Volume 135, Issue 3

This paper deals with some cases of morphological complexity within Germanic. Special attention is paid to forms of over-/underspecification and the in-/decrease of linguistic irregularity. Non-native language acquisition has to be considered crucial for grammatical simplification and inter-linguistic realignment. The main focus lies on the divergent representations of definiteness and passive between German and the Scandinavian languages. German proves to be less complex in this respect. Starting point is the assumption that Ancient Germanic was a contact language and the subsequent reimplementation of the Germanic dialects shows how genetically related languages may diverge typologically.

The relative order of accusative and dative object in German is subject to a number of grammatical (e. g. ›dat. before acc.‹), pragmatic (e. g. ›given before new information‹), and cognitive constraints (e. g. ›animate before inanimate referents‹). The question is whether factors like text type or closeness to oral patterns have an impact on object order in Middle High German, represented by the Prose-Lancelot (PL) and the sermons of Berthold (B). PL shows 20 % deviation from the dative before accusative order, B 2 %. The factor accounting for the difference is not text type, but performative closeness to oral patterns. In modern texts, the same correlation could be detected.

The narrative variations on the motif of the ›Liebestod‹ are described by means of lists of examples in courtly romances, such as ›Reinfried von Braunschweig‹ and Gottfried’s ›Tristan‹. The classical sources of different vernacular adaptions, above all Ovid’s treatment of the Pyramus and Thisbe episode in the ›Metamorphoses‹, show how far the representation of the lovers’ unity in death and an empathetic justification of their dying is anticipated. Yet the ›Liebestod‹ also possesses important functions in the Arthurian romance (Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Wirnt von Grafenberg) and in later romances concerned with love and rulership (Rudolf von Ems and others).

In the narrative ›Reinhart Fuchs‹, the guidance of the reader’s reception, which is at first ambivalent and contradictory, evolves into a consistent, affirmative steering of the reader’s reception. The resulting perspective is ethically unacceptable as the rape of the she-wolf is being approved of, so that the implosion of the world of the animals is the logical conclusion at the end. The recipient is lead to aporia in that he is urged to adopt the perspective of the fox, which is also the view of the narrator, while at the same time he is loath to share this perspective.

For about 170 years the minnesinger Leutold von Seven had been the topic of intense research. The results, however, with regard to his descent and period of activity differed a great deal. The lack of cooperation between philologists, historians of art and historians certainly was one of the reasons. Up to about 1970 for older philologists Leutold came from Säben in South Tyrol and was a contemporary of Walther von der Vogelweide about 1220, although Josef Schatz had found out in 1901 that Seven and Säben are not identic. Younger scholars of the 1970s analysed Leutold’s songs again and dated them about 1250 or later. Since 1976 Leutold is seen as a Styrian of Safenau on the river Hartberger Safen by the historian of art, Ingo F. Walther, according to a Styrian document of 1218, published by historians in 1903, but overseen for a long time by philologists. It was the Styrian historian Fritz Posch to identify the territory of the Lords of Safen (= Seven ) around Kaindorf and Hofkirchen on the river Pöllauer Safen west of Hartberg in Eastern Styria. But Posch neglected the existence of Leutold von Seven, not knowing that he was a minnesinger, and tried to show that his name is only another name for Leutold von Stadegg. In the paper the different aspects of research are discussed and attempts of acceptable solutions are given.