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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 25:1 (2024) ► pp.137–175

“Ih gebiude dir, wurm!”

Directives in Old Saxon and Old High German

ORCID logo | Universidad del Norte
The number of diachronic studies on English speech acts has recently increased remarkably, highlighting the importance of these phenomena for the understanding of the contextualised dimension of linguistic interactions. Recent studies on the realisation of directives in Old English have shown how, in the Anglo-Saxon world, negative politeness did not play a significant role. This study also focusses on the realisation of directives from a diachronic perspective but concentrating on Old Saxon and Old High German, filling an empirical gap in the literature. Focussing on four manifestations, the preliminary data shows the Old Saxon and Old High German may have also been worlds “beyond politeness”.
Keywords: corpus linguistics, Old High German, Old Saxon, politeness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1The corpus
      • 2.1.1The Old Saxon Poem Hêliand
      • 2.1.2The Old Saxon Genesis
      • 2.1.3Kleinere Altsächsische Denkmäler
      • 2.1.4Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch
      • 2.1.5Tatian
      • 2.1.6Notker’s Boethius (De consolatione Philosophiae) and Notker’s Psalter
      • 2.1.7Notker’s Martianus Capella
      • 2.1.8Kleinere Althochdeutsche Denkmäler
    • 2.2Data collection
    • 2.3Limitations of this study
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Explicit performatives
      • 3.1.1Explicit performatives in Old Saxon
      • 3.1.2Explicit performatives in Old High German
    • 3.2Constructions with skulan/sculan
      • 3.2.1 Skulan in Old Saxon
      • 3.2.2 Sculan in Old High German
      • 3.3Construction with latan/lazan plus infinitive verbs and skulan/sculan plus wi/wir
      • 3.3.1 Latan plus infinitive verbs and skulan plus wi
      • 3.3.2 Lazan plus infinitive verbs and sculan plus wir
    • 3.4Constructions with nod/nót and tharf/thurft
  • 4.Directives in Old Saxon and Old High German: An overview
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20012.con
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