Über die perspektivierende Funktion der Artikelwörter im Deutschen – eine kognitive Studie

The paper examines the perspecitivity potential of German articles within the framework of cognitive linguistics. According to Langacker’s cognitive grammar, one of meaning components resulting from subjective scene construal is perspective. Perspective is understood as the viewing arrangement of a conceptualized scene. Its main components are subjecitivity/objectivity, that describe the relation between the subject and the object of conceptualization and the vantage point/the point of view defined as the mental position from which the scene is viewed. The analysis focuses on the use of definite and indefinite articles, on the choice of nouns and pronouns and on the function of tenses as grammatical correlates of different perspectivation strategies in narrative and humorous texts.