Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-based diachronic study of directives in Middle High German (ca. 1050–1350) and Early New High German (ca. 1350–1650). Drawing on 2.4 million tokens from the Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch and 1.3 million from the Referenzkorpus Frühneuhochdeutsch, the study examines the frequency of imperatives, explicit performatives, obligation statements, and common-ground strategies in these two corpora. Results reveal a sharp decline in explicit performatives alongside substantial increases in imperatives, while obligation statements and common-ground strategies register more modest gains—altogether pointing to a complex reorganization of directives over time. These shifts parallel developments documented in English, suggesting a broader cross-linguistic trend for this class of speech acts.