Volume 132, Issue 3

This paper accounts for the distribution of the possessive pronouns sîn and is in Old Saxon. Old Saxon sîn mostly retains its reflexive semantics, but unlike its equivalents in Gothic and Old Norse, it has become limited to masculine singular. The more frequent masc.sg. possessor is , which may be reflexive or non-reflexive, functions as an unstressed variant of sîn in the metrical system of the Heliand .

The ellipsis of parts of words ( be- und entladen ›load and unload‹) is fairly common in contemporary German. This article takes a diachronic perspective, thus revealing how the phenomenon was even more frequent around 1700. Many of the examples are no longer grammatical, e. g. schwest- und brüderlich ›sist- and brotherly‹. It is shown how the phenomenon originated in two distinct domains: In compounds, the ellipsis arose in the 16 th century from constructions like frouwen gelust und list ›women's lust and Ø cunning‹. In the domain of inflection, the earlier data cannot readily be analyzed as ellipsis. The two conjuncts ( von feindt vnd freunden ›of enemyØ and friends‹) could be perceived as a unit, thus inflected only once. The crucial step was the merge of the two domains in the early 17 th century. This event is likely to have caused the extensive type and token frequency of the phenomenon around 1700.

Kidnapping of women and rape are judged in the same way. If the woman consents, the act is classified as marriage. For marriage between free persons and slaves the sentence is death penalty in LB, loss of freedom in LS. – The comparison between the two laws shows that LS 13,8 must be erroneous. – Glosses in LS: scodo ›(partial) penalty‹; antomia ›penalty‹; altheofaltheo ›attack on a housemaid‹; honema ›shame‹, andras theo ›girl of another (man)‹; gange-haldo ›stopping of a procession‹; frio-lasina ›rape of a free woman‹; ** ambaht-mundio ›assumption of power over a woman by a servant‹; ** abna tho wilendemo ›during the lifetime of the husband‹. LS 15,2 and 25,7 are dark.

With respect to form and content Heinrich von Veldeke's lyric is permeated with the conventions of the Romance poetry. On the basis of our computer program ›Anastrof‹ we study Veldeke's strophic forms with regard to the troubadours and trouvères.

The Mönch von Salzburg and Oswald von Wolkenstein were deeply rooted in German traditions of song poetry, the Mönch also in the Latin songs of the church, but both were also open for available elements of the more advanced French and Italian musical culture. The following study attempts a survey of typical relations between musical forms, metrical patterns and literary semantics in the monodic and polyphonic songs of both poets.

The 15 th century Codex 2457 of the Austrian National Library of Vienna contains a German text on the taming, feeding and healing of birds of prey by an otherwise unknown author named Eberhard Hicfelt. The analysis of the ›Aucupatorium herodiorum‹ reveals that it is a fastidious compilation and translation based on eleven different sources (mostly or even all of Latin origin). Of these the following can be identified: Adelard of Bath's ›De avibus tractatus‹, ›Epistola ad Ptolomaeum‹, ›Gerardus falconarius‹, ›Grisofus medicus‹, Pseudo-Hippokrates' ›Practica avium‹, Petrus de Crescentiis's ›Ruralia commoda‹ and Adam des Aigles's ›Traité de fauconnerie‹.