Distribution und Funktionen von Vergangenheitsformen im älteren Obersorbischen.

This study deals with the usage of past tenses in Older Sorbian, especially with the distribution of the aorist/​imperfect (simple past) and the l‑perfect as well as the usage of resultative constructions with the n/​t‑participle. For this purpose, a corpus of Older Sorbian texts was created and the mentioned forms were analyzed. The following questions are of special interest: In which way is the contact to German responsible for the unusually long preservation of the simple past in Upper Sorbian? Is there a connection between the loss of the simple past and the grammaticalization of verbal aspect in West Slavic? To answer these questions, the data from our corpus was compared with the literature on Old Czech, Old Polish and German as well as historical grammars and further relevant publications on the topic. Especially we compare available publications on the development of the l‑perfect to a general past tense in the three Western Slavic languages, the frequent expressions for a perfect meaning in Western Slavic as well as the history of Western Slavic aspect. The comparison of the Upper Sorbian data with the contact language German on the one hand and the neighbouring Slavic languages on the other hand shows significant differences in the usage of past tenses, but also clear parallels in the development of the languages. These insights can help to judge the role of language contact and internal development on the Sorbian tense system clearer then previously.