scholarly journals Old English Syntax and Its Relation to German

Author(s):  
Freja Bang Lauridsen

At first glance, the syntax of ancient Old English appears reminiscent of the syntax of the Present-Day German language. A number of shared syntactic traits such as Subject Object Verb constituent order, Verb Second, and a complicated inflectional system have caused the two languages to be compared by scholars, who often have referred to German as simply a present-day version of the now far-gone Old English. Exploring both similarities and dissimilarities of the two languages, this article examines the relationship between the two languages’ syntax to show that although structurally similar once, modern-day English has lost most of the syntactic traits linking it to the German language and their common Proto-Germanic roots. These syntactical differences not only show that Old English was never just a modern-day variant of German but also show that the two languages are developing in separate directions – or at least in separate paces.

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Pintzuk ◽  
Eric Haeberli

AbstractA standard observation concerning basic constituent order in Old English (OE) is that the position of finite verbs varies by clause type. In root clauses, the finite verb tends to occur toward the beginning of the clause, and we frequently find Verb Second (V2) order. In contrast, in subordinate clauses, finite verbs generally occur toward the end of the clause, and these clauses are frequently verb-final. We challenge the traditional assumption that verb-final orders and, hence, the occurrence of the finite verb in a head-final structural position are rare in OE root clauses. We present new data demonstrating that the frequency of head-final structure in OE root clauses is much higher than previously acknowledged. We then explore some of the implications of this finding for the general structural analysis of OE.


Author(s):  
Chris Jones

This introductory chapter contextualizes the philological study of language during the nineteenth century as a branch of the evolutionary sciences. It sketches in outline the two phases of poetic Anglo-Saxonism for which the rest of the book will subsequently argue in more detail. Moreover, the relationship between Anglo-Saxonism and nineteenth-century medievalism more generally is articulated, and historical analogies are drawn between nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism and more recent political events in the Anglophone world. Finally, the scholarly contribution of Fossil Poetry itself is contextualized within English Studies; it is argued that ‘reception’ is one of the primary objects of Anglo-Saxon or Old English studies, and not merely a secondary object of that field’s study.


2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Pavić Pintarić

This paper investigates the translation of pejoratives referring to persons. The corpus is comprised of literary dialogues in the collection of short stories about the First World War by Miroslav Krleža. The dialogues describe the relationship between officers and soldiers. Soldiers are not well prepared for the war and are the trigger of officers’ anger. Therefore, the dialogues are rich with emotionally loaded outbursts resulting in swearwords. Swearwords relate to the intellect and skills of soldiers, and can be divided into absolute and relative pejoratives. Absolute pejoratives refer to the words that carry the negative meaning as the basis, whereas relative pejoratives are those that gain the negative meaning in a certain context. They derive from names of occupations and zoonyms. The analysis comprises the emotional embedment of swearwords, their metaphoric character and the strategies of translation from the Croatian into the German language.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 234
Author(s):  
Pascal Dieudonné Roy-Ema

For over sixty years (from 1910 to 1973), Martin Heidegger carried out a work of thought which led him to create a large quantity of neologisms. It also led him to create a new use of idioms in the German language. This was regarded as a renewed vocabulary. His study bears new meanings and expresses the philosopher's work of thought and the new concepts he proposes. Among them is the Ereignis that this text proposes to question the content. The Ereignis is what makes time and being belongs to each other. It is the relationship of all the relations engendered by this co-membership. This is made possible by the difference installed at the heart of the same. Heidegger himself admitted that the Ereignis was the keyword of his whole thought since the early 1930s. It is the word-director of his thought.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 292-310
Author(s):  
Lesley Penné ◽  
Arvi Sepp

Abstract The Representation of Marsh and Bog: Figurations of the Marshy Soil as a Topos of Community in Contemporary German-Language Belgian Literature Literature from border regions is often characterised by a specific transcultural poetics that reflects the liminal as discourse and experience. In contemporary German-language prose from East Belgium (‘Ostbelgien’), the topological representation of swamp and moor occupies an important place. We will show how swamp and moor express the complex definition of national and regional identity of the German-language area in Belgium and become relevant topoi in regard to cultural memory. Literature can be seen as a privileged medium of criticism for expressing the pressures of the unspoken and the closed and for initiating intra-community public discussions. Through a cultural-historical analysis of the various figurations of bog and moor, we will examine how the relationship between landscape and community is represented and conceived in contemporary Germanophone Belgian literature.


Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Allen

This chapter provides an overview of the uses of dative case in constructions other than dative external possessors, such as ‘ethical’ datives and dative objects of transitive and ditransitive verbs. Constructions traditionally analysed as ‘impersonal’ as well as constructions with copulas that use dative case present particular challenges of analysis, as do the dative complements of adjectives and nouns. While this study focuses on attributive possession, the use of dative case in predicative discussion is discussed in this chapter. In addition to delimiting the scope of the present investigation, the chapter provides background for the discussion in Chapter 7 of the relationship between the loss of functions of the dative case generally and the loss of dative external possessors in Middle English.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Schäfer ◽  
Ulrike Sayatz

In this paper, we analyze written sentences containing the German particles obwohl (“although”) and weil (“because”). In standard written German, these particles embed clauses in verb-last constituent order, which is characteristic of subordinated clauses. In spoken and – as we show – nonstandard written German, they embed clauses in verb-second constituent order, which is characteristic of independent sentences. Our usage-based approach to the syntax – graphemics interface includes a large-scale corpus analysis of the patterns of punctuation in the nonstandard variants that provides clues to the syntactic structure and degree of sentential independence of the nonstandard variants. Our corpus study confirms and refines hypotheses from existing theoretical approaches by clearly showing that writers mark obwohl clauses with verb-second order systematically as independent sentences, whereas weil clauses with verb-second order are much less strongly marked as independent. This work suggests that similar corpus studies could provide deeper insight into the interplay between syntax and graphemics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Baumgarten

Abstract This article presents an account of the meaning relationship between visual and verbal information in film and the differences between the conventions of making verbal reference to visual information in English films and their German-language versions. The analysis of a diachronic corpus of popular motion pictures and their German-dubbed versions indicates that the film translations ‘handle’ the co-occurring visual information differently than their English source texts. The translations tend to use alternative, non-equivalent, linguistics structures to refer to visual information and insert additional pronominal references and deictic devices, which overtly connect linguistic items to pictorial elements. As a result, the ongoing spoken discourse is explicitly linked with the physical surroundings of the communicative encounter. In contrast, in the English language versions, the relationship between the verbal utterance and the accompanying visual information more often remains lexically implicit. The shifts in translation affect the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings expressed in the film texts which, in turn, may result in a variation in the films’ narrative construction and the realization of extralinguistic concepts, such as, for example, gender relations.


2007 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Anlezark

AbstractScholars have long disputed whether or not Beowulf reflects the influence of Classical Latin literature. This essay examines the motif of the ‘poisoned place’ present in a range of texts known to the Anglo-Saxons, most famously represented by Avernus in the Aeneid. While Grendel's mere presents the best-known poisonous locale in Old English poetry, another is found in the dense and enigmatic poem Solomon and Saturn II. The relationship between these poems is discussed beside a consideration of the possibility that their use of the ‘Avernian tradition’ points to the influence of Latin epic on their Anglo-Saxon authors.


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