Contrastive Research of the Total Vocabularies of Old German Literary Works "Heliand" and "Otfrid"

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The purpose of the present research work is to contrast in the form of a united dictionary the total vocabularies of two representative literary works of ninth century Germany. And the common and the peculiar world-view of both works are probed through an analysis of lexical commonness and diversity. Further it aims to probe into how the lexical diversity corresponds to that of the formal construction principle of the traditional Germanic alliteration on the one Band ("Heliand") and of the newly-arrived Latin rhyme on the other Band ("Otfrid").The conclusion arrived at is as follows : There are ca. 1,240 common items including proper names between ca. 2,840 of "Heliand" and ca. 3,490 of "Otfrid". They are basic vocabulary forms and reflect their common world-view. The uncommon items are more important : "Heliand" has a great deal of words common with English, nominal synonyms, compound nouns and intensive forms of nouns. But "Otfrid" has a great number of compound verbs and nouns used only with prepositions in rhyming positions.The confirmed lexical characteristics clearly correspond to the fact : "Heliand" intended to inform the gospel by means of an old vocabulary based on the traditional Germanic world-view, whereas "Otfrid" tried to avoid such vocabulary as much as he could. The lexical characteristics correspond also to the formal construction principle of the alliteration using many nouns and of the rhyme using both verbs and nouns alike.