Abstract

General Background: Modern German syntax is undergoing a transformation, influenced by broader shifts in language use, with an increasing focus on subjectivity and expressiveness in written discourse. Specific Background: Among these changes, adjunct constructions have gained prominence as devices that enhance emotional nuance and communicative depth, reflecting the speaker's intentionality and facilitating pragmatic interaction with the listener or reader. Knowledge Gap: Despite their stylistic and grammatical exploration, the communicative-syntactic functions of adjunct constructions—especially in conveying the author's egocentric viewpoint and pragmatic intentions—remain underexplored. Aims: This study investigates how adjunct constructions in contemporary German function as communicative-syntactic tools, highlighting their role in shaping narrative perspective, affecting meaning, and interacting with both linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Results: The findings reveal that adjunct constructions are multifunctional elements with descriptive, expressive, and evaluative roles, enhancing the emotional and intellectual impact of texts. They support postmodern narrative features like fragmentation and spontaneity. Novelty: This research offers a fresh cognitive-communicative lens on syntax, focusing on the interaction between speaker subjectivity and reader engagement. Implications: The study contributes to linguistic theory, stylistic analysis, and German language pedagogy, advancing the understanding of pragmatics and syntax in literary discourse.

Highlights:

1. Adjunct constructions enhance emotional depth and narrative perspective.

2. They convey the author's subjective viewpoint and pragmatics.

3. The study explores syntax-pragmatics interaction in modern German discourse.

Keywords: Modern German syntax, adjunct constructions, narrative perspective, pragmatics, emotional nuance.

Introduction

The global reform of the norms of the modern German literary language that we are witnessing has affected almost all linguistic phenomena. Syntax is no exception and has recently undergone significant changes. The study of new phenomena and trends in the development of speech structure has been carried out since the 50s and 60s. The idea of ​​​​the anthropocentrism and egocentrism of language, which arose at the heart of the systemic-structural paradigm, has taken a central place in modern linguistics. Language began to be studied not as a simple system, but as a multifaceted phenomenon in which the decisive role belongs to man, since “language is created according to human norms, and this scale is imprinted in the organization of the language itself” [1].

As AAPotebnya, DNOvsyaniko-Kulikovsky, IAAShakhmatov and other linguists have noted, linguistics deals with the "inner man [2]."

The anthropocentric and egocentric paradigm includes cognitive linguistics, which studies the mental processes of speech production and comprehension, studied from the point of view of how the structures of linguistic knowledge and knowledge of objective reality are projected onto specific speech facts. Language is completely anthropocentric. Human existence makes itself felt throughout the entire space of language, but most importantly, it is reflected in vocabulary and syntax [3]. This includes the pragmatics of the language due to the semanticization of the language, the use of lexemes and constructions, the correspondence of their semantics to the intention of the speaker (writer), and taking into account the trends present in the language [4].

Modern syntax is characterized by maximum emancipation and internal freedom, which is manifested in some violation of the rules, in a certain rejection of norms. All elements of the external speech form perform not a communicative, but an autocommunicative role, which is directly related to the increasing subjectivity of the author's position. The speaker "turns" the objective factor in his direction and forces us to look at it from his point of view. And this desire arises not arbitrarily, but due to changes occurring in the surrounding world and, therefore, in the human mind, which cause certain changes in language forms [5].

In the development of speech structure, there are trends that arise as a result of the increasingly strong penetration of the norms of colloquial speech into literary speech. Currently, the most important and actualized components of speech are emphasized by intonation, while the methods characteristic of “speaking” are increasingly being adopted, designed to return to the units based on auditory perception and direct communication between the speaker and the listener [6].

This method of expressively significant division of sentences, which increases the subjective information content of sentences, is called in modern linguistics the "appendix phenomenon". The problem of the appendix phenomenon has been discussed repeatedly in linguistics. However, despite significant work on the study of this phenomenon of speech syntax, there are still aspects to be studied [7].

The syntactic method of the application phenomenon, which is a means of realizing the author's speech intention, has been fully studied and described by linguists in structural-grammatical and stylistic terms. However, this phenomenon has not yet been sufficiently studied from a cognitive-communicative point of view. Attempts to clarify the content of the concept of the application phenomenon and related phenomena such as the application construction, the application element cannot be considered successful. Until recently, linguistic research, in particular, ignored various egocentric factors that determine the conditions for the placement of application constructions in a literary text, as well as the factors of interaction between the linguistic and extralinguistic conditions of their activity [8].

Methods

Auxiliary constructions were studied as a specific phenomenon of syntax, which has a set of differential signs associated with its special status among other syntactic constructions. In oral speech and written speech, auxiliary constructions, which are intonationally distinguished, form a grammatical, semantic and communicative unity with the main expression, performing informational and affective functions only in conjunction with it. Due to this, a clear division of the sentence into actualized and non-actualized (active and passive) parts is achieved and, being a special intonation unit, represents a speech quantum corresponding to a separate direction of consciousness within the entire sentence [9].

Also, adjunct constructions are a universal phenomenon of a multifunctional nature, capable of realizing various illocutionary intentions of the author. The problem of typology of structural-semantic and functional types of adjunct constructions in modern literary language is part of the communicative, functional-semantic and cognitive problems of choosing expressive syntactic constructions, which differ from the features of their selection in a literary text. Typology is based on such factors as the nature of syntactic constructions, the degree of connection of the main expression and the adjunct element, semantic, grammatical and contextual conditions that simplify and complicate the adjunct element, the nature of the context, types of repetition, and actual division [10].

Result and Discussion

The structure, semantics and communicative capabilities of the application constructions correspond to the main functions of modern mass media, namely, to enhance the emotional and intellectual impact on readers and at the same time provide a certain amount of information. This is explained by the rich capabilities of the application constructions in terms of expressing the entire spectrum of emotional states and evaluative-modal meanings, which allows the author to use them for specific pragmatic purposes, based on their informative and influential potential [11].

The completion of the predicative parts of a complex sentence is not indifferent to their structural and semantic status, which in a number of cases serves to enrich their meaning, transferring them to the category of transitional syntactic phenomena. The author uses the auxiliary construction to achieve expressive goals when it is necessary to emphasize the details of the thought expressed in the main expression, to activate its semantic component or to emphasize the subject, or to influence the thoughts and feelings of the recipient. Most often, the auxiliary construction pursues a purely informative purpose of explanation and conveying ideas. The auxiliary element provides some additional information regarding the topic of the text, which is sometimes associated with the desire to surprise the recipient with an unexpected thought or fact, and sometimes is directly opposite to the main expression. Thus, the author not only organizes the syntactic-semantic structure of the sentence within a specific communicative situation, but also implements a pragmatic relationship related to attracting the reader's attention. It should be noted that adjunct constructions that perform a defining and explanatory function are often found in literary texts and in many cases include homogeneous fragments or repetitions of sentences [12].

Of particular interest is the fact that the content of the auxiliary constructions goes beyond the boundaries of language. A creatively thinking author is able to stimulate the reader's perception, he must use linguistic intuition, rely on approximate and basic knowledge, and perform mental actions to change the semantics and understand the meaning of the entire structure. The result of a deliberate deviation from the norm in speech analysis can be a language game. By establishing meanings in the syntactic structure, homonymizing lexical units, expressing in the polysemy of individual words in the main expression, and forming word combinations, the author is able to convey the entire spectrum of emotions, strengthen the emotional-evaluative component of the sentence, make the reader smile brighter, and thereby make the thought brighter [13].

The author seeks to imitate the spontaneity and directness of speech, which determines the non-linearity of the story. However, the phenomenon of the appendix, which arose due to the principle of disproportion, is a characteristic feature of the prose of the postmodern era. The abundance of appendix constructions that imitate the stream of consciousness provides the fragmentation of the story and its dynamism. Sometimes the addition to the main expression is associated with sudden memories that have arisen in the author and the need to repeat previously known facts. It is worth noting that the appendix construction is a universal phenomenon in terms of genre, which is quite widespread in the language of fiction due to its unique expressive potential [14].

In general, the ratio of various formal signs of adjunctive connection can be hierarchical, since intonational signs play a primary role in determining the range of adjunctive structures compared to structural signs (although both are highly valued in contrasting adjunctive structures with non-attachment). After all, with their help, communicatively separated sentence structures (adjuncts) are distinguished from communicatively unseparated ones, and the structural indicators that are optional for communicatively separated adjunctive constructions are most effective in the group of communicatively unseparated ones, that is, they have a lower distinguishing force of mutual correspondence compared to intonational signs, but are connected in a certain way with each other and, depending on the nature of this connection, depend on the “result of pragmatic influence” of a specific structure with an adjunctive relation. As for the ratio of structural and intonational signs of adverbial connection, it is worth noting that not all means are used in the language here at the same time, but some are developed at the expense of others [15].

Conclusion

Thus, the communicative and syntactic properties of the adjunct construction are associated with the specifics of the pragmatics of the text, which consists in the interaction between the “speaker” and the “listener”, as well as the desire to attract the reader's attention. With the help of an adjunct construction, the author is able not only to emphasize the importance of a separate piece of information, but also to establish contact with readers and ensure interaction with the recipient. As a rule, the adjunct element contains a hidden emotional assessment of the message. Adjunct constructions in literary texts in most cases perform descriptive-expressive and characteristic functions and are determined by the author's compositional concept, the desire to show the most important features of the characters' behavior, shades of their emotional state, and the specifics of the style of speech.

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