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.

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.

scholarly journals Rules of English Spelling and the Choice to Use t or s in Shun-Words: A Wink at Anglophone Cameroonian Students

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blasius Achiri-Taboh
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Online Resources ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Base Word ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Significant Interest ◽  
Spelling Variation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
English Spelling

Although English spelling has been of significant interest to scholars since the 1950s, it has remained a major problem even to native speakers. One peculiar problem with it is the spelling variation of the noun formation suffix often represented in discourse as “shun,” mainly between -tion and -sion. Current textbooks of English grammar have generally not discussed rules of its spelling with either form, even though they do many others. However, following online resources, conflicting on how to spell it are in current debate, with two main schools of thought that each fall in line with one of two approaches that can be called the “word-based model” and the “base-word model.” In Achiri-Taboh (2018), I have shown that, in writing down words that end with “shun,” the base-word model is to be preferred, presenting argument for a synchronic rule following the base-word model with seven conditions to warrant the use of -sion as opposed to -tion, albeit with exceptions. Following current debates and a test of Anglophone Cameroonian students for their spelling preferences, the present study establishes the problem as global and compelling enough, especially for Non-Native users and learners of English, to warrant an address in grammar textbooks by means of available recourses like the recent base-word-based rule. The study also demonstrates that the prevalence of the problem actually stems from the lack of readily available spelling rules in grammar textbooks, and that there is a need for further research on spelling rules in English.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Old English and its sound correspondences in Old English and Middle English

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-718
Author(s):  
GJERTRUD F. STENBRENDEN
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
English System ◽  
Almost All

This article seeks to identify the phonetic correspondence(s) of the digraph <cg> in Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME), assessing a range of sources: the etyma in early Germanic (Gmc) languages, the various spellings in OE and the spelling evidence in the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English. Almost all the textbooks on OE claim that <cg> was pronounced /dʒ/, i.e. as a phonemic affricate, in OE. Evidence is thin on the ground, and the argument rests on certain back spellings <cg> for words with etymological <d+g>, e.g. midgern <micgern>. Words with <cg> in OE go back to Gmc *g(g)j, which subsequently underwent palatalisation, and eventually assibilation and affrication. This article argues that the value [ɟj] is more likely for OE and early ME, and that such an interpretation agrees with the available spelling evidence for both OE and ME, in that there is not one <d>-type spelling in the entire historical corpus until late ME. It is also argued that the development of the voiced (pre-)affricate was later than that of its voiceless counterpart, as voiced fricative phonemes are a late, and infrequent, development in Gmc. Moreover, it is likely that the development of /dʒ/ was affected by the high number of French loans with /dʒ/ which entered the English lexicon after 1066. Thus, the English system of consonant phonemes may not have acquired /dʒ/ until the thirteenth century at the earliest.

Dream Words in Old and Middle English

PMLA ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward C. Ehrensperger
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Old Norse Literature

In Middle English, or rather beginning with Old English and coming down to about 1500, including all works listed by J. E. Wells in his Manual of the Writings in Middle English, there are approximately 553 dream references. By dream references are meant actual dreams or remarks made about dreams which throw light on the attitude of the time toward dreams. Repeated references to the same dream are counted as a single reference. Of these references, 59 occur in Old English and 494 in Middle English. Old Norse is even richer than Middle English in dream references, no less than 530 being found. The large number of dream references in Old Norse is all the more significant in view of the smaller bulk of Old Norse literature in comparison with Middle English.

Anglicized word order in Old English continuous interlinear glosses in British Library, Royal 2. A. XX

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Joseph Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
English Word ◽  
British Library ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Verb Phrases ◽  
Almost All

The Old English interlinear glosses in the prayerbook London, British Library, Royal 2. A. XX frequently render certain Latin verb phrases and noun phrases into Old English with English word order rather than Latin, in contrast to almost all other surviving Old English interlinear glosses of the same prayers. Investigation of the occurrences of similar syntactic tendencies in all other Old English continuous interlinear glosses (the thirteen Old English interlinear glosses to the psalms, the eleven glosses to canticles of the psalter, the two interlinear glosses to the gospels and the thirty other numbered entries under ‘continuous interlinear glosses’ in Angus Cameron's ‘A List of Old English Texts’) reveals that such anglicization is restricted to relatively few texts from various centuries and places. Analysis of the features and conditions of these few witnesses reveals that neither scribal education, region, century nor other particular of situation is a factor common to all witnesses. The scribe of the Old English glosses in Royal 2. A. XX appears to have had deficiencies in Old English grammar, yet confidence in Old English phrasings of the prayers. His gloss was probably not made for students learning Latin grammar; it was more likely intended simply to help laypeople or less-than-well-educated religious persons to understand the Latin prayers. The context is clearer when we consider the Latin prayers in the margins (and a few interlinear glosses in Greek) that were added by the same hand.

scholarly journals The Development of Old English ǣ: Middle English Spelling Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Gjertrud F. Stenbrenden
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Variation ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Systematic Fashion ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
Vowel Shift ◽  
English Spelling

This chapter presents the range of spellings for the reflexes of ǣ1 and ǣ2 in ME dialects, as found in SED, LAEME and LALME. Old English ǣ appears to have raised early in Middle English, as the dominant spelling is <e(e)>; this is further supported by the fact that <a/ǣ/ea> spellings are more frequent in the early LAEME texts than in the later ones. The spelling variants show geographic variation in Old English, with ǣ1 and ǣ2 appearing to have merged in some dialects but kept apart in others. Their reflexes are not kept apart in spelling in any systematic fashion in any ME dialects, but their distribution is certainly are not random. As the sound-changes affecting the two ǣ’s took some time to reach completion, they overlapped in time with the early stages of the Great Vowel Shift; the author argues that they must be seen as part of that shift, rather than as similar but unrelated changes.

scholarly journals Stylo visualisations of Middle English documents

2020 ◽  
Vol Special issue on... ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Mäkinen
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
The Real ◽  
Spelling Variation ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Current Article ◽  
English Spelling

International audience Automated approaches to identifying authorship of a text have become commonplace in the stylometric studies. The current article applies an unsupervised stylometric approach on Middle English documents using the script Stylo in R, in an attempt to distinguish between texts from different dialectal areas. The approach is based on the distribution of character 3-grams generated from the texts of the corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD). The article adopts the middle ground in the study of Middle English spelling variation, between the concept of relational linguistic space and the real linguistic continuum of medieval England. Stylo can distinguish between Middle English dialects by using the less frequent character 3-grams.

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