This chapter considers research published over the last two decades on the linguistics of medieva... more This chapter considers research published over the last two decades on the linguistics of medieval multilingualism as evidenced in all sorts of text types, including work published by our honorand and her collaborators. As historical multilingualism has now become such a burgeoning field, Pahta's contribution to the use of corpus-building and searching for evidence of historical multilingualism can be seen as pioneering. The research considered in this chapter reveals the ubiquity of multilingual practices, the discourse-organizing functions of code-switching, the functional properties of switches, the relevance of abbreviations and their frequency, and the major contribution of Romance borrowings to nuancing the English lexicon. Code-switching, in particular, played an important role in vernacularisation processes, accompanying the shift from French to English in the fifteenth century, and as an intermediate stage in the shift from Latin to English in civic records. Further, work has been carried out on multilingual practices involving Middle Dutch, Old Norse,
On the spatial diffusion of linguistic changes: new methods and theoretical perspectives, 2024
The topic of this paper is the origin and spread of a particular streetname that translates into ... more The topic of this paper is the origin and spread of a particular streetname that translates into English as ‘Seven Turn Street’. The Spanish variant of this name (Calle de las Siete (Re)Vueltas, see Data, below) has numerous tokens that cluster in the southern half of the Iberian peninsula (Spain, Gibraltar and Portugal), and may have their origins, we suggest, in varieties of Arabic in Morocco and Farsi in Iran. Our paper models the lexical diffusion of this streetname in two ways. We call the first of these the ‘communities of spatial practice’ model (Weston and Wright: in press). This blends Eckert and McGonnell Ginnet’s (1992a, 1992b) notion of the community of practice, a group of people who come together to participate in a common purpose, with Lefebvre’s (1974) concept of spatial practice as repeat journeys undertaken in physical space, and Labov’s (2007) notion of community-external “diffusion”. The term ‘communities of spatial practice’ thus describes journeys undertaken by specific groups of peoples for a communal purpose that have (socio)linguistic consequences; in the case we describe here, for transnational lexical spread. The second is the influencer model (Preston 2011, Wright 2023), where a lexical feature replaces another due to its perceived social value.
This article relates Gibraltar's historic half-oral, half-written bilingual, streetname system to... more This article relates Gibraltar's historic half-oral, half-written bilingual, streetname system to its eighteenth-century founding multilingual population. Using the geolinguistic concept of types of mobilities, we demonstrate the existence of communities of spatial practice, who serviced forts in Gibraltar, Menorca, Ceuta and Melilla, and who predominantly hailed from Britain, Genoa, Menorca, Morocco and Portugal. We use the term 'spatial practice' in the sense that these speakers made recurrent journeys around Western Mediterranean forts over generations, establishing a conduit of language interchange. The linguistic feature studied here is surnames, which entered Gibraltar streetnames over an extended period of time, constituting an archaeological trace of a subset of British Gibraltar's founding families. Gender is implicated in this account, as the Gibraltarian Spanish streetnames were transmitted by Spanish women who married Gibraltarians, creating Gibraltarian hispanophone domestic environments. These are now in the process of being lost as the older generation has ceased speaking Gibraltarian Spanish to children, a consequence of Franco's closure 1969-1985 of the land-border. This loss of cultural heritage is significant as the concept of a historical Gibraltarian identity is challenged whenever politicians question Gibraltar's sovereignty. Our analysis demonstrates that the continuity of a cohesive tricentenarian community is audible (if only partially visible) in its bilingual streetscape.
Multilingualism and multiculturalism are burning topics in today's societies. Peoples, languages ... more Multilingualism and multiculturalism are burning topics in today's societies. Peoples, languages and cultures coming into contact with each other can provoke confusion and concern. However, although the current situation in Europe, for example, tends to be viewed as alarmingly sudden, cultural and language contact and multilingualism are nothing new. Multilingualism in the past was not limited in place and time: we find evidence of it throughout medieval Europe, and in other periods and regions as well. Multilingual societies were composed of multilingual individuals who used more than one language in their daily lives, even within a single utterance. This is manifest in their writing. The surviving written evidence offers us access to code-switching and other multilingual practices of the past, the topic to which this volumeand a growing number of othersis dedicated. A key term in discussing multilinguals and their communicative practices is code-switching, which has been defined in a number of different ways. We quote Winford (2003: 14): "the alternate use of two languages (or dialects) within the same stretch of speech, often within the same sentence"and Poplack (1980: 583): "the alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent". Both define code-switching as involving two linguistic codes, although there can be more. Moreover, Winford mentions speech, as codeswitching was originally studied as a feature of spoken interaction, whilst Poplack highlights the linguistic, structural context within which the switch takes place. Since historical linguists only work with written records of language use, we have a slightly different emphasis: "the co-occurrence of two or more languages in a single communicative event" (Pahta and Nurmi 2006: 203). Broader definitions have also been made by othersconsider Heller (1988: 1): "the use of more than one language in the course of a single communicative episode". The similarities between these definitions, though, hide the variation and variability of
In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775–1834)... more In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775–1834) in the London Magazine in 1822 about a desirable quality in books: that they should be ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’. We identify meanings of modifier neat as evidenced by different communities of practice in early nineteenth-century newspapers, and in particular we present meanings of neat as used in certain Quaker writings known to have been read with approval by Lamb. By this method we assemble a series of nuanced meanings that the phrase neat-bound would have conveyed to contemporary readers – specifically, the readership of the London Magazine.
This chapter identifies the first 27 Londoners to live in a Sunnyside, from 1859-1872, after whic... more This chapter identifies the first 27 Londoners to live in a Sunnyside, from 1859-1872, after which the name increased rapidly. Their biographies are given, and the methods used are identification of social networks and communities of practice. Religious nonconformism turned out to be key, as the first four London Sunnysiders were a Swedenborgian, a Sandemanian, a Plymouth Brother, and an unidentified dissenter married to a Wesleyan Methodist. Early London Sunnysiders were wealthy, successful, socially-embedded businessmen, owning their own companies and employing others. The earliest London Sunnysiders had overlapping social networks via their professions (the paper and print industries), their livery companies, their charitable activities, their Nonconformist churches, and family ties. They had a raised likelihood of Scottishness, either by descent or by connection. Early London Sunnysides were large detached suburban houses, newly-built, near to railway-stations.
This article considers vocabulary occurring in the St Helena Consultations, which record court pr... more This article considers vocabulary occurring in the St Helena Consultations, which record court proceedings from St Helena, South Atlantic, from the late 1600s onwards, administrated by the British East India Company. As the island was settled ab initio by East India Company settlers, soldiers and their slaves, the input languages are, to some extent, recoverable. The purpose of the East India Company was trade, resulting in much of the vocabulary recorded in the early years being to do with global commerce. Along with settler's idiolectal Englishes, administrative practices developed elsewhere in the East India Company's domain transferred non-English vocabulary to St Helena, resulting in an early World English lexicon.
Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond, 2018
This paper focuses on three developmental stages in the history of English which are apparent fro... more This paper focuses on three developmental stages in the history of English which are apparent from a multilingual perspective but which are currently omitted from textbooks: the late medieval mixed-language business system, the fifteenth century tip-point when the switchover to English was imminent, and the subsequent shift to Proto-Standard English. (Written several years ago; I would now refer to this as the supralocal stage.)
This chapter compares selected grammatical features found in Southern U.S. speech with those foun... more This chapter compares selected grammatical features found in Southern U.S. speech with those found in an archive of Early Modern prisoners’ narratives, the MS Minutes of the Court of Governors of the Royal Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, viewable on microfilm in the Guildhall Library, London. The purpose of the exercise is to provide data for the very earliest states of Southern U.S. English, as many of the vagrants and petty criminals who passed through the court were transported to the new colony in Virginia. The chapter uploaded here has more extracts from the court documents than the published version.
Legacies of Colonial English Studies in Transported Dialects, 2004
In present-day US Southern basilectal speech, the third person singular present tense is marked w... more In present-day US Southern basilectal speech, the third person singular present tense is marked with both -s and zero. African American Vernacular English speakers and Southern White Vernacular English speakers both use the zero morpheme to mark this slot, but in differing amounts, with some AAVE speakers presently using it more frequently than SWVE speakers. This paper will discuss some historical data which contains both -s and zero, namely, the speech of prisoners transported from London in order to populate the Virginia settlement of Jamestown, from 1607 onwards, including a Appendices of names of people transported, not in the published version.
Language Contact and Development around the North Sea, 2012
This paper considers evidence for diachronic change in medieval mixed-language business writing p... more This paper considers evidence for diachronic change in medieval mixed-language business writing produced in London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The relevant languages were Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin, and the mixed-language system is briefly described, consisting of function words in either Medieval Latin or Anglo-Norman (depending on which was chosen as the matrix), and an amount of lexical items in English. The changes discussed concentrate around the end of the fourteenth century, which is when English resurfaced as a written language
I hypothesise that in the history of English, do-loss resulted in zero, which was subsequently – ... more I hypothesise that in the history of English, do-loss resulted in zero, which was subsequently – but not immediately (or not immediately for all speakers) – filled by generalised –s.
This chapter is concerned with standardisation within the perfume industry. How and when did the ... more This chapter is concerned with standardisation within the perfume industry. How and when did the names of perfumes change from registering their contents or place of manufacture to the narrative, fantasy titles prevalent today? Did mid-Victorian discoveries in chemical synthesis result in naming changes? Data is taken from electronically-searchable London and Paris newspaper corpora. The shift from Lavender Water to Kiss Me, You Dare! is found to have been the work of a small group of closely-networked London perfumers who all had French (and German) connections. The Great Exhibition of 1851 (and subsequent exhibitions) were the main catalysts in naming shifts, and novelty became increasingly important as a marketing device. Perfume names which evoked love and romance developed rather late in the period, with allusion to flirtation the innovation of one specific perfume house. Discoveries in chemical manufacture had no linguistic effect at all on the names used for marketing.
Latin in Medieval Britain. Richard Ashdowne and Carolinne White, eds. Proceedings of the British Academy 206. , 2017
This chapter investigates the role of unintegrated English and French vocabulary in the mixed-lan... more This chapter investigates the role of unintegrated English and French vocabulary in the mixed-language Latin-matrix accounts of St Paul’s Cathedral, written in London between 1315 and 1405. ‘Integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’ means whether or not an English or French word had a Latin grammatical suffix, as sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. They are written in a Medieval Latin grammatical matrix, with Latin vocabulary influenced by Anglo-Norman French, and Middle English words positioned in the Noun Phrase. The research question asked here is not so much ‘why were accounts multilingual’, but rather ‘why was there any unintegrated element at all in such a highly multilingual text-type?’ Given that any word could have been integrated into the Latin matrix by adding a Latin suffix (or an abbreviation or suspension sign representing a Latin suffix), why was a proportion not so integrated?
In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834)... more In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834) in the London Magazine in 1822 about a desirable quality in books: that they should be 'strong-backed and neat-bound'. We identify meanings of modifier neat as evidenced by different communities of practice in early nineteenth-century newspapers, and in particular we present meanings of neat as used in certain Quaker writings known to have been read with approval by Lamb. By this method we assemble a series of nuanced meanings that the phrase neat-bound would have conveyed to contemporary readers-specifically, the readership of the London Magazine.
Merchants of Innovation: the Language of Traders, 2017
This chapter looks at some historical product-names, positing that regardless of origin, they wer... more This chapter looks at some historical product-names, positing that regardless of origin, they were words like any other and subject to the same kinds of phonological, morphological and semantic changes that affected the rest of the lexicon. I focus on four linguistic processes which show merchants' innovations: the development of bound morphemes, conversion from one part of speech to another, semantic extension, and sociolinguistic innovation. My data comes from commodity-names retrieved from the British Newspapers 1600-1950 database , and two main areas of multilingual borrowing emerge: the names of commodities brought to Britain from abroad via trade, and names arriving in Britain as the result of defense policy when the Empire was threatened. A multilingual trading perspective reverses the traditional relegation of commodity-names to the sidelines of linguistic history, foregrounding instead everyday domestic conversations. This everyday lexicon directly reflected Britain's global political and economic partnerships with speakers of other languages.
This chapter considers research published over the last two decades on the linguistics of medieva... more This chapter considers research published over the last two decades on the linguistics of medieval multilingualism as evidenced in all sorts of text types, including work published by our honorand and her collaborators. As historical multilingualism has now become such a burgeoning field, Pahta's contribution to the use of corpus-building and searching for evidence of historical multilingualism can be seen as pioneering. The research considered in this chapter reveals the ubiquity of multilingual practices, the discourse-organizing functions of code-switching, the functional properties of switches, the relevance of abbreviations and their frequency, and the major contribution of Romance borrowings to nuancing the English lexicon. Code-switching, in particular, played an important role in vernacularisation processes, accompanying the shift from French to English in the fifteenth century, and as an intermediate stage in the shift from Latin to English in civic records. Further, work has been carried out on multilingual practices involving Middle Dutch, Old Norse,
On the spatial diffusion of linguistic changes: new methods and theoretical perspectives, 2024
The topic of this paper is the origin and spread of a particular streetname that translates into ... more The topic of this paper is the origin and spread of a particular streetname that translates into English as ‘Seven Turn Street’. The Spanish variant of this name (Calle de las Siete (Re)Vueltas, see Data, below) has numerous tokens that cluster in the southern half of the Iberian peninsula (Spain, Gibraltar and Portugal), and may have their origins, we suggest, in varieties of Arabic in Morocco and Farsi in Iran. Our paper models the lexical diffusion of this streetname in two ways. We call the first of these the ‘communities of spatial practice’ model (Weston and Wright: in press). This blends Eckert and McGonnell Ginnet’s (1992a, 1992b) notion of the community of practice, a group of people who come together to participate in a common purpose, with Lefebvre’s (1974) concept of spatial practice as repeat journeys undertaken in physical space, and Labov’s (2007) notion of community-external “diffusion”. The term ‘communities of spatial practice’ thus describes journeys undertaken by specific groups of peoples for a communal purpose that have (socio)linguistic consequences; in the case we describe here, for transnational lexical spread. The second is the influencer model (Preston 2011, Wright 2023), where a lexical feature replaces another due to its perceived social value.
This article relates Gibraltar's historic half-oral, half-written bilingual, streetname system to... more This article relates Gibraltar's historic half-oral, half-written bilingual, streetname system to its eighteenth-century founding multilingual population. Using the geolinguistic concept of types of mobilities, we demonstrate the existence of communities of spatial practice, who serviced forts in Gibraltar, Menorca, Ceuta and Melilla, and who predominantly hailed from Britain, Genoa, Menorca, Morocco and Portugal. We use the term 'spatial practice' in the sense that these speakers made recurrent journeys around Western Mediterranean forts over generations, establishing a conduit of language interchange. The linguistic feature studied here is surnames, which entered Gibraltar streetnames over an extended period of time, constituting an archaeological trace of a subset of British Gibraltar's founding families. Gender is implicated in this account, as the Gibraltarian Spanish streetnames were transmitted by Spanish women who married Gibraltarians, creating Gibraltarian hispanophone domestic environments. These are now in the process of being lost as the older generation has ceased speaking Gibraltarian Spanish to children, a consequence of Franco's closure 1969-1985 of the land-border. This loss of cultural heritage is significant as the concept of a historical Gibraltarian identity is challenged whenever politicians question Gibraltar's sovereignty. Our analysis demonstrates that the continuity of a cohesive tricentenarian community is audible (if only partially visible) in its bilingual streetscape.
Multilingualism and multiculturalism are burning topics in today's societies. Peoples, languages ... more Multilingualism and multiculturalism are burning topics in today's societies. Peoples, languages and cultures coming into contact with each other can provoke confusion and concern. However, although the current situation in Europe, for example, tends to be viewed as alarmingly sudden, cultural and language contact and multilingualism are nothing new. Multilingualism in the past was not limited in place and time: we find evidence of it throughout medieval Europe, and in other periods and regions as well. Multilingual societies were composed of multilingual individuals who used more than one language in their daily lives, even within a single utterance. This is manifest in their writing. The surviving written evidence offers us access to code-switching and other multilingual practices of the past, the topic to which this volumeand a growing number of othersis dedicated. A key term in discussing multilinguals and their communicative practices is code-switching, which has been defined in a number of different ways. We quote Winford (2003: 14): "the alternate use of two languages (or dialects) within the same stretch of speech, often within the same sentence"and Poplack (1980: 583): "the alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence or constituent". Both define code-switching as involving two linguistic codes, although there can be more. Moreover, Winford mentions speech, as codeswitching was originally studied as a feature of spoken interaction, whilst Poplack highlights the linguistic, structural context within which the switch takes place. Since historical linguists only work with written records of language use, we have a slightly different emphasis: "the co-occurrence of two or more languages in a single communicative event" (Pahta and Nurmi 2006: 203). Broader definitions have also been made by othersconsider Heller (1988: 1): "the use of more than one language in the course of a single communicative episode". The similarities between these definitions, though, hide the variation and variability of
In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775–1834)... more In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775–1834) in the London Magazine in 1822 about a desirable quality in books: that they should be ‘strong-backed and neat-bound’. We identify meanings of modifier neat as evidenced by different communities of practice in early nineteenth-century newspapers, and in particular we present meanings of neat as used in certain Quaker writings known to have been read with approval by Lamb. By this method we assemble a series of nuanced meanings that the phrase neat-bound would have conveyed to contemporary readers – specifically, the readership of the London Magazine.
This chapter identifies the first 27 Londoners to live in a Sunnyside, from 1859-1872, after whic... more This chapter identifies the first 27 Londoners to live in a Sunnyside, from 1859-1872, after which the name increased rapidly. Their biographies are given, and the methods used are identification of social networks and communities of practice. Religious nonconformism turned out to be key, as the first four London Sunnysiders were a Swedenborgian, a Sandemanian, a Plymouth Brother, and an unidentified dissenter married to a Wesleyan Methodist. Early London Sunnysiders were wealthy, successful, socially-embedded businessmen, owning their own companies and employing others. The earliest London Sunnysiders had overlapping social networks via their professions (the paper and print industries), their livery companies, their charitable activities, their Nonconformist churches, and family ties. They had a raised likelihood of Scottishness, either by descent or by connection. Early London Sunnysides were large detached suburban houses, newly-built, near to railway-stations.
This article considers vocabulary occurring in the St Helena Consultations, which record court pr... more This article considers vocabulary occurring in the St Helena Consultations, which record court proceedings from St Helena, South Atlantic, from the late 1600s onwards, administrated by the British East India Company. As the island was settled ab initio by East India Company settlers, soldiers and their slaves, the input languages are, to some extent, recoverable. The purpose of the East India Company was trade, resulting in much of the vocabulary recorded in the early years being to do with global commerce. Along with settler's idiolectal Englishes, administrative practices developed elsewhere in the East India Company's domain transferred non-English vocabulary to St Helena, resulting in an early World English lexicon.
Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond, 2018
This paper focuses on three developmental stages in the history of English which are apparent fro... more This paper focuses on three developmental stages in the history of English which are apparent from a multilingual perspective but which are currently omitted from textbooks: the late medieval mixed-language business system, the fifteenth century tip-point when the switchover to English was imminent, and the subsequent shift to Proto-Standard English. (Written several years ago; I would now refer to this as the supralocal stage.)
This chapter compares selected grammatical features found in Southern U.S. speech with those foun... more This chapter compares selected grammatical features found in Southern U.S. speech with those found in an archive of Early Modern prisoners’ narratives, the MS Minutes of the Court of Governors of the Royal Hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, viewable on microfilm in the Guildhall Library, London. The purpose of the exercise is to provide data for the very earliest states of Southern U.S. English, as many of the vagrants and petty criminals who passed through the court were transported to the new colony in Virginia. The chapter uploaded here has more extracts from the court documents than the published version.
Legacies of Colonial English Studies in Transported Dialects, 2004
In present-day US Southern basilectal speech, the third person singular present tense is marked w... more In present-day US Southern basilectal speech, the third person singular present tense is marked with both -s and zero. African American Vernacular English speakers and Southern White Vernacular English speakers both use the zero morpheme to mark this slot, but in differing amounts, with some AAVE speakers presently using it more frequently than SWVE speakers. This paper will discuss some historical data which contains both -s and zero, namely, the speech of prisoners transported from London in order to populate the Virginia settlement of Jamestown, from 1607 onwards, including a Appendices of names of people transported, not in the published version.
Language Contact and Development around the North Sea, 2012
This paper considers evidence for diachronic change in medieval mixed-language business writing p... more This paper considers evidence for diachronic change in medieval mixed-language business writing produced in London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The relevant languages were Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin, and the mixed-language system is briefly described, consisting of function words in either Medieval Latin or Anglo-Norman (depending on which was chosen as the matrix), and an amount of lexical items in English. The changes discussed concentrate around the end of the fourteenth century, which is when English resurfaced as a written language
I hypothesise that in the history of English, do-loss resulted in zero, which was subsequently – ... more I hypothesise that in the history of English, do-loss resulted in zero, which was subsequently – but not immediately (or not immediately for all speakers) – filled by generalised –s.
This chapter is concerned with standardisation within the perfume industry. How and when did the ... more This chapter is concerned with standardisation within the perfume industry. How and when did the names of perfumes change from registering their contents or place of manufacture to the narrative, fantasy titles prevalent today? Did mid-Victorian discoveries in chemical synthesis result in naming changes? Data is taken from electronically-searchable London and Paris newspaper corpora. The shift from Lavender Water to Kiss Me, You Dare! is found to have been the work of a small group of closely-networked London perfumers who all had French (and German) connections. The Great Exhibition of 1851 (and subsequent exhibitions) were the main catalysts in naming shifts, and novelty became increasingly important as a marketing device. Perfume names which evoked love and romance developed rather late in the period, with allusion to flirtation the innovation of one specific perfume house. Discoveries in chemical manufacture had no linguistic effect at all on the names used for marketing.
Latin in Medieval Britain. Richard Ashdowne and Carolinne White, eds. Proceedings of the British Academy 206. , 2017
This chapter investigates the role of unintegrated English and French vocabulary in the mixed-lan... more This chapter investigates the role of unintegrated English and French vocabulary in the mixed-language Latin-matrix accounts of St Paul’s Cathedral, written in London between 1315 and 1405. ‘Integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’ means whether or not an English or French word had a Latin grammatical suffix, as sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. They are written in a Medieval Latin grammatical matrix, with Latin vocabulary influenced by Anglo-Norman French, and Middle English words positioned in the Noun Phrase. The research question asked here is not so much ‘why were accounts multilingual’, but rather ‘why was there any unintegrated element at all in such a highly multilingual text-type?’ Given that any word could have been integrated into the Latin matrix by adding a Latin suffix (or an abbreviation or suspension sign representing a Latin suffix), why was a proportion not so integrated?
In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834)... more In this paper we consider a much-quoted phrase published by the essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834) in the London Magazine in 1822 about a desirable quality in books: that they should be 'strong-backed and neat-bound'. We identify meanings of modifier neat as evidenced by different communities of practice in early nineteenth-century newspapers, and in particular we present meanings of neat as used in certain Quaker writings known to have been read with approval by Lamb. By this method we assemble a series of nuanced meanings that the phrase neat-bound would have conveyed to contemporary readers-specifically, the readership of the London Magazine.
Merchants of Innovation: the Language of Traders, 2017
This chapter looks at some historical product-names, positing that regardless of origin, they wer... more This chapter looks at some historical product-names, positing that regardless of origin, they were words like any other and subject to the same kinds of phonological, morphological and semantic changes that affected the rest of the lexicon. I focus on four linguistic processes which show merchants' innovations: the development of bound morphemes, conversion from one part of speech to another, semantic extension, and sociolinguistic innovation. My data comes from commodity-names retrieved from the British Newspapers 1600-1950 database , and two main areas of multilingual borrowing emerge: the names of commodities brought to Britain from abroad via trade, and names arriving in Britain as the result of defense policy when the Empire was threatened. A multilingual trading perspective reverses the traditional relegation of commodity-names to the sidelines of linguistic history, foregrounding instead everyday domestic conversations. This everyday lexicon directly reflected Britain's global political and economic partnerships with speakers of other languages.
The Multilingual Origins of Standard English, 2020
In a series of papers (e.g. Wright 2001, 2013) I suggest that the standardisation of English is ... more In a series of papers (e.g. Wright 2001, 2013) I suggest that the standardisation of English is the long-term result of changes in living standards in the fourteenth century. A reduced population due to famine and Black Death in the first half of the fourteenth century resulted in a weakened demand on resources in the second. Living standards improved, expanding the market for manufactured and foreign goods as opposed to raw materials, and enabling growth of extensive food-supply networks. Stenroos (Chapter 2) and Schipor (2018) show that the first writings in English were not the output of officialdom but initiated by less-wealthy, less-powerful classes. In this chapter I consider the language of fourteenth and fifteenth-century financial texts, which were written in mixed-language (a syntactically regular mix of Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman French and Middle English used for accounting) until the later fifteenth century and in supralocal Englishes thereafter. I take the beginnings of standardisation to equate to variant reduction - one instance of which is the reduction of languages from Latin, French, English and the business system of mixed-language, firstly to supralocal Englishes, and eventually to Standard English. As English-speakers became wealthier, identifiable by changing patterns of consumption and demand for more luxury goods, their voices began to be heard in English. Real-world social changes had an effect on language use: as living standards for the masses improved, so those masses began to protest and rebel, and to express what they had to say in writing. That voice was English rather than Anglo-Norman or Medieval Latin.
The Multilingual Origins of Standard English, 2020
Twenty years ago, handbooks discussing the origins of Standard English gave the impression that i... more Twenty years ago, handbooks discussing the origins of Standard English gave the impression that its beginnings were well understood. Readers were told that Chancery Standard was based on Central Midlands writing (or East Midlands, if they were reading an older textbook). Handbooks which went into more detail classified Chancery Standard's evolution as stemming from Type 4 of four prototypical Types into which London Middle English writing had been divided, which was writing from the King's Office of Chancery. The actual mechanism of how Standard English supposedly focussed and diffused both geographically out from the Midlands (whether East or Central) and through different text-types was not detailed. That all that had been originally explicitly stipulated under the label 'Chancery Standard' were spellings for twenty-one common words, the third-person plural pronoun forms they/their, and the-inde/-ende/-ande morpheme, was not specified. Syntax, morphology, sentence structure, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, word-choice, register, text-types, reduction of variation, reduction of abbreviations and suspensions, the abandonment of letter-graphs thorn and yogh, and the multilingual backdrop-the convention of keeping accounts in mixed-language Anglo-Norman/Medieval Latin/Middle English, the continuing custom of alternating passages of monolingual Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin, and the rise of Neo-Latin as a politico-scholarly medium of international communication - these were barely mentioned. This chapter traces the 'East Midland' explanation back to 1873, and shows how successive scholars have misunderstood and embroidered the theme.
The Multilingual Origins of Standard English, 2020
This collaboration by nineteen historical linguists shows why the current textbook explanations o... more This collaboration by nineteen historical linguists shows why the current textbook explanations of the origins of Standard English are incorrect (Part One, the Orthodox Version), and suggests an alternative explanation (Part Two, the Revised Version). The nutshell Revised Version is: Over the fourteenth century, living standards rose, enabling a new class of people to find their voice. Monolingual English, shaped by its Anglo-Norman antecedent, was the written record of the trading classes.
Sunnyside: a Sociolinguistic History of British House Names, 2020
This book traces developments in the history of British house-names from the tenth century, begin... more This book traces developments in the history of British house-names from the tenth century, beginning with medieval house-naming practices referencing the householder’s name, the householder’s occupation, and the appearance of the house. In the early fourteenth century heraldic names appeared on commercial premises: tavern names such as la Worm on the Hope, and shop names such as the Golden Tea Kettle & Speaking Trumpet. From the eighteenth century five main categories are identified: the transferred place-name, the nostalgically rural, the commemorative, names associated with the nobility, and the latest fashion or fad. From the nineteenth century new developments are ‘pick & mix’ names consisting of uncoupled elements from British place-names joined together in new combinations, and jocular house-names. Historically, the house-name Sunnyside predominates in Scotland, and is traced through Middle English, Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman French Scottish Gaelic, and the influence of Old Norse, recording a prehistoric Nordic land-division practice known as solskifte. It was spread southwards in the eighteenth century by Nonconformists, and became a Quaker shibboleth. Quakers took the name to North America where it remains in use as a church name. A specific historic Sunnyside in the Scottish Borders influenced author Washington Irving to name his famous New York Sunnyside, which boosted the name’s popularity. London Sunnysides of the 1870s were grand suburban residences owned by rich industrialist Nonconformists with Scottish family ties, confirming the trend.
Texts of the past were often not monolingual but were produced by and for people with bi- or mult... more Texts of the past were often not monolingual but were produced by and for people with bi- or multilingual repertoires; the communicative practices witnessed in them therefore reflect ongoing and earlier language contact situations. However, textbooks and earlier research tend to display a monolingual bias. This collected volume on multilingual practices in historical materials, including code-switching, highlights the importance of a multilingual approach. The authors explore multilingualism in hitherto neglected genres, periods and areas, introduce new methods of locating and analysing multiple languages in various sources, and review terminology, theories and tools. The studies also revisit some of the issues already introduced in previous research, such as Latin interacting with European vernaculars and the complex relationship between code-switching and lexical borrowing. Collectively, the contributors show that multilingual practices share many of the same features regardless of time and place, and that one way or the other, all historical texts are multilingual. This book, edited by Päivi Pahta, Janne Skaffari and Laura Wright, takes the next step in historical multilingualism studies by establishing the relevance of the multilingual approach to understanding language history.
There is an enormous amount of medieval mixed-language writing as used for business purposes in B... more There is an enormous amount of medieval mixed-language writing as used for business purposes in Britain between the Norman Conquest of 1066 and 1500, when monolingual writing in English became the norm, in archives around the country (and indeed on the continent, where the same system prevailed with different vernaculars, i.e. Medieval Latin/Middle Dutch, Medieval Latin/Middle Low German), but there is very little of it published in print format, and no searchable corpus. Despite mixed-language business writing being the main text-type produced by later medieval scribes, the history of Standard English has been written from the perspective of monolingual English texts – mainly literary ones. As well as gaining a better understanding of the mixed-language text-type, the larger question behind a corpus-based study of mixed-language writing is: did the Medieval Latin/Anglo-Norman/Middle English system of 450 years influence the subsequent emergence of Standard English? This poster presents the procedure we have developed to annotate this complex multilingual corpus.
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Papers by laura wright