Zur Verwendung der Hypotaxe in der gesprochenen Sprache
Zur Verwendung der Hypotaxe in der gesprochenen Sprache

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the syntactical complexity of spontaneous spoken language. Being perceived as less complex than written language, spoken language is often associated with simple syntactic structures. In 1899 BEHAGHEL was the first to put forward this hypothesis by referring to the basic differences in writing and speaking processes. With regard to syntactic structure, he assumed that hypotaxis is avoided in spoken language. Other linguists like CHAFE (1982) or KOCH / OESTERREICHER (1985, 1990) agreed with this assumption. Based on a corpus which contains 20 transcripts of radio conversations, the author will show that empirically this assumption is flawed because the use of hypotaxis in spoken German is not as rare as expected. Even hierarchical structures with ‘higher’ degrees of subordination emerge. The analysis will illustrate the percentage of hypotaxis in interactions and its different functions. Afterwards, the results of the investigation are compared to those of LESKA (1965).

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