Historical Research of Compound Clauses of German

在早期的现代社会，与文件的交流变得更加重要，许多复杂的信息必须以简短和准确的形式传递。在这方面，复合分句起了很大的作用。本研究的目的是考察构成复合分句的从属连词系统在从中世纪到现代德语的发展过程中是如何发展的。研究结果表明：1)从中世纪到现代德语，从属连词的形式系统发生了很大的变化，但其核心仍然存在。在中世纪和早期现代德语中，许多从属连词，尤其是核心连词，都有从属连词的一些形式变体，但在现代德语中，它们被减少了。在中世纪和早期现代德语中，许多从属连词，尤其是核心连词，都是多义的。在现代德语中，人们更倾向于使用较短形式的从属连词，而迂回形式则被缩短为单个单词。5)在现代德语中，人们更喜欢那些在意义上独立于上下文的形式。6)在现代德语中，从属连词的变体形式减少了，变得更加单一，并且在其意义上更加独立于上下文。这些信息要明确地用语言表达出来。我们在上面看到的现象更多的是书面语的特征，而不是口语的特征。因此，我们可以说，在从中世纪到现代的过程中，德语加强了书面语言的特点。

In the early modern society the comunication with documents became more important and much complicated informations had to be transmitted in a brief and accurate form. With regard to this the compound clauses played a great role. The purpose of this research is to investigate how the system of the subordinate conjunctions, with which the compound clauses are built, was developed in the course from the medieval to the modern German. The results of the research are :1) From the medieval to the modern German the formal system of the subordinate conjunctions changed strongly, but the core of them remained.2)) In the medieval and the early modern German many subordinate conjuctions, especially those of the core, had some formal variants of a subordinate conjunction, but they are reduced in the course to the modern German.3) In the medieval and the early modern German many subordinate conjuctions, especially those of the core, were polysemous, but they became monosemous in the course to the modern German.4) In the modern German the shorter forms of subordinate conjuctions are prefered and the periphrastic forms are shortened to single words.5) In the modern German the forms which are independet from the context in their meaning, are prefered.6) In the modern German the variants of forms of a subordinate conjunction are reduced, become more monosemeous, and are more independent from the context in their meaning. The informtions are to verbalize explicitly.7) The phenomena we saw above are mostly rahter characteristics of the written language than those of the colloquial langauge.8) Consequently we could say that the German language strengthened the charater of the written language in the course from the medieval to the modern times.