Quelqu'un n'est pas venu

Received wisdom has it that positive polarity items such as someone are incompatible with negation (?*Someone didn't come). Yet negative contexts are attested with such items not only in their specific indefinite reading (e.g. There's someone who didn't come), but also in their non-specific reading (It isn't the case that someone came). It is the non-specific reading of indefinite quelqu'un as subject of a negative verb phrase which is analysed by the present paper. On the basis of a corpus of attested cases, it demonstrates that polemic contrast is the crucial condition of the considered interpretation. As quelqu'un is included within a presupposed proposition that is rejected as a whole by negation, negative contexts can accommodate an item which does not normally yield the interpretations negation does. Interpretation is thus presented as process of mutual adjustment between contextual readings allowed for by items, readings which can be modalised by discursive values.

Plaedoyer fuer die Entwicklung einer integrativen Didaktik im Bereich der German Studies

Theme of the following polemic is the absence of a didactic-methodological approach in the UK higher education Germanistik, goes beyond the field of language teaching. The resulting problems are to be exemplary unfolded. Following an alternative is presented. Thema der folgenden Polemik ist das Fehlen eines didaktisch-methodischen Ansatzes in der britischen Hochschulgermanistik, der über den Bereich der Sprachvermittlung hinausgeht. Die daraus resultierenden Probleme sollen exemplarisch entfaltet werden. Im Anschluss wird eine Alternative vorgestellt.

Celestino antes y despues del alba

La novela-testimonio ha sido desde siempre un género literario híbrido y difícil de definir. En este trabajo, empezaré destacando los rasgos principales e imprescindibles de este tipo de novela y trataré a la vez el tema polémico de la aceptación o no de la ficción en el mismo. En la segunda parte del estudio, me detendré en el análisis de la primera novela del escritor cubano Reinaldo Arenas Celestino antes del alba dentro de un contexto testimonial y aclararé cuál es su lugar dentro del género testimonio. The documentary novel has always been considered as a hibrid literary genre difficult to define. The first part of this article will emphasize its main and essential characteristics and, at the same time, address the polemic topic of the acceptance or not of the fiction in it. The second part of the study is an analysis of the first novel of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, Singing from the well, within the context of the documentary novel.