MODUS CONCEPT CONDITIONALITY AND ITS STRUCTURE IN GERMAN LINGUISTIC CULTURE

Abstract

The paper is devoted to interaction of cognitive and language mechanisms forming conditional sense in German linguistic culture. Dominant language units that represent this sense are conditional clauses. In the German language there are some conjunctions with conditional sense making the meaning of subordinate clauses variable: wenn, falls, sofern, wenn also . The purpose of the paper is to find out conceptual variability that indicates the interpretation modus of conditionality. Realizing this purpose, the author uses the principle of situation performing that allows to differentiate subconcepts of CONDITIONALITY in the German linguistic culture. The semantics of clauses depends on the semantics of the conjunctions. Following its etymology, the conjunction falls is connected with the verb fallen and the noun der Fall . Both indicate the component ‘moving down’ in their meaning. In German the subconcept represented by the conjunction falls implies especially marked situations that are unexpected or undesired. The conjunction sofern is etymologically connected with the preposition in that indicates some restricted room. That’s why the clauses connected with sofern denote some restriction of situations. The conjunction wenn also is complex, so in this case we have to do with complex cognitive activity. The first step of this activity is to summarize the pretext content by the component also , the second step is to change the summarized content by the component wenn into a condition, so that clauses sign especially marked summarized conditional situations. In the structure of CONDITIONALITY the author distinguishes between the center represented by wenn -clauses and the periphery represented by the following conjunctions whose interpretation modus is specific: falls indicates the modus of unexpected or undesired condition , sofern signs the modus of restriction and wenn also the modus of resuming. The outlook provides researching of other modus concepts that are represented by subordinate clauses connected with other conjunctions.