Cohesive substitution in English and German 223
(56) Kommt John morgen zur Party? (Das) glaube ich nicht.
(57) Ich glaube nicht.
Note that in (57), differently from (56), the German nicht is not the negation of
glauben, but the negative substitute for John morgen zur Party kommen, just in the
same way as not in its English equivalent:
(58) Is John coming to the Party tomorrow? I think not.
For English so, German provides an orthographically corresponding adverb so,
which is usually not a translational equivalent, however. Our corpus investigation
yields a rich multifunctionality of so in both languages. Apart from its substitu-
tional function in English, so may also serve as a conjunction establishing various
logico-semantic relations, particularly in German. Example (59) shows a case of
English clausal substitution, translated by German ellipsis:
(59) I understand from my conversations around the country that you are con-
cerned by the situation in Fallujah. So are we. [EO_SPEECH]
Aus den von mir im ganzen Land geführten Gesprächen weiß ich, daß Sie über
die Situation in Falludscha besorgt sind. Wir auch 0. [GTRANS_SPEECH]
According to Zifonun et al. (1997: Vol. 1: 325) so can be employed with a clear
deictic function to refer to particular aspects of a situational process or action:
(60) L a so (verweist auf eigenen Tafelanschrieb) hätte man‘s also auch schreiben
können. (Redder, Schulstunden, 99 (L = Lehrerin) (simplified)
...in this way (pointing to her own writing on the blackboard) you could have
spelt it, too.
We believe that it is this exophoricity from which the following function may
derive:
(61) Die betriebliche Wirklichkeit in Ostdeutschland, so ergaben Umfragen, zeigt
ein Maß an Wandlungsfähigkeit, von dem die Wirtschaft im Westen nur träu-
men kann. [GO_ESSAY]
‘The corporate reality in Eastern Germany, thus yielded surveys...’
According to a number of different surveys, corporate reality in eastern
Germany manifests a level of adaptability undreamt of in western Germany.
[GTRANS_ESSAY]
As in (61), so quite frequently occurs in our corpus at the beginning of a clausal
apposition and is combined with a verbal or mental predicate underpinning the
plausibility/credibility of the proposition in the main clause. The relation here may