Introduction

In the domain of historical grammar the Germanistic Department of the University of Bonn looks back on an impressive tradition, reaching far back into the 19^th century (Wilhelm Wilmanns 1842-1911, Johannes Franck 1854-1914). Over the last decades, in Bonn (and Augsburg) the grammar of Early High German, spanning four volumes , was developed. Early high german is that stage of language which is directly preceeding the High German Language. Early High German is preceeded by the so called Middle High German.

Middle High German is that High German dialect which was spoken and written from the middle of the 11^th century until the middle of the 14^th. Middle High German wasn't a uniform language like today's german standard language, but consisted of various dialects.
Even though language and literature of the mhg. aera were in the focus of grammatic research since its very beginning, a comprehensive grammar, complying with modern linguistic requirements, basing on hand-written traditioned Middle High German has not yet arisen. It is that kind of grammar which is now being developed (consisting of four volumes), embedded in an even larger scaled project, divided into the sections

• Bonn (Head Prof. Dr. Thomas Klein),
• Bochum (Head Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Wegera) and
• Halle (Head Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Solms).

Cooperation acknowledgments exist with

• Prof. Albrecht Greule (Univ. Regensburg),
• Prof. Dr. Eckhard Meineke (Univ. Jena),
• Dr. Jonathan West (University of Newcastle) and
• Dr. Heinz-Peter Prell (Universitet i Oslo).

In the meantime, the main task of section Bonn is to develop the pivotal Corpus consisting of roundabout 1.000.000 word forms (linguistically so called tokens) by grammatical indices. That ammount of data is a reliable basement to accomplish a grammaticographic analysis.
These single steps are being completed computer-aidedly by a complex software, which has been specially developed for this purpose.

In the grammatical indices, each word form is represented by a single record, containing information as follows: beneath the written word form and its location, the lemma (that means the standard form), word class, grammatical classification like case, numerus, gender, declination in case of adjectives, a computer-generated artificial normalized word form (that is to say in some respect a "virtual" word form) and a grapho-phonemic analysis of the written word form. Basing on these vertically sorted indices, another computerlinguistic tool generates a syntactical analysis, in some way like the phrase-structure grammar does.
In addition, in the present stage of the project word formation of the mhg. adjective is being described and analyized.
The Projects section in Bonn is meanwhile consisting of appointments as follows:

• 1/2 BAT IIa-appointment,
• 1 WHK-appointment and
• 1 SHK-appointment.

In parallel to that large-scaled project, the one-volume spreading mhg. standard grammar by Hermann Paul is being revised by Thomas Klein, Hans-Joachim Solms und Klaus-Peter Wegera. The intention is to decrease that grammar in order to get it into a new shape as a grammar for study purposes in the first place. In addition, the really traditionned mhg. shall be described better and more exactly as it is yet.

Work in progress...

By now, the phases of lemma-assignment on indexing has been completed. The publication of the volume on word-formation is in progress. The relaese is planned by the end of 2005.

Timeline

Since 1999, the written mhg. sources are being evaluated in the domain of a long-term project supported by the "Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft" (DFG). Basing on the results of that evaluation process, the four volumes of the new Grammar of the Middle High German arise, with one volume each for the topics

• word formation,
• phonology,
• morphology and
• syntax.