Digital research on the vernacular vocabulary in the continental west-germanic leges barbarorum - a database project

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Stefanie Stricker
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: from 2012 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 213361911

There has been intense research on Old High German glosses and texts in Historical Linguistics. Before the tradition of glosses and texts set in, the first written records of the German language emerge in medieval law-manuscripts of Germanic tribes, the so called Leges barbarorum. Even though this third major corpus of lexical records of German language temporally precedes the texts and glosses its vernacular vocabulary is not sufficiently documented. The broad inventory of manuscripts and their opaque tradition turned out to be unmanageable for reference works of the historical disciplines. The relevant editions of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica are motivated by the history of law. Their apparatus criticus has been the primary source for lexical material ever since, but still has to be characterised as incomplete and defective when it comes to the Old High German inserts. Thus these earliest testimonies of Old High German language and first written documents of a Germanic technical terminology remained unused in historical dictionaries and grammars so far.The Bamberg LegIT-project collects and provides the vernacular language contained by the tradition of the continental west-germanic leges barbarorum. The inserts are investigated according to a determined number of formal and semantic criteria (11.000 records at present). Detailed analyses of word and inflection classes, inflection forms, morphological structures and striking phonological and graphic peculiarities are presented. The linguistic material of the law codes that have been processed (Lex Alamannorum, Lex Baiuvariorum, Lex Saxonum and Lex Frisionum) is documented and offered in a web service named LegIT. Manuscripts have been described and relevant research literature evaluated. Online accessible data like dictionary entries, digitalized manuscripts or descriptions have been linked and information of all qualities is available for its users. An advanced search engine has been implemented to offer a wide range of options for specific search enquiries of prospective customers.With our request for extension, we want to provide another set of continental west-germanic law codes, the Lex Salica, Lex Ribuaria and Leges Langobardorum, but also continuously improve the functionality, quality and user-friendliness of the LegIT-services. The material is accessible by an online database and thus can build the reference value for research on the Old High German vocabulary and grammar such as Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig) or Althochdeutsche Grammatik. Beyond that a wide range of semantic fields is carried by the vernacular vocabulary in the law manuscripts and the tool we offer can be seen as a groundwork to subsequent studies of all historical disciplines. The philological analyses serve not only historical linguists but also legal historians, cultural scientists, historical lexicographers and historical grammarians.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants