Against the backdrop of universality proposals claiming that all languages share the conceptualisation and expression of THINKING, this study comparatively investigates verbs of thinking (VOT) in German and Swedish. Particularly, it examines semantic specificity in VOT (the restricted availability of only one verb in a certain context), and the potential effect of two constraints (intersubjective verifiability; subjectivity). A contextualised choice task was conducted where German (n = 30) and Swedish (n = 30) native speakers had to indicate which of four verb(s) (denken/glauben/meinen/finden; tänka/tro/tycka/mena) are meaningful in a certain context. The results suggest that the German domain of VOT is less semantically specific than the Swedish one. Moreover, they indicate that both languages are sensitive to the subjectivity constraint: they exclusively allow for one specific verb (finden/tycka) when the VOT frames an utterance expressing a subjective opinion/assessment/evaluation. However, when the VOT frames a statement that other interactants can test for its truth (intersubjective verifiability), only Swedish appears to show semantic specificity, allowing exclusively for tro. German does not appear sensitive to this constraint as both denken/glauben/meinen are available. The finding that even genetically close languages show striking differences in VOT casts doubt on universality proposals in the domain of VOT.

中文翻译：

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用德语和瑞典语思考事物。两种遗传上接近的语言中思维动词的跨语言比较。☆

在普遍性建议声称所有语言都共享思维的概念化和表达的背景下，本研究对德语和瑞典语中的思维动词（VOT）进行了比较调查。特别是，它检查了 VOT 中的语义特异性（在特定上下文中只有一个动词的受限可用性），以及两个约束的潜在影响（主体间可验证性；主观性）。进行了一项情境化选择任务，其中以德语 ( n = 30) 和瑞典语 ( n = 30) 为母语的人必须指出四个动词中的哪一个 ( denken/glauben/meinen/finden; tänka/tro/tycka/mena) 在特定的上下文中是有意义的。结果表明，德国的 VOT 领域在语义上不如瑞典领域。此外，它们表明两种语言都对主观性约束敏感：当 VOT 构筑表达主观意见/评估/评价的话语时，它们仅允许使用一个特定动词（ finden/tycka ）。然而，当 VOT 构建了一个声明，其他交互者可以测试其真实性（主体间可验证性）时，只有瑞典语似乎表现出语义特异性，只允许tro。德语似乎对这种约束不敏感，因为两者都是denken/glauben/meinen可用。即使基因相近的语言在 VOT 中也表现出显着差异，这一发现使人们对 VOT 领域的普遍性提议产生了怀疑。