The aim of this master’s thesis is to present the ways in which dual meaning can be conveyed in English and German and analyze how frequently they are employed in real life. The theoretical part begins with a general overview of the grammatical category of number, then continues to explicate the said category with regard to English and German. After elucidating and comparing the two number systems, the thesis proceeds to provide a detailed description of the dual, including its main properties as well as its role in language and an extensive overview of its history. The second part of the history section is devoted to English and German specifically, transitioning into the first main segment of the thesis, that is the presentation of English and German dual expressions. There, several forms are depicted from a theoretical point of view, including examples of semantic and syntactic dual.
After the theoretical part, the empirical segment features a corpus analysis of selected examples. With the help of two English and two German corpora (BNC, enTenTen15; DeReKo, deTenTen13) accessed via Sketch Engine and Cosmas II, nine groups of expressions are analyzed in terms of frequency, in order to illustrate and compare their actual use as well as draw parallels to the theoretical premises. The examples are selected based on their uniqueness and comparability to their counterparts in the other language. Combined with the theoretical framework, the empirical data showcase the great diversity of English and German dual forms and disprove the assumed absence of the dual from the two languages.
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