Collective Nouns for Animals in Groups. A Contrastive Analysis of English and German

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Contrastive Linguistics, language: English, abstract: This paper contrasts German and English collective nouns for animals in groups. It does so by analysing the nouns according to their sense relations. Are crows really murderous - in English and German alike? Commonly used collective nouns like a school of fishes, a murder of crows, and an unkindness of ravens personify these kinds of animals and children become creative when they hear such terminology. However, the full motivation and history behind this established metaphorical use of collective nouns for animals in groups remain concealed. Despite that, it is possible to analyse how some collective nouns are related to the animals in groups they denote, and if similar patterns apply for other languages than English, in this case German. That is the main question which is aimed to solve in this paper. Against this backdrop, different theoretical aspects are considered. These imply the distinction between relational and non-relational meanings, different sense relations, as well as degrees of specificity in English and German among a few other theoretical aspects. A detailed explanation is given in the further course of this paper. The Theory Chapter begins by defining some relevant concepts to then explain some theoretical ideas. Subsequently, the working hypothesis of this research is presented. In the Analysis, the data at hand as well as the conducted methodology are outlined. After this, the results, which include methodological peculiarities, patterns and striking findings, are pointed out and discussed. Eventually, the Conclusion delivers an overview of all outcomes and their implications.