Celtic influence in English? Yes and No

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
THEO VENNEMANN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Standard English ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Short Sentence ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
English Usage ◽  
Modern Standard

Compared to German Ja and Nein, English Yes and No are used less frequently, and often in combination with short sentences consisting of a pronoun and an auxiliary or modal verb: Yes I will; No I won't. When such a short sentence is used, Yes and No may be omitted: I will; I won't; I do; I don't; He can; They certainly won't. This difference in usage is established (1) by comparing the marriage vow in German and English, where the officiant's question is answered by Ja in German but by I will or I do in English; (2) by citing material from a practical grammar for German students of English; and (3) by studying the way Shakespeare has his figures answer decision questions, or Yes/No-questions, in comparison with Schlegel's way of rendering their answers in his German translation. Next it is shown that Shakespeare's way, which is essentially the same as modern usage, differs radically from earlier English usage up to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1388–1400) and Troilus and Cresseide (1382–6) and the anonymous York Plays (fourteenth century) and Towneley Plays (late fourteenth century), which all reflect the Germanic usage, essentially the same as in German. It is concluded that the modern English usage arose during the two centuries between Chaucer and Shakespeare, as a Late Middle English and Early Modern English innovation. As for the reason why English developed this un-Germanic way of answering decision questions, reference is made to Insular Celtic: decision questions are answered with short sentences in both Irish and Welsh, and this usage is old in both languages. The viability of this contact explanation is underlined by Irish English, where Yes and No are used even less frequently than in Modern Standard English, and short sentences are the normal way of answering decision questions.

Simplification and redistribution

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Trousdale
Keyword(s):  
External Factors ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
English Usage ◽  
The One ◽  
Newcastle Upon Tyne

This article considers patterns of modal verb usage, based on data collected from twenty informants from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north-east of England, which show differences from material taken from the Survey of English Usage, used as data in Coates (1983, 1995). The paper therefore attempts to describe and explain differences in the use of the modals between authoritative accounts of Standard English on the one hand and the informal spoken English of a sample of speakers from Tyneside on the other. I argue that the reason for these differences may be in part due to increased markedness (systemic, sociolinguistic and stylistic) of certain forms, which induces simplification (the (re)creation of regularity within the system, through focussing) and redistribution (where modalities previously expressed by certain modal verbs come to be expressed by other modals within the system). Throughout, I try to suggest an approach to variation which considers language-internal and language-external factors.

Norse Loans in Middle English and their Influence on Late Medieval London English

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelika Lutz
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Basic Vocabulary ◽  
Modern Standard

AbstractMost of the Norse legal and administrative terms attested in Old English were replaced by equivalents from the French superstrate soon after the Norman Conquest, whereas a remarkable number of more basic terms are known to have become part of the very basic vocabulary of modern Standard English. This paper focuses on Norse lexical loans that survived during and beyond the period of French rule and became part of this basic vocabulary. It explores (1) the regional and textual conditions for the survival of such loans and (2) their expansion into late medieval London English and into the emerging standard language. Based on selective textual evidence it is argued that they were not quite as basic originally, that they typically survived and developed in regional centres far away from the French-dominated court, and eventually infiltrated the area in and around late medieval London owing to its growing attraction as an economic and intellectual centre. Both the survival of Norse loans and their later usage expansion are shown to be in harmony with the principles of comparative contact linguistics.

On the alleged existence of a vowel /y:/ in early Modern English

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
FAUSTO CERCIGNANI
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old French ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Relevant Evidence ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Anglo Norman

Many scholars have held that in late Middle English, in the London dialects from which Standard English grew there existed a vowel /y:/ developed from various native sources and/or used as a substitute for Old French or Anglo-Norman /y/. The aim of this article is to accurately review the relevant evidence adduced by E. J. Dobson and other scholars in favour of a variation between early Modern English /y:/ and /iu/ with a view to offering conclusions based on a direct presentation of the original sources. It will be shown that even the early writers on orthography and pronunciation who correctly describe a sound [y] (as they knew it from French, Scottish and Northern English, as well as from other languages) cannot be adduced as evidence for the existence of a vowel /y:/ in early Modern English.

scholarly journals Fromsickertosure: the contact-induced lexical layering within the Medieval English adjectives of certainty

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-300
Author(s):  
RAFAŁ MOLENCKI
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Relative Paucity ◽  
Anglo Norman

The major Old English adjective of certainty was(ge)wiss, which in early Middle English came to be replaced withsickerderived from very weakly attested Old Englishsicor, a word of ultimate Romance origin (from Latinsēcūrus). The relative paucity of occurrences of both adjectives in theDictionary of Old Englishcorpus is attributed to their use in mostly spoken language. The rapid increase in the usage ofsickerin the thirteenth century is a mystery with possible, yet difficult to prove, Norse and/or Anglo-Norman influence. The fourteenth century marks the appearance ofsureandcertainborrowed from Anglo-Norman first by bilingual speakers and writers, and the quick diffusion of the new lexemes to all dialects and genres. This article looks at the adoption of the different senses of these polysemous adjectives into Middle English in the context of subjectification, which appears to affect not only semantic developments within one language but also the process of borrowing. Whensureandcertainwere used epistemically, they tended to occur in the predicative position, usually following the copula. It took several centuries of lexical layering (coexistence of synonyms) beforesickerwas lost from Standard English in the sixteenth century.

scholarly journals Incunable from the Book collection of Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechayev) (Monastery of St Joseph of Volokolamsk). The first attempt of attribution

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Irina N. Buzykina ◽  
Yulia N. Buzykina ◽  
Marina Perst ◽  
Alexandra D. Golovkova ◽  
Zoya Yu. Metlitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Digital Images ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Modern Standard

The following notice is the first draft description of the incunable, the famous Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, written by German nobleman, cathedral dean and politician in the Electorate of Mainz, Bernhard von Breidenbach, which had been discovered in the April 2020 in the library of St Joseph of Volokolamsk Monastery. This example is a German translation into early modern standard German dialect. By the comparison of the discovered book with the digital images of the editions of 1486 (Peter Schöffer of Mainz) and circa 1500 (Peter Drach of Speyer) collected in the European libraries it was identified as one of the copies printed circa 1500. Digitized copies are available in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek und Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel.

Early Accusations of Well Poisoning against Jews: Medieval Reality or Historiographical Fiction?

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 517-539
Author(s):  
Tzafrir Barzilay
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Reliable Evidence

This article reexamines the idea prevalent in existing historiography that Jews were accused of well poisoning before 1321. It argues that the historians who studied the origins of such accusations were misled by sources written in the early modern period to think that Jews were charged with well poisoning as early as the eleventh century. However, a careful analysis of the sources reveals that there is little reliable evidence that such cases happened before the fourteenth century, much less on a large scale. Thus, the conclusions of the article call for a new chronology of well-poisoning charges made against Jews, starting closer to the fourteenth century.

Chaucer the Pilgrim

PMLA ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 69 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 928-936
Author(s):  
E. Talbot Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Geoffrey Chaucer ◽  
Canterbury Tales ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Close Resemblance

Verisimilitude in a work of fiction is not without its attendant dangers, the chief of which is that the responses it stimulates in the reader may be those appropriate not so much to an imaginative production as to an historical one or to a piece of reporting. History and reporting are, of course, honorable in themselves, but if we react to a poet as though he were an historian or a reporter, we do him somewhat less than justice. I am under the impression that many readers, too much influenced by Chaucer's brilliant verisimilitude, tend to regard his famous pilgrimage to Canterbury as significant not because it is a great fiction, but because it seems to be a remarkable record of a fourteenth-century pilgrimage. A remarkable record it may be, but if we treat it too narrowly as such there are going to be certain casualties among the elements that make up the fiction. Perhaps first among these elements is the fictional reporter, Chaucer the pilgrim, and the role he plays in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and in the links between them. I think it time that he was rescued from the comparatively dull record of history and put back into his poem. He is not really Chaucer the poet—nor, for that matter, is either the poet, or the poem's protagonist, that Geoffrey Chaucer frequently mentioned in contemporary historical records as a distinguished civil servant, but never as a poet. The fact that these are three separate entities does not, naturally, exclude the probability—or rather the certainty—that they bore a close resemblance to one another, and that, indeed, they frequently got together in the same body. But that does not excuse us from keeping them distinct from one another, difficult as their close resemblance makes our task.

Hitherto Unprinted Manuscripts of the Middle English Ipotis

PMLA ◽  
1916 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-160
Author(s):  
Josephine D. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship of the manuscripts of the Middle-English poem Ipotis has been studied in detail by Dr. Hugo Gruber on the basis of the nine mss. known to him. In addition to these there are five others, four of which are printed for the first time below. One of these, unfortunately a fragment, is of the greatest importance, since it carries back the date of the poem at least fifty years. On the basis of the earliest manuscript known to him—ms. Vernon, written about 1385—Gruber assigned the Ipotis to the second half of the fourteenth century. But in the light of the new evidence, the composition of the poem is pushed back to the very beginning of the century.

Muslim Roma in the Balkans

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Crowe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.

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