PARTS OF SPEECH IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE IN TRADITIONAL AND DEPENDENCY GRAMMAR: A CASE STUDY OF DUDEN AND ENGEL GRAMMARS

Vollständiger Abstract

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The paper examines parts of speech in the German language, their inventory, classification, criteria for classification, as well as the status of certain problematic or transitional categories (articles, pronouns, determiners, particles). The analysis also addresses the terminological approach in traditional grammar and in dependency grammar (the so-called dependency-based grammar), with the aim of highlighting differences in approach depending on the understanding of language structure and the goals of grammatical description.As a representative of traditional grammar, the analysis draws on the Duden grammar (Duden. Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache / Duden. Die Grammatik), while Ulrich Engel’s Deutsche Grammatik is taken as a representative of dependency grammar. As a grammar of a historical-normative character, Duden treats parts of speech as a morpho-semantic category, whereas dependency grammar views them as elements within the hierarchical structure of the sentence, starting from the verb as the central element of the sentence.The aim of the paper is to determine, through an analysis of the criteria for classifying parts of speech in these two grammars, whether there is a model that would enable a consistent classification, thereby facilitating the systematization of German vocabulary, the learning of German as a foreign language, and the avoidance of difficulties in acquiring parts of speech.The analysis has shown that both grammars exhibit inconsistencies and that there are still open questions that future research needs to address. This is also evidenced by the differing positions of the authors across various editions of these grammars.