The development of sentence internal capitalization of the first letter of nouns in German - a corpus-linguistic study of the interaction of cognitive-semantic and syntactic factors

我们项目的主题是德语单词的内部大写（SIC）的发展。从早期的研究中我们知道，大写字母福尔斯扩展的决定性时期是在世纪到17世纪的早期新高地德语（ENHG）。在我们的研究中，我们将从认知语义和句法因素的相互作用来解释这一现象。这两个维度将系统地相互映射。该项目的目标是表明，大写字母的扩展是由认知语义类别，如生命和个性化的动机，并根据语义（施事程度）和句法功能（主语，宾语等）发生。虽然SIC的发展发生在不同的时间和不同的领域，但我们认为相同的认知语义和句法原则在起作用。这包括伸展阶段的顺序大致相同。因此，我们的方法并不一定依赖于个人chanceries的标准化作用，而是前景的认知因素。因此，我们从语法化的角度来解释SIC，因为这个过程始于大写字母的语用使用。换句话说，我们假设资本化最初具有强调相关信息的功能。它涵盖了生命性（有生命的>无生命的）、个体化（有定的>无定的;单数>复数）、施事性（施事者>受事者）和句法类别（主语>宾语>状语）。随着时间的推移，这些因素越来越消失，取而代之的是纯粹的句法动机，即名词性短语的中心语大写，而与其意义无关。我们的假设依赖于一个数据库，该数据库由1570-1665年审讯女巫的56个ENHG协议组成。

The topic of our project is the development of sentence-internal capitalization of words (SIC) in German. From earlier studies we know that the decisive period for the extension of capital letters falls into Early New High German (ENHG) from 14th until 17th century. In our approach, we will explain this phenomenon by the interaction of cognitive-semantic and syntactic factors. Both dimensions will be systematically mapped on each other. The goal of the project is to show that the extension of the capital letters was motivated by cognitive-semantic categories such as animacy and individualization and took place according to semantic (degree of agentivity) and syntactic functions (subject, object, etc.). Although the development of SIC took place in different areas at different times, we assume that the same cognitive-semantic and syntactic principles were at work. That includes that the order of extensional phases is roughly the same. Hence, our approach does not necessarily rely on the standardizing role of individual chanceries, but rather foregrounds cognitive factors. We, thus, interpret the SIC from a grammaticalization perspective, as this process starts out with a pragmatic use of capital letters. In other words, we assume that initially capitalization has the function of emphasizing relevant information. It spreads over scalar semantic categories including animacy (animated > unanimated), individualization (definite > indefinite; singular > plural), agentivity (agent > patient), and syntactic categories (subject > object > adverbial). In the course of time, these factors more and more disappear and are substituted by a merely syntactic motivation, i.e. that the head of the nominal phrase is capitalized, independently of its meaning. Our hypotheses rely on a database consisting 56 ENHG protocols of interrogation of witches from 1570-1665.