STYLISTIC POTENTIAL OF GERMAN SYNTAX

The article deals with the stylistic potential of German syntactic means, their expressive–stylistic and functional–stylistic features. The study sets out to reveal the expressive syntactic means. Disorder of a proper sentence structure makes its expressiveness. In contrast to a «syntactic tension», the article analyses a «syntactic loosening» of a normative sentence structure as a current trend in German syntax, as a source of syntactic expressiveness and the most productive instrument of simplification of a sentence structure. Thus, it assimilates to the structure of the everyday language. Syntactic «loosening» of a normative sentence structure is formed by a simple hypotaxis, a failure of closed–in constructions and a lack of grammatical agreement among sentence parts. The study is carried out in the context of historical dynamics. The renunciation of a difficult multi-stage hypotaxis but using of a simple sentence as block structures leads to expression saving and easily understanding. Each of the blocks has a large amount of information. Parts of the sentence are in the same line and are united with nominal juxtaposition. Their development is closely related to the nominalization trend. The influence of colloquial speech on the literary German and its written form, closing to natural speech lead to the renunciation of closed–in constructions. The author proves that the removal of grammatical structures isn't new for the modern literary German, but it presents the perfectly sound tendency. As a result of this study, there is a conclusion that the modification of the grammatical structure isn't the result of an abrupt shift or radical turn but it is a natural continuation of a dynamic process.

On the Contrary: Inferential Analysis and Ontological Assumptions of the A Contrario Argument

We remark that the A Contrario Argument is an ambiguous technique of justification of judicial decisions. We distinguish two uses and versions of it, strong and weak, taking as example the normative sentence “Underprivileged citizens are permitted to apply for State benefit”. According to the strong version, only underprivileged citizens are permitted to apply for State benefit, so stateless persons are not. According to the weak, the law does not regulate the position of underprivileged stateless persons in this respect. We propose an inferential analysis of the two uses along the lines of the scorekeeping practice as described by Robert Brandom, and try to point out what are the ontological assumptions of the two. We conclude that the strong version is justified if and only if there is a relevant incompatibility between the regulated subject and the present case.