The Functional Approach in German Linguistics

Abstract

The last years have seen declining interest in the content-oriented approach, although the semantics revival in the early seventies has brought content-oriented concepts such as the word field back into focus. The German linguistic theories that are the subject of this paper have all gained ground at the expense of content-oriented linguistics, especially among students. The strong linguistic tradition and the place of the linguist in society may explain some of the characteristics of the theories developed but it is the structure and the function of the German language which are the prime factors in this context. For this reason, we have, in this paper, examined the problem of German functional grammar not so much as an aim in itself, but mainly as a further illustration of this approach.