Volume 143, Issue 3

The loss of the preterite form in German dialects is still a disputed and unresolved matter. The article summarizes the results of a new study that analyzes several dialectological documentations (e. g. dialect grammars, dialect atlases) and recognizes the areal distribution of the loss of the preterite as a threefold scale (number of preterite building verbs, frequency of forms, hierarchy in loss of forms). On this basis the article reconstructs the historical process of the loss of the preterite and suggests an integrative explanation of the described process as the result of the semantic and functional expansion of the German present perfect.

Based on the Reference Corpus of Middle High German (REM) and the Bonn Early New High German Corpus (FnhdC), this paper investigates the development of the German future construction werden  + Infinitive as well as constructions that are often seen as its predecessors and/or competitors. The paper focuses on the construction werden  + Present Participle but also takes modal verb constructions with mögen, müssen, sollen , and wollen into account. A semantic analysis of the dependent verbs occurring in the constructions with regard to their aspectual characteristics reveals that werden  + Infinitive and werden  + Present Participle undergo parallel developments that can be seen as context expansion from a grammaticalization-theoretical perspective. The modal verb constructions, by contrast, remain stable with regard to the aspectual semantics of their dependent verbs. Furthermore, it is argued that, following recent theoretical approaches from diachronic Construction Grammar, the complex relationship between werden  + Infinitive and werden  + Participle can be modelled as ›attraction‹ or contamination between different constructions.

The purpose of this paper is to criticize established doctrines in the field of metrical analysis of Middle High German verse by incriminating ‒ especially from a methodological view ‒ the inconsistency and arbitrarity of traditional scansion instruments. Thus, broad descriptive research on prosodic regularities, which a new metric theory of Middle High German verse could build upon, is shown to be a desideratum.

The ›Rennewart‹ by Ulrich von Türheim describes a daily habit Willehalm pursues shortly before his death: vespertine walks that help him to say his prayers fully. The description of this routine serves as the focal point for studying how the text frames different forms of religious life in addition to the contrast between chivalric and monastic or eremitic forms of life. The article argues that the main issue in the text is not establishing a hierarchy between different forms of life, but rather addressing the question to what extent an individual can adapt established forms of life. Drawing both on a close reading of the moniage part of the text and on a reconstruction of the cultural semantics of promenading, the article interprets Willehalm’s habit of walking as an idiosyncratic practice of religious life.