SENTENCE STRUCTURE, VALENCY-CHANGING AND THE HISTORICAL SYNTACTIC DICTIONARY OF VERBS AS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE GERMAN VERB ACHTEN

Abstract

The article deals with historical German syntax, in particular with the verbal system, its systematic recording on the basis of valence theory and its historical development from Old High German (OHG) to the present day German. The aim is to record both the deep case frames and the sentence structure of the German verbs documented in all periods of linguistic history. As an example the New High German (NHG) verb achten and its historical equivalents (OHG ahtôn, MHG ahten, ENHG achten) are used. It will be shown how the structure of the entry under the keyword achten in a historical syntactic dictionary (abbreviated to HSVW) can be derived from the historical dictionaries available online. Finally, on the basis of the information stored in the historical syntactic dictionary, the diachronic spectrum of meaning of the verb achten is recorded and its valency changing pattern is presented.