Non-'Technical' Anglo-Norman Lexicon in Early Middle English Texts

English Language and Linguistics, 2018

2021

Changing Conditions after 1200 The linguistic situation described in the previous chapter ("Old English 450-1150") did not continue because the conditions under which it arose changed. Shortly after 1200 England lost an important part of its possessions in Europe. The English nobility gradually relinquished their estates in the continent. Rivalry developed between England and France, accompanied by an anti-foreign movement in England and reaching its culmination in the Hundred Years' War. Social and economic changes affecting the English-speaking part of the population were taking place. In the fourteenth century English won its way back into use all over England, and in the fifteenth century French completely disappeared from the British Isles. We are going to examine the changing conditions and the steps by which this situation came about, in subsections A-D below.

2016

Neophilologus, 1995

In the last few decades several large-scale data-oriented projects in the field of English historical linguistics have been undertaken. One is the Dictionary of Old English project in Toronto with its spinoffs, such as computerised texts and concordances. Another one is the Helsinki Corpus of Diachronic Texts, partly based on the Toronto material. The Old and Middle English parts of the Helsinki Corpus are at present undergoing syntactic tagging (in the case of the Old English material, with the help of morphological coding). The Helsinki corpus also includes Early Modem English texts, but a more extensive corpus of Early (and Late) Modern English is now being prepared by Edward Finnegan and Douglas Biber. Furthermore, electronic texts for complete works of more and more individual writers are becoming available.

John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, 1990

The 16th century is a time of feverish work on the vernacular languages of Western Europe. In that century or in the last few years of the 15th century, the first substantial grammars and the first dictionaries of most European languages appear. 1 The focus of much of our scholarly attention-my own included-had been on the changes in the Greco-Roman grammatical tradition occasioned by these first efforts at describing the vernaculars, or on the shift from medieval grammatical practices. 2 Recently, I have become increasingly aware that our focus was not necessarily the focus of the grammarians of the period. For many of them, the central concern of linguistic discussion was the changeability of language, the deviance of Latin from its classical form-brought to their attention by first by such scholars as Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) and codified in the educational program by Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1536), and the deviance of the vernaculars from their languages of origin. The linguists of the day focus on several types of variation-historical, geographic and sociolinguistic-depending on their own religious and political agenda. In France the plaints over linguistic variation far antedate Geoffroy Tory's (1480-1533) famous appeal of 1529 (see below). Already in the 14th century the anonymous author of the Metz Psalter laments the inconstancy of the Romance idiom: * The author wishes to thank Herbert J. Izzo, University of Calgary, for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Conference paper version. Published version is greatly expanded (The Francophone World and Its Neighbours : Medieval Multilingualism in England, France, and Italy (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 20). ed. Keith Busby and Chris Kleinhenz. Brepols, 2010, pp. 107–126).

Bi- and Multilingualism from Various Perspectives of Applied Linguistics, 2021

This volume is peer-reviewed.

English Language and Linguistics, 2018

Middle English religious vocabulary is radically different from that of the previous period: while Old English is characterised more by lexical pattern replication of Latin (and Greek) etyma, Middle English is the period of matter replication. Due to the intake of new French religious words, English lexemes and also whole word families undergo semantic transformation and lexical replacement. Other terms, however, survive from the Old English period into the present day, resisting contact-induced pressure. This study shows that the survival of old lexemes into Middle English is largely determined by the extent of their diffusion and frequency of occurrence before the Norman Conquest. It is postulated that two kinds of inherited Old English lexis should be distinguished in the Middle English period: (i) established terms that had belonged to the West Saxon standard and were still preserved in general use by the lower regular clergy, parish priests and the faithful at large, and (ii) terms of limited currency that had failed to spread outside local communities with strong ties and survived for a short time after the Conquest in smaller religious foundations. The innovation and spread of new francophone religious lexis was conditioned by the new preaching practices that began to develop in Europe in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council and the emergence of mendicant orders. Preachers of the new type were the multilingual innovators who generated new lexis in English and at the same time were instrumental in its diffusion, serving as weak ties between the various levels of the medieval society. Urban middle classes, on the other hand, were the most likely English-speaking early adopters of new norms.

On the languages of medieval England and the implications of multilingualism. Published in Tim Machan) Chapter 7 - The linguistic repertoire of medieval England, 1100–1500 Edited by Tim William Machan, University of Notre Dame, Indiana Book: Imagining Medieval English (2016)

John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, 2004

Silly Linguistics, 2022

For most speakers of French, the Conquérant’s name is Guillaume whereas for English speakers, the Conqueror’s name is William. By looking at the linguistic history of Guillaume/William’s life and endeavours, we attempt to shed light on part of that story.

Volum omagial – In memoriam Elena Petre, 2020

It is widely acknowledged that a considerable part of our everyday vocabulary derives from Old English, most of these words having different origins. Although many of them completely changed their spelling and some others developed or even modified their meaning, it is still obvious that they are the precursors of present-day English. Linguists were also able to establish, apart from the etymological stratification, a stylistic stratification of the Old English vocabulary. The purpose of this research is to illustrate these linguistic processes as inherent parts of today English. In order to achieve this goal, we will refer to the etymological layers of native Old English and the categories of Old English words from a stylistic point of view. Afterwards, the study of the multiple influences (Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian) on the Old English vocabulary will reveal the type of words that were borrowed, the reasons behind these semantic loans, the forms of alteration, and their impact as linguistic features of English nowadays.

N{uch of the recent work on French grammatical theory and practice in the seventeenth centnry has been inftrsed, rvhether explicitly or implicitly, with the question of which constitute the 'best' works on language of the period: grammars for the French, grammars published abroad, general grammars, observations, treatises on specialized topics, dictionaries or what'?r In this paper I want to consicler the various types of rnetalinguistic texts published in the seventeenth century2 and evaluate their relative merits as soLlrces of information about variation and change in the pronunciation o{ seventeenth-century French. Of course, if I were to take another, completely clilferent area such as syntactic theory or the treatment of neologisms, I u,onld undoulrteclly arrive at quitc diff'erent conclusions. And indeed, this precisely is my point. For the assessment of particular texts to be vrlicl, the purpose for which the work is intendcd ancl its projcctecl audience must be taken into account.

In Laporte, Eric, Christian Leclère, Mireille Piot et Max Silberztein (eds.) Syntaxe, Lexique et Lexique-Grammaire: Hommage à Maurice Gross, Lingvisticae Investigationes Supplementa 24, John Benjamin, Amsterdam/Philadelphia. 527-545 [ISBN: 9789027231345], 2004

American Speech, 2011