History of German Language

The course aims to: - enable students to acquire a basic knowledge of the historical evolution of the German language in its key stages; - introduce students to emblematic works of different genres of Medieval and Early Modern German literature.

Knowledge: - the key stages of the historical evolution of German; - the phonetic, morphological, syntactic and semantical development of the German language; - to understand the structure of contemporary German; - deep understanding of Early New High German. Skills: - ability to read, translate and understand the original texts read in class and to comment on their linguistic aspects, as well as their literary and cultural value; - ability to understand contemporary German structures as the result of diachronic development; - ability to analyze linguistic phenomena in relation to their historic and cultural context; - ability to recognize the linguistic, and particularly semantic, characteristics of Medieval and Early Modern texts.