A Syntactic Analysis of Selected Middle High German Prose as a Basis for Stylistic Differentiations

After comparing several systems for identifying and classifying subordinate clauses, this study uses them to analyze the sentence structure of selected Middle High German prose texts. This analysis, conducted on the quantitative and qualitative levels, is used as the basis for a definition of syntactic/stylistic complexity. Relating the data to various literary genres then shows that in the texts in question there exists a definite correlation between literary genre and complexity.