226 Kerstin Kunz and Erich Steiner
Table 6. German subcorpora: distribution of devices of substitution
GO GTRANS
Total
numbersPercentages Total
numbersPercentagesKeins/keine(s,n) 4 2,48% 9 5,88%
Eins/eine(s,n) 15 9,32% 8 5,23%
Welche(r,s) 4 2,48% 7 4,58%
Das/die/der Gleiche(n) 9 5,59% 5 3,27%
Dasselbe/Der/den-selbe(n)/
Dieselbe(n) 6 3,73% 9 5,88%
Das/der/die 9 5,59% 4 2,61%
Dergleichen 4 2,48% 3 1,96%
Gleiches 1 0,62% 0 0%
Solche(s) 5 3,11% 12 7,84%
Sowas/so etwas 10 6,21% 3 1,96%
Tun/machen 16 9,94% 19 12,42%
Genauso 1 0,62% 2 1,31%
So 77 47,83% 72 47,10%Another general observation is that German provides a greater variety of forms
than English, and as the overall occurrences are fewer in German, occurrences
per form are fewer still. Hence, while a closed class of few items seems to serve
similar conceptual functions in English, the variety and lower number of forms
in German point to a lower degree of stability and possibly grammaticalization of
these. Another contrast lies in the wording of the respective forms: except for the
same, all other forms in English are bleached of lexical meaning beyond number
and type of linguistic structure substituted. In contrast, German provides seven
different forms in which the relation of similarity is still lexicalized (in addition
to the morphological explicitation of gender in some forms). Furthermore, most
forms in German are less clearly restricted in terms of the linguistic structures
of previous textual parts that are being substituted and therefore exhibit more
variation in the scope of their antecedent. For instance, das Gleiche, dasselbe, der-
gleichen, so etwas/sowas and dergleichen are traced as nominal substitutes but are
more often substitutes for antecedents with a wide and vague scope, as illustrated
in (62)–(67):
(62) Wir werden da keine rohen Fische rein tun oder sowas in der Art, das ist dann
schon ‚n bisschen stinkig, ... [GO_INTERVIEW]
(63) In puncto Kosten sehen wir dem Jahr 1997 also mit Zuversicht entgegen.
Dasselbe gilt für die Erträge. [GO_INTERVIEW]