Albertus (1573) and Olinger (1574) - Creating the first grammars of German

This article adapts Linn's 'stylistics of standardization' concept, which L inn (1998) has used to compare Norwegian and Faroese grammarians, to look a t grammaticalization processes in the first two grammars of German (Albertu s 1573, Olinger 1574). While both are clearly indebted to traditional Latin grammar and humanist ideals, these two grammars differ interestingly in th e picture of the language that emerges from their metalanguage and structur al principles. In his reflection on the language, his structuring and namin g of linguistic phenomena and his attitudes to variation. Olinger is the pr actical pedagogue, who imposes systematicity and aims for a one-to-one form -function relationship. Albertus on the other hand, though he too envisages his grammar being used for learning German, has a more cultural patriotic motivation, celebrating the richness and variety of German, worthy to be ra nked alongside Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Albertus and Olinger thus come up with quite different versions of the (as yet arguably non-existent) High Ge rman language. Each grammar yields a different subset of possible forms, re minding us that grammar-writing is always a task of creative construction.