Ellipsis and syntactic syncretism as compression of legal information in the Skra of Novgorod (13th–15th centuries)

Research on German historical syntax usually stresses the positive impact the development of medieval legal genres and the rising need for unambiguous rules and explicit definition of legal norms has on the improvement of linguistic means of expressing logical and syntactic relations in the Middle High/Low German sentence (Admoni). Our analysis of contexts containing legal penalty clauses (mostly pecuniary charges for disciplinary or criminal offences) was carried out on the basis of the Skra of Novgorod (statute of the Hanseatic merchants’ yard in Novgorod). Text versions of the mid-XIII century and of the year of 1361 were compared; in several instances, evidence from the 1392 version and the municipal law of the city of Lubeck (Lübisches Recht) was used for a broader evaluation. The results show that, contrary to expectation, ellipsis and syntactic syncretism remained a typical feature of the Low German legal language during the whole period under analysis and was not corrected in the later (improved and modernized) versions. Legally meaningful parts of the clauses are regularly omitted, and homonymous (or syncretic) expressions occur, thus impairing clear understanding by modern scholars or correct translation for research use. The apparently successful functioning of syntactically compressed texts in the legal practices of the relevant period may be explained by contextual support on the part of (a) common legal knowledge of the tradition of the German habitual law (from before the introduction of the Roman law) and (b) intertextual discourse with basic legal codices (the Law of Lubeck).