Linguistik und Literatur: Ein interdisziplinärer Ansatz zur Analyse des Themas „Emotionen“ am Beispiel Wolf Biermanns „Ermutigung“

Abstract

This contribution investigates the expression of emotions in a song within German contemporary literature, namely Wolf Biermann’s “Ermutigung”, from a linguistic perspective. The paper focuses particularly on processes of word formation by applying the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF) to the German morphology. Among the ontological classes defined by LSF, the situations, and more specifically the sub-classes states and events/processes, can provide a linguistic interpretation of Biermann’s main message – the encouragement. As the analysis of lexical items such as hart – verhärten, bitter – verbittern, verbrauchen – (ge)brauchen shows, the semantic features of German prefixes can play a certain role in this sense.

Keywords

• biermann
• ermutigung
• word formation
• lexical semantic framework