Middle Low German is generally considered to be a direct successor to Old Saxon. However, later dialects, including Middle Low German, differ from Old Saxon with respect to a number of features, which is unexpected under a direct succession relationship. To account for the presence of such features, some scholars attribute them to High German influence on Middle Low German (Wolff 1934, Stiles 1995, Stiles 2013). Others, however, hypothesize that written Old Saxon (which provides the basis for the comparison) was an artificial grapholect that reflected Old English and Franconian conventions rather than a genuine spoken language (Collitz 1901, Rooth 1973, Doane 1991:45–46). This paper further contributes to this discussion by examining the systems of degree adverbs in Old Saxon and Middle Low German. Based on data from different corpora, it is shown that the system in Old Saxon resembles the one in Old English, while the Middle Low German system is comparable to the systems in Middle High German and Early Middle Dutch. It is concluded that an explanation based solely on language contact is problematic, and that the grapholect hypothesis has more explanatory power.*

中文翻译：

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古撒克逊语和中古低地德语的程度副词：历时不连续性的一个例子？

中古低地德语通常被认为是古撒克逊语的直接继承者。然而，后来的方言，包括中古低地德语，在许多特征上与古撒克逊语不同，这在直接继承关系下是意想不到的。为了解释这些特征的存在，一些学者将其归因于高地德语对中古低地德语的影响（Wolff 1934，Stiles 1995，Stiles 2013）。然而，其他人则假设，书面古撒克逊语（为比较提供了基础）是一种人造的笔墨，反映了古英语和法兰克语的惯例，而不是真正的口语（Collitz 1901，Rooth 1973，Doane 1991：45-46）。本文通过研究古撒克逊语和中古低地德语的程度副词系统，进一步促进了这一讨论。基于不同语料库的数据，结果表明，古撒克逊语的系统类似于古英语的系统，而中古低地德语的系统则与中古高地德语和早期中古荷兰语的系统相当。结论是，仅基于语言接触的解释是有问题的，而形语假说具有更强的解释力。*