Changing the functioning of the article in the history of the German language

Abstract

The subject of the study is the historical changes in the syntactic structure of the German language; the object of the study is articles. The authors consider in detail the use of definite, indefinite and null articles based on the material of a fragment of the Gospel of Luke, which were published in various periods of the German language: the text of Tatiana, translated by Martin Luther, made in 1545; an adapted version of Luther's translation, published in 2017 and a lightweight electronic version created as a result of deviation from the canonical translation. Particular attention is paid to the frequency of use of articles, the reasons for the increase or decrease in their use, as well as other means of determination. It is established that modern electronic text shows a tendency to decrease nominal groups, which, accordingly, leads to a decrease in articles. The tendency to decrease the zero article is manifested by the early Upper German period; in modern German, there is a displacement of the definite article. The methodological basis is based on a systematic approach to the interpretation of the phenomena of linguistic ontology in diachrony. The research methods are comparative historical analysis, the method of distributive analysis, quantitative analysis, methods of N. Chomsky's theory of control and binding. The main conclusions of the proposed study are the revealed historical processes in the system of articles of the German language. It was found that at an early stage of language development, the zero article dominated in texts, which significantly narrowed the manifestation of determination. The main burden during this period fell on possessive nominal groups, which primarily included proper names. The definite article was used much less frequently. In nominal groups that are part of the prepositional group, the zero article was mainly used, which eventually led to the creation of stable prepositional constructions with a zero article. The largest number of all types of articles falls on Luther's translation adapted to the modern grammatical structure of the German language, which is associated with the maximum use of nominal groups. What is new is the establishment in modern German of a tendency to reduce the zero and definite articles.