Thomas Gloning

A History of the German Language Through Texts examines the evolution of German, from the Early Medieval period to the present day. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book looks at the history of German through a wide range of texts, from medical, legal and scientific writing to literature, everyday newspapers and adverts. All texts are translated and accompanied by commentaries. The book also offers a glossary of technical terms and abbreviations, a summary of the main changes in each historical period, a guide to reference material, and suggestions for further reading. A History of the German Language Through Texts is essential reading for students of German, Linguistics or Philology.

Looks a the history and evolution of the German language, from the Early Medieval period to the present day.

The meaning of expressions in a language is equivalent to the way they are used in a given language community. Views of this nature are central to the assumptions underlying 'usage theories of meaning' and 'action-theoretical semantics'. The first major section of the book provides an overview of approaches to establishing an action-theoretical semantics and the productive aspects these approaches have engendered (Wittgenstein, ordinary language philosophy, speech-act theory, the discussion sparked off by Grice, game-theoretical semantics, philologically oriented semantics etc.). The second major part is given over to a discussion of central problems of action-theoretical semantics (fundamental concepts, truth-conditions and use-conditions, compositional meaning, forms of meaning description, literal meaning and variety of uses etc.).