The role of the definite article in the rise of the German framing principle : a comparative study of verbal and nominal constructions in the Old High German Muspilli and the Old English Dream of the Rood

Abstract

This paper develops ideas broached in Ronneberger-Sibold (2010) on the origins of the divergent typological developments of English towards a “classical” analytic S-V-O language, and German into a “framing” language, in which the dominating typologically relevant feature is the framing of different constituents by two elements related to each other, such that the recipient can conclude from the appearance of the first element that the constituent in question will not be complete before the second element appears. This principle was discovered and gradually implemented by German language users in a self-fortifying process from OHG on. To isolate specifically OHG prerequisites for this process, two comparable alliterative poems, one in each language, were analysed with respect to separable verbal complexes, verb position as a marker of sentence type, and the structure of complex noun-phrases. The most radical differences concerned the noun-phrase, and particularly the definite article, whereas the differences in verb position were less pronounced. Therefore, a scenario of the first steps of the typological divergence is outlined in which the OHG definite article plays a decisive role.