Historical Dialectology and the Angus McIntosh Legacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Rhona Alcorn ◽  
Joanna Kopaczyk ◽  
Bettelou Los ◽  
Benjamin Molineaux
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Electronic Version ◽  
Digital Repositories ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
The University

This chapter provides an overview of the historical text corpora and digital repositories hosted by the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics and created by its predecessor, the Institute of Historical Dialectology: A Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English (LALME), and its remodelled electronic version eLALME; A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME), A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots (LAOS) and The Corpus of Narrative Etymologies from Proto-Old English to Early Middle English (CoNE). The chapter also highlights related resources created at the University of Stavanger, most prominently the Middle English Scribal Texts programme (MEST), and its offshoot, The Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C), which provides tagged and annotated diplomatic transcriptions of 410 LALME texts; and the Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD) which comprises transcriptions of over 2000 fifteenth-century documents.

Historical Dialectology in the Digital Age

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Electronic Version ◽  
Digital Text ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
New Methods ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Different Levels

Drawing on the resources created by the Institute of Historical Dialectology at the University of Edinburgh (now the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics), such as eLALME (the electronic version A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English), LAEME (A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English) and LAOS (A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots), this volume illustrates how traditional methods of historical dialectology can benefit from new methods of corpus data-collection to test out theoretical and empirical claims. In showcasing the results that these digital text resources can yield, the book highlights novel methods for presenting, mapping and analysing the quantitative data of historical dialects, and sets the research agenda for future work in this field. Bringing together a range of distinguished researchers, the book sets out the key corpus-building strategies for working with regional manuscript data at different levels of linguistic analysis including syntax, morphology, phonetics and phonology. The chapters also show the ways in which the geographical spread of phonological, morphological and lexical features of a language can be used to improve our assessment of the geographical provenance of historical texts.

Old and Middle English Spellings for OE hw-, with Special Reference to the ‘qu-’ Type: In Celebration of LAEME, (e)LALME, LAOS and CoNE: In Memoriam Angus McIntosh

2019 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Margaret Laing ◽  
Roger Lass
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Geographical Variation ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Electronic Version ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Spelling Variation ◽  
In Memoriam

This chapter demonstrates how the four main electronic resources created in the same tradition as A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediæval English (LALME), i.e. LAEME, LALME itself (and its electronic version eLALME), A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots (LAOS) and A Corpus of Narrative Etymologies from Proto-Old English to Early Middle English and accompanying Corpus of Changes (CoNE) can be used in tandem to support an investigation into the initial wh-cluster in words such as when, where, what, who, which. No fewer than 57 different spellings are found for this cluster, from the earliest attested Old English to ca 1500. The authors show how LAEME, eLALME, and LAOS provide the data that allow this spelling variation to be analysed as reflecting various scribal choices, whether determined by orthographic variation (including traditional contextual rules for the use of <v> or <u>), phonological variation, geographical variation, and/or diachronic variation. The final section showcases CoNE, and reconstructs a diachronic account on the basis of these spellings, revealing a coherent, if extremely complex, picture of lenitions, fortitions, and reversals.

A Polish Vernacular Eulogy of Wycliff

1957 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Schlauch
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
English Students

Though well known to specialists in the history of early Polish literature, the figure of Andreas (Andrzej) Galka of Dobczyn, an ardent admirer of John Wycliff, is probably not familiar to English students of Middle English. This fifteenth-century professor at the University of Cracow is notable for several reasons. Not only is his eulogy of Wycliff a precious monument of medieval Polish, but his Latin letters also have great interest, revealing as they do a colourful and pugnacious individual whose meteoric career is linked with some profound social changes occurring in his age and country. Both his literary activity and his personal adventures relate him to the movement for Church reform then sweeping over central and eastern Europe, as a precursor of the more decisive movement which was to occur in the early sixteenth century.

scholarly journals He forbead þæt hi ne weopon: A negative element in the þæt-clause introduced by a verb of prohibition

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Michiko Ogura
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Negative Element ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
The University ◽  
Stylistic Device

In ICEHL 20 at the University of Edinburgh, I made a report of my research on this theme. The present paper gives additional facts on the construction of a verb of negation followed by a þæt-clause with a negative element. What I try to exemplify is not a historical change from expletive negative to affirmative clause, but the facts that (i) the expletive negative was one of the correlative constructions based on Old English syntax and (ii) the affirmative clause was already found in early Old English together with the negative clause, even though the negative clause was frequent in late Old English to early Middle English and then decreased after late Middle English. The verb with negative import with a negated þæt-clause is, therefore, not an illogical expression but a stylistic device of combining the negation of the governing verb with the content of the governed, negated þæt-clause.

scholarly journals The Chequered History of the Prodigal ‘you’ Pronoun

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Dennis Michael Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Second Person ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Single Form ◽  
English Usage ◽  
History Of

This paper pursues the proposition that today’s English can be likened to a spectacularly-coloured butterfly that is always prepared to flutter forward undaunted by its dazzling change over time. In order to exemplify change as a long-term characteristic of English, this paper charts the progress of the second person ‘you’ pronoun, from Old English days, through to Middle English times, arriving into Modern English where the ‘you’ pronoun displays seemingly prodigal behaviour having abandoned its richness of case forms, resulting in a single form now representing all cases while also indicating both a multiple person audience while equally interpreted to indicate a singular person audience. However, it is clear that the latter behaviour is at odds with ‘you’ requiring a grammatically plural verbal particle. Such a paradox may leave ESL, and even native speakers, with an unfavourable impression that ‘you’ has to be accepted as an un-analysable concept. Given existing claims of lethargy in correctly informing the Academy on a range of English Grammar topics, this paper seeks to follow a Critical Theory methodology of evidence-based analysis of the ‘you’ situation; that is, this analysis consults Old English texts through to Middle English texts to today’s English usage, always providing supporting examples along the way.

The Development of Old English eo/ēo and the Systematicity of Middle English Spelling

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-155
Author(s):  
Merja Stenroos
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Core Area ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Spelling Variation ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Almost All ◽  
English Spelling

This chapter uses a new resource, the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C), a corpus of 14th and 15th Century English texts, to answer an old question: it is possible to find traces of a systematic distinction between the reflexes of Old English e/ē and eo/ēo in Middle English? An investigation into the spelling variation found in 27 lexical items that contain a vowel representing Old English eo/ēo as well as the equivalent Old Norse element jó throws up a wide range of spellings, the vast majority of which show <e>/<ee>. Spellings that might suggest a rounded pronunciation are also fairly robustly present, however, particularly <eo>, with the Southwest Midlands as its core area. The second part of the investigation retrieves all words that were spelled with the digraph <eo>. The vast majority of these turn out to be reflexes of Old English eo/ēo, and almost all of them are localized to the Southwest Midlands. They occur either as reflexes of OE y/ȳ, or in unstressed syllables, or in words where <eo> follows <w> – three groups for which a rounded pronunciation would be plausible.

scholarly journals SYNTAX STUDIES IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN AS INDO-GERMANIC LANGUAGES

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Ana Purwitasari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
English Word ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Sentence Patterns ◽  
Germanic Languages

This research aims to describe the development of syntax in English and German diachronically and involves a broader inquiry into English and German as sister languages rooted from Germanic language. In this research, the author gathered data from manuscripts written in both the English and German languages produced at particular times. This research used descriptive-qualitative method. The results showed that: 1) Diachronically, English and German have gone through four periods in their syntax patterns development; 2) Old English and Old High German sentence patterns are apparently the same, adopting SVO-structure; 3) The existence of conjunction separates the verb and object in German, but it does not change anything in the English word-order, from Middle English to Modern English; 3) Early Modern English verbs should be put in the second position. However, Early New High German verb is placed in agreement with the conjunction since conjunction influences the position of the verb and object.Keywords: Syntax; Germanic languages; historical linguistics; Indo-Germanic languagesPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan perkembangan sintaksis dalam bahasa Inggris dan bahasa Jerman secara diakronik dan merupakan penelitian yang diperluas terkait bahasa Inggris dan bahasa Jerman sebagai rumpunbahasa yang berasal dari bahasa Jermanik. Dalam penelitian ini, penulis mengumpulkan data dari manuskrip yang ditulis dalam keduabahasa tersebut, bahasa Inggris danJerman,pada waktu tertentu. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: 1) Secara diakronik, bahasaInggris dan Jerman telah melalui empat periode dalam pengembangan pola sintaksisnya; 2) Pola kalimat bahasaInggris lama dan Jerman lama tampaknya sama, yaitu memilikistruktur SVO; 3) Adanya konjungsi yang memisahkan kata kerja dan benda dalam bahasa Jerman, tidak mengubah apapun dalam ketentuankata perintah padabahasa InggrisdaribahasaInggrisAbad Pertengahan ke bahasa Inggris Modern; 3) Kata kerja bahasa Inggris di awalmasabahasaInggrisModern harus diletakkan di posisi kedua. Namundemikian, kata kerja bahasaJermanditempatkan bersama konjungsi sejakkonjungsimempengaruhi posisi kata kerja dan objek.Kata kunci: Sintaksis; bahasa Jerman; linguistik historis; bahasa Indo-JermanKata kunci: Sintaksis; bahasa Jerman; linguistik historis; bahasa Indo-Jerman

A Middle English Treatise on Hermeneutics: Harley Ms. 2276, 32V-35V

PMLA ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-600
Author(s):  
R. H. Bowers
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Western World ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
University Of Paris ◽  
Allegorical Interpretation ◽  
The University ◽  
Holy Writ ◽  
The Middle Ages

The fourfold interpretation of Holy Writ or of other authoritative texts, through the technique of exegesis commonly known as allegorical interpretation, was a well known cultural phenomenon throughout the Middle Ages.3 The practice of allegorical interpretation itself was well developed in the Western world by the time of Plato,4 and the fourfold method may be regarded as a further refinement of this technique. It constituted a tradition of remarkable vitality: as late as the early fifteenth century we find Erasmus inveighing against its abuses in The Praise of Folly with as much emphasis as Dante had defended it in his famed letter to Can Grande in an earlier century. It was taught at the University of Paris during the Middle Ages5.

Article Title: “The Accordance Hebrew Syntactic Database Project”

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem Boshoff
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Version ◽  
Free State ◽  
Article Title ◽  
The University

Journal for Semitics 27 (1) 2018, #3010https://doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/3010           When this article was originally published, Robert D. Holmstedt’s affiliation with the University of the Free State was accidentally omitted. The electronic version of the article has been corrected and can be located under the DOI specified above.

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