Studia Linguistica Germanica

Just as languages are not evenly distributed across the world, the extent, manifestations, and linguistic effects of multilingualism not only vary geographically but have also changed historically. This volume focuses on Europe, examining in which way and to which extent multilingualism shaped the history and everyday lives of Europeans in different epochs and countries.

The question What is good (High) German? occupies people today just as it did 500 years ago. This study examines discourses surrounding historical attitudes to language and language standardization from the sixteenth to eighteenth century and shows what knowledge or accompanying beliefs scholars of the time associated with (High) German. It uses a frame-semantic approach to reconstruct the frame of knowledge.

This volume shines a light on the supposed tension between linguistic norm and variation in the early modern period by looking at early modern foreign language textbooks. Besides presenting the textbooks as sources, it is first and foremost about analyzing the authors’ ideas of norms and how they were implemented in language use. Studies of grammatical phenomena and language awareness open up new perspectives on linguistic norms and language use.

As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s life partner, Christiana von Goethe (née Vulpius) corresponded extensively, providing remarkable insights into her language and writing practice. This volume examines her letters linguistically as witnesses of everyday language around 1800 and in terms of relationship history, and places them in the broader context of social biography, gender, and cultural history.

The theory of the magic wand of analogy ascribes an exploratory bridging function to formations of analogy in thought and speech. This makes it possible to understand the phenomenon of the analogy as an intellectual universal that can meet analytical, synthetic, and playful needs to create meaning. This volume shows that magic wands manifest themselves in all patterns of language, making it easier to find our way in the world labyrinth.

Multilingualism and language contact have shaped European history up to the present day. After intensive research into modern multilingual orality, the focus is now increasingly on multilingual writing practices. This volume investigates the numerous historical witnesses to multilingual writing traditions, taking into account the different regions and cultural contexts in which German has been present.

This study, on the threshold between linguistics, philology and hermeneutics, examines the linguistic constitution of conceptual and experiential factors in economics and law. The primary focus is on exciting, underdetermined aporetic complexes and conceptual models, which are examined in terms of their denotative configuration in four paradigmatic pieces of writing.

This study offers a linguistic critique of German language history writing at the second metalevel of history. It examines processes of the linguistic construction of history by means of a syntactic-semantic analysis of historical statements using the prepositional group with “for”. It investigates the ways that the significance of past events is expressed in terms of its significance for something else (of greater significance).

Words are symbols for the things and facts of the world. This volume focuses on the ways that words may be seen as “signs of change” in this world, based on numerous examples. Alongside the history of words and concepts, the essays examine questions of the codification of historical lexicons, the dynamics of professional and political language, and the transformation of communicative practices and traditions of verbal expression.

The book examines the use of the definite article in combination with personal names in German (“der Peter,” “die Merkel”). Using qualitative and quantitative data analysis, it investigates the frequency, the contexts of usage, and the functions of the article as it occurs across historical and recent variations. In this analysis, there are two predominant factors that govern the use of the article: pragmatics and structure of the nominal phrase.

Time is mostly viewed as a measurable natural phenomenon. However, it can also be understood as an interpretable cultural phenomenon with diverse organizing functions. The focus of the study is on the knowledge of time accumulated in the lexical, grammatical, and textual forms of naturally evolved language and the anthropological significance of this understanding for human thought and action.

Proper names have developed particular morphological and syntactic characteristics in recent language history. Based on comprehensive diachronic and synchronic corpus, questionnaire, and experimental studies, the author describes when, how, and why names have developed their special status. The focus is on the general grammatical analysis of changes in names, case and number de-inflection, and the emergence of the possessive “s.”

Drawing on a historical text corpus (1500–1710), this study shows how linked N+N-compounds develop and alter existing word formation patterns. The New High German “love of compounds” is directly attributable to these changes in productivity. Of particular interest is the non-paradigmatic s-compound. A proposed (transient) function of the s-compound results in the classification of the new type within existing models of language change.

Spoken German shows a characteristic degradation of preterit forms. This study provides a comprehensive documentation of this “disappearance of the preterit” in time and space. It describes the loss of the preterit as a principled process of displacement and develops a new integrated picture to resolve the contradictory state of the theoretical research from the past 130 years.

This diachronic, corpus-based study documents grammaticalization processes and the syntactic, semantic, and above all pragmatic properties of causal connectors in Early New High German, such as dieweil and denn, as well as derhalben and darum, along with the prepositions halben and wegen. Thanks to the use of modern descriptive models, the findings are also relevant for the analysis of modern German connectors.

The study fills a long-existing gap by investigating the schwa apocope in the Ripuarian dialect, whose origin can be dated by the concurrent phonologization of the tonal accent. While the schwa apocope is largely obscured in the written language because of increasing conservatism in writing, it is possible to successfully date it. In this connection, important hints are provided by morphological class changes and switches.

For some time, historical lexicography has been suspended between the demands of traditional philology, modern metalexicography, and technical innovation. The essays in this compilation volume reflect the challenges associated with these demands as well as ways to overcome them. They also reveal that historical lexicography is conceptually and institutionally capable of continuously re-inventing itself.

This study examines German perfect constructions from a usage-based perspective by carrying out a meticulous empirical investigation in two time frames. It analyzes all perfect tense forms in major early Old High German and Old Saxon textual monuments and their degree of grammaticalization. Then, by means of an extensive corpus examination, it shows the schemata behind contemporary German helper-verb selection in the perfect tense.

This monograph examines how modern dictionaries present diatopic variations in standard language. Using detailed analyses of dictionaries, it first presents the actual status of dictionary depictions of diatopic variations. The author then goes on to suggest opportunities for optimization at all stages of the lexicographic process.

Based on a comprehensive corpus that spans five centuries, this study presents the major developmental lines of adjectival suffix derivation. Arranged according to the most important patterns (-lich, -ig, -isch), it reveals the precise modes of productivity and analyzes factors that promote the rise or fall of particular patterns in competitive structures. The author discusses the theoretical implications in the context of construction grammar.

In recent years, changes in individual word-formation patterns as well as in the broader system of German word formation have been the subject of considerable attention in German linguistics. Using the example of nominalization patterns, this monograph proposes a cognitive-linguistic and constructionist theory of word-formation change and also discusses methodological approaches to studying morphological change.

This book presents in detail the circumstances that prevailed in the field of linguistic research during the National Socialist era. It documents over 300 individuals who were persecuted and driven into exile, and also describes the state of research in the discipline. Starting from this presentation, it outlines the development of linguistic research since the 19^th century.

The studies develop a new historical image of language use by German students, juxtaposing an analysis of authentic texts with specific patterns of student life. A focus is placed on the characteristics of text types such as song and memorabilia, in conjunction with patterns of interaction, such as insult and satisfaction. The analysis is grounded in text theory and action theory, with the aim of contributing to a pragmatic history of language.

Wackernagel’s law explains the global similarity of natural languages. Wackernagel elements generally tend to be in second position but stay as close as possible to the beginning of a sentence. Wackernagel’s Law in German describes their particular features and serialization in the Wackernagel complex as reflecting an interplay between syntax, phonology, and information structure. The work is a contribution to typology and language change theory.

The book presents Grimmelshausen’s place in the 17^th-century linguistic discourse of patriotism. In analyzing this discourse, it describes a number of connective elements in discourse that help to interpret the satirical pamphlet “Teutscher Michel.” The author goes on to examine Grimmelshausen’s satirical engagement with the language of patriotic discourse and with the linguistic practices of his times.

Based on the analysis of texts written between 1650 and 2000 and characterized by their use of language of proximity, this study discusses the German pronoun es. The first section provides a semantic and morphosyntactic description of the phoric use of es. The second section discusses possibilities of a description of non-phoric es, based on the principles of valence theory and construction grammar.

How did German linguists think about Latin, the international lingua franca in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and about Greek and Hebrew? Using wide-ranging sources and evidence, this study presents contemporary writings about genealogy, typology, borrowing, purism, and the use and teaching of foreign languages.

The book investigates the diachronic dimension of contact-induced language change based on empirical data from Pennsylvania German (PG), a variety of German in long-term contact with English. Written data published in local print media from Pennsylvania (USA) between 1868 and 1992 are analyzed with respect to semantic changes in the argument structure of verbs, the use of impersonal constructions, word order changes in subordinate clauses and in prepositional phrase constructions.
The research objective is to trace language change based on diachronic empirical data, and to assess whether existing models of language contact make provisions to cover the long-term developments found in PG. The focus of the study is thus twofold: first, it provides a detailed analysis of selected semantic and syntactic changes in Pennsylvania German, and second, it links the empirical findings to theoretical approaches to language contact.
Previous investigations of PG have drawn a more or less static, rather than dynamic, picture of this contact variety. The present study explores how the dynamics of language contact can bring about language mixing, borrowing, and, eventually, language change, taking into account psycholinguistic processes in (the head of) the bilingual speaker.

This innovative linguistic and cultural-historical study examines interpersonal social relationships during the Early New High German era. The work focuses on activities of linguistic exclusion along with the underlying pragma-grammatical and pragmasemantic strategies associated with them, as well as their impact on ten important marginal groups. The study is geared to readers from all fields with an interest in history.

The question of the conditions, forms, and impact of felicitous dialogue has arisen in the broadest range of academic disciplines in the 20th century. This book examines such normative theories of discourse in the German-speaking world through the perspective of discursive history and places them in a broad social and cultural historical context. It reveals the history of discourse in the 20th century by reflecting on its idealization.

This book is devoted to double forms of the perfect tense in the German language. The study is based on an extensive corpus of double formations of the perfect tense as they have been used over the past eight centuries. This compilation takes into account both written language (the dimension of distance) and spoken language (the dimension of proximity). On the basis of the collected empirical data, the study addresses specific questions about the structure, diachronic use, and diachronic meaning of double-perfect tense formations.

The function of the grammatical category of gender is one of the most controversial issues in linguistics. This study draws to inquire about the extent to which there is a diachronically established relationship motivated by core grammatical structure between gender and suffixation that can be described in terms of nominal quantification . According to this view, word formation by means of suffixes in New High German serves less for transposition and modification, and more for the creation of overtly marked, quantifiable nouns.

Karl Philipp Moritz is best known as the author of the novel Anton Reiser, and as a scholar of classical aesthetics. However, there is another area of his work that was extremely important to him: his engagement with language. Against the backdrop of European intellectual history, this book spotlights Moritz as an original grammarian and philosopher of language. It also illustrates the ways that his reflections on language helped develop the methods of thinking that later became the foundation for his aesthetics.

The written genre of the religious pamphlet stands out as a deeply characteristic form of public communication in the early modern period, not least on account of its inseparable combination of language and images. This study undertakes an analysis of semiotically complex religious pamphlets from the late 16th century, thereby making a contribution to research in linguistic history that is culturally oriented. In the process, it illustrates the opportunities for using frame semantics to analyze both verbal and visual texts.

This book presents the historical lexicography of German, Dutch, and English with a focus on factors related to ideological history, professional lexicography, and cultural education. In the main part of the book, the author undertakes a professional treatment of the common types of lexicographic information, and also gives a discussion of some rarely provided lexicographic information.

Contemporary historical linguistics is characterized by basic instabilities in its theoretical foundations. The studies in this volume both reveal and question this theoretical instability. The authors reflect about the potentials and limitations of different paths to knowledge, different underlying theoretical and methodological principles, as well as about those aspects of research on the history of language linked to the history of science and epistemology.

Usually we try to objectivize our knowledge of language by using terminology. In the process we easily forget that language can also be concretized revealingly by means of images or symbols. This form of objectivization is particularly suitable for grasping the diverse and pragmatic potential functions of language. Moreover, images can also provide good access to the substructures of our terminology-based knowledge of language.

This “corpus-driven‎” work contributes to the investigation of grammatical phenomena in the linguistic period of New High German (17th to 21st centuries) with a focus on pronominal adverbs (e.g. davon weiß ich nichts; da weiß ich nichts von; da weiß ich nichts davon; dadavon weiß ich nichts). This analysis follows the trend of current grammar research by concentrating on registers of spoken German.

This study brings linguistic history and contemporary history together. Using the tools of discourse analysis it examines the linguistic quality of upheaval in the critical discourse of the late 1960s and considers the concepts of democracy represented in this discourse. The critical theory of the Frankfurt School serves as the point of reference in which these concepts are based. The book is aimed not only at linguists but also at historians and sociologists.

The German language is not uniform, but rather has prominent national and regional differences. This book focuses on how much this so-called pluricentricism is reflected in the lexicography, how it presents itself in public written texts and to what extent it appears in the language preferences of speakers from the entire German language area.

In recent decades there has been increased interest and fascination in the concept of openness as a kind of communication. Openness is in fact a communicative ideal of the modern age because this ideal has existed without interruption since the Enlightenment. Another reason is that the idealization of openness is closely interwoven with central social and intellectual developments that were intensified in the modern age. Based on a wide spectrum of sources concerning communication, Juliane Schröter examines the history of this ideal from the 18th century to the present.

Conjugation classes, e.g. strong verbs with change of vowel versus weak verbs with a t-suffix to express tense represent formal differentiations without functional equivalent. Thus, at first glance, they appear to complicate the language system. This study shows that conjugation classes by no means must be necessarily downgraded in the history of Germanic languages but rather maintained and reorganized. On the other hand it shows that their change is not arbitrary but steered by principles, e.g. linked functionally to grammatical categories such as tense.

What does the grammatical category tense have to do with “orality,” and how can this relationship be investigated in historical context? This study explores this question based on a detailed empirical investigation of the Middle High German tense system. Here the textual and functional distribution of the tenses are traced back to a binary structured system depending on two different discourse modes, thus showing an indirect relationship between tense and “historical orality.”

The study deals with the linguistic acculturation at the end of the 17th century of the French Protestant Huguenots, who also sought refuge in Brandenburg. The study focuses on the reconstruction of the linguistic integration of these migrants, who in the course of time gave up their native French language and went over to German. An analysis of the linguistic situation in three different Huguenot colonies shows that the processes of language change differed widely, depending on the place and context.

This study focuses on the systematic linguistic analysis of stereotypical structures of statements on the topic of ‘pact with the Devil’ as they have been recorded in numerous extant records of early modern interrogations of women accused of witchcraft. Based on a supra-regional text corpus comprising more than 200 interrogation records, the statements of the accused are examined for standardisation tendencies and for characteristics of regional language usage; the findings are interpreted against the background of political, social and cultural historical references.

The volume focuses on the Latin tracts produced in Paris around 1270 by the Danes Martinus and Boethius de Dacia on what is known as “modistic grammar.” The contours of this “medieval linguistics” become clear in the comparison with two further approaches to linguistic theory - four tracts by medieval Icelandic grammarians and Saussure’s “Cours de linguistique générale” as a fundamental work in modern linguistics. The comparison then leads to a fundamental epistemological reflection on a possible typology of theoretical constructs in linguistics.

This historical semantic study examines Otto von Bismarck’s use of the term Volk (‘people’) and its synonyms such as Nation or Stamm (‘tribe’). It shows that the expressions are multiply polysemous and that individual meanings can be bundled together into concepts (state community, cultural community etc.). Bismarck employs certain repetitive patterns of argument and an ‘open system’ of expressions with Volk to prosecute or legitimise political aims depending on the time, situation, text-type and addressees.

The study originates from the Erlangen research project on word formation in the Middle High German language of documents from the 13th century. It examines in detail the adjective derivation in the texts of the “Corpus of Old German original documents dating to the year 1300” and thus closes a gap in the research, as word formation in German of the High Middle Ages has been little studied to date. This historical period is especially interesting for research purposes because during this period, morphological structures were formed which later became permanently established in New High German.

The study originates from the Erlangen research project on word formation in the Middle High German language of documents from the 13th century. It examines in detail the noun derivation in the texts of the “Corpus of Old German original documents dating to the year 1300” and thus closes a gap in the research, as word formation in German of the High Middle Ages has been little studied to date. The study provides new, expandable insight into the morphology of Middle High German.

In discussions of National Socialism one question occurs with particular frequency ‑ How was it possible in the country of poets and thinkers for people educated in the humanities to follow a “house painter” like Hitler?
This book aims to show that it was just these educated middle classes, whose own identity was formed by a cultural chauvinism (with the centres of identification of “artistry” and “creativeness”), who had been prepared for an ideology along the lines of National Socialism long before Hitler. One of the most important pioneers of this mind-set was Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

The study is principally based on empirical data; it examines language development processes in the four regionally contiguous cities of Emmerich, Geldern, Nijmegen and Wesel in the early modern age. Using the linguistic study of variables and historical sociolinguistics, the author traces the processes initiating the formation of the linguistic boundary between German and Nederlans in the area of Rhine and Meuse. In this, the viability is tested both of the "classic" theories of German language standardisation (territorial influence, influence of printing and of Luther's language) and of more recent explanatory approaches (significance of the cities and the multilingualism of the upper classes). The study has an important contribution to make to the historical linguistic description of the early stage in the genesis of the modern national languages of German and Dutch.

The study examines the influence of 17th century grammarians on the standardisation of the German written language. It is based on a corpus of handwritten records and on the theoretical writings of leading grammarians. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the grammarians were the dominant factor in the formation of the German written language, but this is called into doubt by the comparison of theory and practice.

Using the Hamburg merchant class, the analysis of the textual records themselves provides a graphic example of how applied scriptorality can be deployed as an instrument of power and illuminates the working conditions for city chancery clerks.

This study is concerned with the history of declension classes in four Germanic languages - German, Dutch, Swedish and Danish. Detailed studies in language history explore the genesis, change and structure of the present-day systems. A comparison of the language histories makes parallels and divergences particularly clear. Using many examples and schematic illustrations, the study illuminates the development of the typological variety in the Germanic languages from a contrastive perspective.

This study in the history of language and culture is concerned with the discourse on the German Standard language in the 18th century, called High German by contemporary linguists and grammarians. Using 18th century grammars, dictionaries, handbooks of rhetoric and other texts, the study examines varying concepts of "High German". Central keywords are presented such as Obersächsisch (Upper Saxon), Pöbel (plebs), or Volk (people) together with models and strategies of argumentation for upgrading or downgrading individual language regions, groups of speakers or individual stylistic features.

Working from a discourse analysis perspective, Müller examines how a national art history was constituted through its linguistic construction and transmission. The study demonstrates how German art history was ‘manufactured’ through language, particularly in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The study operates at the interface between text linguistics, the history of concepts and the history of words and makes an important contribution to the history of national consciousness.

The volume presents a collection of papers on research into East Middle German written languages in the Late Middle Ages. The topics cover aspects of historical East Middle German from the beginning of records until about 1500 from the perspectives of linguistic geography, the sociology of language, philology, textual history and regional history.

The book is concerned with a particular set of Indo-European sounds, the laryngeals, and the effect they had on the sounds, forms and etymologies of the Germanic languages. It contains detailed introductions to all the fundamentals of laryngeal theory, together with an introduction to the problematic history of the laryngeal theory which can be read without specialist knowledge. Research into the Germanic languages has not previously taken account of laryngeal theory, but with it many a sound law, etymology and morphological development can be reformulated or made more precise.

The study examines Jewish and judaeophobic language concepts and conflicts between 1893 and 1933. The author is primarily concerned with reconstructing German Jews’ attitudes to the German language. The sources used include public debates on the assessment of language as they were conducted in prominent Jewish journals around 1900.

Conversely, Kremer also examines the specific linguistic, cultural and racial polemics of the contemporary agitation directed against the Jews. His discreetly and tactfully written study contributes to the process of reappraising German-Jewish relations in attitudes to the German language.

Focusing on the sociolinguistic history of Germanic languages, the current volume challenges the traditional teleological approach of language historiography. The 30 contributions present alternative histories of ten ‘big’ as well as ‘small’ Germanic languages and varieties in the last 300 years. Topics covered in this book include language variation and change and the politics of language contact and choice, seen against the background of standardization processes of written and oral text genres and from the viewpoint of larger sections of the population.

The subject of this volume is the far-reaching phonological change which the German language has gone through during its history and which has led to a fundamental typological reorientation of the language. Whereas Old High German was clearly assigned to the typological pole of syllable languages, Modern German has developed into a pronounced word language that disregards the syllable. With the help of this typological model, all phonological changes can be described far more adequately than ever before. After introducing the concepts of syllable and word language, the volume moves on to describe the phonological-typological changes which have taken place in the history of the German language. Distinguishing features of this volume are its comprehensibility and numerous examples.

This volume examines a selection of popular books on good language and etiquette in 20th-century Germany. It questions whether the different political systems and ideologies that caused upheaval in Germany from the early 1920s to the mid-60s had a formative influence on conceptions of language and social skills. This unusual approach addresses a hitherto neglected area of research and makes an important contribution towards understanding the function of language in 20th-century Germany.

The study is a language-historical investigation of the use of the conjunctive mood in speech rendition. The textual data source consists of 105 transcripts from questioning in Early Modern witch trials dating from 1580 to 1650. Numerous tables document the results in detail. The extensive appendix of data sources will be of interest not only to linguists, but also to historians.

The placement of the würde + infinitive construction within the paradigm of the German tense and mood system has long been a topic of discussion in German linguistics. The study takes on this discussion and examines this construction under the aspect of grammaticalization. The first part of the work aims to determine the exact function and paradigmatic placement of the construction in German spoken today. Part two of the work traces the historical development of the construction as a multi-branched process of grammaticalization.

This study develops solutions to the problem of the linguistic handling of writing from a new perspective arising from the action-oriented nature of writing. The main theory is that writing does not compete with language, but is rather a component of it. The results of the study form a new theory on the relationship between language and writing.

This is the first study devoted to what is known as the subjectless or impersonal passive. The first half of the study examines the function and origin of the impersonal passive from a supra-language perspective. The second half, based on an empirical evaluation of Old, Middle and Early New High German texts from approx. 800 to approx. 1500 demonstrates the different stages involved in the development of the various manifestations of the personal and impersonal passive.

Normally, we expect that our knowledge about language should manifest itself in the form of concepts and theories. This book shows that knowledge about language can also be objectified in stories about language – knowledge which can make very fundamental anthropological, culture-historical and semiotic aspects of language apparent.

Guilt - how do victims speak about it? How do the perpetrators? How do those who were able to keep their distance from National Socialism? How do they all speak about the guilt of the German people? The author investigates these questions and reconstructs three different sub-discourses in which participants construct the term, guilt, from their own different perspectives.

During the time between the two World Wars, German linguistics was not nearly as isolated from international developments in the field as is often assumed. German language linguists not only comprehensively realized the then-current structural approaches of the Prague school, but often referred to them in their own innovative efforts. The study examines political, linguistic, and other determining factors of the reception of Structuralism in the German-speaking region, and a separate chapter focuses on the German reception within Czechoslovakia.

In this work, the Vocabularius rerum - a Latin-German specialist dictionary from 1483 - is edited and examined for the first time from linguistic aspects and with respect to possible sources. This book makes an important contribution to the study of lexicography in the Late Middle Ages, to the development of Early New High German vocabulary, and to lexical geography in the 15th century.

Purism is an aspect of linguistic study which appeals not only to the scholar but also to the layperson. Somehow, ordinary speakers with many different mother tongues and with no formal training in linguistics share certain beliefs about what language is, how it develops or should develop, whether it has good or bad qualities, etc. The topic of linguistic purism in its many realisations is the subject of this volume of 19 articles selected from the contributions presented at a conference at the University of Bristol in 2003.

In particular, the articles deal with the relationship of purism to historical prescriptivism, e.g. the influence of grammarians in the 17th and 18th centuries, to nationhood, e.g. the instrumentalising of purism in the standardisation of Afrikaans or Luxembourgish, to modern society, e.g. the existence of puristic tendencies in computer chatrooms, to folk linguistics, e.g. lay perceptions of different varieties of English, and to academic linguistics, e.g. the presence of puristic notions in the historiography of German or English.

The topic of this language- and culture-historical study is the national ideologization of the German language from the establishment of the Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft [Fruitful or Carpogenic Society] to the end of the Third Reich.

The history of German literature is to a large extent also a history of the translation and editing of Biblical texts. The study presents the translation technique of a medieval evangelist and provides insight into the methodical diversity of Bible translation in the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age.

In dieser Arbeit wird erstmals versucht, das gesamte semantische Spektrum des Wortes "Geschmack" in seiner "großen Zeit" zu erfassen und in Form eines Wortartikels darzustellen. Der begriffsgeschichtlich dominierten Aufarbeitung wird damit ein eigens entwickelter genuin linguistischer Ansatz entgegengestellt, der neue Erkenntnisse zum Wortgebrauch der letzten 300 Jahre zutage fördert.

Die Prinzipien des schreibsprachlichen Wandels stehen im Mittelpunkt dieser empirischen Untersuchung, in der nach einem neuartigen variationsanalytischen Verfahren zehn subsequente Schreibsysteme zwischen 1350 und 1650 kontrastiert werden. Dabei zeigt sich, dass der Wandel nicht als lineares Entwicklungsprinzip zu interpretieren ist, sondern als "diachronische Variation" im Sinne einer soziopragmatischen Stilgeschichte.

Die sprachwissenschaftliche Untersuchung beschäftigt sich mit der Konstitution und Vermittlung juristischen Fachwissens am Beispiel von "Sitzblockaden"-Gerichtsentscheidungen bis zum Bundesverfassungsgericht. Das Konzept der juristischen Textarbeit erklärt Verstehensprobleme auf pragmatischer Ebene und zeigt anhand von eigens entwickelten Sprachhandlungstypen, dass mit deren Hilfe die Unterschiede zwischen juristischer und alltagsweltlicher Sachverhaltskonstitution adäquater erfasst werden können als mit terminologischen oder stilistischen Erklärungsversuchen (z.B. bei der Gesetzesformulierung).

Die Mittel und Verfahren für die Gliederung von Texten in Einheiten werden seit den Anfängen von Text- und Gesprächslinguistik kontrovers diskutiert. Die vorliegende Arbeit führt die Ergebnisse verschiedener Forschungsrichtungen zusammen und vergleicht anhand zahlreicher detaillierter Beispielanalysen die Gliederung geschriebener und gesprochener Texte (verschiedener Text- bzw. Gesprächssorten): Auf der Grundlage des Nähe/Distanz-Konzeptes werden für beide medialen Varietäten die Gliederungsressourcen (syntaktisch, lexikalisch-semantisch, prosodisch usw.) und die Gliederungseinheiten (Ellipse, Satz, Absatz; Äußerungseinheit, Turn usw.) systematisch aufeinander bezogen. Vorgestellt wird ein Beschreibungskonzept, das auch den Einfluss pragmatischer Faktoren auf die Äußerungsgestaltung ("pragmatische Syntax") konsequent berücksichtigt.

This study shows that women involved in National Socialism in the years 1924 - 1934 developed and shaped a recognizable discourse which communicated and reflected their position and status within the NS movement.

The analysis is based on a variety of text-types produced by members of NS women's organisations, and includes official correspondence, circulars, reports, pamphlets, monographs and articles from NS women's journals. It draws upon several areas of linguistic theory, including feminist linguistics, semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis, and the salient features identified in the female discourse are placed within a sociolinguistic framework.

While previous research into the language of the NS-system has largely ignored the possibility of a cohesive female discourse, the study supports the idea that this discourse was dynamic, and at times heterogeneous, whilst also displaying many self-defining and self-referential features. It is characterised by its ambiguities and apparent contradictions, which expresses separateness and difference, yet also solidarity with the NSDAP.

Untersuchungsgegenstand des vorliegenden Bandes ist die für das Jahr 1771 von der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften gestellte Preisfrage, ob Menschen, wenn sie nur ihren natürlichen Fähigkeiten überlassen sind, Sprache erfinden können. Die berühmte Preisfrage ist Philologen und Historikern wohlbekannt, doch reduziert sich ihre Bekanntheit zumeist auf die schließlich ausgezeichnete Abhandlung Johann Gottfried Herders. Die nie veröffentlichten französischen, deutschen und lateinischen Abhandlungen der 30 Mitbewerber hingegen, von denen 24 im Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aufbewahrt werden, sind weithin unbekannt. Sie werden hier zum ersten Mal erschlossen und im Zusammenhang sprachtheoretischer und anthropologischer Diskurse der europäischen Aufklärung (u. a. Rousseau, Condillac, Locke, Buffon) analysiert. Ein wichtiges Anliegen der Arbeit besteht u. a. darin, die ausschließliche Perspektive der Forschung auf Herders Abhandlung zu relativieren und seine Leistung im Kontext der konkurrierenden Einsendungen neu zu bewerten. Die Autorin hat dazu ca. 1000 unedierte Handschriftenseiten ausgewertet, von denen einige hier exemplarisch abgedruckt sind.

Die Untersuchung ist im wesentlichen ein systematischer Vergleich der Satzsyntax Notkers in seinen althochdeutschen Übersetzungen mit den Satzstrukturen seiner lateinischen Vorlagen. Dieser Vergleich beruht auf der Grundlage repräsentativer Textcorpora und ist für jedes Werk in einer tabellarischen Statistik dokumentiert. Die vergleichende Analyse macht deutlich, daß Notker bei der Wiedergabe des Lateinischen, insbesondere der spezifisch lateinischen Konstruktionen, gerade die Satzstrukturen des Deutschen, vor allem die Nebensätze, überaus variabel und in sehr differenzierter Form einzusetzen versteht. Die vielfältigen Satzstrukturen prägen den analytischen Charakter der Übersetzungen, was - neben den Kommentaren - der Vermittlung der Textvorlagen dient, und so erweist sich Notker gerade im Bereich der Syntax als ein höchst eigenständiger Übersetzer. Die Untersuchung erweist seine Werke als Höhepunkt der althochdeutschen Übersetzungsliteratur und seine Syntax als wichtigen Beitrag zur Entwicklung der deutschen Sprache.

Der vorliegende Band versammelt Beiträge zur Entstehung der deutschen Schriftsprache, wobei anhand von Texten aus dem deutschen und niederländischen Raum unterschiedliche Aspekte des Standardisierungsprozesses in der frühen Neuzeit erörtert werden. Die Diskussion um die Rolle von regionalen, textsortenspezifischen und sozialen Faktoren liefert neue sprachgeschichtliche Erkenntnisse.

The volume presents the proceedings of an expert conference held in Dresden on the history of the German language. The papers focus particularly on the discussion of the "new" methods of "new" language history. In addition, the volume contains historical case studies from the period between 1800 and 1933. A third section concentrates on the historical links between the German language and ist Slavonic neighbours Polish, Russian and Czech.

Eine Grundfrage der Wissenschaftsvermittlung ist, ob Experten, Vermittler und Öffentlichkeit von den gleichen Gegenständen reden bzw. reden können.

Ausgehend von einem Vermittlungsmodell und der handlungssemantischen Analyse eines Korpus zum Thema "Ozonloch" kann folgende Antwort formuliert werden: Wissenschaftliches Wissen wird nicht einfach transferiert, sondern durch die massenmediale Vermittlung - bisweilen entscheidend - verändert. Viele medial thematisierte Glaubwürdigkeitskrisen "der Wissenschaft" können so als Folge medialer Wissenstransformationen erklärt werden. Personalisierte Erzählformen, Stereotype über Wissenschaftler und Laien sowie spezifische Eigenschaften des Mediensystems lassen vermuten, dass die Massenmedien nur in sehr eingeschränktem Maße dazu dienen können, einer größeren Öffentlichkeit den Zugang zu wissenschaftlichen Diskursen zu ermöglichen. Deshalb wird abschließend das Konzept einer Wissenschaftsvermittlung außerhalb der Massenmedien skizziert.

The present study describes German and English personal nouns taking account of historical linguistic aspects and using features in such a way that lexicalized derivatives can be analysed, and at the same time the conditions can be established for new formations, and an explicit description of the commonalties and differences between the two languages can be provided.

Despite German specialist texts in the fields of medicine, pharmacy and botany making up a considerable proportion of early printed texts, they have been largely ignored by linguistic research. Early scientific printed texts are of particular significance for text linguistics and pragmatics if sufficient attention is paid to their projected reader-ship among non-specialists; in order to prepare specialist knowledge for the 'common man' and enhance their viability in the market place, it was necessary to 'package' the books effectively with regard to presentation, text and style. Numerous texts have been analysed to trace the wide range of techniques used to propagate knowledge in the vernacular and to consider the extent to which they depend on Latin models from Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The strategies deployed to popularise the contents and optimise the texts play an important part in the development of modern non-fiction.

The auxiliary do (tun) is one of the most-discussed constructions in West Germanic. In German, there is a striking opposition between modern standard German, where the construction is virtually ungrammatical and considered to be "sub-standard" by most speakers, whilst, as this book shows, the construction is attested in all modern dialects as well as historic stages since 1350. In answering why auxiliary tun is ungrammatical in modern standard German, it is shown that the stigmatization of tun was caused by prescriptive grammarians in the 16th-18th century. Furthermore it is shown that the stigmatization of tun as "bad" German occurred in clearly discernible stages, from bad poetry (1550-1680), to bad written German (1680-1740) and finally to "bad" German in general (after 1740), thus providing evidence that the history of the standardization of German needs to take into account direct metalinguistic comments from prescriptive grammarians. The effectiveness of linguistic purism is also shown by evidence from two other constructions, namely polynegation and double perfect.

Ergebnisse psychologischer Emotionsforschung werden mit der linguistischen Beschreibung des Ausdrucks von Emotionen in Sachtexten verknüpft. Es wird ein Konzept vorgestellt, wie aus der inhaltlichen und sprachlichen Darstellung von Texten auf die Emotionen von Textverfassern geschlossen werden kann und welche Typen von Emotionen vorliegen. Mittels einer Formel lässt sich die Intensität der Emotionen abschätzen. Emotionsstrukturen konstituieren sich aus dem qualitativen und quantitativen Verlauf der Emotionen innerhalb des Textes und lassen verschiedene emotionale Verhaltensmuster erkennen. Die Bedeutung der Arbeit liegt u. a. darin, ein Instrumentarium zur Rekonstruktion der Emotionen von Textautoren zur Verfügung zu stellen, von dem insbesondere Linguisten, Emotionspsychologen sowie Kultursoziologen profitieren können.

A comprehensive documentation, based mainly on original research, of the sources of the German dictionaries and vocabularies published between 1600 and 1700. With its 1,150 entries, it also provides information on numerous multi-lingual dictionaries, covering some 30 other languages.

Spracharbeit ist im 17. Jahrhundert ein Programm zur praktischen Umsetzung sprachtheoretischer Erkenntnisse. Der Autor erörtert die Stellung dieses Programms im Rahmen der zeitgenössischen Sprachauffassungen, die Hauptvertreter der Spracharbeit, die wichtigsten programmatischen und anwendungsbezogenen Texte sowie die Anwendungsfelder von der Phonologie/Graphematik bis hin zur kommunikativen Pragmatik. Es zeigt sich, daß insbesondere G. P. Harsdörffer in seinen Frauenzimmer Gesprächspielen Spracharbeit in Form von zahlreichen Sprachspielen demonstriert. Neben solchen Formen gehörte die Diskussions- und Übersetzungstätigkeit in der Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft sowie die Kodifikation der deutschen Sprache in Grammatiken und Wörterbüchern (Schottelius, Gueintz) zu den Anwendungsgebieten. Ziel der Spracharbeit war es, die deutsche Sprache im europäischen Kontext aufzuwerten und ihre Verwendung in allen Kommunikationsbereichen zu ermöglichen.

Die konkreten Ausformungen des zeitgenössischen Sprachpatriotismus erweisen sich aus der Perspektive der Spracharbeit als Umsetzungsversuche von einer philosophisch motivierten Theorie in die kommunikative Praxis. Die Reduktion der zeitgenössischen Sprachreflexion auf sprachpuristische Ziele erweist sich im Licht der Spracharbeit als unhaltbar. Schließlich zeigt sich, dass Spracharbeit als sprachreflexive Praxis einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Etablierung und Normierung der neuhochdeutschen Standardsprache geleistet hat.

Der Struktur der Nominalphrase des Deutschen gilt seit Mitte der achtziger Jahre vor allem das Interesse einer generativ ausgerichteten Grammatik. Dieses Interesse gründet sich auf die Einführung der so genannten funktionalen Kategorien in die strukturelle Beschreibung von Wortgruppen und Sätzen. Die daraus folgende Auffassung der Nominalphrase als einer Determinansphrase wirft eine Reihe von Fragen bei der Beschreibung der linken Erweiterungen des Kernnomens auf. Die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt diachronische Veränderungen in der Steuerung der Adjektivflexion, im Gebrauch des bestimmten Artikels sowie den morphosyntaktischen Eigenschaften von Possessivpronomina und attributiven Genitiven und kann diese als Oberflächeneffekte einer Reanalyse der strukturellen Beziehung zwischen Artikelwort und Kernnomen erklären. Die historische Entwicklung im Deutschen wird kontrastiert mit entsprechenden Strukturen in den skandinavischen Sprachen und vergleichbaren Veränderungen in der englischen Sprachgeschichte. Die Arbeit ist der Vermittlung zwischen den Einsichten der germanistischen Philologie und der modernen theoretischen Linguistik verpflichtet.

Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, warum es Sprachen mit Artikel und solche ohne Artikel gibt. Am Fallbeispiel der Artikelentstehung in den germanischen Sprachen (Altisländisch, Gotisch und Althochdeutsch) wird herausgearbeitet, daß Artikelsysteme immer dann fehlen, wenn Sprachen intakte Aspektpaare aufweisen, und umgekehrt. Ein weiteres Ergebnis ist die Unterscheidung zwischen hypo- und hyperdeterminierenden Artikelsprachen, die als sprachtypologisch relevant erachtet wird. Hyperdeterminierende Artikelsprachen tendieren zum Neuaufbau von Aspektsystemen mit parallelem Verlust des Artikels. Auf der Basis kommentierter Transkriptionen von Textsequenzen werden die komplexen Muster der kategorialen Interaktion von Artikel und Aspekt aufgezeigt. Die Arbeit mündet in einer unifizierenden Beschreibung von Artikel und Aspekt als jeweils spezifische Anpassungen der Definitheitskategorie an ihre nominale oder verbale Umgebung.

Die Frage, welches die historischen Bedingungen des standardisierten und überregional verwendbaren Neuhochdeutschen sind, gehört zu den zentralen Themen der deutschen Sprachgeschichte. Ausgehend von einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit den bisherigen Erklärungsansätzen wird in diesem Buch die funktionale Differenzierung von Sprache als Bedingung der Möglichkeit anderer Standardisierungsprozesse behandelt. Damit wird das sprachgeographische Paradigma zugunsten einer diskurs- und textanalytischen Sichtweise in Frage gestellt. Die theoretischen Positionen des Buches werden in einer Untersuchung zur Funktionsdifferenzierung des juridischen Diskurses von 1200 bis 1800 untermauert. Es wird deutlich, dass die Textvorkommen in allen relevanten Rechtskreisen über intertextuelle Bezüge funktional hochgradig differenzierend wirken. Die Geschichte der Standardisierung des Deutschen ist insofern als Prozess der textgestützten Polyfunktionalisierung erklärt.