Textgrammatik und frühneuhochdeutsche Gebrauchstexte aus tschechischen und slowakischen Archiven (Urbar, Satzung, Kirchenlied): Analyse und Versuch der Didaktisierung

ALECHT GREULE Universität Regensburg Research fields: text grammar, theolinguistics and sacred song, onomastics, historical syntax. TEXT GRAMMAR AND EARLY NEW HIGH GERMAN FUNCTIONAL TEXTS FROM CZECH AND SLOVAK ARCHIVES (URBARIA, ORDINANCES, CHURCH HYMNS): ANALYSIS AND AN ATTEMPT AT DIDACTIC ADAPTATION Text grammar and early texts written in New High German from Czech and Slovak archives (cadastral records, ordinances, church hymns): analysis and an attempt at didactic adaptation ABSTRACT Three Early New High German texts originating in the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovakia are analyzed from the perspective of text grammar. The aim is to describe how, in these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts belonging to different text classes, textual coherence was made intelligible to the recipient and enabled them to grasp the text's subject. The analysis primarily employs two strategies: identifying central text entities by tracing chains of coreference, and identifying isotopy levels by extracting semantic features. From the combination Straipsniai / Articles 29 ALBRECHT GRULE of the central text entities and isotopy levels, the subject of the texts can be inferred. The article also includes remarks on how text-grammatical analysis can be used in the teaching of language history. KEYWORDS: language history, historical text grammar, subject didactics, urbariolinguistics, hymnology. ANNOTATION Three Early New High German texts which originated in the Czech Republic (Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovakia are analysed from a text-grammatical point of view. In this way there follows a description of how in these texts of the 15th and 16th centuries, which belong to different text classes, text coherence was made understandable for the recipient and how he was enabled to grasp the subject of the text. In the analysis two strategies are used for this central issue: the statement of the central text objects by the clarification of co-reference chains and the statement of isotope-levels by the extraction of semantic features. From the combination of these central text objects and the isotope-levels the subject of the texts can be classified. In this paper tips have been incorporated how text-grammatical analysis can be used in language history lessons. KEYWORDS: Language history, historical text grammar, subject didactics, cadastral linguistics, hymnology. 1. INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES With the following considerations, we continue a project whose task is to test the explanatory power of a text-grammatical model tried out on contemporary newspaper texts by applying it to texts from the history of language (cf. Greule, Kolbeck 2014). With a view to the teaching of German as a foreign language and the role that texts from the history of language could play there, we have selected Early New High German texts originating from Czech and Slovak archives or produced in Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia in the 15th and 16th centuries. These are the statute of the council of the city of Kaschau/Košice from 1404, the Urbar of the Principality of Jägerndorf from 1531, and the cantional (church hymnal) of the Bohemian Brethren from 1531. From a text-linguistic perspective, all three sources are “macrotexts,” which are, however, subdivided into “microtexts” at different hierarchical levels (Greule 2012: 81–86). The following discussion focuses on three selected microtexts from the aforementioned sources 30 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text Grammar and Early New High German Functional Texts from Czech and Slovak Archives (Urbar, Statute, Church Hymn): Analysis and an Attempt at Didacticization The following analytical attempts concern these texts. First, the cultural-historical particularity of each source text is addressed, and the question of didacticizing historical text grammar is raised. 2. TEXT-GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS The text-grammatical description of the Early New High German texts under consideration, which were produced in the 15th and 16th centuries, aims to demonstrate textual coherence. It seeks to answer the question of how the linguistic means on the expressive and content planes make textual coherence comprehensible to the recipient and enable them to grasp the text’s subject and its development. Two strategies are primarily relevant: identifying the Central Textual Objects (ZTG) by establishing coreference chains, and identifying isotopy levels by extracting classes of semantic features that recur throughout the text. It is unmistakable that, in the analysis, the quantification of recurring elements and operations at the sentence level play the main role. Furthermore, there is reason to suspect that, when applied to text specimens of different text types, the model must be adapted and revised accordingly, and that substantial work remains to be done with regard to historical macrotexts (for details, see Greule 2011: 24–26; Greule, Kolbeck 2014). If, moreover, one accepts the view that grammar is the theory of combination, which, proceeding from the bottom up, combines ever larger complexes of signs according to specific rules, then complex “macrotexts” can be defined as communicative products consisting of several microtexts, between which text-grammatical relations must likewise be discernible. 3. URBAR OF THE PRINCIPALITY OF JÄGERNDORF (1531) The Urbar of the Principality of Jägerndorf/Krnov o.Bruntál from 1531 survives as an original manuscript, together with other urbars compiled during the reign of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach, in the State Archives in Troppau (Zemský archiv v Opavé). It was edited in 2010 by Siegfried Hanke and Rainer Vogel (Hanke, Vogel 2010: 18–100). Margrave George of Straipsniai / Articles 31 ALBRECHT GREULE Brandenburg had the Urbar drawn up in German and in close accordance with an earlier Urbar, written in Old Czech in 1523. The Urbare record landed estates, rights, and dues belonging to an ecclesiastical or secular lordship; they are therefore classified as “domainal text types.” We know quite a lot about the nature of Urbare. Originally, it may be assumed that the estates and rights were recorded locally by questioning those liable to pay dues and were then set down in writing in an Urbar at the princely chancery. For Urbar linguistics, this means that Urbare written in one of the vernacular languages contain a mixture of spoken and written language, which was not recorded in as perfect an “orthography” as we would expect today (Greule 2003: 58–61). From a functional perspective, Urbare are regarded as registers with an appellative function: they list estates and rights, as well as the revenues accruing from them, which can be demanded as payments from those liable to pay dues on the basis of the written record. (Greule 2003: 63) The Urbar of the Duchy of Jägerndorf, a large-scale text, is divided into records of dues from ten localities in the duchy; within each locality, these text complexes themselves break down into smaller texts that list the dues for that locality under thematic headings. Analyse: Teiltext/Kleintext „Mayerhoff“ (Hanke, Vogel 2010: 18f.) With regard both to the linguistic analysis and to the didactic adaptation of such a text, its syntactic structures and lexical potential (specialized vocabulary) must be examined in light of its communicative function. The analysis of the syntactic structures is manifested in the following list of the 24 Minimal Text Units (MTE). Heading/Supra-text: Mayerhoff 1: Under Lobenstain Castle there is a demesne farm, well suited for farming and likewise well built, and it also has many fields and good facilities; from these fields, during the winter, IX malter and in the summer just as much, more or less depending on the season, may be sown. 2: Zue dem selben schlos sint viel gute wysn, wie dann Vndten Vortzaichen, schaff Vnd rindvieh ain schock, tzen wagen Zug, Reitpferd viel, 3: this can provide all of these with what is properly needed. 32 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text grammar and Early New High German utilitarian texts from Czech and Slovak archives (Urbar, statute, church hymn): analysis and an attempt at didacticization 4: [item] The rods for this castle are good, 5: In it one may see many kinds of vegetables in the kitchen. 6: [item] A large and useful orchard, which can be used for fruit and grass. 7: [item] The lower orchard, in which there are many trees, 8: one may enjoy fruit and grass from that same garden. 9: [item] The third orchard is behind the manor farm, beneath the planks, 10: which can likewise be used for fruit and grass. 11: [item] The fourth orchard, newly planted around the castle on the planks, which may be used for fruit and grass. 12: [item] The said four orchards may be enjoyed yearly for about XXf, more or less depending on the season. 13: [item] For the castle, black and other woods are to be sold, 14: the benefit from them set here, one year to another XXf, more or less depending on the times. 15: [item] In those same woods are beehives made from three pieces of wood, 16: one gives a measure of honey Connector: and 17: such measures contain four quarts of mead. 18: One may enjoy a gulden’s worth of this tithe each year, more or less. 19: [item] Below the castle there are two bodies of water, in which there are pike, burbot, and perch, 20: of these one may enjoy three gulden’s worth each year, sometimes more and sometimes less. [...] 21: [item] A good and useful stream below the castle, in which there are pike, grayling, and other fish for necessary use, 22: from these one may enjoy six gulden annually, more or less. 23: [item] Below the castle there are large meadows 24: on these one can make cnine wagonloads of hay during the season, or less. The MTEs were obtained by separating 20 simple and complex verbal clauses according to the syntactic criterion—that is, utterances containing one or more predicates. Only four utterances (MTE 5, MTE 6, MTE 10, MTE 21) contain no main-clause predicate and are classified as so-called independent fragments. The further procedure—which is also didactic—presupposes an understanding of the text, which the division into the smallest syntactic units is also intended to facilitate. This depends both on the communicative function (recording Straipsniai / Articles 33 ALBRECHT GRULE of the properties and their yield for the territorial lord) as well as on an understanding of the lexemes, especially the technical lexemes such as malter, schock, Zuemße, geniessen, pynbeuten, mesel mehd, fahren, grund, Herlitzen, Eschen. They can easily be identified using the glossary accompanying Hanke/Vogel’s edition. What remain, however, are the spellings that make the text difficult to understand; these differ considerably not only from present-day German orthography but also provide little support for the contemporary sentence structure. A worthwhile exercise in historical linguistics can therefore be added here: adapting the spelling of 1531 to present-day orthography as far as possible. This exercise makes especially clear the communicative value of capitalization and doubled letters. A first step toward identifying the isotopy levels that form the semantic background of the text is to classify the predicates, which are best highlighted beforehand by underlining. If the recurring predicates are quantified from a semantic perspective, the following isotopies emerge on the basis of their frequency, with the classes ‘existence’ (sein, hat) and ‘receive/have the benefit’ (mag geniessen, mag gnossen werden, lasset geniessen, sein...zuer notdurft gebrauchen, den nutz...gesetzt, gen mag, giebt). Also noteworthy is the potential modality expressed by the frequent modal verb mag ‘can’. Furthermore, while the “bearers of existence” are mentioned with the existence predicates, the beneficiary or beneficiaries are not specified with the use predicates, except through the generalizing pronoun man. The latter is unsurprising, since the beneficiary was the landlord who commissioned the urbar, and there was no need to name him repeatedly (with all his titles). From MTE 12 onward, the respective benefit is stated in (monetary) sums. We arrive at the topic of the text, understood as a brief summary that could also serve as a heading, by identifying the ZTG, which emerges from the sequence of recurring references: mayerhoff (1) – Hinder dem mayerhoff (9) Schlos Lobenstain (1) – Zu dem selben schlos (2) – zu dem selben schlos (4) – umb das schlos (11) – Zu dem schlos (13) – Vndterm schlos (19) – underm schlos (21) – Vndter dem schlos (23) Viel gute wysn (2) – grosse wiesn (23)!! – auff den selben (24) die Gerten (4) – In den (5) – Ein...baumgarten (6) – der oder Baumgarten (7) - denselben garten (8) – Der dyte baumgarten (9) – der (10) – Der fierde baumgarten (11) – Der selben fier bawmgarten (12) Weld („Wälder“) (13) – der selben (14) – Inn den selben weldn (15) pynbeuten („Honigtrag“) (15) – ain mesel mehd (16) – soliche mesel (17) – Dietz („davon“) (18) 34 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text Grammar and Early New High German Practical Texts from Czech and Slovak Archives (Urbar, Statute, Hymn): Analysis and an Attempt at Didacticization two water (19) – the same (20) – a...stream (21) – the same (22). By combining the classemes (isotopies) with the ZTG, the text theme can be developed and formulated as follows: “The following (specified in detail) use/yield is possible from the meadows, gardens, woods, honey yields, and bodies of water belonging to the manor below Lobenstein Castle.” The fact that the theme does not appear in this formulation as a heading (supratext) is due to the fact that the locality of Lobenstein Castle is named in the main heading and the manor in the heading. The remainder of the theme would amount to a division of the text in the heading, and the function of the text—to name the properties and their usufruct—is clear and familiar from the function of the Urbar. The late resumption of the category “meadows” in MTE 23 suggests an addition, which can be explained by an oversight on the part of the scribe. Ultimately, the function of item, which can be specified text-grammatically as a structural connector, remains unclear (see also below, 4). 4. STATUTE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF KASCHAU/KOŠICE (1404) Ilpo Tapani Piirainen’s description of the manuscript already provides important indications of text-grammatical structures that can be traced in the edition (Piirainen 1987: 239f.). The 1404 statute of the council of the city of Košice/Kaschau (hereafter: Statute) is a homogeneous, complex text composed of short texts (“articles”) that serve exclusively the function of legislation (text type “statute”) and are clearly delineated from one another. In addition to the 47 articles, the short texts, the complete text (the manuscript) also includes an introduction, which does not, however, exceed the length of a short text. The manuscript’s text is reproduced in the edition in a diplomatic, letter-faithful form. This presumably also applies to punctuation, so that the commas, the only punctuation marks used in the edition, contribute only to a limited extent to the understanding of the passage’s content. The same applies to the capital letters. The sentence boundaries, which are important for text-grammatical analysis, must be interpretatively imposed on the text by the analyst. Straipsniai / Articles 35 ALBRECHT GREULE Analysis of Article 21 (Piirainen 1987: 246) Supratext: The twenty-first article1 1: [Item] no impertinent vanity, useless proverb, or empty talk shall be present in a seated council, Connector: but 2: each person shall be assigned to hear what is to be discussed, so that the matter may suffer neither disruption nor hindrance. Connector: Item also 3: no impertinence shall take place within the council, in order to avoid giving offense before the common people, Connector: And also 4: no other matter shall be brought forward at the same time; particular attention shall be paid to the matter under discussion, Connector: vnd 5: enter or touch no other matter, but the one being dealt with at the time Although MTE 5 is an infinitive construction coordinated with the infinitive construction in MTE 4 (besunderlich uf sehen haben...), I have separated it as an independent, albeit elliptical, sentence in which “sol men” is to be supplied. Coreference through a) identical repetition of nouns: - Dy sach (2) – keyn ander sach, dy sach (4) – keynerley ander sach (5) - keyn vngebert (1) – keyn vngeberd (3) - in siczenden rot (1) – auswendig des rots (3) b) identical repetition of verbs: - handlen (2) – handlen (4) - handelt (5) 1 Translation: Likewise, when the council is in session, there shall be no improper conduct, idleness, “proverb” (interjection?), useless whispering, or shuffling of feet. Rather, everyone shall be ready to hear what is to be deliberated, so that the matter is neither disrupted nor impeded. Likewise, there shall be no improper conduct outside the council, in order to avoid causing offense before the public. And no other matter shall be brought forward at the same time; instead, one should concentrate on the matter currently being deliberated. And (one should) not introduce or touch upon any other matter except the one being dealt with. 36 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text Grammar and Early New High German Practical Texts from Czech and Slovak Archives (Urbar, Statute, Hymn): Analysis and an Attempt at Didacticization – eyntragen (4) – eyntragen (5) Coreference through contiguity (‘activities of the council’): siczenden rot (1) – handlen, dy sach (2) – sach eyntragen, handeln (4) – sach eyntragen, handelt (5) Structural recurrence/syntactic parallelism: negated modal predicate: sol nicht seyn (1) – (keyn...) sol seyn (3) – (keyn...) sol eyngetragen werden (4) – (sol) eyntragen noch beruren (5, elliptical). Comparable are the stative passive in the subjunctive sey geschickt zw horen and the passive substitute form nicht störung habe (2), which could be understood as variants of expression (instead of sol seyn geschickt, sol nicht störung haben). Isotopy with the class ‘(improper) conduct’: vngeber t eytelkeyt sprichwort vnniiczlich rawmen füstreten (1) – störung...noch hinderniβ (2) – vngeberd, ergerniβ (3) – ander sach... eyntragen (4) – ander sach eyntragen noch beruren (5) All five MTEs are connected to one another by adversative and coordinating connectors. This finding may be attributable to the text type, which requires clear structuring. If we try to construct the theme of Article 21 from this text-grammatical information, the first thing to catch the eye is a negated modal predicate occurring in four MTEs, formulated almost stereotypically as in the Ten Commandments (e.g., “you shall not steal”). Only in MTE 2 is the prohibition expressed somewhat more mildly in the subjunctive (sey, habe). The modality, the speaker’s/writer’s stance toward the reader/listener, remains the same. It is noticeable here that no addressee (syntactically: no agent) is named; yder ‘everyone’ in MTE 2 is too vague. A gap opens up here, which can be filled anaphorically or cataphorically from Article 20 or 22—in the hope that an “addressee” will be found there—and thus becomes a problem of the grammar of the macrotext. The theme of Article 21 can be formulated as follows on the basis of the interplay of text-grammatical relations: “An unnamed author X commands unnamed addressees Y to avoid disruptions to the council meeting.” The place and time at which this is to take place are not specified. Since the content of MTE 3 concerns conduct not in, but outside, the council meeting, it can be understood as a secondary theme, which the author of the statute introduces conspicuously with Item, a coordinating connector at the beginning of the short texts. The variables X and Y in the formulation of the theme are intended to indicate the non-autonomy of the Straipsniai / Articles 37 ALBRECHT GREULE of the short text, because the short text depends on additions from the pre-text and post-text for full understanding. 5. HYMNAL (CHURCH HYMNBOOK) OF THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN FROM 1531 It is among the firmly established findings of comparative hymnology that Bohemia is the homeland of the hymnbook (Greule 2012: 167), among other reasons because Europe’s oldest Protestant church hymnbook was printed in Prague in 1501 and its only surviving copy is kept in the National Museum in the Czech Republic. This finding is not undermined by the fact that the Brno medievalist Sylvie Stanovská recently argued in a lecture in Görlitz (Saxony) that the hymn “Adam het vns gantz verderbet,” printed together with its melody in the 1531 Hymnal of the Bohemian Brethren, is a textual reworking of the hymn “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbet,” written by Lazarus Spengler (1479–1534) in Nuremberg in 1520.2 In addition, Sylvie Stanovská has discovered that the transformation of Spengler’s text took place under the influence of the melody. The melody of the German hymn of the Bohemian Brethren is identical to that of the Bohemian Brethren’s Czech hymn “Chvalmež Otce nebeskeho” (“Let us praise the Heavenly Father”), attested in texts from 1541, 1545–46, and 1564, but not to the melody of Lazarus Spengler’s hymn. The task of comparative text-grammatical analysis is to elucidate the linguistic transformation process and the related transformation of content and theology. Comparative analysis of the hymn “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt” (=Text A) with “Adam het vns gantz verderbet” (1st stanza) (=Text C) Through Adam’s Fall, human nature and being are wholly corrupted; that same poison is inherited by us, so that we might not recover without God’s comfort, which redeems us. 2 Albrecht Greule/Sylvie Stanovská, Transformation des geistlichen Liedes bei den Böhmischen Brüdern. Vortrag anlässlich der Tagung „Textgestaltung als Abbild der Transformationsprozesse vom 15. bis 17.Jahrhundert“, Hochschule Zittau/Görlitz, 25.–27.9.2012. 38 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text grammar and Early New High German functional texts from Czech and Slovak archives (Urbar, statute, church hymn): analysis and an attempt at didacticization Has, because of the great harm into which the serpent drove Eve, brought God’s wrath upon himself. While analysis of continuous texts divided only into sentences proceeds across sentence boundaries (transphrastically), in the case of church hymns—apart from the fact that they are constituents of the printed macro-text “hymnbook”—one must take into account a constitutive unit of division above the sentence in order to assess the textual coherence of the stanzas added later, namely the stanzas distinguished by rhythm and rhyme. If we approach the texts, as it were, from the outside, we find that the stanza structure of Text A, with two stollen, a concluding section, and a masculine cadence, is found neither in Czech Text B nor in Text C. However, the stanza structures of Text B and Text C (four lines of four stresses, forming two rhyming couplets) correspond. The syntactic structure consists of two sentences, one of them a simple sentence: MTE 1 Through Adam’s Fall, human nature and being are wholly corrupted. and one complex sentence: MTE 2 That same poison is inherited by us, so that we might not recover without God’s comfort, which redeems us from the great harm into which the serpent drove Eve, thereby bringing God’s wrath upon himself. Although the relatively small amount of text in the first stanza does not yet allow them to be quantified, the “protagonists” (=ZTG) of this subtext are the pair ADAM/EVE and GOD. The deixis expressed by us and we is often overlooked; that is, the reference to a group of people who sing or receive the hymn, a group that also includes the otherwise linguistically unrepresented author. The isotopy levels are identified through the semantics of the lexemes in the text, as determined by the co-text. Thus, we can readily see that the common “semantic denominator” of the expressions Fall, corrupted, poison, not recover, great harm, serpent, drove, wrath is the semantic feature (=classeme) ‘harmful (to humans)’. Yet no theme can be formulated from this configuration of ZTG and isotopy alone. It follows that the first stanza thematically only prepares the way for at least one or more subsequent stanzas. Straipsniai / Articles 39 ALBRECHT GREULE And indeed, in the 2nd stanza, the TCs ADAM/EVE as well as GOD and the WE-deixis, along with the isotopy ‘(harmful to humans)’ (Schlang, abgefallen, veracht, Bracht hat den Tod, Not), are continued; but at its end a new protagonist appears in close textual proximity to GOD and the WE-deixis: HIS DEAR SON, called CHRIST in varying forms in the following stanzas! At this point, from a text-grammatical perspective, an intertextual “interface” with the Czech song (B) becomes apparent, whose first stanza says: jeho syna milého “his dear son” Analysis of the further stanzas, carried out according to the same pattern, yields the following: the protagonists and deixis remain the same; with the appearance of CHRIST, a new isotopy takes its place alongside the isotopy ‘harmful’: namely, the isotopy ‘salvation’ (‘redemption’), antonymous to ‘harmful’. It is then surpassed, indeed, in the 5th stanza by an accumulation of predicates of Christ such as way, light, gate, truth, life, counsel, eternal Word, protection. In thematic terms, this seems to mark the song’s climax and its end. After the 5th stanza, a sharp break can be identified text-grammatically: in the 6th stanza there is no longer any deixis, the TC is THE HUMAN BEING in general, and the isotopy associated with HUMAN BEING (godless, accursed, far from salvation, without a comforter, in the devil’s power) has ‘cast off by God’ as its common denominator. As a modern reader, one cannot escape the impression that the illocution of a threat lies behind this stanza. In stanza 7, only the isotopy changes: HUMAN BEING is now promised ‘salvation’—if they trust in God. Essentially, in these two stanzas, 6 and 7, the isotopy and thus the two themes of the first five stanzas—namely, “harm caused to humans by Adam” as opposed to “salvation through Christ”—are pointedly reiterated. Contrary to expectations, then, there is a thematic connection with the subtext comprising stanzas 1–5. Another caesura, beginning with stanza 8, is no less marked. It opens with “I beseech you, O Lord”; the performative verb beseech immediately makes clear that the deixis of stanzas 1–5 is taken up again, but now through the individual I rather than the plural WE, in correspondence with the YOU-GOD, which is important to note. If stanza 8 is a plea for the salvation promised conditionally in stanza 7, the song ends in stanza 9 40 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text Grammar and Early New High German Texts of Practical Use from Czech and Slovak Archives (Urbar, Statute, Hymn): Analysis and an Attempt at Didacticization from the I-deixis with the word hope, which stands at the end of a strong ‘light’ isotopy (burning lucerne, a light, morning stars). From a text-grammatical perspective, we can conclude that song A consists of four vertically (i.e. successively) coordinated subtexts, each with a different illocution: I: stanzas 1–5; II: stanzas 6–7; III: stanza 8; and IV. Part I may be called “historice-mystice,” using a term from medieval scriptural exegesis (illocution: information/remembrance); Part II, by the same analogy, “moraliter” (illocution: threat); Part III is a plea; Part IV, because of the ‘light’ isotopy associated with GOD, is close to a doxology (illocution: praise?). Finally, an attempt at an intertextual comparison of Text A and Text C, which it makes sense to begin with stanza 1.3 Adam hett vnns gantz verderbet suᵉnd vnd schult auf vns geerbet verandert natur vnd wesen das wir nicht mochten genesen The question, almost technical in linguistic terms, is: How does the unknown author formally adapt the text of A to the structure of the stanza in song B? We can immediately establish that only the grammar of the respective first stanza makes comparison possible at all; this may be different from an ideational-historical and theological perspective. The first thing to consider is the syntactic structure of the two stanzas: whereas the stanza in Text A consists of two sentences, the stanzaic structure of song C accommodates only one sentence. It is complex and consists of a three-part asyndetic series of clauses that leads into a complex sentence with a that subordinate clause. By contrast, the TCs are the same in both stanzas: ADAM as Agent and the WE-deixis as Patient; as in Spengler, the action takes place on an isotopic plane that, with the semantic feature (class) ‘hopeless destruction of human beings’, differs little from Spengler’s isotopy ‘(harmful to humans)’; at most, it is sharpened and intensified. The reviser of Text C achieves this first through repetition (or adoption) of the text segments Adam, gantz verderbet, auff vns vererbet, natur und wesen and finally through the adoption of an entire line from Spengler, namely: das wir nicht mochten genesen. In C, however, this line is moved from the middle of Spengler’s text to the end of the stanza, thereby achieving an important dramatic effect: we human beings need a savior. 3 Text according to Thomas 1931. Straipsniai / Articles 41 ALBRECHT GREULE From this point onward, Lied C takes a quite different theological direction from Spengler’s song: since, according to Christian theology, the “Savior” came—or comes—at Christmas, Lied A has become a Christmas carol. 6. RESULTS The initial questions—what text-grammatical analysis contributes to the interpretation and better understanding of Early New High German texts, and how it can be made fruitful in language teaching—can be answered in the following way. The first step, when dealing with handwritten texts such as the Urbar and the Satzung, lies with the editor of the manuscripts. The editor transcribes them and, in doing so, identifies which state of the language the manuscript represents, or which writing region it belongs to, and what vocabulary characterizes it. However, when considering the application of text grammar to historical texts, this question should not be the main focus, since it has often been addressed in connection with the development of New High German written language. Editions should also facilitate the interpretation of texts by proposing sentence divisions, thereby making text-grammatical analysis easier to apply in teaching. By applying the steps of text-grammatical analysis (identifying minimal textual units, their external and internal connections, and developing a theme) to selected sections or short texts in (linguistic and literary-historical) teaching, students can gradually develop an understanding of the text and, beyond that, a particular understanding of the functional styles of late-medieval secular (handwritten) and religious (printed) text types (register, statute, religious song). In a further step, which considers the complete text as a whole but could not be carried out here, one could ultimately investigate the formal and thematic connections among the short texts of which the larger text is composed. 42 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV Text Grammar and Early New High German Practical Texts from Czech and Slovak Archives (Urbar, Statute, Church Hymn): Analysis and an Attempt at Didactic Adaptation L I T E R A T U R E G r e u l e A l b r e c h t 2003: Urbare als Kanzleiprodukte und Sprachquellen. – Aufgaben einer künftigen Kanzleisprachenforschung (= Beiträge zur Kanzleisprachenforschung 3), hrsg. von Jörg Meier und Arne Ziegler. Wien, 57–67. G r e u l e A l b r e c h t 2011: Beobachtungen zur Textgrammatik des Frühneuhochdeutschen in der Ostslowakei – am Beispiel der Satzung des Rates der Stadt Košice/Kaschau von 1404. – Deutsch-Slawische Kontakte – Geschichte und Kultur, Festschrift für Mária Papsonová, Michaela Kováčová, Jörg Meier, Ingrid Puchalová (eds.). Košice, 23–32. G r e u l e A l b r e c h t 2012: Sakralität. Studien zu Sprachkultur und religiöser Sprache, hrsg. von Sandra Reimann und Paul Rössler. Tübingen. G r e u l e A l b r e c h t, C h r i s t o p h e r K o l b e c k 2014: Kanzleisprachenforschung und Textgrammatik. – Perspektiven und Desiderate der europäischen Kanzleisprachenforschung (= Beiträge zur Kanzleisprachenforschung 8), hrsg. von Jörg Meier, Wien (Praesens) (im Druck). H a n k e S i e g f r i e d, V o g e l R a i n e r (e d s.) 2010: Urbare des Fürstentums Jägerndorf aus der Zeit der Markgrafen von Brandenburg-Ansbach (1531, 1535, 1554/89). Berlin, 18–100. P i i r a i n e n I l p o T a p a n i 1987: Die Satzung des Rates der Stadt Košice/Kaschau aus dem Jahre 1404. Edition und Untersuchung eines frühneuhochdeutschen Textes aus der Slowakei. – Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 88. Helsinki, 237–255. T h o m a s W i l h e l m (H g.) 1931: Michael Weiße, Gesangbuch der Böhmischen Brüder vom Jahre 1531. Wiederabdruck Kassel. Straipsniai / Articles 43 ALBRECHT GREULE Text Grammar and Early New High German Texts from Czech and Slovak Archives (Urbar records, statutes, church hymns): Analysis and an Attempt at Didactic Adaptation SUMMARY The article analyzes three texts in Early New High German from the Czech Republic (Bohemia and Moravia) and Slovakia from a grammatical perspective. It discusses how these texts from the 15th and 16th centuries, which belong to different text classes, convey textual coherence and theme to the addressee. This central question is analyzed using two strategies: identifying the main text objects by establishing coreference chains, and distinguishing isotopy levels by identifying semantic features. The theme of the texts can be classified according to the combination of these main text objects and isotopy levels. The article offers recommendations on how grammatical text analysis can be applied in teaching language history. Received December 15, 2014. ALBRECHT GREULE Universität Regensburg Institut für Germanistik, D-93040 Regensburg. [email protected] 44 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXV