Buchstabengebrauch in der Ödenburger Kanzleischriftlichkeit vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (1510–1800)
The present dissertation examines the validity of the empirically unproved hypothesis that graphemical and morphological unification of the German language came to an end only in the second half of the 18th and not in the middle of the 17th century as the traditional periodization of the history of...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
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2008-05-27
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| Online Access: | http://doktori.ek.szte.hu/818 |
| Summary: | The present dissertation examines the validity of the empirically unproved hypothesis that graphemical and morphological unification of the German language came to an end only in the second half of the 18th and not in the middle of the 17th century as the traditional periodization of the history of the German language suggests it placing the dividing line between Early New High German and New High German a century earlier, at about 1650. To answer this question, I examine the letter use of the handwritten writing of Sopron, a town in Hungary, in an Austrian dialect area, infour time cross-sections between 1510 and 1800. The choice of the periods oversteps the formerresearch on language unification which mainly focuses on writing in the 15th–16thcentury. In the periods the present dissertation is concerned with I examine the chancery, the official and the guild writing – for these language strata are continuously present in the sources preserved from the period between the 16th and 18thcentury –, in a corpus containing 70–100 texts for each period. The dissertation offers a catalogueof the letter correspondances of the single graphemes of Present-Time-German in the four periods examined (1510–1540, 1610–1640, 1720–1750, 1770–1800) – not using the concept of grapheme in the description of the letter use of the periods concerned – and it discusses processes of language use which can be interpreted in the context of language unification as well. Such processes are e.g. the use of letters according to writing principles and the following of patterns of letter use. In sum, it can be stated that in the 16th–17th centuries letter use in the single strata of writing in Sopron is not uniform and not consistent. Letter variation is also frequent by the same writer and in comparison of different writers. The most important principle of letter use is: ‘Write the same word in the same way’. The situation changes to the first half of the 18th century. Letter use in chancery and official writing becomes more or less uniform, and its main principle becomes marking same speech sounds in same sound positions with same letters. But inconsequence and divergences from the usus are still possible. By the second half of the 18thcentury inconsequence disappears for the most part and new sound-letter-correspondances get spread. In the second half of the 18th century letter use of chancery and official writing approximates the contemporary normative orthographic demands and letter use of prints reaches them. |
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