Vol. 10 (2025): Argumentidentifikation und handlungsbezogene Bedeutung: indirekte Redewiedergabe mit "sagen" und "fragen" im Deutschen und Italienischen

The starting point of the present study is the observation that in certain languages general utterance and question verbs typically also function as request verbs (in the narrower and broader sense) and then preferentially or exclusively segregate infinitive constructions instead of finite clause structures as propositional arguments. Corpus studies show that the German verbs sagen and fragen only very rarely function as request verbs compared to their translation equivalents. The comparison with Italian shows that the form, illocutionary type and context of the utterances to which reference is to be made in the context of the speech request must fulfill more specific requirements in German in order to be able to refer to them with say or ask. In this context, it can be seen that argument realization and identification in corresponding sentence structures follow a cross-linguistic pattern that proves to be constitutive for an action-related meaning of verbs of speech repetition and that the marginal instances of sagen and fragen as verbs of request also fall back on.