Evidentiality in German - Linguistic Realization and Regularities in Grammaticalization

The book is a comprehensive study of the evidential system in German. It focuses on the constructions scheinen ‘seem’, drohen ‘threaten’, versprechen ‘promise’ + zu-infinitive, and werden ‘become’ + infinitive. The main idea is that with the diachronic development of these constructions we are witnessing the genesis of a new grammatical category in German.


Gabriele Diewald and Elena Smirnova, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany.