Colloquium

Evidential Strategies in Ancient vs. Early Modern Medical Discourse

Prof. Dr. Theresa Roth (Historisch-Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft)

Gohar Schnelle (B04)

In our talk we will discuss the development of evidential strategies used in historical medical discourse as a register relevant function. Our results show, that the use of evidentiality in Early Modern German medical texts is tightly bound to evidential strategies used in Ancient medical texts (i.e. Galen), but also shows variation as the scientific standards and thus registers used in contexts of scientific communication change over the centuries.

Our analyses are carried out on the basis of a variationist corpus study based on annotation in the Register in diachronic German Science Corpus (Ridges-herbology) combined with a qualitative analysis of medical tractats by Galen (2nd-3rd century AD).