Volume 139, Issue 1

This paper investigates the development of sentential negation in Middle High German using sermons from the Upper German dialect area. To this end, a heterogeneous yet fine-grained corpus of Alemannic and Bavarian sermons is analysed with respect to diachronic development, geographical distribution and language-internal factors. What becomes clear is that Jespersen’s Cycle, a cross-linguistic model of the development of negation that can be seen as part of the received history of German negation, fails to account for the mechanisms in the development of sentential negation in German. These mechanisms cannot be understood independently of the – in some respects parallel – development of n‑indefinites. It appears that the interplay of variation and the grammaticalisation of the n‑indefinite nicht , which co-occurred with ne but could also appear on its own, played a more important role in the emergence of the negation particle nicht than previously thought. It is argued that when nicht was grammaticalised it retained the variation of the n-indefinite nicht , and that the subsequent loss of ne was a parallel development in both usages of nicht . Für wertvolle Hinweise zu einer früheren Version dieses Beitrags möchte ich mich bei Stephan Elspaß, Helmut Graser, Nils Langer, Sonja Müller, Konstantin Niehaus, Hannes Scheutz und zwei anonymen GutachterInnen herzlich bedanken.

The ›Nibelungenlied‹ unfolds its story of social destruction by means of foreshadowing, which influences the level of characters as well as the narrative discourse. Various approaches elucidated how this raises and directs expectations, drawing on techniques of anticipation, Vgl. grundlegend Burghart Wachinger: Studien zum Nibelungenlied. Vorausdeutungen, Aufbau, Motivierung, Tübingen 1960, mit Verweisbelegen auf S. 146, Anm. 2, und Analysen auf S. 5–28. Zur Auswertung der Vorausdeutungen vgl. zuvor auch Adrien Bonjour: Anticipations et prophéties dans le ›Nibelungenlied‹, in: Études Germaniques 7 (1952), S. 241–251, danach auch Harald Burger: Vorausdeutung und Erzählstruktur in mittelalterlichen Texten, in: Stefan Sonderegger [u. a.] (Hgg.): Typologia litterarum. Festschrift für Max Wehrli, Zürich 1969, S. 125–153, hier S. 142–146; resümie­rend Ursula Schulze: Das Nibelungenlied, Stuttgart 2001 (Universal-Bibliothek 17604), S. 120–131. indeterminate gaps of characterization Vgl. Walter Haug: Montage und Individualität im Nibelungenlied, in: Fritz Peter Knapp (Hg.): Nibelungenlied und Klage. Sage und Geschichte, Struktur und Gattung. Passauer Nibelungengespräche 1985, Heidelberg 1987, S. 277–293. or latent modes of knowledge. Vgl. Andrea Sieber: Latenz und weibliche Gewalt im ›Nibelungenlied‹, in: Johannes Keller u. Florian Kragl (Hgg.): Heldinnen. 10. Pöchlarner Heldenliedgespräch, Wien 2010 (Philologica Germanica 31), S. 165–184. Less attention has been paid to the fact that these calculative effects not least result from narrative functions of computation that equally support determination and indeterminacy. The following essay seeks to explore and re-evaluate this computational ambiguity which converges in the symbol of the hoard.

In premodern narratives contradictions are omnipresent – conflicting concepts, logical inconsistencies, acts of objection. In a narratological perspective ›contradiction‹ – conflicts of incompatible knowledges and narrative patterns; inconsistencies in or between speech (by narrator or characters) and action; contradictory or inconsistent information and motivation – is apt to subvert, complicate, or enrich the textual production of meaning. The project ›Contradiction as a Narrative Principle in Premodern Narrative‹ (University of Bremen) explores different types of contradictions in medieval epic and romance.

The essay comments on nine stanzas ascribed to Frauenlob dealing with the conflict between Emperor Louis the Bavarian and different popes. Further­more, the essay discusses the questions of dating and authorship.