Joinings: Compound Words in Old English Literature

Joseph Biddulph, 2022

Obscurities, rarities, apparently inexact applications of Old English words in a poetic context can be explained by aesthetic rather than purely semantic considerations. Words in 'Andreas' and the works of Cynewulf provide the starting point.

Languages, 2024

See also: https://www.academia.edu/125335974/ This paper explores a constructionist and corpus-based approach to Old English formulaic language through an analysis of the “maþelode system” of speech introductions. The analysis is performed on a section of the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry, comprising the poems Beowulf, Battle of Brunanburh, and Exodus. The results show that most instances of the maþelode system belong to a well-attested construction continuum, structured by the widespread Old English (and ultimately Germanic) poetic devices of variation and kenning. This continuum ranges from more fixed repetitions that exclusively involve the verb maþelian to more schematic patterns that are also attested by other speech verbs, by verbs of giving, as well as by a number of further verbs of various semantic types. The particularly high frequency of this pattern with speech verbs and verbs of giving matches the prominent role, highlighted by previous studies, of both word-exchange and gift-exchange within Old English heroic ideology, and suggests that these formulaic patterns served the purpose to characterize the protagonists of speech or giving events as heroic and/or lordly figures. Keywords: Old English poetry; formulas; oral-formulaic language; Construction Grammar; corpus linguistics; annotated corpora

Renaissance Studies, 2007

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.

SELIM. Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 8 (1998): 239-258., 1998

Compound nouns, which by definition imply a condensation of in - formation, seem to be particularly important at the stage of the Old English period, because the predominant synthetic tendencies of the language and the comparative scarcity of prepositions may have fostered such formations. Together with this primarily syn- tactic phenomenon, an additional but not less important factor in the development of compounds can also be found. They are cog- nitively or functionally grounded, and their use has to do as well with the evolution of the English language, which progressively tends to reflect more complex ideas and thoughts. All this can be analysed under functional approaches, whose overall framework is the study of language as a means of communication, as well as under the perspectives opened by relevance theory, based upon the study of the existing relationships between communicative efforts and effects. In this paper, the issue of compound nouns during the Old English period will be developed on the basis of two of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints.

2011

In 1705, the last fascicle of the Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus of George Hickes was published in Oxford. This monumental volume represented a major step forward in Anglo-Saxon studies. This study translates the most monumental chapter of the Thesaurus, Chapter 23. Although this chapter-On the Poetic Art of the Anglo-Saxons,‖ represents the first sustained attempt to apply a critical and theoretical apparatus to Anglo-Saxon poetry, it is also concerned with attempts to sort out a-purer‖ language from the various dialects represented in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Hickes directly addresses two major Anglo-Saxon forms in Chapter 23,-pure Saxon,‖ and-Dano-Saxonic,‖ the lesser of the two languages, because of its-foreignness,‖ a key term for Hickes, who sought to separate out what he believed to be the true Anglo-Saxon from dialectal languages which he believed to have introduced-abhorrent‖ elements into Anglo-Saxon poetry. Ultimately, this desire of Hickes to divine the-purer‖ language with respect to the Anglo-Saxon reflects a more general eighteenth century anxiety vi about the nationalistic uses of language and the attempt to control and modify the language, beginning with Sir William Temple's essay On Ancient and Modern Learning, as well as the response to it by William Wotton in his Reflections Upon Ancient and Modern Learning, culminating in Jonathan Swift's-A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue,‖ and Elizabeth Elstob's An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities. Especially important was the linking of language to national identity and issues of nation building, as with the establishment of the Académie Française in 1635. This anxiety manifests itself in Swift as an attempt to purge the English language of-barbaric‖ elements, namely Germanic words and grammatical forms, placing him and his supporters in direct opposition to the antiquarian movement headed by George Hickes and the Oxford Saxonists. vii Table of Contents Chapter One: George Hickes and His Thesaurus .

2011

The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature

Neque enim possunt carmina, quamuis optime conposita, ex alia in aliam linguam at uerbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri. HE, iv. 24 For it is not possible to translate verse, however well composed, literally from one language to another without some loss of beauty and dignity. Along with the Alfredian aphorism 'hwilum word be worde, hwilum andgit of andgiete' [sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense] and AElfric's comments in the preface to his translation of Genesis, the passage from Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum quoted above is one of the most well-known Anglo-Saxon meditations on the problems and possibilities of translation. 1 What is remarkable about Bede's phrase is not the concern for the integrity of words that it expresses, but the respect it bestows on the vernacular language. Although he advocated translating certain Christian works such as the Pater Noster from Latin into Old English, 2 and according to Cuthbert was working on his own translation of the Gospel of St John at his deathbed, 3 in the Historia ecclesiastica, even though he took the trouble to list them, Bede gave the vernacular languages of early medieval Britain and Ireland short shrift. 4 Here, however, he indicates that the language we now know as Old English might be capable of great artistry and power. Bede also makes a wider point, which isn't actually about translation at all but about how languages function. The loss of

2009

This dissertation examines how borrowed derivational morphemes such as -age, -ity, -cion, and -ment became productive in the English language, particularly in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. It endeavors to expand our current understanding of morphological productivity as a historical phenomenon--to account for not only aggregate quantitative measures of the products of morphological processes, but also some of the linguistic mechanisms that made those processes more productive for language users. Judgments about the productivity of different suffixes in the late ME period cannot be made on counts of frequency alone, since the vast majority of uses were not neologisms or newly coined hybrid forms but rather borrowings from Latin and French. It is not immediately clear to the historical linguist if Middle English speakers perceived a derivative such as enformacion as an undecomposable word or as a morphologically complex word. By examining usage patterns of these derivatives in guild records, the Wycliffite Bible, end-rhymed poetry, medical texts, and personal correspondence, this project argues that several mechanisms helped contribute to the increased transparency and perceived productivity of these affixes. These mechanisms include the following: the use of rhetorical sequences of derivatives with the same base or derivatives ending in the same suffix; the frequent use of derivatives as end rhymes in poetry; the lexical variety of derivatives ending in the same suffix; and the more frequent use of certain bases compared to their derivatives. All of these textual and linguistic features increased readers' and listeners' ability to analyze borrowed derivatives as suffixed words. Ultimately, the dissertation finds that several borrowed affixes were seen as potentially productive units of language in the late ME period, though some were seen as more productive than others in different discourses and contexts. It also emphasizes the value of register studies for understanding the specific motivations for the use of borrowed derivatives in different discourses, as well as the morphological consequences of salient usage patterns within different registers.

This study argues that Anglo-Saxon scribes copied Old English verse to different standards of accuracy depending on the nature of the context in which they were working. Taking as its sample all metrically regular Old English poems known to have survived in more than one twelfth-century or earlier witness, it divides this corpus into three main contextual groups, each of which exhibits a characteristic pattern of substantive textual variation. Chapter Two examines “Glossing, Translating, and Occasional” poems. These texts are generally short, are found in primarily non-poetic contexts, and appear to have been transmitted independently of their surrounding context. They also all show a high level of substantive textual accuracy. At their most accurate, the scribes responsible for copying the surviving witnesses to these poems show themselves to have been able to reproduce their common texts with little or no variation in vocabulary, word order, or syntax – and preserve this accuracy even in the face of a corrupt common exemplar or thoroughgoing dialectal translation. The substantive variants the witnesses to these texts do show tend either to be obvious mistakes or to have a relatively insignificant effect on sense, syntax, and metre. Apparently significant inflectional differences more often than not can be attributed to graphic error, orthographic difference, or phonological change. Verbal substitutions are rare and almost invariably involve words which look alike and have similar meanings. Examples of the addition or omission of words and elements either destroy the sense of the passage in which they occur, or involve unstressed and syntactically unimportant sentence particles. Chapter Three looks at the poems preserved in “Fixed Contexts” – as constituents of larger vernacular prose framing texts such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Old English translation of the Pastoral Care, and the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. With the exception of a single, late witness to the Old English Historia, these poems are found in exactly the same contextual position in each surviving witness. The Battle of Brunanburh is always found in manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the Metrical Preface to the Old English Pastoral Care survives only in manuscripts of Alfred’s translation. In contrast to the Glossing, Translating, and Occasional poems discussed in Chapter Two, the Fixed Context poems differ greatly in the amount and types of textual variation they exhibit. At their most conservative, the scribes of the surviving witnesses to these texts produce copies as accurate as the least variable Glossing, Translating, and Occasional poems; the scribes of other witnesses, however, show themselves to be far more willing to introduce substantive changes of vocabulary and inflection. In either case the amount and nature of the variation introduced is directly comparable to the substantive textual variation found in the surrounding prose. Scribes who show themselves to have been innovative copyists of the prose texts in which these poems are found, also invariably produce innovative copies of the poems themselves; scribes who produce conservative copies of the poetic texts, on the other hand, are responsible for the most conservative texts of the surrounding frame. The third standard of accuracy is exhibited by the “Anthologised and Excerpted” poems discussed in Chapter Four. These poems differ from the Glossing, Translating, and Occasional poems of Chapter Two and the Fixed Context poems of Chapter Three in both the nature of the contexts in which they are found and the amount and significance of the substantive variation they exhibit. Unlike the texts discussed in the preceding chapters, the Anthologised and Excerpted poems show evidence of the intelligent involvement of the persons first responsible for collecting or excerpting them in their surviving witnesses. Like the greater part of the corpus of Old English poetry as a whole – but unlike the poems discussed in Chapters Two and Three – these texts all survive with at least one witness in a compilation or anthology. In four out of the six cases, their common text shows signs of having been excerpted from, inserted into, or joined with other prose or verse texts in one or another witness. Where the variation exhibited by the poems discussed in Chapters Two and Three was to be explained only on the grounds of the personal interests, abilities, or difficulties of the scribes responsible for the tradition leading up to each of the surviving witnesses, that exhibited by the witnesses to the Anthologised and Excerpted poems frequently can be explained on contextual grounds – and often involves the introduction of metrically, lexically or syntactically coordinated variants at different places in the common text. This argument has some important implications for our understanding of the transmission of Old English poetry. In the first place, it suggests that there was no single style of Old English poetic transmission. Since Sisam first asked “Was the poetry accurately transmitted?” scholars examining variation in the transmission of Old English verse texts have tended to assume they were investigating a single phenomenon – that is to say, have assumed that, a few late, early, or otherwise exceptional examples aside, all Old English poems showed pretty much the same kinds of textual variation, whether this variation be the result of “error,” or the application of “oral” or “formulaic” ways of thinking. The evidence presented here, however, suggests that the scribes themselves worked far less deterministically. Rather than copying “the poetry” to any single standard of substantive accuracy, the scribes seem instead to have adjusted their standards to suit the demands of the context in which the specific poem they were copying was to appear. When the wording of their text was important – as it was when the poem was being copied as a gloss or translation – the scribes reproduced their exemplars more or less word-for-word. When the relationship between their text and its surrounding context was paramount – as it appears to have been in the case of the Anthologised and Excerpted poems – the evidence of the surviving witnesses suggests that the persons responsible for transmitting these texts were more willing to adjust sense, syntax, and metre. When other factors