2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Historical Research of Compound Clauses of German
| Project/Area Number |
09610510
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
独語・独文学
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| Research Institution | Musashi University |
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Principal Investigator |
NITTA Haruo Musashi Univ. Fac. of Humanities Professor, 人文学部, 教授 (00012443)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 2000
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| Keywords | History of German / Early New High German / Syntax / Compound Clause / Subjunction |
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| Research Abstract |
In the early modern society the comunication with documents became more important and much complicated informations had to be transmitted in a brief and accurate form. With regard to this the compound clauses played a great role. The purpose of this research is to investigate how the system of the subordinate conjunctions, with which the compound clauses are built, was developed in the course from the medieval to the modern German. The results of the research are :
1) From the medieval to the modern German the formal system of the subordinate conjunctions changed strongly, but the core of them remained.
2)) In the medieval and the early modern German many subordinate conjuctions, especially those of the core, had some formal variants of a subordinate conjunction, but they are reduced in the course to the modern German.
3) In the medieval and the early modern German many subordinate conjuctions, especially those of the core, were polysemous, but they became monosemous in the course to the modern German.
4) In the modern German the shorter forms of subordinate conjuctions are prefered and the periphrastic forms are shortened to single words.
5) In the modern German the forms which are independet from the context in their meaning, are prefered.
6) In the modern German the variants of forms of a subordinate conjunction are reduced, become more monosemeous, and are more independent from the context in their meaning. The informtions are to verbalize explicitly.
7) The phenomena we saw above are mostly rahter characteristics of the written language than those of the colloquial langauge.
8) Consequently we could say that the German language strengthened the charater of the written language in the course from the medieval to the modern times.
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