Information Density and the Extraposition of German Relative Clauses

This paper aims to find a correlation between Information Density (ID) and extraposition of Relative Clauses (RC) in Early New High German. Since surprisal is connected to perceiving difficulties, the impact on the working memory is lower for frequent combinations with low surprisal-values than it is for rare combinations with higher surprisal-values. To improve text comprehension, producers therefore distribute information as evenly as possible across a discourse. Extraposed RC are expected to have a higher surprisal-value than embedded RC. We intend to find evidence for this idea in RC taken from scientific texts from the 17th to 19th century. We built a corpus of tokenized, lemmatized and normalized papers about medicine from the 17th and 19th century, manually determined the RC-variants and calculated a skipgram-Language Model to compute the 2-Skip-bigram surprisal of every word of the relevant sentences. A logistic regression over the summed up surprisal values shows a significant result, which indicates a correlation between surprisal values and extraposition. So, for these periods it can be said that RC are more likely to be extraposed when they have a high total surprisal value. The influence of surprisal values also seems to be stable across time. The comparison of the analyzed language periods shows no significant change.

The emergence of light verb constructions

This paper takes a data-driven perspective on the grammaticalization of German light verb constructions (LVCs) with kommen ‘come’. LVCs are complex predicates consisting of a semantically light verb and an eventive noun realized within a phrasal complement, e.g. German zur Vollendung kommen, lit. ‘come into completion’. We assume that (at least) two different processes interact in the emergence of LVCs: the desemanticization of the verb on the one hand and the realization of eventive nouns in the complement-PP of the verb on the other. In order to check whether these processes take place in parallel or if one precedes the other, we conduct a corpus study based on samples from the Reference Corpus of Middle High German (REM) and the Bonn Early New High German Corpus (FnhdC), focusing on the animacy and concreteness of the subject NPs and the PP-internal nouns. Our results indicate that we can first observe an increase in the use of abstract nouns in subject position and that only later – from Middle High German to Early New High German – eventive nouns in PP-internal position become more frequent.

Pre- and postnominal onymic genitives in (Early) New High German

This empirical study focuses on the diachrony of adnominal genitives of proper names in (Early) New High German (17th to 19th centuries), e.g., Carls Haus vs. das Haus Carls ‘Carl’s house’. Starting from the observation that word order variation exists within the whole period investigated, the study identifies determining factors for this variation and weights them in a multifactorial model of word order variation and change, the first time this has been done for German. The focus is on formal factors such as syntactic complexity, a factor that increases in importance over the observed time span. The historical data allow not only the investigation of established formal parameters but also the identification of new factors such as the type of inflectional marker (due to genitive allomorphy in older stages of German). In addition to these formal factors, genitive semantics, pragmatic information status and genre are also taken into account. Explanations for the trend towards the postnominal position of complex adnominal genitives as well as the stability of bare name possessors in the prenominal position are discussed.

Zur Realisierung der standardsprachlichen vokalischen Lautwandelprozesse des Frühneuhochdeutschen im Text der Hermannstädter Protokolle (1560–1565)

The article presents the results of the phonemic-graphemic analysis of the official reports’ entries from the early second half of the 16th century, which come from the town council of Sibiu (Hermannstadt) and the Concilium Transylvania Saxonicum. The reports constitute a part of the first liber civitatis of Sibiu (Hermannstadt). The aim of the paper is to answer the question how far the script fixes the features of the spoken language. Due to the analysis it could be unambiguously proved, the German used in the text corresponds to the level of development of the German language within the periodization of history of the language as it contains the standard Early New High German features as well as the dialectal structures and the sound changes, which are characteristic for the Silesian dialect. The text can therefore be classified as one of the linguistic monuments of the East Central German of Silesian tradition. All the results of the exploration are supported with the appropriate examples.

On the specific graphic, orthographic and morphological features of the usus of the monastic scriptoria of Nuremberg in the 15th century

The article examines the graphic, spelling and morphological features characteristic for medieval texts created in Nuremberg. The study involves spiritual literature created in various Nuremberg scriptoria. Each investigated text is considered as an integral and independent graphic and spelling system, consisting of interrelated elements. Following features presented in the studied manuscripts are revealed in the course of the analysis of the texts: the Middle and Early New High German features, features characteristic of the Southeastern, East Frankish and Nuremberg dialects, as well as the spelling features. The reasons for the differences between the graphic and spelling systems of the studied texts from the phonetic system of Early New High German and intertextual differences are subject to interpretation. The analysis of the scriptoria peculiarities makes it possible to determine the place of graphic and orthographic systems in the context of Early New High German linguistic dynamics, as well as the degree of influence of various dialects on them. When considering the graphic and orthographic features of the studied texts, the specificity of the written fixation of Early New High German is taken into account as well as the fact that the urban written language and the urban dialect are different sources of influence on the formation of the written tradition of each scriptorium. This study allows to conclude about the degree of independence of the graphic and spelling systems of manuscripts and about the usability of the norms of the written language of the period under study.

“Non-coordinating UND” in Middle and Early New High German

Even though it has been noted quite early that the conjunction UND may also serve as a relative/equative particle or even a subjunction in MHG and ENHG, corpus-based empirical studies are lacking so far. Based on new empirical data, I show that non-coordinating UND originated in the UG dialect area during the 12th century, subsequently spreading to the CG dialect area and reaching the peak of its use in the 14th century. In contrast to recent literature, I argue that the non-coordinating use of the conjunction originated from semantically and syntactically ambiguous constructions of the form UND-XP-VFIN. I also propose that the earliest instances of the phenomenon are (adverbial) relative constructions and that the temporal and the equative function developed via reanalysis of adverbial relative clauses with a temporal/modal head element.

Zur graphischen Gestalt der deutschen Berufsbezeichnungen in den lateinischen Eintragungen des Thorner Proskriptionsbuches aus den Jahren 1358–1412

The article presents the results of a phonemic-graphemic analysis of German official job titles in the Latin proscription entries from the turn of the 15th century, which come from the Book of the proscribed people from the New City of Thorn/Toruń, and were written down in the Silesian dialect of Early New High German. Due to the analysis, it could be proved that the text contains the majority of the standard Early New High German features as well as the dialectal structures and the sound changes which are characteristic for the Silesian dialect, which spread in Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe within the context of German Eastwards Expansion. All the results of the exploration are supported with appropriate examples.

Lexikographische Konzeption und kulturgeschichtliche Erkenntnis im digitalen Zeitalter

Digitization of dictionaries, which were founded in predigital times, face the challenge of modern technics. In the case of the Early New High German dictionary this challenge has proved to be more a chance than a curse. This article demonstrates how the textual structure of the (old) dictionary is transformed in the (new) digital language. It has shown that the new technics produce an added value. This is of course only possible under the condition, that the conception of the dictionary and the formulation by the lexicographer has prepared an elaborated base of semantic informations.