Zum Quellenwert des althochdeutschen Tatian für die Syntaxforschung. Überlegungen auf der Basis von Wortstellungsphänomenen

This paper is about the potential value of the Old High German Tatian manuscript as a source for research on word order. The Tatian (dated before 850), being one of the largest records of Old High German, is often viewed as a slavish translation of the Latin text, displaying many features of an interlinear translation. However, it has long been noted that deviations from the Latin word order can provide valuable evidence for genuine Old High German syntactic structures. Research until now has shown that such deviations display features known from New High German grammar. In this paper, it is argued that deviations from the Latin word order going against New High German can also be found in significant numbers. Taking into account the totality of deviations, it is argued that they allow to reconstruct a genuine Old High German system in which word order is largely determined by information structural parameters.