Explicitation, its lexicogrammatical realization, and its determining (independent) variables - towards an empirical and corpus-based methodology

In the following paper, notions of “explicitness” of lexicogrammatical encoding, and of “explicitation” as a relationship between translation and original are proposed and some operationalizations in terms of properties of linguistic constructions are suggested. The categories used in these operationalizations are intended to form the basis for an annotation scheme in an empirical corpus-based project investigating properties of translated texts between English and German. After a brief overview of the state of the art in investigations of properties of translated texts, and after a short characterization of the corpora to be created, some general approaches to “explicitness” and “explicitation” in linguistics will be discussed, and the current approach will be situated relative to them. This is followed by a stratification of the notion of “explicitness” according to the linguistic levels of lexicogrammar and text. In additon to this initial specification of the notion, a modularization of “explicitness” will be proposed into not only the levels of lexicogrammar and text, but also according to linguistic metafunctions. A parallel modularization will be given for the properties of “directness” and “density”, as these interact heavily with explicitness. We shall furthermore define “explicitation” as a relationship and a process between instantiated and aligned pieces of translated or otherwise registerially closely related texts. After the general notions of “explicitness” and “explicitation” have thus been specified, an attempt will be made to outline its conceptual boundaries, discussing types of phenomena which appear to be similar at first sight, but which represent different phenomena on closer inspection and are thus outside our immediate research interest. As the concept of explicitness developed up to that point is still too abstract to be directly quantified on linguistic data in electronic corpora, a series of further micro-level operationalizations will be undertaken which are meant to bring the relevant phenomena down to an empirical level at which they can be directly identified in linguistic data. In the following sample analysis of two texts according to the variables addressed in our operationalization, the functioning of the approach will be illustrated and detailed problems and open questions of analysis discussed. We shall finish with the proposal of an annotation scheme to be used in the analysis, as well as with a summary of the independent and dependent variables characterizing the textual varieties represented in the linguistic data constituting our corpora.