Volume 132, Issue 1

Our understanding of the relative chronology and linguistic geography of velar palatalization in West Germanic remains limited. A major obstacle is the lack of evidence for the earlier stages of the western Franconian dialects. An examination of the origins of the spelling <gh>, common in medieval Dutch as well as in the Old High German Isidor, reveals a relationship with velar palatalization. The view that <gh> goes back to Merovingian Latin and that its later use in Middle Dutch is a borrowing of an Old French spelling practice is untenable. Instead, the spelling is an internal development by Germanic scribes of an established model with diacritical <h> inherited from Latin. If Gmc. *g in the western Franconian dialects is analyzed as a voiced velar fricative, then the distinction <g ~ gh> points to an opposition between velar and palatalized reflexes of Gmc. *g.

The first part of the Lex Burgundionum corresponds in principle to the first part of the Lex Salica , but between the paragraphs of LB later material has been (unsystematically) introduced, whereas the regulations of LS have been extended and larger parts have been shifted to the beginning and the end of the original first part. Later additions in LB stand disconnectedly side by side, whereas to the original first part of LS a set of specifically Germanic regulations has been added.

The Walther corpus includes two obituaries dedicated to the minnesinger Reinmar which share the same style. With regard to the personal evaluation of the fellow singer, however, they are simply irreconcilable with each other. To resolve this problem, the statement in L.82,24 has to be reflected in a critical way, along with a new look at the performative orientation of L.83,1. This serves to verify how the two stanzas are linked to reality and to reconcile them with the confusion evoked by their contradictory nature.

The article is concerned with the presentation of Minne in Wolfram von Eschenbach's ›Titurel‹. Based on Kiening's and Köbele's considerations on the metaphorical quality of the speaking of courtly love in the fragments, it argues that Wolfram's text is structured by a mythic concept of Minne. This concept transcends the standards of discourse established around 1200 by using elements of mythic narration like homology, polarization and the repetition of basic patterns. Wolfram's ›Titurel‹ thus presents its reader with a deification of Minne which resists (modern) logic approach. The concept functions as »mythic analogon« and allows Wolfram to design his poem on the myth of love as a mythic narrative.

To substitute an individual in most intimate proximity and to play sexual masquerade between the sexes appears to have been a global narrative pattern of various genres. The following considerations though are neither concerned with a widely noticed phenomenon of narration in general nor with the variety of comparable variants in respect to form and content but they are concentrating on a particular practice of narrative transformation. In ›Prose Lancelot‹ the dual substitution of Ginover touches the central meaning of an adultery love between her and Lancelot. It is reflecting the conflict of clerical and courtly discourse characteristic for ›Prose Lancelot‹. The substitution as narrative core is confronted with courtly, biblical and novellistic patterns of narration.