Open AccessDistribution of Word Classes in Old English and Old High German: a Preliminary Contrastive Study Based on „The Battle of Maldon”, „Hildebrandslied” and „Ludwigslied”
Author(s) -
Anna Kamińska
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
research in language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.165
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 2083-4616
pISSN - 1731-7533
DOI - 10.2478/v10015-007-0005-3
Subject(s) - german , linguistics , relevance (law) , battle , word (group theory) , computer science , contrastive analysis , history , philosophy , political science , archaeology , law
This paper presents an example of a historical study based on comparable corpora. It aims to analyse and compare the distribution of different parts of speech in Old English and Old High German, thus providing a quantitative basis for further conclusions concerning different patterns of the development of those two West-Germanic languages. A particular attention has been devoted to the frequencies of prepositions and pronouns, as there are considerable differences between the languages in this respect. In addition, the article is a an attempt to show the importance and relevance of computational data for contrastive historical linguistics and their role in supporting or disproving traditional theories