This chapter describes a new application of the Dynamic Model of contact by Edgar W. Schneider to the medieval contact situation between Anglo-Norman and Middle English, which lasted from 1066 until ca. 1500. Specifically, the emergence of an insular variety of Old French called Anglo-French, as well as the transfer of linguistic features from French into Middle English, are discussed within this framework. By way of three pilot studies, the productivity of copied features as well as instances of ‘failed change’ are explained by the model’s dynamic and granular nature. The chapter demonstrates how the model can be applied to further contexts than its original scope, and may provide a framework to explain contact-induced developments in both settler and indigenous languages.
Unlike Standard English, Celtic English varieties generally use word order shifts or special syntactic devices to give emphasis to a specific clausal constituent. This study analyses the frequency of use of focusing devices in a number of Cornish English stories and compares the results with those obtained in other studies for other Celtic English varieties. Likewise, this chapter attempts to provide an explanation for why Cornish English shows a preference for fronting over clefting by referring to the structure of focal constructions in Cornish. Finally, I offer an account of the discourse-pragmatic functions of fronting and clefting in Cornish English and compares them with those found in Standard English to provide evidence in support of its Celtic substratum.
This chapter focuses on Old English causal connector forþæm / forþon / forþy “because, therefore” in the Alfredian translation of Boethius’s treatise De Consolatione Philosophiae. This polyfunctional causal connector plays a crucial role in the OE adaptation of the treatise, which is relatively distant from its Latin source. Clauses with forþæm / forþon / forþy correspond to various Latin structures (e.g., causal, conditional, concessive, temporal, relative, and purpose clauses, or ablative absolute) and support discourse coherence in the OE text. The study explores the mechanisms behind the emergence of structures with explicit causality in a translated text, from a translation studies perspective, and addresses the problem of correlation of CCC-relations in the two texts.
Recovering the Earliest English Language in Scotland: Evidence from place-names (REELS) is a research project funded for three years by The Leverhulme Trust at the University of Glasgow: http://berwickshire-placenames.glasgow.ac.uk/. The project team is using a place-name survey of the historical county of Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders, the heartland of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Scotland from the seventh to eleventh centuries, to investigate the Northumbrian dialect of Old English and its development into Older Scots. The place-name data are being analysed for evidence of the lexis, semantics, morphology and phonology of Old Northumbrian, a language variety poorly attested in other (written and epigraphic) sources. This chapter presents some discoveries from the ongoing project, alongside a discussion of the strengths and limitations of place-name evidence in this context.
This chapter discusses the demise of Old English adjectives of fortune which came to be replaced with some new items of Germanic origin, in particular Norse-derived happy and Low German or Flemish lucky. Interestingly, in this semantic field referring to abstract ideas, English did not take Romance borrowings, except for fortunate. The adjective happy was not a direct Scandinavian loanword, but an independent regular late-14th century native derivation from the originally Norse noun hap borrowed into English at least two centuries before. In Middle and Early Modern English some Old English items fell into disuse (e.g., ēadig) while others underwent major semantic shifts ((ge)sǣlig and blīðe). Using the data from several historical dictionaries of English and the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, I trace the mechanisms of replacement in the context of lexical layering, subjectification and contact-induced linguistic changes.
This chapter analyzes the diachronic development in 19th- and 20th-century American English of the synonyms fragrant, perfumed, and scented, which denote the concept sweet-smelling. Their distributional patterns are examined by means of conditional inference trees and collocational networks in order to (1) uncover distinctions in meaning between the synonyms and (2) determine the changes that the concept sweet-smelling has experienced and their effect on the relationship between the synonyms. Results indicate a significant split between entities denoting natural and artificial smells, associated with fragrant and perfumed, respectively. In turn, scented is common in both senses. Moreover, a significant increase of scented at the expense of fragrant and perfumed emerges over time, a fact which can be accounted for in terms of processes of attraction, differentiation, and ongoing replacement.
This chapter examines the path that orthographic etymologisation, as in doubt and verdict, followed mainly in the course of the sixteenth century. Few corpus-based studies have been undertaken on etymological spellings, but the recent availability of the large-sized EEBO Corpus must be of great help in making it clear when and how etymological spellings took off and caught on in the Early Modern English period. Besides giving a close description of the process of the orthographic shift, we discuss some methodological problems in the use of the corpus, stressing at the same time that it is an excellent tool, when carefully used, for studies in the history of English.
Throughout the history of the English language we find different sets of speech-act verbs which seem to reflect the most prominent speech acts. These inventories change across the periods of the English language, revealing remarkable lexical gaps. This chapter investigates some of these gaps and how they were filled in the course of history. The basic result of this chapter is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand it suggests that the study of speech-act gaps and paths of evolution of speech acts, together with a systematic study of speech-act loanwords is a highly promising but completely unexplored area in historical pragmatics. On the other hand, not all donor languages may have exerted a significant influence in the long run.
This chapter describes a new application of the Dynamic Model of contact by Edgar W. Schneider to the medieval contact situation between Anglo-Norman and Middle English, which lasted from 1066 until ca. 1500. Specifically, the emergence of an insular variety of Old French called Anglo-French, as well as the transfer of linguistic features from French into Middle English, are discussed within this framework. By way of three pilot studies, the productivity of copied features as well as instances of ‘failed change’ are explained by the model’s dynamic and granular nature. The chapter demonstrates how the model can be applied to further contexts than its original scope, and may provide a framework to explain contact-induced developments in both settler and indigenous languages.
Unlike Standard English, Celtic English varieties generally use word order shifts or special syntactic devices to give emphasis to a specific clausal constituent. This study analyses the frequency of use of focusing devices in a number of Cornish English stories and compares the results with those obtained in other studies for other Celtic English varieties. Likewise, this chapter attempts to provide an explanation for why Cornish English shows a preference for fronting over clefting by referring to the structure of focal constructions in Cornish. Finally, I offer an account of the discourse-pragmatic functions of fronting and clefting in Cornish English and compares them with those found in Standard English to provide evidence in support of its Celtic substratum.
This chapter focuses on Old English causal connector forþæm / forþon / forþy “because, therefore” in the Alfredian translation of Boethius’s treatise De Consolatione Philosophiae. This polyfunctional causal connector plays a crucial role in the OE adaptation of the treatise, which is relatively distant from its Latin source. Clauses with forþæm / forþon / forþy correspond to various Latin structures (e.g., causal, conditional, concessive, temporal, relative, and purpose clauses, or ablative absolute) and support discourse coherence in the OE text. The study explores the mechanisms behind the emergence of structures with explicit causality in a translated text, from a translation studies perspective, and addresses the problem of correlation of CCC-relations in the two texts.
Recovering the Earliest English Language in Scotland: Evidence from place-names (REELS) is a research project funded for three years by The Leverhulme Trust at the University of Glasgow: http://berwickshire-placenames.glasgow.ac.uk/. The project team is using a place-name survey of the historical county of Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders, the heartland of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Scotland from the seventh to eleventh centuries, to investigate the Northumbrian dialect of Old English and its development into Older Scots. The place-name data are being analysed for evidence of the lexis, semantics, morphology and phonology of Old Northumbrian, a language variety poorly attested in other (written and epigraphic) sources. This chapter presents some discoveries from the ongoing project, alongside a discussion of the strengths and limitations of place-name evidence in this context.
This chapter discusses the demise of Old English adjectives of fortune which came to be replaced with some new items of Germanic origin, in particular Norse-derived happy and Low German or Flemish lucky. Interestingly, in this semantic field referring to abstract ideas, English did not take Romance borrowings, except for fortunate. The adjective happy was not a direct Scandinavian loanword, but an independent regular late-14th century native derivation from the originally Norse noun hap borrowed into English at least two centuries before. In Middle and Early Modern English some Old English items fell into disuse (e.g., ēadig) while others underwent major semantic shifts ((ge)sǣlig and blīðe). Using the data from several historical dictionaries of English and the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, I trace the mechanisms of replacement in the context of lexical layering, subjectification and contact-induced linguistic changes.
This chapter analyzes the diachronic development in 19th- and 20th-century American English of the synonyms fragrant, perfumed, and scented, which denote the concept sweet-smelling. Their distributional patterns are examined by means of conditional inference trees and collocational networks in order to (1) uncover distinctions in meaning between the synonyms and (2) determine the changes that the concept sweet-smelling has experienced and their effect on the relationship between the synonyms. Results indicate a significant split between entities denoting natural and artificial smells, associated with fragrant and perfumed, respectively. In turn, scented is common in both senses. Moreover, a significant increase of scented at the expense of fragrant and perfumed emerges over time, a fact which can be accounted for in terms of processes of attraction, differentiation, and ongoing replacement.
This chapter examines the path that orthographic etymologisation, as in doubt and verdict, followed mainly in the course of the sixteenth century. Few corpus-based studies have been undertaken on etymological spellings, but the recent availability of the large-sized EEBO Corpus must be of great help in making it clear when and how etymological spellings took off and caught on in the Early Modern English period. Besides giving a close description of the process of the orthographic shift, we discuss some methodological problems in the use of the corpus, stressing at the same time that it is an excellent tool, when carefully used, for studies in the history of English.
Throughout the history of the English language we find different sets of speech-act verbs which seem to reflect the most prominent speech acts. These inventories change across the periods of the English language, revealing remarkable lexical gaps. This chapter investigates some of these gaps and how they were filled in the course of history. The basic result of this chapter is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand it suggests that the study of speech-act gaps and paths of evolution of speech acts, together with a systematic study of speech-act loanwords is a highly promising but completely unexplored area in historical pragmatics. On the other hand, not all donor languages may have exerted a significant influence in the long run.