV like_to-ADV one day
die
schlecht-en
Angewohnheit-en
ablegen.
the-DET.ACC.PL bad-ADJ.ACC.PL customs-NN.ACC.PL throw_off-VB.
Yes, I would like to throw off the bad customs someday.

As a starting point I focus only on the original texts to see whether the use of tense, modality
and polarity is different in English and in German. The results can serve in future research as
grounds for a comparison of the parallel translations.

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Additional to all that could be worth investigating in the parallel translations, the
original newsgroup texts are interesting in themselves in terms of mode (Halliday & Hasan
1989). They can be described as written-as-if-spoken; the texts show features of spoken
discourse, e.g. interjections and discourse particles, however, the discourse is written and
distributed in written form on the internet. Beiwenger & Storrer (to appear: 14) note that
[s]ince this dichotomy is crucial for the categorization in speech and text corpora, it is
difficult to decide whether CMC discourse should form part of text or speech corpora. The
research presented here is meant to investigate the affinity of CMC to written and to spoken
discourse.

2.2 Corpus processing

Since all original texts in the corpus are taken from the internet, they can conveniently be
saved in their digital format and be computationally processed. Analysis of tense, modality
and polarity eventually has to be done manually. I therefore use the Systemic Coder
(ODonnell 2005) to support computer-assisted manual annotation (CAMA). The texts are
saved in UTF-8 format, then processed using the Systemic Coder which can split a text into
sentences automatically using punctuation to identify sentence boundaries. Sentences are then
split up into clauses containing a verbal group. Since annotation has to be done manually,
only small amounts of text can be analysed for a first exploratory investigation. I focus,
therefore, on the two sub-corpora of originals discussing relationship problems. The English
sub-corpus contains 4,500 words, which can be split into 906 clauses with an average of 5
words per clause. The German equivalent contains 4,080 words and 667 clauses with an
average of 6 words per clause.
For the purpose of finding all instances of syntactic negation, i.e. all clauses that
include a negation marker like in English for example no, not, never, and contracted forms of
primary and modal auxiliaries like arent, doesnt, couldnt, wouldnt or in German nicht,
nichts, nie, kein*, niemals, all texts of the English and of the German sub-corpus of originals
on relationship problems are processed using a concordance programme, in this case
WConcord (Martinek 1998). After extracting only those clauses carrying a marker of
syntactic negation, these clauses are annotated, again with the aid of the Systemic Coder.
Likewise, all clauses containing a modal auxiliary are traced with WConcord and then
processed by Systemic Coder for annotation with a coding scheme. For analysis of tense, all
clauses have to be annotated individually, as described in the following section.

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3. Some exploratory results

3.1 Tense
The primary function of the verbal group, including the finite element, is of course to connect
the discourse to the speakers or writers immediate reality, or the context. The verbal group
[] relates the proposition to its context in the speech event. (Halliday 1994 [1985]: 75). In
addition to this logical function on the ideational metafunction level, however, tense can also
be an indicator for spoken or written discourse. The Longman Grammar of Spoken and
Written English (LGSWE) (Biber et al. 1999) shows in a study based on the 40 million word
LSWE corpus that in different registers, preference for the use of present, past or future tense
differs. Thus, the tense system has an additional function on the textual metafunction level.
In order to be able to show the affinity of my corpus of newsgroup texts to spoken or to
written discourse, a quantitative analysis of the tense forms in the corpus is necessary. I start
by splitting up sentences into clauses containing a verbal group (excluding nominalisations).
These clauses are annotated with the tense form they display, using the system networks
shown below.

simple-present
present

PRESENT T YPE

present-perfect
progressive

PROGRESSIVET YPE

simple-progressive
perfect-progressive

simple-past
past
tense

PAST T YPE

T ENSET YPE

past-perfect
past-progressive

future

FUT URET YPE

PAST PROGRESSIVE-T YPE

simple
perfect

will
be-going-to

modal
to-clause
non-finite

NONFINIT E-T YPE

ing-clause
imperative

Figure 2: System network for tense in English

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705

einfaches-praesens
present

PRESENT T YPE

praesens-perfekt
konjunktiv

KONJUNKT IVT YPE

praesens
perfekt

einfaches-praeteritum
past

PAST T YPE

praeteritum-perfekt
konjunktiv_

tense

KONJUNKT IV_T YPE

praeteritum
perfekt_

einfaches-futur

T ENSET YPE

future

FUT URET YPE

futur-perfekt
konditional

modal

MODALT YPE

KONDIT IONALT YPE

1-wuerde
2-wuerde-perfekt

praesens_
praeteritum_
infinitiv

non-finite

NONFINIT E-T YPE

zu-infinitiv
partizip-perfekt
imperative

Figure 3: System network for tense in German

As shown in table 1, English newsgroup texts have a higher amount of non-finite clauses, 17
%, compared with 5 % of non-finite clauses in German. The amount of modal auxiliaries is
slightly lower in English, 9 %, as compared to 12 % in German. In the following tables, the
number in brackets is the total number of clauses displaying a feature. A sum of more than
100 % results from rounding up results to full numbers.

Clause type

English (906 clauses)

German (667 clauses)

Tensed

(658)

73 %

(530)

79 %

Modal auxiliary

(78)

9%

(78)

12 %

Non-finite

(153)

17 %

(30)

5%

Minor clause

(17)

2%

(29)

5%

Table 1: Clause type in English and German newsgroup texts

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For the investigation of tense, we will concentrate on the tensed clauses: 658 in English and
530 in German. With the method of transfer comparison, I try to apply to both my English
and German texts what an English grammar, i.e. LGSWE (Biber et al. 1999), says about the
frequency of tense forms in written and spoken discourse. Unfortunately, I do not have any
data available about the frequency of tense forms in different registers in German, which
would be essential for valid conclusions. I assume, however, that present, past and future
tense has the same functions of logically connecting the discourse to the context in both
English and German. Table 2 displays the results of the computer-assisted manual annotation
with Systemic Coder using the system networks shown in Figures 1 and 2.
Tense type

English (658 clauses)

German (530 clauses)

Simple Present

(376)

57 %

(315)

59 %

Present Perfect

(39)

6%

(106)

20 %

Present Progressive

(37)

6%

--

Simple Past

(187)

28 %

(74)

14 %

Past Perfect

(6)

1%

(3)

1%

Past Progressive

(8)

1%

--

Future

(5)

1%

(23)

4%

Subjunctive mood

--

(9)

2%

Table 2: Tense types in English and German newsgroup texts

The LGSWE (Biber et al.1999: 456) notes that about 85 % of all finite verbal groups in the
LSWE Corpus are tensed. Looking at the results in table 1, we can conclude that of the
originals in the BTC on relationship problems 69 % of all English finite verbal groups and 79
% of the German finite verbal groups are tensed which is less than in the LSWE Corpus.
Both the English and the German corpus display a strong use of the simple present
tense, suggesting the proximity of newsgroup texts to conversation. Biber et al. (1999: 457)
state that [t]he preference for present tense verbs is particularly strong in conversation [],
the reliance on present tense reflects speakers general focus on the immediate context.
We can also compare the results in table 2 with what Biber et al. (1999: 456) state about the
use of different tenses in different registers: Conversation and academic prose are alike in
showing a strong preference for present tense forms. Fiction shows the opposite pattern, with
a strong preference for past tense verbs. Our newsgroup texts, like conversation (and

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707

academic prose) in the LSWE Corpus, also show a strong preference for present tense forms
(simple present + present perfect + present progressive). The English texts have 69 % present
tense forms in the finite verbal groups, in the German counterpart, present tense forms amount
to 79 %. With only 30 % past tense verbs in the English texts and only 15 % in the German
texts, we cannot identify a strong preference for past tense verbs in the newsgroup texts.
Therefore, these newsgroup texts can be said to be more similar to conversation than to
written narration (fiction) if we look at the use of tense in isolation.
While the second most frequent tense in English is the simple past, the second most
frequent tense in German is the present perfect. Again, this reflects the similarities with
spoken discourses in German. Quoting the standard German grammar Duden (2005: 519-20),
in German, the simple past is the unmarked tense for narration in written discourse, while the
present perfect is the tense that is typically chosen for narration in spoken discourse.
In addition, the results show gaps in the language systems: German does not mark verbs for
aspect, while English has no formally distinguishable subjunctive mood. German marks
modal auxiliaries for present and past tense, and English does not.
Remaining fully aware of the dangers involved in comparing a 4,500 word corpus with
a 40 million word corpus, if we convert our results to the frequency in one million words,

frequency per million words (thousands)

they can be visualised as shown in figure 4 below.

160
140
120
100

Modal

80

Past

60

Present

40
20
0
Conv

Fict

E NG

G NG

Figure 4: Frequency of present tense, past tense and modal verbs across registers, including
English and German newsgroup texts, adapted from Biber et al. 1999: 456
German newsgroup texts (G NG) seem to be more similar to English conversation than the
English newsgroup texts (E NG). We also see that there are differences between the use of

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tenses in German and English newsgroup texts. The results presented here, however, must be
verified with more data from a much larger corpus to allow us to form any conclusions about
their significance. My exploratory research suggests that it might be worth carrying out such a
comparison of English and German use of tenses in a relatively new register.

3.2 Modality
The next aspect that catches the eye when exploring the BTC is the divergence between the
parallel translations of modal auxiliaries. If we think back to example 1, the German modal
auxiliary msste must (subjunctive mood) has been translated into English as has to (once),
must (twice) and should (once), and in the last translation it appears without a modal
auxiliary. Again I start with an exploration of the originals before investigating the parallel
translations. With only 9 % (English) and 12 % (German) of all clauses in the sub-corpora on
relationship problems carrying a modal auxiliary (that is, 78 clauses in both languages) the
study is easily feasible. The results, however, must naturally be treated with caution due to the
limited size of the corpus. Once again the clauses are manually annotated with support from
the Systemic Coder according to the main functions of modality (Halliday 1994 [1985]) and
using the system network shown in figure 5. The results are shown in table 3 below.

modalization
modality

MODALIZAT IONT YPE

MODALIT YT YPE

modulation

MODULAT IONT YPE

probability
usuality

obligation
inclination

Figure 5: System network for modality in English and in German

Modality type

English (78 clauses)

German (78 clauses)

Modalization

70 %

49 %

-probability

87 %

100 %

-usuality

13 %

0%

30 %

51 %

-obligation

48 %

60 %

-inclination

52 %

40 %

Modulation

Table 3: Function of modal auxiliaries in English and German newsgroup texts

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We can see that in the German texts the clauses are evenly distributed between modalization
(probability and usuality) and modulation (obligation and inclination). In English, however,
about two thirds of the clauses display modalization, only one third of the clauses showing
some kind of modulation. We might say that the German writers have a stronger sense of
obligation or inclination, i.e. they think more about what they should do, or what other people
should do. We might even claim that the German writers actually think that other people
should be doing something (60% obligation) rather than feeling the necessity to act
themselves (40 % inclination).
Another difference lies in the subtypes of modalization: whereas in English texts 13 %
of modal auxiliaries express usuality, in the German texts there are none. Either, by
coincidence, none of these specific German texts actually expressed usuality, or maybe this is
a sign that in the German language system modal auxiliaries cannot express usuality. The
results, however, seem to support the statement in Steiner & Teich (2004: 151):

Generally, the expression of meanings of modality, modulation and also of phase

is dissociated from the Finite element: rather than employing auxiliaries for
realizing such meanings, German encodes them in Adjuncts. In addition to modal
verbs and adverbs, German has a larger number of modal particles, which add
other kinds of interpersonal meanings to a clause.
Differences in the function of modal auxiliaries may consequently result from the fact that in
German other means are used to express what English expresses using modal auxiliaries, e.g.
modal particles or adverbs. This possibility may be worth pursuing in future research.
The second aspect of the investigation deals with the combination of modal and lexical
verbs. What kind of process types are modified using a modal auxiliary? For the annotation I
use the system network for process types following the Cardiff Grammar (Fawcett, in
preparation). Since event-relating or environmental processes are found in neither the English
nor the German texts, table 4 demonstrates the results for the remaining five process types. I
annotate the German texts with the re-expression tests for identifying participant roles and,
thereby, the process type that Fawcett suggests for analysing process types in English. This is
an interesting and thought-provoking exercise, to say the least. The evaluation of the validity
of the English re-expression tests for other languages certainly deserves more time and
attention than it can receive here.

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Process type with modal English (78 clauses)

German (78 clauses)

verbs
action

56 %

51 %

relational

16 %

11 %

mental

11 %

26 %

mental 3role cogn.= verbal

12 %

9%

influential

5%

3%

Table 4: Frequency of process types with modal auxiliary

Unsurprisingly, mainly action processes carry additional modality. In my English corpus
other process types are modified only to a small extent, between 5 and 16%. At the same time,
in the German texts a quarter of all clauses with a modal auxiliary contain a mental process.
This seems to suggest that German writers feel more uncertain about what they think than
English writers. These results have to be compared with the overall frequency of process
types in the corpus; this has not yet been done due to lack of time. Only then can we see
whether the results reflect an even distribution across the process types or whether one or
more process types are modified significantly when compared to other process types.

3.3 Polarity
The investigation of polarity, or negation markers, is of a slightly different nature. It is
inspired by Sinclair (1991) and his statement about where the phrasal verb set in was most
likely to appear in a clause complex: A number of the clauses are subordinate. With the
samples available, it is not possible to assign status in every case, and there are some of clear
main clauses; but I think the tendency to lower status should be noted. (Sinclair 1991: 74).
While I carried out the above research, I had the impression that markers of syntactic negation
(no, not, never and contracted forms like e.g. arent, doesnt, couldnt, wouldnt in English or
nicht, nichts, nie, kein*, niemals in German) appeared most often in subordinate clauses. To
verify this hypothesis, all negated clauses in English and German from the sub-corpora on
relationship problems are annotated using the system network shown in figure 6 below.

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711

simple-clause
negation

NEGAT IONT YPE

main-clause
clause-complex

CLAUSECOMPLEX-T YPE

co-ordination
sub-ordination

Figure 6: System network for position of negation marker

The results are shown in table 7 for the 78 sentences in English and 86 sentences in German
carrying negative polarity. We see that in the English newsgroup texts less than one third of
all negation markers appear in a sentence consisting of a simple clause. In the German
newsgroup texts, even less than a quarter of all syntactic negations are in a simple clause.

Position

English (78 sentences)

German (86 sentences)

Simple clause

28 %

22 %

Main clause in clause complex

32 %

31 %

Co-ordinated clause

27 %

33 %

Sub-ordinated clause

41 %

36 %

Table 5: Position of negation marker in clause complex

The distribution across clauses in a sentence consisting of more than one clause, i.e. a clause
complex, is fairly even. Slightly more negated finite verbal groups are positioned in a subordinate clause, both in English and in German, thus verifying my hypothesis. There seems to
be a tendency to hide negative polarity in a sub-ordinate clause, or to elaborate and maybe
justify negative polarity using dependent clauses. But, as with the combination of modal
auxiliaries and process types, the frequency of negation appearing in a certain type of clause
has to be compared with the overall frequency of these different types of clauses in the entire
corpus to allow any statement on the significance of these results.

4. Conclusion
In my exploration of the Bremen Translation Corpus, Systemic Functional Grammar has been
a valuable theoretical background for an analysis of tense, modality and polarity. On the level
of the textual metafunction, I have shown that differences in the use of tense can reflect

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whether we are dealing with spoken or written discourse. This is an interesting feature when
studying a fairly new register such as newsgroup texts from the internet. With a frequency of
69 % (English) and 79 % (German) of present tense verbs, newsgroup texts show their
proximity to conversation, which also displays a preference for present tense verbs (Biber et
al. 1999: 457). But differences can also be detected between the English and German
newsgroup texts; the second most frequently used tense in the English texts is the simple past,
whereas in the German texts it is the present perfect.
On the level of the interpersonal metafunction, modality and polarity provide us with
categories to study how writers express their stance towards the problems they discuss in
these newsgroup texts. While in the German texts the distribution between modalization and
modulation is fairly even, in the English texts more than two thirds of all modal auxiliaries
express modalization. Another finding that may point to a difference between the systems of
modal auxiliaries in English and German is that in the German sub-corpus not one modalizing
auxiliary expressed usuality. The process types modified most frequently in both languages
are action processes, followed in the English sub-corpus by a rather equal distribution
between relational, mental and three-role-cognition (verbal) processes. In the German subcorpus, however, mental processes are clearly the second most frequently modified processes.
The research on polarity is of a different nature. I study the position of negation markers in
the clause (complex). There seems to be a tendency for syntactic negation to appear in clause
complexes rather than simple clauses, and syntactic negation seems most often to be placed
within a subordinate clause.

5. Evaluation and Outlook

After all that could be shown with my exploratory research, further interesting questions
emerged. What are the criteria for annotating tenses correctly in English and in German? How
can, for example, the will-future be distinguished from will as a modal auxiliary? How can we
distinguish simple from historical present, or simple present future?
Is SFGs categorisation of modality types (Halliday 1994 [1985]: 91) equally valid for
other languages, e.g. German? What other means, apart from modal auxiliaries and adverbs,
does German have to express modality? How does German express usuality? How can the
different process types be analysed in German? Can the criteria for English process type
analysis, for example the Cardiff Grammars re-expression-tests, be transferred to German? If

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not, how can we analyse process types in German, if we want to carry out contrastive studies
based on SFG?
The major problem has been the small size of the two sub-corpora of original texts on
relationship problems in the BTC. With such small numbers, no statements can be made about
the relevance of the results, or even about their truthfulness. The research presented here has
constituted what Sinclair (1991: 137) has called only the first dipping of an inquisitive toe
into the vast pool of language texts. The limited size of the data has, however, made
exploratory research feasible on a number of different aspects, thus revealing interesting
features in the newsgroup texts and in the comparison of English and German.
As a first step in the future, the corpus of original newsgroup texts will be extended to
10,000 words in English and also 10,000 words in German. According to Biber (1995), []
it is possible to represent the distributions of many core linguistic features, both within and
across registers, based on relatively short text samples (as short as 1,000 words) and relatively
few texts from each register (as few as ten texts) (Biber 1995: 131).
Since a comparison of registers is not the aim of this research project, I feel confident
that ten times 1,000 words in each language will suffice to provide reliable results in an
investigation of the lexicogrammatical systems of German and English, while still remaining
a feasible size for computer-assisted manual annotation. Furthermore, the results from the
BTC must be compared to results from a reference corpus, e.g. the British National Corpus
(BNC) for English and the Cosmas II for German. This procedure will enable us to see more
clearly how newsgroup texts from the internet differ from other registers.
Work then has to be undertaken to develop guidelines for the annotation of tenses,
process types and modality in both languages to make results comparable. When detailed
descriptions of the finite verbal groups in the two languages represented in the BTC have
been completed, we can start to analyze how these phrases are translated. My ultimate aim is
to study what kind of variation exists between the five parallel translations, and how this
variation can be explained.

Anke Schulz, Research Assistant

Institut fr Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft
Technische Universitt Darmstadt, Germany
[email protected]

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