Open Access

Joanna Smereka

• In my contribution it’s about testaments made by german citizen of Cracow. The material is based on texts of last wills of people representing a minority of citizen of Cracow, the patrician families. The tastators where drawn dealer and trademans, which also pushing the development of the region. The texttype testament often marginalized by linguistics. I aske in opposite of this from the perspective of ontology and pragmatism: What is the deeper linguistic structure of this relative formalized texttype. I show in my analysis the texts of a last will include not only declarative (resp. indirect declarative) acts of speech but also a variety of assertive and directive elements. I don’t want to decide the justice of an act of speech but I have a catalogue of repetitive facultative phrases and combine this with particular narrations of certain paragraphs of testaments. This element not only refers to the private sphere of the tastators (conflicts or emotions) but uncover the social, educational and in part religious attitude of the testators. And so at least fully developed testaments let understood as selfreports.