Chapter published in:
Records of Real People: Linguistic variation in Middle English local documents
Edited by Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 11] 2020
► pp. 95–128

Chapter 5
Regional variation and supralocalization in late medieval English

Comparing administrative and literary texts

| University of Stavanger
Article outline
  • 5.1Introduction
  • 5.2The idea of a fifteenth-century standard
  • 5.3Variability and text production: Documentary and literary texts
  • 5.4The material and methodology
  • 5.5Comparison of the corpora: Findings
    • 5.5.1Purely orthographic features (W-features)
      • The variable (th) in they, them and other
      • The variable (sh) in shall
      • The variable (gh) in right
      • Final <i> and <y> in any, holy and they
      • Double and single <l> in shall
      • Summary
    • 5.5.2Features relating to the spoken mode
      • Phonology: land, any, shall, holy, man and other
      • Morphology: they, them, are and the past participle prefix y-
      • Vocabulary:: Clepe and call
  • 5.6Discussion: Literary vs documentary texts
  • 5.7Conclusions
Published online: 10 December 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.11.05ste