Cover not available

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

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

“Ih gebiude dir, wurm!”

Directives in Old Saxon and Old High German

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad del Norte
Published online: 23 November 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20012.con
Abstract
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”.
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
      • 3.2.1Skulan in Old Saxon
      • 3.2.2Sculan in Old High German
      • 3.3Construction with latan/lazan plus infinitive verbs and skulan/sculan plus wi/wir
      • 3.3.1Latan plus infinitive verbs and skulan plus wi
      • 3.3.2Lazan 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
References (46)
References
Archibald, Linda. 2004. “Otfrid von Weißenburg”. In Brian Murdoch (ed.), German Literature of the Early Middle Ages, 139–156. Rochester and New York: Camden House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beetz, Manfred. 1990. Frühmoderne Höflichkeit. Komplimentierkunst und Gesellschaftsrituale im altdeutschen Sprachraum [‘Early Modern Politeness: The Art of Complimenting and Social Rituals in the Old German-Speaking Region’]. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. “The Polite Answer in Pre-Modern German Conversation Culture”. In Andreas H. Jucker, Gerd Fritz and Franz Lebsanft (eds), Historical Dialogue Analysis, 139–166. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bostock, John Knight. 1976. A Handbook on Old High German Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cathey, James. 2002. Hêliand: Text and Commentary. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Concu, Valentina. 2019. “Temporal Deixis in Old Saxon and Old High German: The Adverb nu in the Hêliand and Evangelienbuch”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 141 (2): 157–181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2023. “‘Face’ in Retrospective: The Use of ‘Thanks’ and ‘To Thank’ in Old Saxon and Old High German”. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 19 (1): 175–198. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donhauser, Karin. 1996. “Negationssyntax in der deutschen Sprachgeschichte: Grammatikalisierung oder Degrammatikalisierung?” [‘Negation Syntax in the History of the German Language: Grammaticalization of Degrammaticalization?’]. In Edwald Lang and Gisela Zifonun (eds), Deutsch – typologisch [‘German – Typological’], 201–2017. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Erdmann, Oskar (ed.). 1973. Otfrids Evangelienbuch. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ernst, Peter and Martina Werner (eds). 2016. Linguistische Pragmatik in historischen Bezügen [‘Linguistic Pragmatics in Historical Contexts’]. (Volume 91.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glauch, Sonja. 2000. Die Martianus-Capella-Bearbeitung Notkers des Deutschen Notker der Deutsche and his Version of the Martianus Capella. I. Studies; II. (Translation of Book I and commentary.) Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haubrichs, Wolfgang. 2004. “Otfrid von Weißenburg – Umrisse eines Lebens”. In Ernst Hellgardt Kleiber (ed.), Otfrid von Weißenburg: Evangelienbuch, Bd. I: Edition nach dem Wiener Codex 2687, Tl. 2: Einleitung und Apparat, Tübingen (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz. Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse) [‘Otfrid von Weißenburg: Gospel Book, Volume. I: Edition based on the Wiener Codex 2687, p. 2, Introduction and Structure, Tübingen (Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz. Humanities and Social Sciences Class’], 3–11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hauser, Albert. 1998. Grüezi und adieu: Gruss-und Umgangsformen vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart [‘Greetings and Farewells: Greetings and Etiquette from the 17th Century to the Present’]. Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas. 2019. “Speech Act Attenuation in the History of English: The Case of Apologies”. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4 (1): 451, 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Politeness in the History of English: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. and Joanna Kopaczyk. 2017. “Historical (Im)politeness”. In Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh and Dániel Z. Kádár (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, 433–459. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen. 2008. “Apologies in the History of English: Routinized and Lexicalized Expressions of Responsibility and Regret”. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Speech Acts in the History of English, 229–244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen (eds). 2010. Historical Pragmatics. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kohnen, Thomas. 2000a. “Explicit Performatives in Old English: A Corpus-Based Study of Directives”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1 (2): 301–321. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000b. “Corpora and Speech Acts: The Study of Performatives”. In Christian Mair and Marianne Hundt (eds), Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Papers from the Twentieth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 20), 237–247. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “Towards a History of English Directives”. In Andreas Fischer, Gunnel Tottie and Hans Martin Lehmann (eds), Text Types and Corpora: Studies in Honour of Udo Fries, 165–175. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. “Directives in Old English: Beyond Politeness?” In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Speech Acts in the History of English, 27–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017a. “Anglo-Saxon Expressives: Automatic Historical Speech-Act Analysis and Philological Intervention”. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 28 (1): 43–56.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. “Non-Canonical Speech Acts in the History of English”. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 65 (3): 303–318. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lebsanft, Franz. 1999. “A Late Medieval French Bargain Dialogue (Pathelin II), or Further Remarks on the History of Dialogue Forms”. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Dialogue Analysis, 269–292. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred. 1956. The Development of Germanic Verse Form. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lötscher, Andreas. 1981. “Zur Sprachgeschichte des Fluchens und Beschimpfens im Schweizerdeutschen” [‘On the Language History of Swearing and Insults in Swiss German’]. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 481: 145–160.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meineke, Eckhard and Judith Schwerdt. 2001. Einführung in das Althochdeutsche [‘Introduction to Old German’]. Stuttgart: UTB.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rapp, Rebecca and Sandra Reimann. 2016. “Gruoz enbieten und grüszen. Ein Beitrag zum Desiderat eines syntaktisch-semantischen mittelhochdeutschen Verbwörterbuchs” [‘Greetings and Salutations: A Contribution to the Need for a Syntactic-Semantic Middle High German Verb Dictionary’]. In Peter Ernst and Martina Werner (eds), Linguistische Pragmatik in historischen Bezügen [‘Linguistic Pragmatics in Historical Contexts’], 253–271. Berlin: Lingua Historica Germanica 9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sievers, Eduard. 1875. Der Hêliand und die altsächsische Genesis [‘The Hêliand and the Old Saxon Genesis’]. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed.). 1966. Tatian. Paderborn: Schöningh.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Somers, Katharina and Shannon Dubenion-Schmidt. 2014. “The Intersection between Syntax and Meter in the Old Saxon Hêliand”. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 72 (1): 83–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stroebe, Klara. 1911. Altgermanische Grussformen [‘Old Germanic Salutation Forms’]. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
von Steinmeyer, Elias (ed.). 1916. Die kleineren althochdeutschen Sprachdenkmäler [‘Short Old High German Memorials’]. Berlin: Nachdruck (Dublin and Zürich: Weidmann [1971]).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma and Andreas Jucker. 2008. “Speech Acts Now and Then”. In Andreas Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Speech Acts in the History of English, 1–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taavitsainen, Irma and Andreas H. Jucker. 2010. “Trends and Developments in Historical Pragmatics”. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds), Historical Pragmatics, 3–32. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taeger, Burkhard (ed.). 1984. Hêliand. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed.). 1996. Altsächsische Genesis. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2008. “The State of English Language Studies: A Linguistic Perspective”. In Marianne Thormählen (ed.), English Now. Selected Papers from the 20th IAUPE Conference in Lund 2007, 199–225. August 2007. Lund: Lund Studies in English.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wadstein, Elis (ed.). 1899. Kleinere altsächsische Sprachdenkmäler [‘Short Old Saxon Memorials’]. Germany: D. Soltau.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
West, Johnathan. 2004. “Late Old High German Prose”. In Brian Murdoch (ed.), German Literature of the Early Middle Ages, 139–156. Rochester and New York: Camden House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeige, Lars Erik, Gohar Schnelle, Martin Klotz, Karin Donhauser, Jost Gippert and Rosemarie Lühr. 2022. Deutsch Diachron Digital. Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch [‘German Diachronic Digital: Reference Corpus Old German’]. (Version 1.2.) Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. See: [URL].
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Jucker, Andreas H.
2025. Historical Pragmatics: The Evolution of Language Use. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue