The project investigates mood and modalization applying a prominence-based conception of discourse structure. The categories capture for instance, how certain an assertion is or what relationship it holds with respect to reality. Thereby, the project complements its insights in temporal discourse structure (phase I) and argumentative orientation (phase II). The aim is to gain a better understanding of TAM (tense-aspect-mood) categories and world reference. The phenomena investigated in detail are (1) propositional attitudes like individual beliefs or evaluations of events, (2) dream contexts and their distinction from the real world, and (3) free indirect discourse (FID) with its different “voices”. The project focuses on two Romance languages, Spanish and Italian. It combines corpus research and experimental methods.

See list of publications

Publications

To appear

• Becker, Martin. To appear. Due profile discorsive in contrasto: il caso di “poiché” e “dal momento che” in sincronia e diacronia. Cuadernos di Filologia Italiana. 1–23.
• Becker, Martin. To appear. Sprachdiskurse in Brasilien. In Peter Schulze (ed.), Brasilianistik: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. To appear. Saltos atrás: El uso de retrocesos temporales en los reportajes periodísticos de fútbol. In Arroyo Hernández, Ignacio & Piero Renato Costa León (eds.), Partido a partido. La lengua del fútbol (VenPalabras. Estudios de Lexicología Española, 5). Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari.

2024

• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2024. Textual development beyond temporality and interactions between the adversative connector pero and the indefinido. In Jakob Egetenmeyer, Sarah Dessì Schmid & Martin Becker (eds.), Tense, aspect and discourse structure, 297–319. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2024. The updating imperfecto in Spanish. Moenia 29. Thematic Issue: El verbo en las lenguas románicas, ed. by Susana Azpiazu Torres, 1–37.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2024. The discourse status of deviating tense-aspect-mood (TAM) forms in German and French football reports. In Eva Lavric & Gerhard Pisek (eds.), Language and Football, vol. 589, 37–60. 1st edn. Tübingen: Narr / Francke / Attempto.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob, Sarah Dessì Schmid & Martin Becker (eds.). 2024. Tense, aspect and discourse structure (Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Für Romanische Philologie 492). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob, Sarah Dessì Schmid & Martin Becker. 2024. Tense, aspect and discourse structure. An introduction. In Jakob Egetenmeyer, Sarah Dessì Schmid & Martin Becker (eds.), Tense, aspect and discourse structure, 1–14. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

2023

• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2023. The temporal relationships between the pluscuamperfecto and mientras + imperfecto. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16(1), 63-107.
• Müller, Lukas. 2023. The Spanish and the Portuguese Present Perfect in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2022

• Becker, Martin. 2022. A tradição do pensamento universalista e a Grammatica Philosophica de Lingua Portugueza de João Soares Barbosa. In Yvonne Hendrich & Benjamin Meisnitzer (eds.), Lingua e identidade no mundo lusófono - Sprache und Identität in der lusophonen Welt, 57–74. Ibidem.
• Becker, Martin. 2022. Looking back and looking ahead: Some thoughts on the suffix -ata in Romance. In Chiara Gianollo, Łukasz Jędrzejowski & Sofiana Lindemann (eds.), Paths through meaning and form. Festschrift offered to Klaus von Heusinger on the occasion of his 60th birthday, 22–26. Köln: Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln.
• Becker, Martin. 2022. More about the PPC – the PPC and its interaction with quantifiers in a diachronic perspective. In David Paul Gerards, Benjamin Meisnitzer & Albert Wall (eds.), Micro-Variation and its impact on the system(s) of Portuguese (=Special issue of PhiN (Philologie im Netz)).
• Becker, Martin & Rolf Thieroff. 2022. 22. Modus und Modalität. In Ralf Klabunde, Wiltrud Mihatsch & Stefanie Dipper (eds.), Linguistik im Sprachvergleich: Germanistik – Romanistik – Anglistik, 457–584. Berlin: Springer.

2021

• Becker, Martin. 2021. Free indirect discourse, quotative readings and the Romance imperfect. Italian Journal of Linguistics 33(2). 23–58.
• Becker, Martin. 2021. 9 La modalidad entre lo dicho y el decir. In Óscar Loureda & Angela Schrott (eds.), Manual de lingüística del hablar, 177–200. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
• Becker, Martin. 2021. Le système des modes verbaux dans les langues romanes et ses dynamiques en diachronie. In Gerda Haßler & Sylvie Mutet (eds.), Manuel des modes et modalités, 351–384. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter.
• Becker, Martin. 2021. The pluperfect and its discourse potential in contrast – a comparison between Spanish, French and Italian. Revue Romane. Langue et Littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures 56(2). 267–296.
• Becker, Martin, Jakob Egetenmeyer & Stefan Hinterwimmer. 2021. Perspective in German and French: Divergences in formal marking and temporal anchoring. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (LiLi) 51(2). 321–356.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2021. Genre determining prediction: Non-standard TAM marking in football language. Frontiers in Communication 6. 1–18. 
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2021. Temporal relations of free indirect discourse events. Linguistics 59(4). 1057–1102.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2021. Time updating uses of the French imparfait extending across genres. In Laura Baranzini & Louis de Saussure (eds.), Aspects of tenses, modality, and evidentiality (= Cahiers Chronos; 31), 56–77. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

2020

• Becker, Martin. 2020. Das Pretérito Perfeito Composto - ein Perfekt? Zur Semantik und Diachronie der ter + Partizip-Konstruktion. In Benjamin Meisnitzer & Elissa Pustka (eds.), Zwischen Sprechen und Sprache, 83-110. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. 
• Becker, Martin. 2020. O Pretérito Perfeito Composto (PPC) na história do português no Brasil. In Rodolfo Ilari & Renato Basso (eds.), História Semântica do Português Brasileiro, 146-203. São Paulo: Editora Contexto.
• Becker, Martin. 2020. O subsistema doxástico nas línguas românicas: uma análise comparativa da seleção dos modos verbais. Fórum Linguístico 17. 4714–4725.
• Becker, Martin. 2020. Zeit, Tempus und Erzählperspektive in Kebir Ammis Sur les pas de Saint Augustin. Romanische Forschungen 132(4). 439–466.
• Becker, Martin & Giovanni Pairotti. 2020. L’imperfetto narrativo in italiano. In Antje Lobin, Sarah Dessì Schmid & Ludwig Fesenmeier (eds.), Ibridità e norma, 179–203. Berlin: Frank & Timme.
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2020. Experiment: Prominent anchor time of French FID [Data set]. Zenodo. zip
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2020. Temporal prominence demotion in updating imparfait uses in L’Étranger. In Eric Corre, Danh Thành Do-Hurinville & Huy Linh Dao (eds.), The Expression of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality in Albert Camus’s L'Étranger and Its Translations / L'Étranger de Camus et ses traductions : questions de temps, d'aspect, de modalité et d'évidentialité (TAME): An empirical study / Etude empirique (=Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa 35), 118-142. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 
• Egetenmeyer, Jakob. 2020. The prominence value of the temporal anchor of free indirect discourse: A comparison with the perspectival center. Discours 27. 3–40.

2018

• Becker, Martin & Jakob Egetenmeyer. 2018. A prominence-based account of temporal discourse structure. Lingua 214. 28-58. pdf
• Becker, Martin & Ludwig Fesenmeier (eds.). 2018. Configurazioni della serialità linguistica - prospettive italoromanze. Berlin: Frank & Timme.
• Becker, Martin & Giovanni Pairotti. 2018. Le frasi presentative dal latino all'italiano antico: le categorie aspettuali. In Antonelli, Roberto, Martin Glessgen & Paul Videsott (eds.), Atti del XXVIII Congresso internazionale di linguistica e filologia romanza. Roma 18-23 luglio 2016 (=Bibliothèque de Linguistique Romane 15), 363-374. Strasbourg: ELIPHI, Éditions de linguistique et de philologie.
• Donazzan, Marta & Martin Becker. 2018. Deissi e relazioni di coerenza testuale. Il caso di «ora». In Becker, Martin & Ludwig Fesenmeier (eds.), Configurazioni della serialità linguistica. Prospettive italoromanze (= Romanistik 28), 153-182. Berlin: Frank & Timme.

2017

• Becker, Martin & Marta Donazzan. 2017. Or, ora, maintenant: perspective temporelle et perspective argumentative. Discours: Revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique 20. 1-33. pdf 
• Müller, Lukas. 2017. Die zentralen und peripheren Lesarten des portugiesischen Perfekts - eine explorative Studie für ein integratives Modell. Masterarbeit, Universität zu Köln.

Event organization

• Organization of the workshop "Ways of Reference in Romance Languages" held from 27th-28th September 2018, joint work with C03 and B04.
• Section 12: "Tempus, Aspekt und Diskursstruktur" at the 36th Romanistentag from 29.09. to 02.10.2019 in Kassel (Jakob Egetenmeyer, Sarah Dessì Schmid and Martin Becker).