comprehensive and descriptive overview of the entire language history of English, illustrates and discusses current tren
779 118 8MB
English Pages 1164 [1168] Year 2012
Table of contents :
Preface to the Handbook of English Historical Linguistics
Acknowledgments
In memoriam
General abbreviations
IX. Resources
71. Early textual resources
72. Electronic/online resources
73. Lexicographic resources
74. Teaching perspectives
75. Textbooks
76. Online resources for teaching
X. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography
77. Literature
78. Music as a language – the history of an idea
79. Periodization in the history of the English language
80. Myths of the English language; or, alternative histories of “English”
81. Spoken and written English – orality and literacy
XI. History of English Historical Linguistics
82. Overview
83. The historiography of the English language
84. North America
85. Germany and the German-speaking countries
86. The Netherlands and Belgium
87. Northern Europe
88. East-Central and Eastern Europe
89. Southern Europe
90. Asia - Minoji Akimoto
XII. New Perspectives, Theories and Methods
91. Historical dialectology
92. Historical sociolinguistics
93. Historical pragmatics
94. Information structure and syntax in the history of English
95. The actuation problem revisited
96. Corpus linguistics
97. Frequency and language change
98. Lexical diffusion
99. Grammaticalization
100. Lexicalization
101. Diachronic change and language acquisition
102. Generative approaches to English historical linguistics
103. Construction Grammar
104. Lexical Functional Grammar
XIII. English in Contact
105. German and Dutch
106. French
107. Celtic and Celtic Englishes
108. Latin
109. Greek
110. Norse
111. English in contact with other European languages
112. Native American Languages
113. Pidgins and creoles
114. Middle English creolization
115. African American English (AAE) early evidence
XIV. Varieties of English
116. American English
117. Re-viewing the origins and history of African American Language
118. Regional varieties of American English
119. Canadian English in real-time perspective
120. Standard British English
121. Received Pronunciation
122. Estuary English
123. Regional varieties of British English Christian Langstrof
124. Scots
125. English in Ireland
126. English in Wales
127. Australian/New Zealand English
128. Cockney
129. Diffusion
130. Dialect contact
131. Supraregionalization
XV. Second-Language Varieties
132. English in India
133. English in Africa – a diachronic typology
134. Second-language varieties of English
135. English-based Creoles
136. Global English
Index
English Historical Linguistics HSK 34.2
Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science Manuels de linguistique et des sciences de communication Mitbegründet von Gerold Ungeheuer (†) Mitherausgegeben 1985−2001 von Hugo Steger
Herausgegeben von / Edited by / Edités par Herbert Ernst Wiegand Band 34.2
De Gruyter Mouton
English Historical Linguistics An International Handbook
Edited by Alexander Bergs Laurel J. Brinton Volume 2
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-020265-6 e-ISBN 978-3-11-025160-9 ISSN 1861-5090 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston Cover design: Martin Zech, Bremen Typesetting: Apex CoVantage Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Go¨ttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper s Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com
Contents
Volume 2 Preface to the Handbook of English Historical Linguistics Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton . Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In memoriam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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IX. Resources 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.
Early textual resources Kathryn A. Lowe . . . Electronic/online resources Oliver M. Traxel Lexicographic resources Philip Durkin . . . . . Teaching perspectives Michael Adams . . . . . Textbooks Mary Blockley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Online resources for teaching Beatrix Busse .
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X. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.
Literature Andrew James Johnston. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Music as a language – the history of an idea Dietrich Helms . . . Periodization in the history of the English language Anne Curzan Myths of the English language; or, alternative histories of “English” Richard J. Watts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spoken and written English – orality and literacy Ursula Schaefer
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XI. History of English Historical Linguistics 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.
Overview Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton . . . . . . . . . The historiography of the English language Jeremy J. Smith . North America Thomas Cable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Germany and the German-speaking countries Ilse Wischer. . The Netherlands and Belgium Peter Petre´ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Northern Europe Risto Hiltunen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . East-Central and Eastern Europe Ire´n Hegedu˝s . . . . . . . . . . Southern Europe Teresa Fanego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Asia Minoji Akimoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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XII. New Perspectives, Theories and Methods 91. 92.
Historical dialectology I. Keith Williamson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1421 Historical sociolinguistics Terttu Nevalainen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1438
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Historical pragmatics Irma Taavitsainen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Information structure and syntax in the history of English Bettelou Los and Ans van Kemenade . . . . . . . . . . . 95. The actuation problem revisited Richard J. Watts . . . . . . . . . . . 96. Corpus linguistics Merja Kyto¨ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97. Frequency and language change K. Aaron Smith . . . . . . . . . . . 98. Lexical diffusion Betty S. Phillips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99. Grammaticalization Lieselotte Brems and Sebastian Hoffmann. 100. Lexicalization Laurel J. Brinton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101. Diachronic change and language acquisition Holger Diessel . . . 102. Generative approaches to English historical linguistics Bettelou Los. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103. Construction Grammar Alexander Bergs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104. Lexical Functional Grammar Cynthia L. Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93. 94.
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1475 1490 1509 1531 1546 1558 1577 1599
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XIII. English in Contact 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.
German and Dutch Jennifer Hendriks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . French Janne Skaffari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Celtic and Celtic Englishes Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola . Latin Letizia Vezzosi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greek Brian D. Joseph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Norse Richard Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English in contact with other European languages Cristina Sua´rez-Go´mez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Native American Languages Keren Rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pidgins and creoles Suzanne Romaine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Middle English creolization David M. Trotter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . African American English (AAE) early evidence Alexander Kautzsch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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XIV. Varieties of English 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126.
American English Richard W. Bailey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re-viewing the origins and history of African American Language Sonja L. Lanehart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional varieties of American English Luanne von Schneidemesser . . . Canadian English in real-time perspective Stefan Dollinger. . . . . . . . Standard British English Pam Peters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Received Pronunciation Lynda Mugglestone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Estuary English Ulrike Altendorf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional varieties of British English Bernd Kortmann and Christian Langstrof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scots Robert McColl Millar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English in Ireland Jeffrey L. Kallen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English in Wales Colin H. Williams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1809 1826 1839 1858 1879 1899 1913 1928 1951 1961 1977
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Australian/New Zealand English Marianne Hundt Cockney Sue Fox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Diffusion David Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dialect contact Peter Trudgill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Supraregionalization Raymond Hickey . . . . . . . . .
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1995 2013 2031 2044 2060
English in India Devyani Sharma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English in Africa—a diachronic typology Rajend Mesthrie Second-language varieties of English Daniel Schreier . . . . English-based Creoles Andrea Sand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global English Joachim Grzega . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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XV. Second-Language Varieties 132. 133. 134. 135. 136.
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2151
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Volume I Preface to Historical Linguistics of English Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In memoriam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . General abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
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Periods Pre-Old English Jeannette K. Marsh . Old English Ferdinand von Mengden Middle English Jeremy J. Smith . . . . Early Modern English Arja Nurmi . . Late Modern English Joan C. Beal . . Contemporary English Jim Miller . . .
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Linguistic Levels
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Phonology Janet Grijzenhout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prosody Donka Minkova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphology Dieter Kastovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Syntax Graeme Trousdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Semantics and lexicon Elizabeth Closs Traugott . . . Idioms and fixed expressions Gabriele Knappe . . . . Pragmatics and discourse Andreas H. Jucker. . . . . . Onomastics Carole Hough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orthography Hanna Rutkowska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Styles, registers, genres, text types Claudia Claridge
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255 272 294 313 325 340 362 373 385
III. Old English 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
Phonology Robert Murray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morphology Ferdinand von Mengden . . . . . . Syntax Rafał Molencki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Semantics and lexicon Christian Kay. . . . . . . Pragmatics and discourse Ursula Lenker . . . . Dialects Hans Sauer and Gaby Waxenberger Language contact Gernot R. Wieland . . . . . . Standardization Lucia Kornexl . . . . . . . . . . . Literary language Robert D. Fulk . . . . . . . . .
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IV. Middle English 26. Phonology Nikolaus Ritt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 27. Morphology Jerzy Wełna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Contents
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Syntax Jeremy J. Smith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Semantics and lexicon Louise Sylvester . . . . . . . . . Pragmatics and discourse Elizabeth Closs Traugott . Dialects Keith Williamson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language contact Herbert Schendl . . . . . . . . . . . . . Standardization Ursula Schaefer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sociolinguistics Alexander Bergs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Literary language Leslie K. Arnovick . . . . . . . . . . . The language of Chaucer Simon Horobin . . . . . . . .
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37. Phonology Julia Schlu¨ter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38. Morphology Claire Cowie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39. Syntax Elena Seoane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40. Lexicon and semantics Ian Lancashire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41. Pragmatics and discourse Dawn Archer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42. Dialects Anneli Meurman-Solin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43. Language contact Laura Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44. Standardization Lilo Moessner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45. Sociolinguistics Helena Raumolin-Brunberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46. Pronouns Ulrich Busse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47. Periphrastic DO Anthony Warner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48. The Great Vowel Shift Manfred Krug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49. Relativization Christine Johansson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50. Literary language Colette Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51. The language of Shakespeare Ulrich Busse and Beatrix Busse
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52. Phonology Charles Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53. Morphology Britta Mondorf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54. Syntax Bas Aarts, Marı´a Jose´ Lo´pez-Couso, and Bele´n Me´ndez-Naya. 55. Semantics and lexicon Marina Dossena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56. Pragmatics and discourse Diana M. Lewis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57. Dialects Susanne Wagner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58. Standardization Anita Auer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59. Sociolinguistics Erik Smitterberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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V. Early Modern English
VI. Late Modern English
VII. Standardization 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.
Prescriptive tradition Edward Finegan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The complaint tradition Tony Crowley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Standards in the history of English Claudia Lange . . . . . . . . . . Codifiers Carol Percy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English language regard Dennis R. Preston and Jon Bakos. . . . Bible translations Thomas Kohnen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dictionaries and the standardization of English John Considine
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VIII. English and the Media 67. 68. 69. 70.
Newspapers Udo Fries . . . . . Television Jane Stuart-Smith . Radio Ju¨rg Rainer . . . . . . . . Internet Theresa Heyd . . . . .
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Preface to the Handbook of English Historical Linguistics
The study of the English language has a lengthy history. The second half of the 18th century saw a phenomenal increase in the number of published grammars of the vernacular language, while the field of comparative linguistics arising in the 19th century was concerned in large part with the Germanic languages, including English. However, it is in the field of theoretical linguistics that English has played a truly central role. While there are no reliable statistics, it seems safe to say that the majority of studies in contemporary linguistics deal at least in part with English, and are also written in English. During the 20th century, monumental works concerned with the English language, both synchronic and diachronic, were produced, following historical/comparative and more contemporary linguistic approaches. In keeping with developments in the field of general linguistics, today it is possible to find descriptions and analyses of the history and development of English from virtually any linguistic perspective: external, internal, generative, functional, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, comparative, phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic. There are numerous “Histories of English” to cater to just about every (theoretical) taste, as well as detailed descriptions of historical periods, language levels, or theoretical frameworks of English and specialized studies of individual topics in the development of the language. Work on the history of English has culminated most recently in the six-volume Cambridge History of the English Language, edited by Richard M. Hogg (1992–2001). Study of the history of any language begins with its texts. Increasingly, however, scholars are turning to dictionaries and corpora of English that are available online or electronically. The pioneer historical corpus of English, the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, was first released to scholars in 1991. The third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary online is now fully integrated with the Historical Thesaurus. The searchable Middle English Dictionary, completed in 2003, is available online along with the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus is also searchable online. ARCHER, A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers 1650–1990, accessible at a number of universities, provides a balanced selection of historical texts in electronic form. COHA, a 400-million-word, balanced Corpus of Historical American English 1810–2009, was launched online in 2010. Smaller corpora, such as the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760, the Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, and the Old Bailey Corpus, have made more specialized corpora available to scholars. Archives of historical newspapers online, including the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus, provide another source of electronic data. Finally, syntactically annotated corpora for historical stages of English are being produced, including the The York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry, The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose, The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, and The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English.
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Preface to the Handbook of English Historical Linguistics Taking into account the important developments in the study of English effected by the availability of electronic corpora, this Handbook of English Historical Linguistics offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and theory-neutral synopsis of the field. It is meant to facilitate research by offering overviews of all the relevant aspects of the historical linguistics of English and by referring scholars and students to more indepth coverage. The handbook is intended primarily for researchers in the field of (historical) linguistics generally, as well as for researchers in allied fields (such as history, literature, and culture). The handbook comprises two volumes, each volume consisting of approximately 70 articles written by a wide variety of authors from a number of different countries world-wide, representing a variety of theoretical approaches, and including both younger scholars as well as more established experts.
Volumes 1 and 2 The sequencing of material in the two volumes of the Handbook of English Historical Linguistics is bottom-up, beginning with detailed studies of the periods, levels, and linguistic components of each period. The second volume moves to a higher level, with a focus on general underlying concepts, theories, and methods as well as new and hitherto rather neglected approaches to the history of English. While the two volumes form a set, with cross-reference as far as possible in order to facilitate reader-guidance, they are also capable of standing alone. Following this essentially inductive approach, then, the first volume (edited by Laurel J. Brinton) is focused on the details of English language history. After overviews of the recognized periods of English (Section I), the volume then treats the linguistic levels. These are broadly understood to include newer components such as prosody, pragmatics, phraseology, discourse, styles, registers, and text types as well as more traditional areas such as orthography and onomastics in addition to the fully acknowledged areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics (Section II). These summaries will be useful both to students and to those not working directly in the field of English historical linguistics, such as typologists. Sections III–VI contain detailed descriptions of the different periods – Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Late Modern English – in respect to the range of linguistic levels; discussions of language contact, standardization, sociolinguistics, and literary language are included for most periods. Moreover, for each period, selected important phenomena (such as the development of do-periphrasis, the Great Vowel Shift, pronoun usage, or relativization) have been chosen for more detailed study. Following the treatment of the different periods, the volume addresses a variety of questions of standardization (Section VII), such as the effects that dictionaries, the Bible, language attitudes, and codifiers have on normalizing the language. The last section (VIII) brings the handbook into the 21st century by treating the effects of new media (radio, television, computer) on forms of the language, as well as the longer established effects of newspapers. The second volume (edited by Alexander Bergs) then abstracts away from these details and moves outward to address theoretical concerns raised by the topics covered in Volume 1. Volume 2 first surveys resources for the studying and teaching of English (Section IX). Section X on interdisciplinarity (in particular literature and music) and historiography explores some of the debates involved in writing a history of English, questioning, for example, how the continuum of history is divided into accepted
Preface to the Handbook of English Historical Linguistics “periods”, how oral and written forms of the language are accommodated in a history of English, and how new and perhaps “alternative histories” relate to the more established stories. This is followed by a history of the discipline of English historical linguistics itself, as it has developed in different parts of the world (Section XI). A significant part of Volume 2 covers changes in the English language as they have been theorized in various linguistic fields in the 20th century (Section XII). As Neogrammarian and Structuralist approaches are, to a great extent, embodied in the treatment of topics in Volume 1, this volume begins with later 20th century theories, including Generative Grammar, Construction Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Rates of Change, Frequency, Lexical Diffusion, Grammaticalization, Lexicalization, and Language Acquisition. Related to the theoretical perspectives are new approaches which have been developed in the analysis of the history of English, including Historical Dialectology, Historical Sociolinguistics, Historical Pragmatics, Corpus Linguistics, Information Structuring, and Actuation/Change from Below. Another important aspect of Volume 2 is its focus on the effects of language contact and the often neglected history of different varieties of English. It offers a section on language contact in the history of English, organized by contact languages, and supplemented by discussions of pidginization and creolization in the history of English and its varieties (Section XIII). Section XIV comprises historical sketches of more than ten varieties of English, and complementary theoretical discussions of dialect contact, diffusion, and supra-regionalization. The history of several second-language varieties is treated in Section XV, ending with a discussion of Global English. The beginning of a new millennium seems the right time for taking stock of the long span of scholarship in English historical linguistics and for surveying the field as a whole. Furthermore, the availability of electronic resources has changed the study of the history of English in fundamental ways, and it is important that a new handbook recognize this turning point in the study of English. Laurel J. Brinton, Vancouver (Canada) Alexander Bergs, Osnabru¨ck (Germany)
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Acknowledgments
Foremost, the editors wish to thank the nearly 150 experts in English historical linguistics worldwide who contributed chapters, without whom these volumes would not exist. We are particularly grateful to those who wrote two chapters or who stepped in to fill gaps that arose late in the process of assembling the contributions. We would also like to thank our Advisory Board – Cynthia Allen, Merja Kyto¨, Donka Minkova, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott – who gave us invaluable advice in the initial stages of this project. Thanks too to Anne Curzan, who helped in the planning stages. Our student assistants provided invaluable assistance in the editing stage: Slade Stolar and Martin McCarvill of the University of British Columbia; Jens Bonk, Lisa Gratzke, Barbara Hagenbrock, Claudia Ko¨mmelt, Mona Matzke, Meike Pentrel, and Lena Probst of the University of Osnabru¨ck. At De Gruyter Mouton, we are grateful to former Publishing Director Anke Beck for inviting us to develop this project and to Uri Tadmor to seeing it to completions, to Barbara Karlson for her encouragement, patience, gentle prodding, and expert guidance, and to Ulrike Swientek for her production expertise. For her keen eye and soft touch in copy-editing, we are most appreciative of Catherine Every (of EveryWord), and for her meticulous indexing, we thank Vicki Low (of Scholar’s Cap). We extend our gratitude to all of the following scholars, who generously contributed their time and expertise in serving as referees for the articles contained in these volumes. Some went well beyond the call of duty and reviewed more than one article or both wrote and reviewed an article: Sylvia Adamson John Algeo Ulrike Altendorf Leslie K. Arnovick Richard Bailey Jo´hanna Barðdal Joan Bresnan Derek Britton Ulrich Busse Joan Bybee Deborah Cameron Ruth Carroll Jack Chambers Claudia Claridge Eve Clark Sandra Clarke Richard Coates Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre John Considine Nikolas Coupland
Jonathan Culpeper Hubert Cuyckens Mary Catherine Davidson Hendrik De Smet Dagmar Deuber Hans-Ju¨rgen Diller Stefan Dollinger Bridget Drinka Edwin Duncan Stefan Evert Edward Finegan Olga Fischer Susan Fitzmaurice Robert Fulk Heinz Giegerich Eugene Green Peter Grund Trinidad Guzma´n Gonza´lez Martina Ha¨cker Antonette diPaolo Healey
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Acknowledgments Lena Heine Juan Manuel Herna´ndez-Campoy Susan Herring Raymond Hickey Gary Holland Richard Ingham Matti Kilpio¨ John Kirk Marina Kolokonte Lucia Kornexl William Kretzschmar Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky Merja Kyto¨ Roger Lass Gerhard Leitner Christian Liebl Michael Linn Angelika Lutz T. W. Machan Michael K. C. MacMahon Christian Mair Murray McGillivray Daniel McIntyre Donka Minkova Marianne Mithun Rosamund Moon Bruce Moore Colette Moore Susanne Mu¨hleisen Pieter Muysken Robert Murray Minna Nevala
Hans Frede Nielsen Arja Nurmi Stephen B. Partridge Meike Pfaff Joanna Przedlacka Matti Rissanen Juhani Rudanko Mats Ryde´n Pingali Sailaja Joseph Salmons Holger Schmidt Anne Schro¨der Elena Seoane K. Aaron Smith Dieter Stein Merja Stenroos Patrick Studer Sali Tagliamonte Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen Sarah G. Thomason Ingrid Tieken Boon van Ostade Carola Trips Uwe Vosberg Susanne Wagner Terry Walker Gregory Ward Brita Wa˚rvik John Wells Gernot R. Wieland Walt Wolfram Alison Wray Nuria Ya´n˜ez-Bouza
In memoriam
We commemorate those friends and colleagues who passed away since this project came into being. Without them, English historical linguistics will not be the same: Richard Bailey, Derek Britton, and Richard Hogg.
General abbreviations
ACC ACT ADJ ADV AN
Angl. AUX AP
C C COMPR DAT CP DEM
DM DU
EModE EWSax. FEM
Fr. GEN
Ger. Gk. Go. Grmc. IE IMP IND INF INFL INSTR
IP Kent. Lt. LModE LWSax. MASC
ME MED ModE NEG NEUT
accusative case active adjective adverb Anglo-Norman Anglian auxiliary adjective phrase consonant complementizer comparative dative case complementizer phrase demonstrative discourse marker dual Early Modern English Early West Saxon feminine French genitive case German Greek Gothic Germanic Indo-European imperative indicative infinitive inflected instrumental case inflection phrase Kentish Latin Late Modern English Late West Saxon masculine Middle English Middle English Dictionary Modern English negative neuter
xx
General abbreviations noun nominative case NP noun phrase O object OBJ objective case OE Old English OED Oxford English Dictionary OFr. Old French OFris. Old Frisian OHG Old High German ON Old Norse OSax. Old Saxon OV object-verb word order P person PASS passive PAST past PDE Present-day English PGrmc. Proto-Germanic PIE Proto-Indo-European PL plural PP prepositional phrase PREP preposition PRON pronoun PRTC participle PRES present PRET preterit S subject SG singular SUBJ subjunctive mood SUP superlative SOV subject-object-verb word order SV subject-verb word order SVO subject-verb-object word order SVX subject-verb-other parts of sentence word order T tense THM thematic vowel TMA tense-modality-aspect TVX topic-verb-other parts of sentence word order V verb V2 verb second V vowel VO verb-object word order VP verb phrase WGrmc. West Germanic WSax. West Saxon XP variable phrase XSV others parts of sentence-subject-verb word order N
NOM
General abbreviations XVS
> < Ø *
other parts of sentence-verb-subject word order changes to, becomes derives from no ending reconstructed form, ungrammatical form spelling
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IX. Resources 71. Resources: Early textual resources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
The corpus Dialect materials and methodology Kentish: a case study Charters Middle English Summary References
Abstract This introduction to the resources available for the history of English focuses on the nature of the evidence and the difficulties associated with individual text types. The chapter focuses on the Old and Middle English periods which perhaps pose the greatest challenge to those who are not specialists in these areas. An overview of the resources available for the early periods highlights general problems in terms of uneven diatopic and diachronic coverage, the uncertainties of dating and localization, together with broader issues relating to manuscript production and scribal practice. Topics surveyed include (for the Anglo-Saxon period) runic and non-runic inscriptions, place- and personal-names, glosses and glossaries, charters, and literary texts. Sections include a discussion of each text type with relevant bibliography, together with consideration of the principles underpinning their study. Texts surviving from the early Middle English period are similarly assessed in terms of their value for the historical study of English, as are selected resources for later Middle English. There is emphasis throughout on methodology and the importance of primary research.
1 The corpus The corpus of Old English is comparatively small (under 3,000,000 word tokens). This manageable size permits full concordancing, and a fully searchable version has been available online (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/index.html) from 1997 as part of the Dictionary of Old English project (DOE) (Cameron et al. [eds.] 1986–) essentially replacing the microfiche versions of 1980 and 1985 (high-frequency words). The importance of this resource to the study of Old English cannot be overestimated. The historical linguist working with the corpus, however, needs to be aware of certain issues relating to its production. A potential problem concerns the treatment of variant texts. As Koopman (1992: 607) observes, there is some inconsistency in the inclusion of texts that appear in more than one version: thus only one version of Bede, but two of the Alfredian translation of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues. Lexical variants are generally supplied, but only occasionally syntactic, morphological or phonological variants; this is unsurprising Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1119–1131
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given the origins of this resource as a by-product of the Dictionary project, but does mean that the concordance, while comprehensive, is incomplete. A futher concern of relevance here, noted by Jenkyns (1991: 385) is the DOE policy of expanding abbreviations silently. Other issues relate to the varying quality of the editions used as base texts: it turned out not to be practical to undertake the level of checking of editions against manuscripts initially proposed; reviewers have also noted some lapses in recording editorial emendations. However, the DOE policy of checking dictionary citations against editions means that the Corpus undergoes continual refinement as the Dictionary itself progresses. The corpus of Old English may not be extensive, but there exists a considerable variety of text types. The range is well summarized by DOE’s editor, Antonette diPaolo Healey: The body of surviving Old English texts encompasses a rich diversity of records written on parchment, carved in stone and inscribed in jewelry. These texts fall into several categories: prose, poetry, glosses to Latin texts and inscriptions. In the prose in particular, there is a wide range of texts: saints’ lives, sermons, biblical translations, penitential writings, laws, charters and wills, records (of manumissions, land grants, land sales, land surveys), chronicles, a set of tables for computing the moveable feasts of the Church calendar and for astrological calculations, medical texts, prognostics (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the horoscope), charms (such as those for a toothache or for an easy labour), and even cryptograms. (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/about.html [last accessed 17 May 2011])
Some historical linguists appear to assume that one text is broadly equivalent to another in terms of the evidence it supplies; texts are too frequently mined for individual forms generally without discussion of their status, value or circumstances relating to their production; the tendency to take such shortcuts is no doubt exacerbated by the way in which online search engines present their results. Further sections in this chapter elaborate on some of the issues relating to individual text types and their study.
2 Dialect materials and methodology Old English dialectology as a discipline is compromised by the fact that diatopic investigation is hampered by the patchy survival of texts and their diachronic diversity. Crowley’s summary of the situation makes for depressing reading in this regard: There is no evidence for Northumbrian of the ninth century and the early tenth; for Mercian before c.750, or of the later two thirds of the eleventh century; for Kentish before c.800 and after c.1000; and for West Saxon before c.850. Relatively few witnesses date before 950. Those that do are quite important, because texts after 950 are usually affected by the standard Late West Saxon literary language. (Crowley 1986: 103)
Crowley here references the four traditionally-assigned distinct dialect areas for which linguistic materials survive: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish. Such divisions stem from political structures deriving ultimately from the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy. This approach is conceptually flawed because, as Hogg (1988; 1992: 4) has importantly observed, the texts that survive are to be associated not with such political but rather ecclesiastical structures. He proposes (Hogg 1992: 4) instead an alternate
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classification based on dioceses, although does not adopt this taxonomy in his own work. There is much, however, to commend such an approach (or one broadly similar to it) not least because it coheres better with modern dialectological theory such as that which informs The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) (McIntosh et al. 1986) and The Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) (Laing and Lass 2007) – see Williamson, Chapter 91. The study of Old English dialectology has developed in an altogether strange way: as a whole and in general, Old English has a limited, defined, and accessible corpus, but the basic groundwork required to establish dialectal witnesses appears not to have been undertaken or at least is nowhere set out adequately or in full. This has hampered not just phonology but also word-geographical studies (see Kastovsky 1992: 338). There is nothing, therefore, that corresponds either to volume 1 of LALME (McIntosh et al. 1986) or Laing 1993, despite the fundamental nature of these works. For example, no consensus exists as to what constitutes even the basic witnesses of non West-Saxon dialects, in particular Kentish and Mercian. The texts highlighted by Crowley (1986: 102) as “substantial, fairly well dated and localized, and linguistically consistent” (a phrase replete with difficulties) for these dialect areas are, for Mercian, two charters and, for Kentish, nothing. This statement is at variance with the source material identified by both Campbell (1959) and Hogg (1992), although they are not in full agreement either. Behind these discrepancies lie serious issues relating to matters of transmission, status, and localization which are of great consequence to, but too often overlooked by, the linguistic historian. In consequence, historical linguists working in this period tend endlessly to redeploy examples derived from Campbell and Hogg, or, at best, use only a small subset of source material potentially available to them.
3 Kentish: a case study The case study of Kentish demonstrates some of the difficulties with preliminary assessment of the material. In terms of charters, the small number of differences between Hogg’s (1992) and Campbell’s (1959) lists is largely due to the inclusion or omission of early (pre 9th-century) charters, written in Latin, and which therefore only include names. Hogg does not formally list such texts, although does adduce onomastic evidence in his grammar. For Crowley (1986: 101), such evidence is “non-textual” and therefore not considered primary. Both Hogg and Campbell list the later (10th-century) material surviving in MS BL Cotton Vespasian D. vi (comprising the texts short-titled as KtHy, KtPs and CollGl 13). Only Campbell makes it clear that these three texts appear in the same manuscript, but does not explain that only the two poetic texts (KtHy, KtPs) are in the same hand. Both Hogg and Campbell note that the language of the texts is mixed which accounts for their omission from Crowley. In fact, neither Hogg nor Campbell has done justice to the charter material surviving from Kent. Lowe (2001) lists a series of ten single-sheet charters from Kentish charters written in English, 14 Latin diplomas with some significant element of English (generally in the shape of boundary clauses) and 42 Latin diplomas. Most of these contain only place- or personal names, but a few additionally feature some contemporary (or nearcontemporary) vernacular endorsements. As a whole, the material amounts to well in excess of four thousand words, and should form the basis of serious future study into the dialect. Similar work needs to be undertaken for other varieties of Old English.
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4 Charters Campbell, working in 1959, assembled his corpus of pre-10th-century charters from Sweet (1885), and it seems as though Hogg (1992) essentially followed suit, despite the publication in the meantime of Sawyer (1968), which has revolutionized charter study. Now available in revised and updated form online, the “electronic Sawyer” (eSawyer, see http://www.esawyer.org.uk/) lists each charter, together with information about the manuscript(s) in which it is preserved, the monastic archive it belongs to, and a summary of scholarly opinion. The bibliography is strong on historical and palaeographical information, rather less so on linguistic work. The most recent items currently date to 2007; more up-to-date bibliography may be found by consulting the relevant sections in the journal Anglo-Saxon England. Most vernacular charters have been reliably edited by Harmer (1914; [1952] 1989), Whitelock (1930) and Robertson ([1939] 1956). The ongoing British Academy/Royal Society Anglo-Saxon Charters project (since 1968) seeks to reedit the entire corpus (which numbers over 1,500 complete texts) of charters on an archive-by-archive basis with full commentary. To date, 14 volumes have appeared. For the others, one is still obliged to rely on the 19th-century scholarship of Thorpe (1865), Earle (1888), Kemble (1839–48) and Birch (1885–99). These texts (particularly those of the first three) need to be used with caution; Kemble, for example, sporadically normalized texts which do not survive in contemporary form. A trawl through eSawyer reveals that under a fifth of charters survive in anything like their original form; the rest are preserved in cartularies (mostly dating from the 13th through to the 15th centuries) or in antiquarian transcripts. Although many of the single sheets are of known date and provenance and therefore seem to offer the tempting prospect of supplying a matrix of anchor texts, there is a limit to their value as evidence for several reasons. The first echoes the problem with the chronological and geographical spread observed in the Old English corpus at large. Very few charters survive from northern archives, for example, and the majority of pre-10th-century charters are from Kent making comparison between varieties problematic. Palaeography is an inexact science which can at best add only general support to external evidence for dating. Thus a palaeographer can only confirm whether the script of a particular charter is in her or his opinion broadly consonant with its given date or dating range (see further Lowe 2005) and in general there is insufficient material to permit the dating of a particular script more closely than to within around three decades. This precludes attempts to identify phonological trends and developments on a timescale shorter than this.
4.1 Charter boundary clauses It seems to have been normal practice to include vernacular bounds in diplomas from the beginning of the 10th century (Lowe 1998: 74); before then some single-sheet (i.e. those existing in contemporary or near-contemporary form) charters contain topographical terms in English housed within Latin prose. Boundary clauses offer considerable scope for linguistic research particularly from an onomastic, lexicological, and word-geographical approach, and important work has been undertaken in this area by Peter Kitson (1995, 2004). The phonological value of these texts is, however, likely compromised by the centralization of diploma production from the 930s, after which such
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clauses, originally compiled locally, were recopied into the diploma by the main text scribe (Lowe 1998: 64–65). The helpful LangScape database (http://www.langscape. org.uk/index.html [last accessed 17 May 2011]) has recently opened this area to nonspecialists. It presents fully-searchable transcriptions of boundary clauses (with variant texts) together with a variety of other search options (including indices of topographical terms, archive and manuscripts) with associated mapping.
4.2 Onomastics Place- and personal name materials represent some of the most extensive evidence for periods where little else survives. Names in Bede are important witnesses to 8th-century Northumbrian, whereas the Domesday and Little Domesday surveys (the latter comprising circuit summaries of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk) represent aspects of the language (albeit viewed through the filter of foreign scribes using Latin spelling conventions) at the end of the 11th century. The value of names for the study of phonological development has often been questioned in vague and rather unhelpful terms (for example, “[t]here are difficulties in using the evidence of names too freely” [Hogg 1992: 5]). The clearest statement of their limitation as evidence is supplied by Clark: Once semantically emptied, names draw partly aloof from language at large. Although the phonological tendencies that affect them cannot be alien to those bearing on common vocabulary, the loss of denotation allows development to be freer, with compounds obscured and elements blurred and merged earlier and more thoroughly than in analogous “meaningful” forms. Sound-developments seen in names may therefore antedate or exceed in scope those operating elsewhere in the language; and this makes any use of name-material for study of general or dialectal phonology an exercise requiring caution. (Clark 1992: 453)
Important, however, is the point Clark makes here that names will not operate under a set of phonological rules entirely different from that which affects other vocabulary. It is clear that the value of names as evidence will depend entirely on their context, on the conditions and circumstances that gave rise to their transmission, and a case needs to be made for their use on a source-by-source basis; no shortcuts or easy generalizations can be made. Place-name elements offer us insights into the lexis of the quotidian as a necessary corollary to the specialized poetic vocabulary of better-studied Old English texts. Personal names also, importantly, allow us to compare naming practices across the social scale, from those of kings and ealdormen, through thegns and reeves to lesser farm workers and slaves.
4.3 Editions and manuscripts Editions naturally vary considerably in terms of the level of detail they preserve from the manuscripts; it is always worth paying attention to the section on editorial conventions in any given edition and, if it is unclear or none exists, drawing appropriate conclusions. Certain series draw up guidelines for their editors to ensure that similar methods are employed throughout. It is surprisingly rare, even in scholarly editions, for the expansion of abbreviations to be signalled, and the majority of Old English
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texts are punctuated in accordance with modern conventions. It is also worth attempting to establish the principal audience of a given edition; certain editorial decisions (for example, the inclusion or exclusion of variant readings, emendations and so on) that seem surprising to linguists and render the result unserviceable will be entirely acceptable, even welcomed, in other disciplines. By way of (extreme) example, the crowning glory of the series The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A Collaborative Edition, containing meticulously-edited texts of the separate manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, will be, if we are to believe one of the general editors, “reconstructed texts of the several text-historically defined stages of development of the Chronicle” (Dumville 1994: 48). It seems that these composite texts will be presented in the language of one of the main manuscript witnesses: quite how this will be accomplished for those passages which do not appear in the selected base text is not revealed. This reveals the gulf that exists between the needs and requirements of two separate academic constituencies who nevertheless share many of the same texts. Manuscripts written mostly or entirely in Old English before c.1200 are catalogued in Ker (1957 with additions 1977 incorporated as an appendix to the reissue of 1990). This seminal work is now supplemented by Gneuss (2001; additions 2003).
4.4 Glosses, glossaries, and texts derived from Latin Glossed material is perhaps the most under-utilized source of linguistic evidence in preConquest England. Some, of course, is well known to and heavily exploited by linguists: in particular, glosses in the Vespasian Psalter, the Durham Ritual, Rushworth and Lindisfarne Gospels provide much of our evidence for Mercian and Northumbrian. There ´ pinal, the are celebrated glossaries, too, which are mined in much the same way: the E Erfurt and the Corpus Glossary, again for Mercian. Lexical glosses have been collected and many published; it is of course important to signal words which appear only in glosses as the Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts and Kay 2000) and DOE (Cameron et al. [eds.] 1986–) do. It is important to investigate the transmission and interdependence of manuscripts when assessing and attempting to explain this material, and no justice can be done in print to the complexities of a typical glossed page, as Page (1992) effectively demonstrates. Far less well explored than the lexical glosses are the syntactical glosses, a topic best treated by Robinson (1973) who argues persuasively for their importance: Syntactical glossing offers a source of evidence about Old English word-order quite different from any of the evidence used by syntacticians up to now, and it is possible that further study will show this glossing to be a uniquely valuable witness to functional word-order in Old English. Unlike the prose texts, which invariably have at least some literary pretensions, the sequential syntactical marks would seem to be designed to signal straightforward Old English word-order uncomplicated by any distortions or irregularities for the sake of stylistic effect… It has been observed that when an Old English translator is confronted by a complicated Latin sentence with interlocking clauses he will often take the easy way of breaking the thought down into two or more simple Old English sentences, even though the vernacular is known to have been capable of hypotactic as well as paratactic constructions. The conditions of syntactical glossing do not permit such evasions, and so they offer a richer variety of sentence types and sentence lengths than do some of the more pedestrian prose translations in Old English. (Robinson 1973: 471–472)
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This statement is reproduced at length here because it makes the important and underacknowledged point that much Old English literature is derived directly or indirectly from Latin sources. As Mitchell (1985: i. lxi) wisely says “[w]e therefore have to study Latin loan syntax”. In his conclusion, Mitchell (1985: ii. 1006–1007) identifies Latin influence on Old English syntax and syntactical glossing as two of several topics particularly worth investigation. Over twenty years on, little progress has been made in these areas. It is remarkable that Mitchell (1985: i. lxiv) produced his monumental work without access to the DOE microfiche concordance, the first volume of which was issued only when his work was in its final draft. More recent work in this area has undoubtedly profited from the online corpus, despite the reservations expressed by Koopman (1992). Relevant bibliography is collected and annotated by Mitchell (1990; Mitchell and Irvine 1992) and then at intervals (Mitchell and Irvine 1996, 2002, 2006).
4.5 Runes, coins, and inscriptions Crowley considers the evidence supplied by coins, inscriptions, and names in general as “supplementary” (with the apparent exception of the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross and Auzon (Franks) Casket), and this option seems largely to be shared, although perhaps less baldly stated, by the grammarians. The value of coinage to Old English phonology has been highlighted by scholars such as Fran Colman (1991, 1996) and Jayne Carroll (2010; Carroll and Parsons 2007). Here the ongoing Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles (since 1958) is of the utmost importance, separate volumes of which may be consulted in conjunction with the searchable SCBI electronic database (http://www-cm.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/coins/emc/emc_search.php, last accessed 29 January 2012). Non-runic inscriptions have been collected and edited by Elisabeth Okasha (1971 with three supplements 1982, 1992, 2004). A corpus of Anglo-Saxon runes remains a desideratum, although a project is ongoing at the University of Eichsta¨tt to present the material in both paper and database form (see http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/SLF/EngluVglSW/AeRunen.htm and http://www. runenprojekt.uni-kiel.de/, both last accessed 29 January 2012). Meanwhile, scholars will find the bibliographical listing of individual English runic inscriptions in Page ([1973] 1999) invaluable, supplemented by more recent volumes of Anglo-Saxon England: fresh finds are not uncommon. Even more so than with manuscripts, matters concerning layout must be considered by the historical linguist and there is no substitute for looking at the inscription itself instead of simply its transcription or transliteration; peculiarities in orthography may well result from consideration of space or aesthetics. As inscriptions and runes can easily become abraded over time, antiquarian drawings of material, used with due caution, can be of considerable value.
5 Middle English 5.1 Early Middle English The early Middle English period shares many of the same problems as the Old English period in terms of the comparative scarcity of sources. The materials available in
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manuscripts dating from 1150 to 1350 are conveniently assembled in Laing (1993) with an admirably clear introduction as to method and selection criteria. This work, an essential research tool in its own right, was a necessary precursor to A Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English 1150–1325 (Laing and Lass 2007), and should be read in conjunction with the online introduction to the project. There Laing makes the important point that, without the Second Continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle, the terminus a quo for the project would be c.1200 (Laing and Lass 2007: 1:4). Before then survive a few charters from the reigns of William I (now reedited by Bates 1998), William II, Henry I and Stephen catalogued in Pelteret (1990), the Peterborough Chronicle with its First and Second Continuations (Irvine 2004; Clark [1958] 1970), some post-Conquest memoranda of uncertain date, and Domesday Book.
5.2 A Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English (LAEME) Laing (1993: 3) distinguishes in her Catalogue between texts created during the period and those that are copies of Old English texts; research shows that, with a few notable exceptions, post-Conquest scribes are timid when faced with Old English material and tend in the main (especially as the period progresses) to duplicate what they see (or think they see) in front of them (see Laing 1991; Lowe 2008). This makes the use of these charters as “anchor” texts difficult, and the paucity of freshly-composed documentary materials exacerbates the problem. Careful manuscript study has allowed Laing to ascribe an small additional number of literary texts to specific areas with varying degrees of certainty; her work emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the broader manuscript context in which an individual text appears. LAEME (Laing and Lass 2007) rejects the questionnaire method of analyzing texts employed for LALME (McIntosh et al. 1986); instead the texts are lexicogrammatically tagged. Particular care has been taken to disentangle distinct scribal contributions. The decision as to whether to tag a text in its entirety was not made purely on the basis of its length, but rather on a number of factors including significance, the nature of the scribal language and other “interpretative complexities” (Laing and Lass 2007: 2.1 3:6). Time constraints led to more restrictive sampling than originally intended: it is important to recognize that the corpus is not, and is not intended to be, fully comprehensive. Nevertheless, it consists of 650,000 fully tagged words which are searchable in a variety of ways: as a research tool for the study of orthography, phonology and morphology of the period it is therefore unparalleled. A specific advantage is that the texts were transcribed diplomatically from the manuscript witnesses themselves importantly retaining consistency of practice across the corpus and a level of faithfulness to scribal usage (such as the retention of wynn, and ) rarely encountered elsewhere. A sister project of LAEME is the Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots project (Williamson 2007), LAOS, which uses the same tagging system for Older Scots texts. At present the database (version 1.1 at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos1.html [last accessed 17 May 2011]) covers mainly anchor texts dating 1380–1500, but will eventually extend across the entire period (1150–1700) considerably expanding the coverage in LALME.
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5.3 Late Middle English: A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) Over twenty years, LALME (McIntosh et al. 1986) continues to define and dominate the field of medieval dialectology, with many new projects built upon its achievements. Its usefulness is not restricted to dialectology: its list of sources justifiably claimed in 1986 to be the “largest and most comprehensive list of manuscripts containing Middle English yet published” (i. 39) and its localized texts form the basis of the ongoing Middle English Grammar Project which eventually aims to produce a reference grammar to replace Jordan’s of 1925 (http://www.uis.no/research/culture/the_middle_english_ grammar_project/ [last accessed 29 January 2012]). Thirty-five years in the making without benefit of electronic aids, with analysis of over a thousand manuscripts, and principally the work of just two scholars, LALME is bound to contain errors. What follows is derived from Benskin’s (1991) response to Burton’s (1991) review of LALME. Some inaccuracies exist in the southern (essentially south of the Wash area) survey, largely as a result of perceived time pressures and resultant scanning. The questionnaire required refinement and supplementation as the project progressed, producing unevenness in the early analyses in the southern survey and omission of some relevant features. These and other issues are addressed in the project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for eLALME (2007–10) which will make the materials freely available online with the exciting addition of powerful interactive mapping functionality. There are wider methodological issues. LALME’s authors were well aware themselves of the deficiencies of the questionnaire approach to interrogation of the data, quoting Gillie´ron’s (1915: 45) trenchant observation that “L’e´tablissement du questionnaire […] pour eˆtre sensiblement meilleur, aurait duˆ eˆtre fait apre`s l’enqueˆte”. As Laing and Lass (2007: 1:8) additionally observe, different types of text may well not include examples of particular items: “For instance, a past tense narrative may not have examples of items that elicit present tense verb morphology, while instruction manuals may not have examples of those that elicit past tenses”. Short texts are less likely to exhibit the full range of forms, and specific genres (such as the all-important documentary texts) may have a limited range of vocabulary items of those identified as displaying dialectallyconditioned variation. In consequence, some Linguistic Profiles are at best sketchy, but the number of texts analyzed and the strength of diatopic coverage compensates for this. LALME’s 280-item checklist is still routinely used by scholars from all disciplines to reach preliminary conclusions about the dialect of a particular text.
5.4 The Middle English Dictionary (MED) and Compendium The first fascicle of the print MED was published in 1952, and the last in 1991. Its achievement is extraordinary, but its long genesis inevitably resulted in some changes in editorial focus and inconsistencies. These are discussed by Blake (2002) whose article should be read alongside the MED’s Plan and Bibliography (Kurath 1954) and Supplement I (Kurath et al. 1985). Blake draws attention in particular to a rather ill-tempered exchange between MED editor Kurath and reviewer Visser concerning the omission of words (many from Barbour’s Bruce) from the MED; this apparently was a deliberate decision because of the coterminous production of Dictionary of the Older Scottish
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Tongue, but not one reported in the Plan, nor indeed it seems, implemented consistently in the dictionary itself. For the majority of users, the print MED has been superseded by the rich textual resources of the online Middle English Compendium (McSparran 2002) with its searchable database, hyper-bibliography and a full-text corpus of Middle English prose and verse at present containing some fifty works. As its chief editor, Frances McSparran (2002: 130), notes, “[e]lectronic search mechanisms open up the whole of the dictionary and its 54,000-odd entries for complex searches, restricted by user-specified criteria such as date, manuscript, author, language of etymon, language associated with a field like law or medicine, etc.”. The incorporation of LALME references to manuscript information allowing searches restricted by county is particularly useful. Such a powerful search engine is, however, not necessarily easy or intuitive to use, and the scholar new to the resource is advised to spend time working through the online help pages in order to make the most from it. It is important to remember that the MED itself has not been updated: although bibliographic references have been standardized, and revised datings implemented in order to facilitate searches, no attempt has been made to (for example) replace quotations from editions superseded during the course of the print publication.
6 Summary The discussion above has sought to emphasize the recent developments in resources for this early period that together have the potential to revolutionize work in historical linguistics; this is an exciting time to be working in the field. It has also endeavored to demonstrate that what lies behind all of these corpora, grammars and dictionaries is a series of individual texts. We forget at our peril that (to adapt a phrase) chaque texte a son histoire. Each (and this goes as much for colloborative scholarly projects as for a runic inscription) must be interrogated in a way that is sensitive to the individual mechanics and manifold complexities of its production and history. Without this requisite spadework, we build our house on sand.
7 References Bates, David. 1998. Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Benskin, Michael. 1991. In reply to Dr Burton. Leeds Studies in English 22: 209–262. Birch, Walter de Gray (ed.). 1885–99. Cartularium Saxonicum: A Collection of Charters Relating to Anglo-Saxon History, 3 vols. London: Whiting & Co. Blake, Norman F. 2002. The early history of, and its impact upon, the Middle English Dictionary. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 23: 48–75. Burton, Thomas L. 1991. On the current state of Middle English dialectology. Leeds Studies in English 22: 167–208. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandall Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. (eds.) 1986–. Dictionary of Old English (DOE). University of Toronto. http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/about.html (last accessed 29 January 2012). Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carroll, Jayne and David N. Parsons. 2007. Anglo-Saxon Mint-Names, I. Axbridge–Hythe. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.
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Carroll, Jayne. 2010. Coins and the Chronicle: mint-signatures, history, and language. In: Alice Jorgensen (ed.), Reading The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Literature, History, Language, 243–273. Turnhout: Brepols. Clark, Cecily (ed.) [1958] 1970. The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon. Clark, Cecily. 1992. Onomastics. In: Richard M. Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. I. The Beginnings to 1066, 452–488. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colman, Fran. 1991. Money Talks: Reconstructing Old English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Colman, Fran. 1996. Names will never hurt me. In: M. J. Toswell and E. M. Tyler (eds.), ‘Doubt Wisely’: Papers in Honour of E. G. Stanley, 13–28. London: Routledge. Crowley, Joseph P. 1986. The study of Old English dialects. English Studies 67: 97–112. Dumville, David N. 1994. Editing Old English texts for historians and other troublemakers. In: Donald G. Scragg and Paul E. Szarmach (eds.), The Editing of Old English: Papers from the 1990 Manchester Conference, 45–52. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Earle, John (ed.). 1888. A Hand-Book to the Land-Charters, and Other Saxonic Documents. Oxford: Clarendon. Gillie´ron, Jules. 1915. Pathologie et the´rapeutique verbales. Bern: Beerstecher. Gneuss, Helmut. 2001. Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Gneuss, Helmut. 2003. Addenda and corrigenda to the Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts. Anglo-Saxon England 32: 293–305. Harmer, Florence E. (ed.). 1914. Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harmer, Florence E. (ed.) [1952] 1989. Anglo-Saxon Writs. 2nd edn. Paul Watkins: Stamford. Hogg, Richard M. 1988. On the impossibility of Old English dialectology. In: Dieter Kastovsky and Gero Bauer (eds.), Luick revisited: Papers read at the Luick-Symposium at Schloß Liechtenstein, 15–18 September 1985, 183–203. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr. Hogg, Richard M. 1992. A Grammar of Old English. Vol. 1: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell. Irvine, Susan (ed.). 2004. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Vol. 7, MS. E. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Jenkyns, Joy. 1991. The Toronto Dictionary of Old English resources: a user’s view. The Review of English Studies 42: 380–416. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1992. Semantics and vocabulary. In: Richard M. Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. I. The Beginnings to 1066, 290–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemble, John M (ed.). 1839–48. Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici. 6 vols. London: Sumptibus Societatis. Ker, Neil R. 1957. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reissued in 1990 with Ker. 1977 appended. Ker, Neil R. 1977. Supplement to Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. AngloSaxon England 5: 121–131. Kitson, Peter R. 1995. The nature of Old English dialect distributions, mainly as exhibited in charter boundaries. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Medieval Dialectology, 43–135. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kitson, Peter R. 2004. On margins of error in placing Old English literary dialects. In: Marina Dossena and Roger Lass (eds.), Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology, 219–239. Bern: Peter Lang. Koopman, Willem F. 1992. The study of Old English syntax and the Toronto Dictionary of Old English. Neophilologus 76: 605–615. Kurath, Hans. 1954. Middle English Dictionary: Plan and Bibliography. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
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Kurath, Hans et al. 1985. Middle English Dictionary: Plan and Bibliography. Supplement I. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Laing, Margaret. 1991. Anchor texts and literary manuscripts in Early Middle English. In: Felicity Riddy (ed.), Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, 27–52. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Laing, Margaret. 1993. Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Laing, Margaret and Roger Lass. 2007. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325 Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html (last accessed 17 May 2011). Lowe, Kathryn A. 1998. The development of the Anglo Saxon boundary clause. Nomina 21: 63–100. Lowe, Kathryn A. 2001. On the plausibility of Old English dialectology: The ninth-century Kentish charter material. Folia Linguistica Historica 22: 136–170. Lowe, Kathryn A. 2005. Paleography, Greek and Latin. In: Keith Brown (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edn. 14 vols. ix. 134–141. Oxford: Elsevier. Lowe, Kathryn A. 2008. The Exchequer, the Chancery, and the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds: Inspeximus charters and their enrolments. English Manuscript Studies 14: 1–26. McIntosh, Angus, Michael L. Samuels and Michael Benskin. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. McSparran, Frances. 2002. The Middle English Compendium: past, present, future. Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 23: 126–141. Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mitchell, Bruce. 1990. A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax to the End of 1984 Including Addenda and Corrigenda to Old English Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Mitchell, Bruce and Susan Irvine. 1992. A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax: supplement 1985–1988. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 93: 1–53 Mitchell, Bruce and Susan Irvine. 1996. A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax: supplement 1989–1992. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 97: 1–28. Mitchell, Bruce and Susan Irvine. 2002. A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax: supplement 1993–1996. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 103: 3–32. Mitchell, Bruce and Susan Irvine. 2006. A Critical Bibliography of Old English Syntax: supplement 1997–2000. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 107: 91–116. Okasha, Elisabeth. 1971. Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okasha, Elisabeth. 1982. A supplement to Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions. Anglo-Saxon England 11: 83–118. Okasha, Elisabeth. 1992. A second supplement to Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions. Anglo-Saxon England 21: 37–85. Okasha, Elisabeth. 2004. A third supplement to Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions. Anglo-Saxon England 33: 225–281. Page, Raymond I. 1992. On the feasibility of a corpus of Anglo-Saxon glosses: the view from the library. In: Rene´ Derolez (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Glossography: Papers Read at the International Conference Brussels, 8 and 9 September 1986, 77–95. Brussels: Paleis der Academien. Page, Raymond I. [1973] 1999. An Introduction to English Runes. 2nd edn. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. Pelteret, David A. E. 1990. Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Roberts, Jane and Christian Kay. 2000. A Thesaurus of Old English. 2nd edn. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Robertson, Agnes J. (ed.) [1939] 1956. Anglo-Saxon Charters. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Robinson, Fred C. 1973. Syntactical glosses in Latin manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon provenance. Speculum 48: 443–475. Sawyer, Peter H. 1968. Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society. Revised and updated version: http://www.esawyer.org.uk/ (last accessed 17 May 2011). Sweet, Henry (ed.). 1885. The Oldest English Texts. London: Oxford University Press. Thorpe, Bernard (ed.). 1865. Diplomatarium Anglicum Ævi Saxonici. London: MacMillan & Co. Whitelock, Dorothy (ed.). 1930. Anglo-Saxon Wills. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williamson, Keith. 2007. A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots, Phase 1: 1380-1500 (LAOS). http:// www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/laos1.html (last accessed 17 May 2011).
Kathryn A. Lowe, Glasgow (UK)
72. Resources: Electronic/online resources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Introduction Surveys Dictionaries Thesauri Corpora Further projects Further resources Summary References
Abstract This chapter provides a brief survey of currently available and forthcoming electronic/ online resources that may be used for research in English language history. The focus of this compilation is on those electronic projects and resources that may be of particular interest to historical linguists; it omits those relating primarily to other disciplines, such as literary criticism or source study. It attempts to give mention to as many resources as possible, especially with regard to the most prominent historical dictionaries, thesauri, and corpora. A number of further projects and resources is presented and briefly characterized in order to give an impression of the wide range of material that is currently available. These include select projects dealing with specific aspects from various time periods, primary sources in the form of digitized manuscripts and electronic editions, and digital bibliographies, publications and discussion groups. Web addresses valid on 1 September 2010 are provided for all resources; references are given to representative and complementing printed publications. Some problems involving electronic material are also addressed.
1 Introduction This chapter provides a brief survey of currently available and forthcoming electronic/ online resources that may be used for research in English language history; for a study of such resources intended for teaching purposes, see Busse, Chapter 76. For each Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1131–1148
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project, a web address is given which was valid on 1 September 2010. References to printed works on electronic material have been restricted both for reasons of space and since these become outdated rather quickly. Only some important and representative publications are mentioned which supplement the information found on the respective sites. The focus of this compilation is on those electronic projects and resources that may be of particular interest to historical linguists; it omits those relating primarily to other disciplines, such as literary criticism or source study. It has been attempted to give mention to as many resources as possible, especially with regard to the most prominent historical dictionaries, thesauri and corpora. However, not all of these could be included for reasons of space, in particular concerning the immense number of further projects and resources currently available on the World Wide Web. Whenever an online resource can be accessed without subscription this is indicated in the survey. All other websites as well as the CD-ROMs require a licence. For some corpora, mostly those hosted at the Oxford Text Archive (OTA) (http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/), this licence may be obtained free of charge. The representation of digital texts generally conforms to the standard of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) (http://www.tei-c.org/). Non-academic sites are usually excluded unless they make extensive use of scholarly material.
2 Surveys Surveys on electronic resources become outdated rather quickly as new projects are started, ongoing projects are completed or abandoned, and even finished projects may be revised. For example, work on the Old English projects listed in Howe (2001: 501) and the historical corpora listed in Rissanen (2000: 14–16) has progressed significantly since. Moreover, internet resources do not necessarily remain on the same server. For this reason, printed studies such as Arista (1999) may contain a significant number of obsolete web addresses. The same problem may occur with regard to online link collections, which are usually freely accessible. For example, on 11 February 2009, Dan Mosser’s History of the English Language page hosted at Virginia Tech (http://ebbs.english. vt.edu/hel/hel.html) stated that the last update occurred on 23 May 2005; out of the seventy links provided, no less than nineteen were no longer valid. Significantly, the site itself has been taken down since. It is therefore useful to check whether such collections are regularly maintained, as currently seen, for example, in the Electronic Canterbury Tales (http://www.kankedort.net/). There are also periodically updated and annotated lists, such as Circolwyrde (http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/links.php), a feature of the Old English Newsletter, which has provided the latest information on electronic resources for Anglo-Saxon studies on a yearly basis since 2004. With any luck, obsolete web addresses may still be accessible at the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine (http:// archive.org/web/web.php), which contains copies of more than 150 billion pages stored since 1996.
3 Dictionaries The largest electronic dictionary project is concerned with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (http://www.oed.com/). The latest print version of this dictionary is the second edition (Murray et al. 1989–97); it has been digitized and can be searched on CD-ROM, currently in its version 4.0 (http://www.oup.co.uk/ep/cdroms/), which also
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incorporates 7,000 additional entries not listed in printed form. There is no print version of the ongoing third edition, which is confined to web access. On 14 March 2000, the first batch of entries, ranging from M to mahurat, was published online; the remaining entries were taken from the second edition. Since then the subsequent entries have been updated and revised in alphabetical order on a quarterly basis. On 11 December 2008 these ranged until reamy, which resulted in the overall documentation of 263,917 entries at the time. Every regular quarterly update has also included additional entries from across the alphabet as well as revised entries replacing the respective earlier versions. Coinciding with the release of each update, commentaries on the respective changes are put online, which among other extensive background information can be accessed even without subscription. The nature of the revisions is manifold (Simpson et al. 2004). For example, besides providing a consistent terminology throughout OED, entries may be predated if earlier attestations have been found, and Old English quotations are no longer attributed to a particular year, but may be characterized as early, late or general Old English. Queries can be performed in various categories, for example, with regard to “etymologies”, “first cited date” or “quotation work”, which can also be combined in “advanced” searches. In December 2010, after the completion of this chapter, OED was scheduled to undergo a major relaunch including the integration of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) (Kay et al. 2009) (cf. below, Section 4) (http://www.oed.com/news/relaunch.html). OED has been used for a large number of academic studies and has even been studied itself, as seen by Charlotte Brewer’s project Examining the OED, which primarily investigates the role of quotations in this resource (http://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main/, Brewer 2007). In 2003, the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) project at the University of Toronto (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/), which had until then only issued microfiches of letters A–E between 1986 and 1996, published the first electronic version on a CD-ROM containing letters A–F (Healey 2005). The second, latest version has extended this range to letter G, resulting in currently 12,633 entries. Microfiches of letters F and G were issued shortly after their electronic publication. It has been possible to search letters A–G online since 2007; this web version is also continuously updated and complemented (http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/). Each entry contains information in several categories, such as “attested spellings”, “occurrences and usage” or “Latin equivalents in manuscript”, if available. The field “secondary references” points to corresponding or etymologically related entries in other dictionaries; if OED is mentioned, a direct link to this resource is provided. Regrettably, DOE contains no etymological information. A list of both Old English and Latin texts cited in DOE including the consulted editions is freely accessible, thereby providing a useful bibliographical resource. Yearly progress reports are available both at the site and in the Old English Newsletter. The corpus used by DOE (OEC) is available both online (http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/ doecorpus/) and on CD-ROM, the latest version of which was released in 2004. The search engine allows queries for single words, or parts of these, as well as up to three combinations or co-occurrences of whole or fragmentary words, which can also be confined to specific works or major genres. The results are listed according to their Cameron number (Cameron 1973), and page and line numbers are taken from the indicated editions. The output of OEC searches is strictly homographic; length-marks are not included, and þ and ð are distinguished. An additional tool is a “word wheel
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interface” for both English and Latin, which provides alphabetical lists of all types with links to the respective tokens. Bosworth et al.’s (1882–1972) Anglo-Saxon Dictionary including its supplements have been digitized in various ways. Sean Crist’s freely accessible Germanic Lexicon Project (GLP) (http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/) offers several different formats: besides scanned pictures in tiff- and png-format as well as a single “weekly updated” txt-file and html-files of the individual pages achieved by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) (http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html), there is also a specifically designed downloadable application (http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/app/). This particular program, currently in its version 0.2c, allows searches for individual entries as well as a full text search; image-files in jpg-format can be downloaded separately for optional inclusion. There is also an online version (http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/). GLP hosts a number of other dictionaries, grammars, and readers, two of which concern the Old English period. Comparable to the digitization of Bosworth et al. (1882–1972), the second edition of Hall’s (1916) Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary is available in tiff-, png- and html-format (http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_clarkhall_about.html). However, due to currently incomplete OCR, only 257 of the 373 pages are available as html-files, and there is no downloadable txt-file; moreover, there is no application. Another Old English resource at GLP is the third edition of Bright’s (1912) AngloSaxon Reader (http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_bright_about.html). Besides individual pages of the entire book in tiff-, png- and html-format, the glossary can be downloaded as a separate file in html-, xml- and pdf-format. There are several other freely accessible resources that use material from Bosworth et al. (1882–1972), but generally without the second supplement, which is the only volume still in copyright. Kevin Kiernan’s freely accessible site at the University of Kentucky provides scanned images in jpg-format of both the main volume (http:// beowulf.engl.uky.edu/~kiernan/BT/Bosworth-Toller.htm) and the first supplement (http://beowulf.engl.uky.edu/~kiernan/BT2/Toller-Supplement.htm). Two searchable electronic versions have been created by David Finucane: a free one for Macintosh OS X (http://www.davidfinucane.com/bt/index.html), and an iPhone application (http://www. davidfinucane.com/Old_English/). James Jonson’s Old English dictionary page at his Old English Made Easy site draws on a variety of sources, but only acknowledges Bosworth and Toller (http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm). Alphabetical lists are provided not only for Old English headwords, but also for Modern English equivalents. There is no search function, but each beginning letter has a separate htm-address. Based on this resource is Stephen Forrest’s online tool Englisc Onstigende Wordboc (EOW) (http://wandership.ca/projects/eow/about.php), which translates more than 5,000 words from Old English into Modern English and vice versa. The digitization of Bosworth et al. (1882–1972) as part of Bekie Marett’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Project, which is still listed on some web pages, seems to have been discontinued and the site (http://dontgohere.nu/oe/as-bt/) has been taken offline. The Middle English Dictionary (MED, Kurath et al. 1954–2001) was transferred into electronic form in the year of its printed completion (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/). It is part of the Middle English Compendium (MEC) (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mec/) (McSparran 2002), a freely accessible resource which besides MED includes also an associated hyperbibliography (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/hyperbib/) as well as the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse (CME) (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/).
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The 54,081 entries of MED as well as the quotations can be searched in various ways. Besides simple searches for headwords and variant forms, Boolean and proximity searches within both entries and quotations are also permitted. Full regular expression searches involving wildcard characters are also possible. As in OED, up to three fields can be combined, such as “definition”, “manuscript” or “date”, though date ranges are not allowed. Each “stencil”, which precedes each quotation and contains information on date, text and manuscript, is linked to the hyperbibliography, which provides information on further manuscripts containing the text as well as editions and other resources. Entries can be displayed without quotations or with quotations in either compact or open display. No revisions and updates to MED have occurred since 18 December 2001, though CME was expanded on 22 February 2006, as stated on the respective websites. Also of interest to scholars of Middle English is the freely accessible Anglo-Norman Online Hub (ANH) (http://www.anglo-norman.net/), which features a revised version of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND) (Stone and Rothwell 1977–92) containing c.24,800 entries. It also includes a searchable database of c.125,000 citations, which are used as the basis for an integrated concordance application. Unlike for Old and Middle English, there is as yet no period dictionary of Early Modern English. However, one online lexicographical resource dealing with this era deserves to be mentioned: Ian Lancashire’s Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) at the University of Toronto (http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/), the follow-up project to the discontinued Early Modern English Dictionaries Database (EMEDD) (http://www. chass.utoronto.ca/~ian/emedd.html), does not merely list words attested during this period, but is dedicated to the digitization of early English dictionaries themselves (Lancashire 2006). It currently features electronic versions of 166 monolingual, bilingual and polyglot dictionaries as well as various other lexical works dated 1480–1702 containing more than 575,000 word entries. The entries of 112 fully analyzed lexicons have been lemmatized according to their modern spellings and have been given permanent URLs. Two versions of the database are available. The freely accessible public version does not permit all search features, but allows restrictions to date range, author and text; however, the output is generally limited to 100 results. The full version displays all results and also allows further restrictive searches, such as “language”, “genre”, and “subject”. Additional features include browsable wordlists as well as a searchable index with information on more than 1,200 lexical works. There is also a period database containing more than 10,000 Early Modern English texts, access to which, however, requires an additional external subscription. Not many etymological dictionaries of English are available in electronic form. The freely accessible ongoing Indo-European Etymological Dictionary project (IEED) (http://www.indo-european.nl/) at the University of Leiden currently contains no information on the English language. The fullest and most up-to-date resource in this respect is the aforementioned third edition of OED. There are many electronic dictionaries which also have etymological information, such as the CD-ROM of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED), currently in version 3.0 of the sixth printed edition (http:// www.oup.co.uk/ep/cdroms/), or the freely accessible dictionary at Merriam-Webster Online (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/). One independent project focusing primarily on English etymology is Douglas Harper’s freely accessible Online Etymological Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/). This has been compiled from several printed sources, which are listed at the site. Its search engine allows both headword
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and full text searches. Another electronic resource is Eugene Cotter’s Roots of English (http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/roots.html), a freely downloadable application, version 4.0 of which has not been updated since 1999. An unusual feature of its search engine is that queries for entries provide an output of etymologically or semantically related Greek or Latin roots as well as English words containing these. However, no sources are given. Electronic dictionaries are also available for historical varieties of English. The largest of these is the freely accessible Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) (http:// www.dsl.ac.uk/), which combines two major printed sources, namely the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST), dedicated to entries attested between the 12th and the 17th century (Craigie et al. 1931–2001), and the Scottish National Dictionary (SND), which lists words in Scots used since the 18th century (Grant et al. 1931–2005). Besides full text and headword searches, some other fields are also available, such as “etymologies”, “senses” or “date”, though, as in MED, no date range can be specified. Boolean searches within a single category are also permitted. Queries can be restricted to DOST, SND or any of their supplements. One entry is displayed immediately, while a full list of results is indicated within a separate frame, in either alphabetical order in the case of headword searches, or their order of relevance in any other case. Bibliographic information can also be searched separately. The site is complemented with additional background information taken from the printed versions. The digitization of another variety dictionary, namely the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD, Wright 1898–1905), which is dedicated to the 18th and 19th centuries, is currently in development at the University of Innsbruck (Markus and Heuberger 2007). A beta version can be accessed after requesting a free password (http://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/projects/speed/index. html). Finally, another specialized dictionary needs to be mentioned: the Institute for Name-Studies at the University of Nottingham is currently developing an onomastic resource, namely the Vocabulary of English Place-Names (VEPN) (http://www. nottingham.ac.uk/english/ins/vepn/). Its ultimate aim is to list all elements of placenames attested before c.1750. It thereby revises and extends an earlier dictionary (Smith 1956). Of the three volumes published so far as fascicles (Parsons et al. 1997–), the latest one comprising 157 entries ranging from ceafor to cock-pit can also be accessed freely at the site, though only headword searches are possible. Besides listing examples containing the element in question, an entry provides also etymological information and gives references to corresponding or related entries in other dictionaries, most notably OED, DOE, MED and EDD.
4 Thesauri An online version of the second edition of the Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) (Roberts et al. 2000) can be accessed freely at the University of Glasgow (http:// libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus/). Improvements to the printed version include the occasional display of additional information in a “comments” field and the indication of word classes as “parts of speech”. In contrast to the aforementioned electronic dictionaries, it is possible to refine searches according to length-marks; moreover, all occurrences of ð have been replaced by þ. Queries are allowed for both Old and Modern English words. The sections containing the respective results are then indicated and can
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be browsed, though currently no alphabetical list is given. The 18 major sections of TOE and their respective sub-sections can also be displayed separately, either in full or confined to “flagged” words which are restricted to glosses, poetry, or single occurrences. Revisions and updates have not occurred since its release in 2005, however, the website states that these are planned. The database of TOE also forms the basis of a derived didactic project called Learning with the Online TOE (http://libra.englang. arts.gla.ac.uk/oeteach/oeteach.html). This consists of fourteen “units” intended for use in class or self-study, most of which contain questions that can be answered with the help of TOE, as well as bibliographies and further links. TOE has also been regarded as a pilot project for the much larger Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE), which was completed in 2009 and published in print as Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) (Kay et al. 2009) (http://libra. englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/WebThesHTML/homepage.html). In December 2010, after the completion of this chapter, it was scheduled to be electronically incorporated into OED online (cf. above, Section 3). A freely accessible version of some areas in HTE is available online (http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/historicalthesaurus/). HTE contains c.650,000 word meanings ranging from the Old English period until today. These are grouped into three major parts (“The External World”, “The Mind” and “Society”), which are subdivided into sections and further sub-sections. As in TOE, it is possible to search for categories in which a word occurs. In fact, the engine of HTE allows more: besides a general query for synonyms, it is possible to search for specific labels, affixes, parts of speech, and dates or date ranges within currently 333 categories. The results of the searched categories are displayed according to sub-section, entry, part of speech, date or date range of occurrence, and label if applicable. If the meaning of an entry occurs both in Old English and later then two spellings are given. Generally, spellings and further data are taken from OED or unspecified “dictionaries of Old English”. HTE contains no information on etymologies or quotations, but with regard to its chronological range it supersedes all dictionaries of English, even OED, which does not include words attested only before 1150. In its organisation of data on semantic rather than alphabetical principles, HTE represents a unique resource for the study of lexical change. There were initial plans for a third historical thesaurus dedicated to the English language, namely the Thesaurus of Middle English (TME, Sylvester and Roberts 2002), but the project seems to have been abandoned or incorporated into HTE as the original web address can no longer be accessed (http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/sesll/ EngLang/thesaur/mideng.htm). An even larger range than HTE is envisaged in the European Historical Thesaurus (EuroHiT), currently in its early development stages at the University of Eichsta¨tt (http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/SLF/EngluVglSW/OnOnEuroHiT.htm), which aims at providing historical onomasiological data for several European languages for comparative purposes by means of a publicly accessible wiki.
5 Corpora A large amount of textual corpora representing various time periods are available in electronic form; for more detailed surveys and discussions of their use, see Claridge (2008), and Kyto¨, Chapter 96. Descriptions of currently 51 corpora, many of which are mentioned in this section, are available at the University of Helsinki (http://www.
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helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/index.html). Corpora usually indicate their size according to the number of words, though the term “token” would be more precise. The dictionary corpora of OEC and CME have already been mentioned above in Section 3. These are hosted by the University of Michigan, which also provides another historical corpus, namely Michigan Early Modern English Materials (MEMEM) (http:// quod.lib.umich.edu/m/memem/), which is a collection of c.50,000 citations dated 1475–1700, originally compiled to illustrate occurrences of mostly modal verbs in an as yet unrealized dictionary of Early Modern English (Bailey et al. 1975). Both MEMEM, which has not been updated since 1996, and another electronic resource at this location, namely the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) (http://quod.lib. umich.edu/m/micase/), which represents a specific register of Present-Day English and currently contains more than 1.8 million words, can be accessed freely. With regard to dictionaries, it has also been suggested that the quotation database of OED may be used as a corpus though one needs to take into account the uneven representation and particular selection principles of the first two editions (Hoffmann 2004). No less than six historical corpora are contained on a CD-ROM produced by the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), the latest, second version of which was released in 1999 (http://icame.uib.no/newcd.htm): the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal (HC); the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS); the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS); the Newdigate Newsletters; the Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts (Lampeter Corpus); the Innsbruck Computer-Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts (ICAMET). These corpora can also be obtained from OTA. HC and HCOS as well as some pilot studies based on these corpora are described in Rissanen et al. (1993). The historical part of HC contains c.1.5 million words from representative texts dating from the three major periods of Old, Middle, and Early Modern English, which are subdivided into three or four chronological phases each. The modern dialectal part contains another c.400,000 words. The current version of HCOS contains c.830,000 words from Scots texts dated 1450–1700. CEECS is merely a sample version of about the sixth of the size of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), which features c.2.7 million words from letters dated 1417–1681 (http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/domains/CEEC.html). Newdigate Newsletters contains 2,100 letters from the Secretary of State’s office dated 1673–1692. The Lampeter Corpus consists of c.1.2 million words from 120 non-literary prose texts dated 1640–1740 (http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/chairs/linguist/real/ independent/lampeter/lamphome.htm). ICAMET features c.4 million words of Middle English prose; a fuller version of 6 million words is also available (http://www.uibk.ac. at/anglistik/projects/icamet/). Besides these historical six corpora, the ICAME CDROM contains also several modern ones, namely eight corpora of “written English”, which include the “Brown Family” of corpora, five corpora of “spoken English” and two “parsed” corpora, manuals of which can be consulted freely (http://khnt.aksis.uib. no/icame/manuals/index.htm). Registered users of the CD-ROM can access all corpora also online (http://torvald.aksis.uib.no/icame/cwb/). Information on HC, HCOS, Lampeter Corpus and ICAMET is also contained in the conference monograph by Kyto¨ et al. (1994). This volume provides descriptions of many more historical corpora as well as dictionaries, thesauri and software. Among these is A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (ARCHER), which contains c.1.7 million words of British and American English dated 1650–1990. Initially devised
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at Northern Arizona University and the University of Southern California, it is now an international collaboration of a number of universities, where it is currently being revised for its third version. ARCHER can only be accessed at those universities involved in the project, for example, at Flagstaff or Freiburg (http://portal.uni-freiburg. de/angl/Englisches_Seminar/Lehrstuehle/LS_Mair/research/projects/archer/). Two corpora compiled by David Denison at the University of Manchester are available at OTA. The Corpus of Late Modern English Prose (CLMEP) (http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/ subjects/lel/staff/david-denison/lmode-prose/) contains c.100,000 words from English letters written between 1861 and 1919. The associated Corpus of Late Eighteenth-Century Prose (CLECP) (http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/staff/david-denison/corpuslate-18th-century-prose/) contains c.300,000 words from letters written in the northwest of England between 1761 and 1790. The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (ZEN) (http://es-zen.unizh.ch/) consists of c.1.6 million words collected from newspaper issues published between 1661 and 1791; licensed owners of the CD-ROM can also access this corpus online. Besides HCOS another historical corpus of a regional variety of English is presented in the monograph: the Corpus of Irish English (CIE) (http://www.uni-due. de/CP/CIE.htm) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, which is available on CD-ROM (Hickey 2003), contains over seventy texts dating from the early 14th century to the present day. These include both English texts by Irish writers and the representation of Irish English in texts written outside Ireland. There are several more well-known corpora and electronic text collections that need to be mentioned. The Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections currently comprise no less than 28 corpora and bibliographies from various time periods and genres (http:// collections.chadwyck.com/marketing/list_of_all.jsp). The widest diachronic range is represented by the archive of English Poetry, which in its second edition contains more than 183,000 poems dating from the 8th to the early 20th century. The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, a frequently consulted resource for digitized text collections in the past, was transferred to the Scholar’s Lab in 2007 (http://www2. lib.virginia.edu/etext/). Some electronic texts are still freely accessible. The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing (CEEM) is subdivided into three parts, the first of which, namely Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT), was issued on CD-ROM in 2005 (http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/CEEM/MEMTindex.html). The upcoming parts will focus on Early Modern English and Late Modern English respectively. The Corpus of English Dialogues (CED) (http://www.engelska.uu.se/corpus. html), a project devised at the Universities of Lancaster and Uppsala, contains c.1.2 million words from speech-related texts dated 1560–1760. The freely accessible Old Bailey Proceedings Online project (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) hosts the texts of more than 197,000 London trials from the Old Bailey Proceedings conducted between 1674 and 1913, and more than 2,500 biographical details from the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts recorded between 1676 and 1772. Three large corpora of Late Modern English can be downloaded after requesting a free password from Hendrik De Smet at the University of Leuven (https://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0044428/): the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMET) with 10 million words; the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts Extended Version (CLMETEV) with 15 million words; the Corpus of English Novels (CEN) with 25 million words. In addition to corpora which do not contain any further data besides the text itself as well as bibliographical information, there are a number of annotated or “parsed”
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corpora which permit searches for specific syntactic structures. The principles of annotation with regard to three specific corpora are outlined in the respective manuals (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/annotation/). Currently, there are seven parsed corpora which are based on HC or CEEC: the Brooklyn-Geneva-Amsterdam-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English (Brooklyn Corpus); the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE); the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry (York Poetry Corpus); the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edn. (PPCME2); the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME); the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence (PCEEC); the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE). The Brooklyn Corpus has been superseded by YCOE, but can still be consulted by requesting access from Susan Pintzuk at the University of York (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~sp20/corpus.html). YCOE, the York Poetry Corpus and PCEEC can be obtained from OTA. PPCME2, PPCEME and PPCMBE are distributed on CD-ROM by the University of Pennsylvania (http://www. ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/). There are various programs aimed at constructing, annotating and searching electronic corpora. Among the most widely used ones are CorpusSearch 2 (http://corpussearch.sourceforge.net/), which is also issued alongside PPCME2, PPCEME and PPCMBE, and Corpus Presenter, which is included on the CD-ROMs of CIE and MEMT, and is also freely available in a restricted “lite” version (http:// www.uni-due.de/CP/). Besides the aforementioned MICASE and those included on the ICAME CD-ROM there are several more electronic corpora of Modern and Present-Day English. The largest of these is the freely accessible British National Corpus (BNC) (http://www. natcorp.ox.ac.uk/), which contains over 100 million words of both written and transcribed spoken English from different registers and varieties from the later part of the 20th century. BNC is also hosted by Mark Davies at Brigham Young University (http://davies-linguistics.byu.edu/personal/), who besides historical corpora of Spanish and Portuguese has also compiled three corpora of American English, all of which have a specifically devised search interface and can be accessed freely, namely the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which contains more than 410 million words recorded since 1990, the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), which contains more than 400 million words recorded since the 1810s, and the TIME Corpus, which contains more than 100 million words recorded since 1923. Present-Day English corpora may also be parsed, most notably the International Corpus of English (ICE) (http://ice-corpora.net/ice/), which is dedicated to world-wide varieties of English. This project combines various corpora of English from around the globe with each one containing c.1 million words of written or transcribed spoken English dated later than 1989 (Greenbaum 1996). Currently, seven corpora can be accessed at the website after requesting a free licence (Canada, East Africa, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Philippines, Singapore), three corpora can be obtained on CD-ROM (Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand), and several more are being developed. The Linguistic Data Consortium (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/) also hosts a large collection of corpora, such as the New York Times Annotated Corpus, which is available on DVD and contains more than 1.8 million articles published in this newspaper between 1987 and 2007. Work on many more corpora of historical English is in progress. One particularly large example is the Diachronic Internet Corpus of English (DICE) (http://dicecorpus.pbworks.com/), which currently contains c.19 million words from 500 non-fiction
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texts dating from the 16th century to the present day; it is announced to be “openended” and continuously incorporating additions. The envisaged web based application will be freely accessible online at the University of Tampere. Another announced corpus is The Corpus of Early American English (CEAE) (http://www.anst.uu.se/merjkyto/ Early_Am_Eng.htm), a project conducted at the University of Uppsala and associated with HC which focuses mostly on the New England area from around 1600 to 1800 and currently contains c.700,000 words. A unique interdisciplinary project in development at the University of Helsinki is Digital Editions for Corpus Linguistics (DECL) (http:// www.helsinki.fi/varieng/domains/DECL.html), which is aimed at providing a model that also takes into account the importance of manuscript evidence for electronic corpora (Honkapohja et al. 2009).
6 Further projects Besides electronic dictionaries, thesauri, and corpora, a large amount of other academic projects dealing with various aspects of language history are available or in development. In order to give an impression of their range, some prominent examples dealing with particular time periods as well as resources providing access to primary sources are briefly mentioned in this section. Projects may be based on the corpus of one particular text, writer, or period, but use it for more or different purposes than the aforementioned electronic corpora. An example for the Old English period is An Inventory of Script and Spellings in EleventhCentury English at the University of Manchester, which is concerned with written evidence dated to the 11th century, including copies of earlier texts and different scribal versions of one and the same text (Powell 2004). The project has produced the freely accessible MANCASS C11 Database (http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/mancass/ C11database/), which contains the text of 1,884 items identified by Cameron number (Cameron 1973) and manuscript shelfmark. Various searches within the database are permitted. A query for a particular word or stem provides a list of attested spellings occurring within a larger lexical group as well as their type frequencies; their occurrences within a wider context can also be indicated. Spelling variants involving the doubling of certain letters or the substitution of one particular letter within a stem can be searched separately. It is therefore possible to establish which variant spellings of a specific word exist, and which of these are preferred in particular texts or manuscripts. Besides storing orthographic information, the database features also illustrations of handwriting, most notably a palaeographic catalogue of certain letter-shapes and links to their occurrences in specific scribal sequences. Information on these sequences, which frequently include palaeographic images, can also be found by searching for particular manuscripts. Typical letter-shapes used by “scriptors”, who are responsible for writing more than one sequence, may also be displayed. By making these features available the database combines the disciplines of orthography and palaeography, and thereby covers two fields relevant to questions of textual transmission. Various linguistic categories are examined in the Middle English Grammar Project (MEG) (http://www.uis.no/research/culture/the_middle_english_grammar_project/), currently in development at the Universities of Stavanger and Glasgow (Stenroos 2007). Based on a specifically devised corpus, version 1.0 of which is freely accessible at the
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site, this project intends to provide a comprehensive reference grammar of Middle English which is to include a full description of variation and change during this period. There are also three projects which are specifically concerned with regional variation in Middle English and Scots; these are being developed at the Institute of Historical Dialectology at the University of Edinburgh. The freely accessible Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) (http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html), currently in its version 2.1, covers the period from around 1150 to 1325. Version 1.1 of the freely accessible Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots (LAOS) (http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laos1/ laos1.html) contains mainly documents written in Scots between 1380 and 1500. The digitization of literary documents from this period as well as an extension up to the year 1700 are in progress. Both LAEME and LAOS have been called “daughter projects” of the Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English (LALME) (McIntosh et al. 1986), a printed resource which is currently being revised for online publication (http://www.ling.ed.ac. uk/research/ihd/projectsX.shtml). In their final form, all projects will allow various searches for specific linguistic features including displays of their regional distribution on specifically created maps. With regard to the Early Modern English period, the Shakespeare Database Project (SDB) (http://www.shkspr.uni-muenster.de/) (Neuhaus 1989, 1990), currently in its publication phase at the University of Mu¨nster, needs to be mentioned. It uses the “copy text” printings of Shakespeare’s works as a foundation for a relational database. All original spelling texts are lemmatized, all lemmata are morphologically analyzed and classified according to etymology and date of first occurrence with access to all Shakespearean coinages and contemporary innovations. Variation in usage and later editorial emendations are systematically linked. Spevack (1993) is a printed thesaurus listing based on a previous version of the database using the modern spelling Riverside edition (Evans 1974). Besides projects concerned with specific linguistic categories, the accessibility of primary sources is also of particular interest to historical linguists. The importance of manuscripts and early printed books is stressed in various projects. Whereas mere scans of manuscript folios may be available on the websites of various libraries, such as some belonging to the University of Oxford (http://image.ox.ac.uk/), there are also specific projects which use images as a basis for editions and applications; these usually also include a search engine as well as additional material. The Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham hosts the Canterbury Tales Project (CTP) (http://www.canterburytalesproject.org/) (Robinson 2003), which has so far issued four CD-ROMs of individual tales as well as two CD-ROMs of the manuscript Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 392 D/Hengwrt 154, also known as the “Hengwrt Chaucer”, and a CD-ROM containing two versions of the Canterbury Tales printed by William Caxton. Both early books can also be accessed freely at the British Library (http://www.bl.uk/treasures/caxton/homepage. html) and De Montfort University (http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/Caxtons/). Several more medieval manuscripts have been digitized in order to provide easy access to primary evidence as well as electronic tools and material for further study. The Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET) (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/ seenet/) has so far released CD-ROMs of various manuscript versions of Piers Plowman, as well as William of Palerne, The Destruction of Troy, and Cædmon’s Hymn, which is also accompanied by a printed study of the poem (O’Donnell 2005). The
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CD-ROM of Kevin Kiernan’s Electronic Beowulf (http://ebeowulf.uky.edu/), version 3.0 of which was released in 2011, contains images of all texts in London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv as well as the Thorkelin transcripts and early collations. A new transcript and edition of Beowulf is also included. Another image-based edition of an Old English text by the same scholar, namely the Electronic Boethius from the heavily damaged manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho A.vi with additional evidence from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 180, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 12, is currently in development (http://beowulf.engl.uky. edu/~kiernan/eBoethius/inlad.htm). Bernard J. Muir’s software for Digitising the Middle Ages (http://www.evellum.com/) includes complete scans and editions of two other Old English poetic codices, namely Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501, issued on DVD as The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11, which is available on CD-ROM. Additional features, such as bibliographies and audio material, are also provided. Electronic versions of originally printed editions may also be available online, though these do not usually include scans of the original manuscripts. Many digitized editions of Middle English texts have been made available by the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS) (http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/ tmsmenu.htm), which grants free access to these for individual use. There are also online editions specifically devoted to particular texts, such as Melissa Bernstein Ser’s freely accessible Electronic Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (http://english3.fsu.edu/~ wulfstan/). These may be intended as teaching aids, such as the freely accessible nine Old English texts and text extracts that form part of a hypertext course pack hosted at the University of Oxford (http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/). Such electronic editions often contain hyperlinks to additional information, which may be displayed on the same screen in the form of frames for ease of reference. The already available editions of the freely accessible Online Corpus of Old English Poetry (OCOEP) (http://www.oepoetry.ca/), which is currently being compiled at the University of Calgary, contain three frames displaying the main text, a glossary and textual notes respectively. Those Old English poems not yet edited are provided in merely textual form, taken from the Old English section of the Labyrinth Library at the University of Georgetown (http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/medieval/labyrinth/ library/oe/oe.html), which hosts a digitized version of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (ASPR) (Krapp and Dobbie 1931–53) in html-format. Despite its title, the freely accessible site Renascence Editions (http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/ren. htm) does not provide online editions as such, but merely the electronic text of works printed in English between 1477 and 1799; it may therefore be regarded rather as a corpus.
7 Further resources Besides particular research projects, a whole range of electronic material is available which is useful for historical linguists. One frequently encountered issue is the need for specific letters or other graphs that are not generally included in the standard fonts employed in word processing. Several fonts are freely available for this purpose. The latest version 6.0 of the Unicode Standard, which contains over 100,000 characters, also includes a large number of medieval ones (http://www.unicode.org). Junicode, a
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Unicode font developed by Peter Baker at the University of Virginia (http://junicode. sourceforge.net/), is aimed at medievalists and in its version 0.6.17 contains 3,096 characters. The Titus Cyberbit Font, another Unicode font for historical linguists, can be downloaded at the University of Frankfurt (http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/ unicode/tituut.asp). The Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI) (http://www.mufi. info/) both gathers additional characters to be suggested for inclusion in future Unicode versions and coordinates the allocation of characters in the Private Use Area. A similar purpose is intended by the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI) at the University of Berkeley (http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~dwanders/). Bibliographies of printed works can easily be searched in electronic format. Generally, academic libraries hold information on most if not all of their stock within databases that can be consulted by their users. Library catalogues may also be linked with one another. The largest central search engine is hosted by WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/), which provides free access to the bibliographic databases of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. One of the most frequently consulted bibliographies with regard to language and literature is the Modern Language Association International Bibliography (MLAIB) (http://www.mla.org/publications/bibliography/). The electronic online version contains all entries from the annually updated printed version since 1926 and is expanded ten times a year. Another regularly updated electronic bibliography is provided by the Old English Newsletter (http://www.oenewsletter.org/OENDB/index.php), which is freely accessible after registration and incorporates the bibliographies of the printed version on a yearly basis. Bibliographies may also be connected to projects, as seen, for example, in the aforementioned MEC, which contains a searchable hyperbibliography of the works cited in MED; with 5,522 entries it is currently the largest electronic database focusing on publications dealing with Middle English (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/ hyperbib/). A particularly valuable resource with regard to the Early Modern English period and slightly beyond is the freely accessible English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) (http://estc.bl.uk/), which contains bibliographic information on more than 460,000 printed works published between 1473 and 1800. A large amount of digitized publications are in the public domain due to their expired copyright. The freely accessible Ebook and Texts Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/ texts/) is a particularly rich resource; it features more than 1 million items that can be browsed by a search engine. The obtained results are available in various formats: besides pdf-, txt- and djvu-files there is also a “flip book”-application based on jpg-files. Among those books included are also the main volume and the first supplement of Bosworth et al. (1882–1972) as well as Hall (1916). Another notable free e-book site is Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/), which currently contains over 33,000 items in html- and txt-format. Works in the public domain can also be downloaded in pdf-format at the freely accessible Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/). Moreover, this resource also provides selective preview pages to books that are still in copyright, many of which are of an academic nature; currently, more than 7 million items can be accessed in this way. There is also a purely historical e-book site, namely Early English Books Online (EEBO) (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home/). It contains bibliographical information on more than 125,000 searchable items printed between 1473 and 1700. More than 110,000 of these are available in digitized form; these can be displayed as gif-images on screen or be downloaded in tiff- or pdf-format. An additional subscription
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to the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) (http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/) allows access to the machine-readable converted text of more than 25,000 items in ASCII. The electronic availability of many academic journals has facilitated access to these significantly. The archive of Journal Storage ( JSTOR) (http://www.jstor.org/) currently contains digitized versions of over 1,300 titles and is continually being expanded. Journals may date as far back as 1665 in the case of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, but issues from the most recent years are usually not included. In addition to journals JSTOR features also other collections, such as letters, pamphlets or conference proceedings. Journals may have a freely accessible online archive of past articles, such as the Old English Newsletter (http://www.oenewsletter.org/). Besides digitized versions of printed publications, there are also journals or series that are available exclusively online; these are usually peer-reviewed and freely accessible. They may be concerned with various aspects of historical linguistics, such as Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English at the University of Helsinki (http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/ journal/index.html), or focus on a specific area of language change, such as Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics at the University of Leiden (http:// www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/). There are also interdisciplinary journals of interest to historical linguists, such as the one published by the web-based community Digital Medievalist, which has offered articles on bibliographies and editions of medieval texts (http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/), and The Heroic Age, which even has an entire issue dedicated to early medieval languages and linguistics (http://www. heroicage.org/). Online discussion groups are generally used to ask questions and exchange ideas that fall within a specific subject area and may take the form of free mailing lists. Usually, archives of past postings can also be accessed by subscribers. The most prominent academically oriented ones for the purpose of this survey are the History of the English Language List (HEL-L) (http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/hel-l/), and the Historical Linguistics List (Histling-L) (https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l/). Other relevant lists include ANSAX-L (http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/index.html) for Anglo-Saxon studies, and Chaucernet (http://pages.towson.edu/duncan/chaucnet.html) for Chaucer and Middle English. There are also several rather specific lists in which academics may be involved, such as ENGLISC (http://www.rochester.edu/englisc/), which is dedicated to composing texts in Old English (Schipper and Higley 1996). Besides mailing lists, there are also online forums, which can be browsed according to topics; postings are permitted after free registration. Currently active forums are hosted, for example, by Đa Engliscan Gesiðas, a society dedicated to Old English language and Anglo-Saxon culture (http://www.tha-engliscan-gesithas.org.uk/gegaderung/), or by David Wilton’s etymology site (http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/forums/). However, though academics may participate in such forums, they are mostly frequented by the general public. Finally, audio versions of past texts recorded by scholars need to be mentioned. These are available in both digital and analogue format. With the exception of most of Beowulf, the entire ASPR, as read by Michael Drout of Wheaton College, is freely accessible in mp3-format (http://fred.wheatonma.edu/wordpressmu/mdrout/), whereas Beowulf and a selection of other Old English poems with Modern English translations and commentaries are available on CD. The Chaucer Studio at Brigham Young
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University has issued a number of readings in Old and Middle English as well as other medieval languages on CD and audiocassette (http://creativeworks.byu.edu/chaucer/). Visual material that attempts to provide authentic pronunciation is found less frequently. Besides some performances available from the Chaucer Studio on DVD and VHS, a well-known example is Benjamin Bagby’s presentation of Beowulf with accompanying music, which is available on DVD with optional Modern English subtitles (http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/). Performances of Early Modern English plays, on the other hand, are usually pronounced in Present-Day English, as seen in the innumerable examples of modern Shakespeare productions.
8 Summary This chapter has shown that a vast number of electronic/online resources in English historical linguistics is currently available or in development. Though these make research in various fields generally easier, it must not be forgotten that there are also several problematic issues attached to the ever-growing amount of material. Besides the already mentioned possible outdatedness of web addresses, online resources may also be subject to continuous changes and revisions, which may mean that results obtained in earlier versions can no longer be verified. The output given by some queries conducted in OED can even change every three months; more recent searches usually provide more precise results though it is also possible for updates to introduce errors. For this reason, the date of access to online resources and the version number of CD-ROM releases should always be noted. Moreover, any search within electronic/online resources is restricted to the possibilities offered by the respective engines, which may not offer all features required by their users, for example, complex wildcard searches or the resorting of results. Another difficulty is that any particular software is not necessarily compatible with the computer system used by the researcher. Programs developed for Windows may not run on Linux systems, and software intended for Windows XP may have problems under Windows Vista or Windows 7. CD-ROMs may also become unreadable, either through damage or simply due to the aging process, which varies, however, considerably. Though back-up copies for personal use are normally permitted, any further distribution will result in legal issues. Generally, electronic data is lost much more easily than printed or analogue material. Nevertheless, if one is aware of the problems relating to electronic/online resources when consulting these, they can facilitate research to an extent not possible before.
9 References Arista, Javier Martı´n. 1999. English historical linguistics online. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 7: 299–306. Bailey, Richard W., Jay L. Robinson, James W. Downer, and Patricia V. Lehman. 1975. Michigan Early Modern English Materials. Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms in cooperation with University of Michigan Press. Bosworth, Joseph, Thomas N. Toller, and Alistair Campbell (eds.). 1882–1972. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth. 1 vol. and 2 suppls. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brewer, Charlotte. 2007. Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Bright, James W. 1912. An Anglo-Saxon Reader, Edited with Notes, a Complete Glossary, a Chapter on Versification, and an Outline of Anglo-Saxon Grammar. 3rd edn. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Cameron, Angus. 1973. A list of Old English texts. In: Roberta Frank and Angus Cameron (eds.), A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, 25–306. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Claridge, Claudia. 2008. Historical corpora. In: Anke Lu¨deling and Merja Kyto¨ (eds.), Corpus Linguistics: An International Handbook. Vol. 1, 242–259. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Craigie, William Alexander, Adam J. Aitken, Margaret G. Dareau, and James A.C. Stevenson (eds.). 1931–2001. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue from the Twelfth Century to the End of the Seventeenth. 12 vols. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, G. Blakemore (ed.). 1974. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Grant, William, David Murison, and Iseabail Macleod (eds.). 1931–2005. Scottish National Dictionary. 10 vols. and 2 suppls. Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association. Greenbaum, Sidney (ed.). 1996. Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Healey, Antonette diPaolo. 2005. The Dictionary of Old English: The next generation(s). In: Tom Trabasso, John Sabatini, Dominic W. Massaro, and Robert C. Calfee (eds.), From Orthography to Pedagogy: Essays in Honor of Richard L. Venezky, 289–307. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hall, John R. Clark (ed.). 1916. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hickey, Raymond. 2003. Corpus Presenter: Software for Language Analysis with a Manual and A Corpus of Irish English as Sample Data. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hoffmann, Sebastian. 2004. Using the OED quotations database as a corpus: A linguistic appraisal. ICAME Journal 28: 17–30. Honkapohja, Alpo, Samuli Kaislaniemi, and Ville Marttila. 2009. Digital Editions for Corpus Linguistics: Representing manuscript reality in electronic corpora. In: Andreas H. Jucker, Daniel Schreier, and Marianne Hundt (eds.), Corpora: Pragmatics and Discourse. Papers from the 29th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 29). Ascona, Switzerland, 14–18 May 2008, 451–476. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Howe, Nicholas. 2001. The new millenium. In: Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (eds.), A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, 496–505. Oxford: Blackwell. Kay, Christian, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, and Irene´ Wotherspoon (eds.). 2009. Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krapp, George P. and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds.). 1931–53. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition. 6 vols. New York: Columbia University Press. Kurath, Hans, Sherman M. Kuhn, and John Reidy (eds.). 1954–2001. Middle English Dictionary. 13 vols. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Kyto¨, Merja, Matti Rissanen, and Susan Wright (eds.). 1994. Corpora across the Centuries. Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on English Diachronic Corpora. St Catherine’s College Cambridge, 25–27 March 1993. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Lancashire, Ian. 2006. Computing the Lexicons of Early Modern English. In: Antoinette Renouf and Andrew Kehoe (eds.), The Changing Face of Corpus Linguistics, 45–62. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Markus, Manfred and Reinhard Heuberger. 2007. The architecture of Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary: Preparing the computerised version. International Journal of Lexicography 20(4): 355–368. McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. McSparran, Frances. 2002. The Middle English Compendium: Past, present, future. Dictionaries 23: 126–141.
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Murray, James A. H., John A. Simpson, and Edmund S. C. Weiner (eds.). 1989–97. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd edn. 20 vols. and 3 suppls. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Neuhaus, H. Joachim 1989. Shakespeare’s Wordforms: A Database View. In: Heinz-Joachim Mu¨llenbrock and Renate Noll-Wiemann (eds.), Anglistentag 1988 Go¨ttingen: Vortra¨ge, 264–279. Tu¨bingen: Niemeyer. Neuhaus, H. Joachim. 1990. Die Architektur eines Shakespeare Hypertext-Systems. In: HansJu¨rgen Friemel (ed.), Forum ’90 Wissenschaft und Technik. Neue Anwendungen mit Hilfe aktueller Computer-Technologien, 308–316. Berlin: Springer. O’Donnell, Daniel P. 2005. Cædmon’s Hymn: A Multi-Media Study, Edition and Archive with CD-ROM. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Parsons, David N., Tania Styles, and Carole Hough (eds.). 1997–. The Vocabulary of English PlaceNames. Nottingham: Center for English Name Studies. Powell, Kathryn. 2004. The MANCASS C11 database: A tool for studying script and spelling in the eleventh century. Old English Newsletter 38(1): 29–34. Rissanen, Matti. 2000. The world of English historical corpora: From Cædmon to the computer age. Journal of English Linguistics 28(1): 7–20. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, and Minna Pallander-Collin (eds.). 1993. Early English in the Computer Age: Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Roberts, Jane, Christian J. Kay, and Lynne Grundy (eds.). 2000. A Thesaurus of Old English. 2nd edn, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Robinson, Peter. 2003. The history, discoveries and aims of the Canterbury Tales Project. The Chaucer Review 38(2): 126–139. Schipper, William and Sarah Higley. 1996. ENGLISC: a new listserv discussion group. Old English Newsletter 30(1): 16. Schonfeld, Roger C. 2003. JSTOR: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Simpson, John, Edmund Weiner, and Philip Durkin. 2004. The Oxford English Dictionary today. Transactions of the Philological Society 102(3): 335–385. Smith, Albert H. (ed.). 1956. English Place-Name Elements. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spevack, Marvin. 1993. A Shakespeare Thesaurus. Hildesheim: Olms. Stenroos, Merja. 2007. Sampling and annotation in the Middle English Grammar Project. In: Anneli Meurman-Solin and Arja Nurmi (eds.), Annotating Variation and Change. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Available at http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/01/stenroos/ (last accessed 6 June 2011). Stone, Louise W. and William Rothwell (eds.). 1977–92. Anglo-Norman Dictionary. 7 fascs. London: Modern Humanities Research Association. Sylvester, Louise and Jane Roberts. 2002. Word studies on Early English: Contexts for a Thesaurus of Middle English. In: Javier E. Dı´az Vera (ed.), A Changing World of Words: Studies in English Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics, 136–159. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Wright, Joseph (ed.). 1898–1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. 6 vols. London: Frowde.
Oliver M. Traxel, Mu¨nster (Germany)
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73. Resources: Lexicographic resources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Historical dictionaries Dictionaries of particular varieties or geographical areas Slang dictionaries A historical thesaurus Dictionaries and other resources for English etymology References
Abstract This chapter offers a brief overview of the main dictionaries of English which have a historical perspective, or which are likely to be of particular use to historians of English. This is followed by a very short survey of current work in English etymology. Throughout I have aimed firstly to list the main relevant work, and give ample bibliographical references so that it can be located simply and easily; and secondly to alert the reader to some of the most distinctive qualities of each resource, particularly those which might confuse a reader new to a particular dictionary or other resource.
1 Historical dictionaries The period dictionaries all came into being in a sense as children of the first edition of The Oxford English Dictionary (OED, Murray at al. 1884–), as part of a series of initiatives by Sir William Craigie in the 1920s (see Aitken 1987). The first edition of the OED sought to cover all but the rarest words found in English from 1150 onwards, but normally only included Old English words if they survived into Middle English or later. The period dictionaries have all sought partly to fill perceived gaps in OED’s coverage, and partly to allow a sharper focus on a particular period, or, in the case of Dictionary of Older Scottish Tongue (DOST, Craigie et al. [eds.] 1931–2002), on a particular variety in a particular period. On the history of all of the dictionaries discussed here, the various contributions in Cowie (2008) provide an invaluable starting point, as on the history of English lexicography in general. The OED is now in the middle of its first ever comprehensive revision, in the course of which data and perspectives from the various period dictionaries play a major part. I will therefore look first at the period dictionaries, before turning to look at the OED in its early 21st century incarnation.
1.1 The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) and other resources for Old English Since the late 19th century the vocabulary of Old English has been served by BosworthToller (Bosworth and Toller 1882–98), a dictionary edited by T. Northcote Toller on the basis of the collections of Joseph Bosworth (which were in part made use of in earlier much shorter dictionaries by Bosworth). A substantial Supplement by Toller, a little over half the length of the original dictionary, was added in 1921, and a much smaller Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda was added by Alistair Campbell in 1972. Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1149–1163
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A serviceable hand dictionary for students is provided by Clark Hall (1960). For the letters A to G Old English is now served much better by 20th- and 21st-century scholarship in the Dictionary of Old English (DOE, Cameron et al. [eds.] 1986–). The DOE was one of the period dictionaries which emerged from Craigie’s initiative when the first edition of the OED was nearing completion, but in fact the OED has only ever covered that portion of the vocabulary of Old English which survived beyond 1150, omitting most words and senses which were obsolete before that date, and hence DOE is more truly the successor to Bosworth-Toller than to OED. One distinguishing feature of DOE is its tight and symbiotic relationship with its corpus. The body of surviving Old English is obviously relatively small in comparison with the data available for later periods. DOE has the huge advantage of being based on a comprehensive database of the surviving writings in Old English. Electronic publication of DOE makes it possible to exploit this relationship to the full: the dictionary and the database can be used in conjunction, so that quotations can be viewed in their fuller context, and so that the dictionary’s detailed digest of information on spelling variation or grammatical forms can immediately be explored in greater depth using the database. Thus key questions can be carried further along whichever parameters are of interest to the researcher. One thing that Bosworth-Toller, DOE, and even Clark Hall have in common is that dates are not given for quoted sources within the body of the dictionary entry. The dating of nearly all Old English sources is approximate and presents difficulties of one sort or another, and for the specialist readership of an Old English dictionary the information on dating and regional provenance given in the bibliography of a dictionary will be only the starting point for the exploration of numerous difficulties and controversies. The first edition of the OED tempted fate by assigning dates to its Old English quotations, thus in very many cases appearing hopelessly out of step with modern scholarship from an early 21st-century perspective. Old English material in the new edition of the OED instead follows a tripartite division into early Old English (for significantly early material up to 950, such as the early glossaries or the texts traditionally associated with Alfred the Great), Old English (for the vast bulk of Old English material, beginning roughly from the date of the Benedictine reforms), and late Old English (for material from 1100 to 1150).
1.2 The Middle English Dictionary (MED) The MED (Kurath et al. [eds.] 1952–2001) takes advantage of its position as a dictionary of a single fairly coherent period in the history of English in order to reflect medieval society in unusual detail. This has led to criticism from some that MED is a dictionary which (to state the case very crudely) is overly keen to distinguish different senses for each different context of use. However, this very tendency (and it is certainly no more than that) makes MED an unusually rich source for social and cultural historians keen to explore the contexts in which Middle English words were used. In contrast to this very detailed analysis of meanings and contexts of use, there is only very limited labeling of the regional provenance of particular linguistic forms in the body of each entry in MED. In many ways this reflects the limited state of knowledge in the period when MED’s editorial principles were established, as well as the very cautious approach of its early editors. It is now somewhat offset by the much richer documentation on
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regional provenances provided by MED’s bibliography, especially where this can draw on the documentation of the Linguistic Atlas of Later Middle English (McIntosh et al. 1986). A related characteristic of MED entries is that there is relatively little separation of material into different sections according to particular form types: to an unusual degree among the historical dictionaries of English, semantics is the main structural criterion within entries in the MED. One particularly innovative area is the treatment of words when they appear as, or as part of, proper names. Such uses are treated in separate sections at the end of the relevant entries, thus avoiding difficult or sometimes impossible decisions about which sense to assign particular examples to. By this structural device uses as names are also identified clearly as being different in kind from other uses of words, while not being neglected entirely. In the light of this, the treatment in MED of vernacular words which occur in multilingual documents is often surprising: these are routinely assigned to the paragraphs of English examples, presumably because the meaning of the word is not in doubt, but in many cases it is very doubtful which language the word should be interpreted as belonging to. In many cases it would be at least as plausible to regard a vernacular word occurring in a Latin or mixed-language document as being Anglo-French rather than Middle English, but in MED such examples are treated as showing English words without comment (see discussion in Durkin 2009: 173–177). A similar treatment is even accorded to English words occurring as code switches in Cornish documents. If MED’s editorial policy were re-thought in the light of modern work on the complexity of language contact situations it is unlikely that precisely this approach would be adopted. The etymologies presented in MED are extremely short, identifying only the immediate antecedent or donor of a Middle English word, and giving little or no documentation of its range of spelling variation or of its meanings. However, one innovative area is in the treatment of mixed Latin and French etymologies, on which see further Section 6.2 below. A truly revolutionary aspect of the editorial policy of MED is the use of a system of double dating, giving as primary date the date of the witness cited (i.e. a particular manuscript, or in some cases an early printed book), followed in parentheses by the putative date of composition of the text (where this differs). This has the huge advantage that the primary dates, used for ordering quotations and seen first by the reader, are those of the firm documentary evidence. The question of whether or not a particular reading may reflect the authorial text is then raised by the presence of the composition date, with additional evidence being brought to bear on this question when alternative readings are cited from other witnesses. It is important to be aware, however, that many of the editions used by MED are critical editions, giving a base text which is typically based on the readings of a particular witness but with numerous editorial normalizations, emendations, and corrections, which may or may not be based on the readings of other witnesses or on what the editor takes to be the more usual practice elsewhere in the same witness. In such editions an apparatus recording deviations from the base text and the readings is normally given, but very often many changes to the text are not listed in the apparatus, on the grounds that they are not taken by the editor to make a substantive difference to the text. For a linguist the implications of such editorial policies in the editions used by dictionaries can be very significant. To a large extent this is a general problem of any linguistic work based on editions which are not entirely
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faithful diplomatic transcripts of a particular witness. However, in the presentation of data in a dictionary it can be easy to lose sight of these issues, since the user is at a remove from the edition, and it is important that MED’s quotations are approached with due caution, and that recourse is made to the edition (and if possible the underlying witnesses) in all cases of doubt. Fortunately, as noted above, the MED is provided with a very comprehensive bibliography (especially in its expanded electronic version) which permits ready identification of the editions used, with dating information (and often also localization) for each witness. For insightful accounts of the history of MED, in addition to its own prefatory materials, see Blake (2002), Adams (2002), Kretzschmar (2002), which all arose from celebrations for the completion of the dictionary.
1.3 A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) DOST (Craigie et al. [eds.] 1931–2002) has been placed here among the period dictionaries because it covers a period which is entirely in the past, with a cut-off date of 1700. However, since it also describes only English as used in a particular place, Scotland, it could equally be placed in the following section on dictionaries of particular varieties or geographical areas. It covers a fascinating time span, documenting a variety of English with an emergent standard independent of that of the south of England, followed in the 17th century by the beginnings of the decline of that independent standard in the face of pressures from the English of England. The nature of this material shaped the inclusion policy of DOST: DOST is a hybrid – “comprehensive” down to 1600, “supplementary” from 1600 to 1700, when it records only the specially Scottish (Aitken 1987: 105). Throughout its history DOST has striven to define itself as a resource distinctively different from the OED, although in some ways the differences of lexicographical approach can detract from the comparison of the lexis of England and Scotland which should be one of the key innovations made possible by DOST. The methodology of DOST has also changed to an unusual degree during the course of its editorial history. One innovation found already in the entries edited by Craigie and continued by his successors Aitken and Stevenson is the tendency to devote separate entries to different form variants of a single (etymologically defined) word. Such an approach is not unknown in OED or other historical dictionaries, but in DOST it became commonplace and something of a hallmark of the dictionary. In latter years (from approximately the letter R onwards) under Dareau’s editorship a different approach again was adopted to the same question, with for instance to and till being combined under a single entry, on the grounds that the meaning and function of the two words are the same. In this particular instance the theoretical underpinning for such an approach is hard to see: the two words are of different etymology (to being from Old English and till from Old Norse), and are very distinct in form, sharing only the same initial consonant. However, a suggestion is made that the two function as distributional variants in early Scots, although the argument is not pursued very far: “In early use the rule of till coming before vowels or h tends to be observed, later the variation seems to be simply a matter of style.” (DOST s.v. til prep.) Such conflation, which goes much further than would normally be countenanced in most other historical dictionaries, is all the more surprising in the latter stages of a dictionary which in its middle period was marked particularly by its tendency to split material into separate entries which most other historical dictionaries
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would tend to treat in a single entry. Sadly, it appears that limitations on time and resources played a considerable part in such decisions (on this particular example and on criticism of DOST’s earlier policy compare Dareau 2002; for further examples of both the early and later policies see the introductory matter to the last volume of DOST). So far as the dating of quoted sources is concerned, DOST largely follows the policy of the first edition of the OED in generally using putative dates of composition. Scottish National Dictionary (SND, Grant and Murison [eds.] 1931–1976) could be considered here among the period dictionaries, since it follows on chronologically immediately from DOST. Both dictionaries can now be consulted online together as part of the website Dictionary of the Scots Language (http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/, last accessed 24 November 2010). However, particularly since SND deals with a period in which the functions of written Scots have been severely curtailed, it will be considered below in the company of other regional dictionaries such as English Dialect Dictionary (EDD, Wright 1898–1905).
1.4 An abandoned dictionary of Early Modern English Another of the projects envisaged by Craigie was a dictionary of Early Modern English. A good deal of preparatory work was undertaken at the University of Michigan, but ultimately support could not be found for the full dictionary project. Reservations rested largely on the fact that the samples prepared were perceived not to be sufficiently distinct from the OED’s coverage of the same period to justify the considerable investment which would have been involved. On the history of this project see Bailey (1985) and Aitken (1987). Today the materials which were compiled for the early modern dictionary are being used to help supplement the coverage of this period for the new edition of the OED, providing the sort of high quality results from targeted reading programs which searching of electronic corpora still cannot match (see further Durkin 2002b).
1.5 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) In 1989 the first edition of the OED (Murray et al. 1884–1928) and its supplements (Murray et al. 1933; Burchfield 1972–86) were brought together in a single alphabetical sequence, forming the second edition of the dictionary (Simpson and Weiner 1989). At time of writing in 2010 a quarter of the new, third edition of the dictionary has been published online (Simpson 2000–). This is the first ever top to bottom revision of the OED. At the same time as new words and senses are being added to the dictionary, all of the existing content is being revised. Extensive searches are being made for antedatings, postdatings, and other examples which make a significant difference to the existing documentation; approximately 50% of all existing lemmas and senses are being antedated. Such examples come from a variety of sources: the OED’s traditional targeted reading of historical and contemporary texts, today making extensive use of non-literary as well as literary sources; other historical and regional dictionaries, including all of those mentioned in this chapter; text corpora and other electronic collections; and direct contributions from dictionary users. Especially for the modern period, the focus remains on published, printed material. All definitions and labels are being reassessed. Pronunciations are being updated, using British and U.S. pronunciation models
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established in Upton et al. (2001). All etymologies are being comprehensively revised in the light of a century of scholarship and the new approaches made possible by modern research tools (see further Section 6.2). The availability of databases of historical texts is changing all the time, and is having a truly transforming effect on the OED’s historical lexicography. There remain some areas of difficulty and of controversy. Notoriously, the coverage of 18th-century vocabulary in the first and second editions of the OED is not so comprehensive as its coverage of other periods (see e.g. Brewer 2007); however, availability of the majority of surviving printed 18th-century material in electronically searchable form (especially through Eighteenth-Century Collections Online [ECCO], Gage Cengage Learning 2009) suggests that there is genuinely a dip in lexical productivity in the 18th century, at least in those varieties and registers which are reflected by surviving printed sources. In many instances where the documentation of the OED presented a gap in the 18th century, it remains impossible to fill this gap, even with the help of such resources as ECCO. Exploring and explaining this further will be a major task for English historical lexicology. The first edition of the OED normally gave the presumed date of composition as the date for its quoted sources. The new policy of dating Old English quotations with the broad periodization eOE/OE/lOE has already been discussed in Section 2.1. For Middle English material OED3 broadly follows MED (see Section 2.2), using documentary dates as the primary dates for ordering material, but also paying close attention to composition dates in selecting examples. This creates some areas of difficulty, e.g. with Middle English works which survive only in 16th- or even 17th-century copies, and which thus appear alongside genuinely 16th- or 17th-century uses if cited. In many cases use of such sources can be avoided without any significant loss to the historical picture presented (it should be remembered that typically only a representative selection of Middle English examples are given in OED anyway). Sometimes, use of such sources is unavoidable, e.g. where the composition date would be the earliest date for a word or meaning: in such cases a note is normally supplied drawing attention to the anomaly. Early modern material (and, where relevant, later material) is also dated by date of publication in OED3, hence examples from Shakespeare are now generally dated rather later than the (sometimes speculative) dates of first performance which were normally used in the first edition; significantly, quotations also follow the text of the witness used, not that of a modern critical edition (see further Durkin 2002b on changes in this period). A similar approach is also applied to Older Scots material, with the result that dates are often much later than those found for the same source in DOST. Another innovation is in the ordering of senses within entries. In the first edition this is generally chronological, i.e. following the earliest date of attestation for each sense, but in some instances senses are placed in what seemed to editors their likely order of historical development from one another, even if this ran counter to the actual dates of attestation. This could be termed a “logical” arrangement of material, but it should be noted that the approach remained diachronically motivated: the intention was to reflect what seemed likeliest to have been the historical development of the senses, rather than the synchronic relationships between the various senses of a word. In OED3 material is ordered on a strictly chronological basis, even where this places e.g. a figurative sense earlier than the literal sense from which it appears to have developed. In some cases this may well reflect historical reality, e.g. where in a borrowing
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situation a figurative meaning may have been borrowed earlier than a literal one (e.g. pregnant, recorded earliest in a figurative meaning, which may have been the first to be borrowed from Latin or French). In others it seems likely that the discrepancy is an accident of the historical record (e.g. milksop, which is recorded earlier in figurative use than in the literal sense ‘sop of bread’, and which is recorded earlier still as a surname). On this issue see Considine (1996), Lundbladh (1997), Considine (1997), Allan (2012). The secondary literature on the OED is huge. On the first edition see especially Mugglestone (2000). On the new edition see Simpson (2004), Simpson et al. (2004), and further references given there.
2 Dictionaries of particular varieties or geographical areas Most of the dictionaries discussed in this section are also, in a sense, historical dictionaries, since they deal with a particular variety or geographical area over a particular time span, and at least some of the documentation is in the form of dated quotations arranged chronologically. However, in most of them this is accompanied by (largely synchronic) data from fieldwork, and the resulting dictionaries are thus somewhat hybrid in character. Joseph Wright’s The English Dialect Dictionary (EDD, Wright 1898–1905) was a worthy sister (or at least a close relative) of the first edition of the OED, and continues to be of inestimable value to anyone with an interest in historical dialectology. Its continuing importance is reflected by the considerable time and resources which have recently been devoted to the development of an electronic version at the University of Innsbruck. EDD was a pioneering venture in historical dialect lexicography, and the elegance and familiarity of the result makes it easy to overlook how seamlessly various different types of data are brought together. Most obviously, fieldworker reports are drawn upon alongside the results of reading of print (and some manuscript) sources of the type undertaken by OED. The print sources include many secondary sources (especially dialect glossaries and similar studies), as well as primary sources, drawn from literary publications, journals, newspaper columns, and a wide variety of other types of publication. Modern work on sources of this type has shown significant differences between the features which are salient and hence indicated by spellings in dialect writings by and for native speakers of a particular variety, and those intended for people who are not native speakers of that variety (see Trudgill 2002). EDD presents material drawn from all of these diverse sources side by side, with the result that its listing of form variation at the head of each dictionary entry must be used with care, and with constant reference to the supporting documentation given in these form listings and in the quotation evidence which forms the main body of each entry (on this topic see further Durkin 2010a, Durkin 2010b). For more recent coverage of English regional usage, in addition to (sadly too few) glossaries of individual regional varieties in the 20th century and beyond, EDD is complemented by the record of the speech of mostly elderly speakers of traditional regional dialects in the mid 20th century presented in Upton et al. (1994), based on the material of the Survey of English Dialects. A fundamentally similar framework is followed in The Scottish National Dictionary (SND), which presents similar data for Scotland, over a broadly similar historical
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timeframe. Standard, non-regionally-marked English as used in Scotland is largely outside SND’s remit, although “Scotticisms”, i.e. words or senses found only or chiefly in Scottish English, are included, even when they belong mainly or entirely to the standard language as used in Scotland. In this aspect of its coverage SND thus resembles dictionaries such as A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (DSAE, Penny 1996), The Australian National Dictionary (AND, Ramson 1988), or The Dictionary of New Zealand English (DNZE, Orsman 1997) (see below) rather than EDD. Modern U.S. regional usage is wonderfully covered by A Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE, Cassidy and Hall 1985–2002; see von Schneidemesser, Chapter 118). Like EDD and SND, DARE combines the results of fieldwork with quotations from various types of literary sources (the latter especially for earlier periods). Its fieldwork methodology is informed by modern work on dialectology, especially the techniques involved in the editing of dialect atlases. This is reflected most obviously in the splendid maps which accompany many of the entries, but is also reflected more fundamentally in the nature of the data on which information on regional distributions is based. The dictionary’s founder editor comments thus on its inclusion policy, which is rather narrower than for instance SND’s: “DARE’s treated lexicon excludes standard words, words of artificial formation, cant or secret vocabularies, highly technical usages, and popular slang. The borderlines of some of these are very difficult to determine” (Cassidy 1987: 126). The material excluded by DARE is part of the core target vocabulary for numerous dictionaries of regionally defined varieties of English. For US English there are A Dictionary of American English (Craigie and Hulbert 1938–44) and its successor A Dictionary of Americanisms (Mitford 1951–), which both ultimately emerged from Craigie’s scheme for the period dictionaries (see Aitken 1987: 102). Both are now somewhat elderly. A new dictionary of distinctively U.S. English would be an enormous undertaking, and hard to delimit. Similar considerations have thus far stood in the way of a dictionary of distinctively English (or British) English. Other dictionaries of what is distinctive in the vocabulary of various regionally defined varieties of English have fared much better. Each takes as its remit to cover broadly that component of the vocabulary which is distinctive to the regional variety in question, or which originated in it or is strongly associated with it. South African English, Australian English, and New Zealand English are served admirably by A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (DSAE), The Australian National Dictionary (AND), and The Dictionary of New Zealand English (DNZE). For Canadian English A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (Avis 1967) is available, and a new edition currently in preparation (see http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sdollinger/dchp2.htm, last accessed 29 January 2012; see Dollinger, Chapter 119) is eagerly awaited; Dictionary of Newfoundland English (Story et al. 1982) is also a valuable resource for the distinctive lexis of Newfoundland. The Dictionary of Jamaican English (Cassidy and Le Page 1980) sets an example for one variety of Caribbean English, followed by Dictionary of Bahamian English (Holm 1982); for general coverage of Caribbean English A Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Allsopp 1996) is invaluable, but a more detailed treatment with more of a diachronic perspective would be warmly welcomed. If we turn to gaps in coverage, these certainly exist even for the English of the British Isles. Irish English is particularly poorly represented (although A Concise Ulster Dictionary (Macafee 1986) is invaluable for a very concise treatment of Ulster English).
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Contemporary Indian English awaits a full treatment (in place of which Yule et al. 1903 remains invaluable; compare also Hawkins 1984, among others). The English of for example Singapore or Hong Kong also presents inviting prospects for lexicographical research.
3 Slang dictionaries Few of the dictionaries so far listed exclude slang, but the specialist slang dictionary can provide many useful perspectives. This said, most slang dictionaries with a diachronic perspective show deficiencies in the historical documentation they offer; it thus often is difficult for the reader to tell factually based statements from educated guesswork when assessing suggested dates of first occurrence, and definitions and etymologies. The great exception to this is A Historical Dictionary of American Slang (HDAS, Lighter 1994–2008), offering (for those parts of the alphabet so far published) a historical dictionary treatment of American slang, with dated illustrative quotations, and definitions and etymologies based on these (and also drawing on the secondary literature where appropriate). Slang in British English has been less well served, although there is a great deal of useful documentation in resources such as Partridge (1984), Dalzell and Victor (2006), or Green (2008). For the early modern period Williams (1994) gives very useful documentation on sexual slang. Jonathon Green’s historical dictionary of slang (Green 2010), which has appeared while this chapter has been in press, is a major new contribution to the field. Regional dictionaries such as AND or DNZE can be useful on slang in local varieties. Contemporary slang dictionaries from earlier periods are an invaluable resource, in most cases long since mined for information in OED and elsewhere, but there doubtless remain discoveries to be made: for an overview see Coleman (2004–08).
4 A historical thesaurus In all of the dictionaries listed in this chapter it is possible to trace linguistic history through word forms. Electronic versions of dictionaries also enable users to make searches on meanings, since it is possible to search the wording of definitions. However, this can be a laborious process, and it is always very difficult to be certain that something has not been missed because a difference of wording in a definition was not anticipated. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED, Kay et al. 2009), in preparation for 40 years at the University of Glasgow, now makes it possible to explore all of the documentation of the OED through word meanings, arranged in a thesaurus structure. The OED’s data is supplemented by a comprehensive Old English wordlist, enabling the HTOED to portray the semantic history of English from the earliest times to the present day. Within each semantic category the time period for which each word has been current in a particular meaning can be seen at a glance, enabling readers to analyze the diachronic development of semantic fields and of meaning relations more broadly. Any given item can then be explored more fully in the OED (or beyond in other dictionaries, or in corpora, etc.). Through the HTOED whole new areas of research in English historical lexicology have now become viable. On the history and development of HTOED see Kay et al. (2009).
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5 Dictionaries and other resources for English etymology This brief section will give an overview of the main sources of information on the etymologies of English words, and will note some major trends in recent work. For introductions specifically to English etymology see Bammesberger (1984) and Lockwood (1995); on more general methodological questions see Durkin (2006b, 2009).
5.1 Etymologies of Old English words For reasons of time and resources, DOE does not cover etymologies. Bosworth-Toller (Bosworth and Toller 1882–98) gives only occasional listings of cognates and parallels in other Germanic languages. OED provides much fuller etymologies, but only for those words which fall within its inclusion policy; the same applies to The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (ODEE, Onions et al. 1966). For words which are not included in OED, recourse can be made (by those who read German) to Holthausen (1963), but this is not a full etymological dictionary, and for many words it serves as little more than an index to the relevant sections of Pokorny (1959–69); a very few words are covered in much more detail in Bammesberger (1979). For fuller discussion of Old English words of Germanic descent, it is usually necessary to turn to the etymological dictionaries of other Germanic languages, especially Kluge (2002) and the dictionaries of inherited Germanic strong verbs and primary adjectives edited by Seebold (1970) and Heidermanns (1993) respectively; for inherited nouns Wodtko et al. (2008) is extremely useful.
5.2 Middle English and modern English The fullest accounts of the etymologies of most English words are given in OED, although those not yet revised for the new edition are on average many decades old, and many are badly in need of revision. ODEE is a single-volume etymological dictionary, mostly based on OED’s data, but with some supplementary data and reconsideration of some etymologies, especially those in the earlier parts of the alphabet, which are generally in most need of review in OED. There is some further updating in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Hoad 1986). The period dictionaries (except DOE) all offer etymologies, although these are generally very brief (those in SND tend to be somewhat fuller, and often have useful insights). Among the regional dictionaries DARE is particularly strong in this area. The etymologies in MED are very brief, but do show at least one important innovation: dual etymologies are often considered for words which could, on formal and semantic grounds, be from either Latin or French or both (see Coleman 1995, Durkin 2002a). This lead has been taken up in the new edition of the OED, where the availability of much better documentation on medieval Latin and French (both continental and insular), and more generous editorial resources, make it possible to make detailed comparisons of the semantic and formal histories of words in Latin, French, and English. This work opens up further new perspectives on processes of continuing semantic and/or formal borrowing from one or more donor languages over an extended period of time, as an English word acquires further meanings and/or shows continuing formal influence. In so far as the available documentation allows, a similar methodology can be
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applied in examining borrowings from other languages (see Durkin 2004, 2006a, 2008, 2009). In many cases improved documentation, for English and for donor languages, can help resolve questions about the route of transmission of a borrowed word; e.g. marmalade can be shown probably to be an early, 14th-century, borrowing directly from Portuguese, rather than via French as previously thought (see Durkin 1999). Outside the dictionaries, but interconnecting with them, work on language contact has brought many new theoretical perspectives to the study of borrowing in English in recent decades. Thomason and Kaufman (1988) and Townend (2002) both consider various situations in which the introduction of words into English may have resulted from transfer when speakers switched from another language to English (i.e. a language shift situation), rather than showing borrowing by speakers of English from another language (i.e. a language maintenance situation); this theoretical perspective has shown most potential when applied to the introduction of words from Norse during the Middle English period. In work which overlaps to some extent, Dance (2003) offers a very valuable detailed consideration of intralinguistic spread of borrowed vocabulary. Such processes are generally not reflected well by even the most detailed historical dictionaries, and accommodating such perspectives is likely to be one of the future challenges for English etymology. Work, of course, also continues on English words of unknown or problematic etymology. A detailed investigation of past suggestions combined with often very daring new hypotheses (frequently involving sound symbolism) is shown by the etymologies showcased in Liberman (2008). There is a good deal of very useful bibliographical material in Liberman (2010). A search for previously unconsidered sources for very early Old English borrowings is shown by the work of Theo Vennemann (e.g. 2002).
6 References Adams, Michael. 2002. Phantom Dictionaries: The Middle English Dictionary before Kurath. Dictionaries 23: 95–114. Aitken, Adam Jack. 1987. The Period Dictionaries. In: Robert Burchfield (ed.), Studies in Lexicography, 94–116. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Allan, Kathryn. 2012. Using OED data as evidence. In: Kathryn Allan and Justyna Robinson (eds.), Current Methods in Historical Semantics, 11–39. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Allsopp, Richard (ed.) and Jeanette Allsopp (contributor) 1996. A Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Avis, Walter S (ed.). 1967. A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Toronto: W. J. Gage. Bailey, Richard W. 1985. Charles C. Fries and the Early Modern English Dictionary. In: Peter H. and Nancy M. Fries (eds.), Towards an Understanding of Language: Charles C. Fries in Perspective, 171–204. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bammesberger, Alfred. 1979. Beitra¨ge zu einem etymologischen Wo¨rterbuch des Altenglischen. Heidelberg: Winter. Bammesberger, Alfred. 1984. English Etymology. Heidelberg: Winter. Blake, Norman F. 2002. On the Completion of the Middle English Dictionary. Dictionaries 23: 48–75. Bosworth, Joseph and Thomas N. Toller. 1882–98. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; Supplement, ed. T. Northcote Toller, 1921; Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda, ed. Alistair Campbell, 1972. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Brewer, Charlotte. 2007. Reporting eighteenth-century vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary. In: John Considine and Giovanni Iammartino (eds.), Words and Dictionaries from the British Isles in Historical Perspective, 109–135. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, and Antonette diPaolo Healey (eds.). 1986–. The Dictionary of Old English. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, http://www.doe. utoronto.ca/ (last accessed 24 November 2010). Cassidy, Frederic G. and Robert B. Le Page. 1980. The Dictionary of Jamaican English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cassidy, Frederic G. and Joan Houston Hall. 1985–2002. A Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Cassidy, Frederic G. 1987. The Dictionary of American Regional English as a resource for language study. In: Robert Burchfield (ed.), Studies in Lexicography 1987, 117–135. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clark Hall, John R. 1960. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th edn., with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Coleman, Julie. 1995. The chronology of French and Latin loan words in English. Transactions of the Philological Society 93: 95–124. Coleman, Julie. 2004–08. A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Considine, John. 1996. The Meanings, deduced logically from the Etymology. In: Martin Gellerstam, Jerker Ja¨rberg, Sven-Go¨ran Malmgren, Kerstin Nore´n, Lena Rogstro¨m and Catarina Ro¨jder Papmehl (eds.), Euralex ’96: proceedings I–II: papers submitted to the seventh EURALEX International Congress on Lexicography in Go¨teborg, Sweden I., 1996. 365–371. Go¨teborg: Go¨teborg University. Considine, John. 1997. Etymology and the Oxford English Dictionary: a response. International Journal of Lexicography 10: 234–236. Cowie, Anthony P. 2008. The Oxford History of English Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craigie, William A. and James R. Hulbert (eds.). 1938–44. A Dictionary of American English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craigie, William A., Adam Jack Aitken, James A. C. Stevenson, and Marace Dareau (eds.). 1931–2002. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/ (last accessed 24 November 2010). Dalzell, Tom and Terry Victor. 2006. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Abingdon: Routledge. Dance, Richard. 2003. Words Derived from Old Norse in Early Middle English: Studies in the Vocabulary of the South-West Midland texts. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Dareau, Marace. 2002. DOST: Its history and completion. Dictionaries 23: 208–231. Durkin, Philip. 1999. Root and branch: revising the etymological component of the OED. Transactions of the Philological Society 97: 1–49. Durkin, Philip. 2002a. “Mixed” etymologies of Middle English items in OED3: Some questions of methodology and policy. Dictionaries 23: 142–155. Durkin, Philip. 2002b. Changing documentation in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: sixteenth-century vocabulary as a test case. In: Teresa Fanego, Bele´n Me´ndez-Naya, and Elena Seoane (eds.), Sounds, Words, Texts and Change, 65–81. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Durkin, Philip. 2004. Loanword etymologies in the third edition of the OED: Some questions of classification. In: Christian Kay, Carole Hough, and Irene´ Wotherspoon (eds.), New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Vol. II: Lexis and Transmission, 79–90. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Durkin, Philip. 2006a. Loanword etymologies in the third edition of the OED: The benefits of a consistent methodology for the scholarly user. In: Nikolaus Ritt, Herbert Schendl, Christiane Dalton-Puffer, and Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), Medieval English and its Heritage, 61–75. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Durkin, Philip. 2006b. Etymology. In: Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn., 260–267. Oxford: Elsevier. Durkin, Philip. 2008. Latin loanwords of the early modern period: How often did French act as an intermediary? In: Richard Dury, Maurizio Gotti, and Marina Dossena (eds.), Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006, 185–202. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Durkin, Philip. 2009. The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Durkin, Philip. 2010a. Assessing non-standard writing in lexicography. In: Raymond Hickey (ed.), Varieties in Writing: the Written Word as Linguistic Evidence, 43–60. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Durkin, Philip. 2010b. The English Dialect Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary: A continuing relationship between two dictionaries. In: Manfred Markus, Clive Upton, and Reinhard Heuberger (eds.), Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and Beyond. Proceedings of the 15th ICEHL in Munich, August 2008, 199–216. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Gage Cengage Learning. 2009. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). Gale Digital Collections. http://mlr.com/DigitalCollections/products/ecco/ Grant, William and David D. Murison (eds.). 1931–76. The Scottish National Dictionary: designed partly on regional lines and partly on historical principles, and containing all the Scottish words known to be in use or to have been in use since c. 1700; Supplement 2005. Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association. Available online as part of Dictionary of the Scots Language: http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/ (last accessed 24 November 2010). Green, Jonathon. 2008. Chambers Slang Dictionary. London: Chambers Harrap. Green, Jonathon. 2010. Green’s Dictionary of Slang. Edinburgh: Chambers. Hawkins, R. E. 1984. Common Indian Words in English. Delhi/New York: Oxford University Press. Heidermanns, Frank. 1993. Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch der Germanischen Prima¨radjektive. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hoad, Terry F. (ed.). 1986. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holm, John A. (ed.). 1982. Dictionary of Bahamian English. Cold Spring, New York: Lexik House. Holthausen, Ferdinand. 1963. Altenglisches Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch, 2nd edn. Heidelberg: Winter. Kay, Christian, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, and Irene´ Wotherspoon (eds.). 2009. Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kay, Christian, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, and Irene´ Wotherspoon. 2009. Unlocking the OED: The story of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED. In: Kay et al. (eds.), Vol. I., xiii–xx. Kluge, Friedrich. 2002. Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch der Deutschen Sprache. 24th edn., ed. by Elmar Seebold. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kretzschmar, William A. Jr. 2002. Following Kurath: an appreciation. Dictionaries 23: 115–125. Kurath, Hans, Sherman Kuhn, and Robert Lewis (eds.). 1952–2001. The Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (last accessed 24 November 2010). Liberman, Anatoly. 2008. An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Liberman, Anatoly. 2010. A Bibliography of English Etymology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lighter, Jonathan E. (ed.). 1994–2008. A Historical Dictionary of American Slang, 1994–97 (Vol. II H-O 1997) Vols. I and II first published as: Historical Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House. (From Vol. III New York: Oxford University Press).
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Lockwood, William B. 1995. An Informal Introduction to English Etymology. London: Minerva Press. Lundbladh, Carl-Erik. 1997. Etymology and the historical principles of the OED. International Journal of Lexicography 10: 231–233. Macafee, Caroline A. (ed.). 1986. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McIntosh, Angus, Michael Samuels and Michael Benskin, with the assistance of Margaret Laing and Keith Williamson. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Mitford, Mathews M. (ed.). 1951–. A Dictionary of Americanisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mugglestone, Lynda (ed.). 2000. Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murray, James A. H., Henry Bradley, Sir William A. Craigie, and Charles T. Onions. 1884–1928. The Oxford English Dictionary. Supplement and Bibliography, 1933. Supplement, 1972–86 ed. Robert W. Burchfield. 2nd edn., 1989 ed. John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner. Additions Series, 1993–97 ed. John A. Simpson, Edmund S. C. Weiner, and Michael Proffitt. 3rd edn. (in progress) OED Online, 2000– ed. John A. Simpson, www.oed.com (last accessed 24 November 2010). Onions, Charles T, with the assistance of G. W. S. Friedrichsen and Robert W. Burchfield (eds.). 1966. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orsman, Harry (ed.). 1997. The Dictionary of New Zealand English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Partridge, Eric. 1984. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 8th edn., ed. by Paul Beale. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Penny, Silva, (ed.) 1996. A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pokorny, Julius. 1959–69. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch. Bern: Franke. Ritt, Nikolaus, Herbert Schender Christiane Dalton-Puffer, and Dieter Kastovsky (eds.). 2006. Medieval English and its Heritage. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Seebold, Elmar. 1970. Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch der germanischen Starken Verben. The Hague: Mouton. Ramson, William S. (ed.). 1988. The Australian National Dictionary: a Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simpson, John. 2004. The OED and collaborative research into the history of English. Anglia 122: 185–208. Simpson, John, Edmund Weiner, and Philip Durkin. 2004. The Oxford English Dictionary Today. Transactions of the Philological Society 102: 335–374. Story, George M., William J. Kirwin, and John D. A. Widdowson. 1982. Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Thomason, Sarah G. and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Townend, Matthew. 2002. Language and history in Viking age England: linguistic relations between speakers of Old Norse and Old English. Turnhout: Brepols. Trudgill, Peter. 2002. Dedialectalisation and Norfolk dialect orthography. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers, and Pa¨ivi Pahta (eds.), Writing in Nonstandard English, 323–329. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Upton, Clive, William A. Kretzschmar Jr., and Rafal Konopka. 2001. The Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Upton, Clive, David Parry, and John D. A. Widdowson. 1994. Survey of English Dialects: The Dictionary and Grammar. London: Routledge. Vennemann, Theo. 2002. Key issues in English etymology. In: Teresa Fanego, Belen Me´ndez-Naya, and Elena Seoane (eds.), Sounds, Words, Texts and Change. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000, 227–252. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Williams, Gordon. 1994. A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature. London: Athlone Press. Wodtko, Dagmar S., Britta Irslinger, and Carolin Schneider. 2008. Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon. Heidelberg: Winter. Wright, Joseph A. (ed.). 1898–1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. London: Henry Frowde (at the expense of Joseph Wright); subsequently: Oxford: Oxford University Press. Electronic version in preparation at University of Innsbruck: http://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/projects/speed/ (last accessed 24 November 2010). Yule, Henry, Arthur C. Burnell, and William Crooke. 1903. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, new edn., ed. by William Crooke. London: Murray.
Philip Durkin, Oxford (UK)
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Introduction Linguistics and philology The textbook Common objectives From HEL to HOTEL Unorthodoxies Summary References
Abstract The typical university survey course on the history of English problematically combines linguistics and history. Conceiving such a course is a challenge for many teachers because combining the two subjects is not easy, partly due to recent relations between philology and linguistics. While choosing a textbook is important to overcoming this impasse, the key to a successful course is determining the appropriate objectives, both fundamentals and otherwise essential aspects of the subject, both historical and linguistic. While students often anticipate the History of English (HEL) as a punishing course, it is possible to make History of the English Language (HOTEL) hospitable, instead. Various instructors cited do so by demonstrating the relevance of the material, engaging students as fully as possible, and capitalizing on the familiarity of certain aspects of language, especially lexis. Surveys are not the only courses appropriate to the subject, and teachers should consider unorthodox approaches and unorthodox sites within the curriculum.
1 Introduction The typical university survey course on the history of English language (HEL) combines linguistics and something called “history”, though what “history” means in this case is not obvious. The course is usually part of the English curriculum, usually fits into a single academic term, and usually covers a millennium or more of language Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1163–1178
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history. For several centuries, the language and the history were helpfully restricted to England and southern Scotland (see Watts, Chapter 80); subsequently, though, they spread over the globe in abundant variety. The course depends on literary and other texts as sources of linguistic data, especially in pre-Modern periods, but the degree to which students encounter English in literary contexts is variable. Sometimes the course is taught by a credentialed linguist who teaches in an English department; sometimes it is taught by a literary scholar, often one who studies Old and Middle English literature and culture, but who may have minimal philological training or interest; occasionally it is taught by someone we might call a philologist, though explicitly philological training in English doctoral programs has been on the wane for decades, especially in the United States. Usually, too, a history of English course focuses on language change, though “change” is not the only historical category potentially valuable in language study. The change model focuses attention on what is often called the “inner history” of English. Celia Millward, in A Biography of the English Language, a leading textbook conceived on the change model, describes inner history as “the changes that occur within the language itself, changes that cannot be attributed to external forces”, whereas the “outer history is the events that have happened to speakers of the language leading to changes in the language” (Millward 1989: 10). This is a very narrow sense of language history, albeit a defensible one. Anyway, how can a course probably taught by a linguist untrained in the histories of Anglophone peoples plausibly account for the history of a language like English, given its age and its many varieties, unless it takes a similarly narrow approach? In fact, there are significant areas of agreement among teachers of the history of English about what to teach in a survey and how to teach it; there are, of course, also significant areas of disagreement about both linguistic and historical content of such a course. This chapter begins with the origins of disagreement, and proceeds to illustrate both agreement and disagreement – first in the array of textbooks available to support the course, subsequently in the practice of individual professors as they identify objectives and subjects essential to the course, as well as an effective pedagogical rhetoric for a subject that unnerves many students – and particularize them in course design and student course work. Surveys are not the only curricular means to teach the history of English, however, and, towards the end of the chapter, I consider ways in which to locate the subject at various curricular sites, representing various ways of approaching it linguistically, historically, and textually. The history of English is a naturally interdisciplinary subject, one in which many elements of a liberal education converge – if professors and students (and administrators) keep that in mind, it can be the most significant intellectual experience of an undergraduate’s career.
2 Linguistics and philology Teaching the history of English language hasn’t been problematic for long, because teaching it at all is a relatively new enterprise. Francis A. March (1825–1911) was the first in America or Europe to occupy a professorship dedicated to English Language and Comparative Philology (from 1855, at Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania); his Method of the Philological Study of the English Language (March 1865) was the first textbook of the subject. March reported, in an address to the Modern Language Association, “In 1875 the United States Commissioner of Education sent out a circular to
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our colleges inquiring about their study of Anglo-Saxon. Twenty-three colleges then claimed to be reading some of it” (March 1892: xx), and concluded that “AngloSaxon study, delightful and important in itself to specialists, seems also to be necessary for a solid and learned support to the study of Modern English in college” (March 1892: xxi), thus anticipating survey courses designed to demonstrate the connection by charting the history of the language in between. English, which had been overlooked as obvious before, could now be taught by the principles of classical philology: “The early professors had no recondite learning applicable to English”, March said, “and did not know what to do with classes in it. They can now make English as hard as Greek” (March 1892: xxi). By the mid-20th century, many universities and colleges offered courses on the history of English, some of them focused on “periods” of the language (Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Modern English), others spanning the chronological whole. The legitimacy of such courses was questioned, however, during the advent of American structural linguistics. The philological tradition was on the verge of becoming outmoded, even though nearly every intellectual impulse in it was absorbed into what we call linguistics today (see Joseph 2002: 46–47). But Leonard Bloomfield intruded dissonance into what had been an academic harmony, when he put “normal” speech ahead of textual speech, and warned students against the wasted effort of a philological “detour” (Bloomfield 1984 [1933]: 22). In a brilliant rhetorical maneuver, Bloomfield addressed the competition he was constructing between modes of language research – in a footnote: “The term philology, in British and in older American usage, is applied not only to the study of culture (especially through literary documents), but also to linguistics. It is important to distinguish between philology […] and linguistics […], since the two studies have little in common” (Bloomfield 1984 [1933]: 512). Bloomfield spoke of a “detour”, but he really meant “wrong turn”. And what started out as a disagreement about methods and aims quickly gathered ideological force. Since Saussure, linguistics has not been a primarily historical discipline, so “the history of English” is, from a linguistic point of view, problematic, and teaching it unfamiliar territory for the average linguist. Yet Werner Hamacher (2010: 996) suggests in his apothegmatic From “95 Theses on Philology”, “The inner law of language is history. Philology is the guardian of this law and of this one alone”. How can both Saussure and Hamacher be right? Today, we generally consider language to be natural, partly a matter of the brain, and partly a matter of ordered social activity, the sort on which we collect data which we then analyze in the social sciences (see Joseph 2002: 46). But “there is nothing natural about a sense of history” (Frank 1997: 500). How does a course on the history of English reconcile these conceptual tensions in practice, and is that practice historical or linguistic, or in some measure both, or more? At least some of the practice must be historical, and not just an account of English’s internal history, but a reconciliation of linguistic features, the language in which they figure, and other historical phenomena. Even if it is somewhat uncomfortable for them, linguists teaching the history of English must pay some attention to philology. Thus, as Cecily Clark argued, The history of language is part of ‘history’ in the wider sense, and can therefore be tapped for evidence of past socio-cultural patterns. The resultant discipline – already wellestablished – might be called ‘Applied Historical Socio-Linguistics’ or, […] more
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Even in a course taught by someone who identifies as a linguist, focused primarily on linguistic phenomena, students should engage some historical questions by examining artifacts of language in their context. Of course, philology and linguistics are not mutually exclusive. Donka Minkova recently mounted “a renewed defense of the inseparability of philology and linguistics” (Minkova 2004: 7), between which “the breach was noticed early, and many outstanding scholars on both sides of the Atlantic set out to ‘heal’ it […] and argued against the absurdity of philology without theory or theory without data” (Minkova 2004: 9). As Edgar Sturtevant and Roland Kent (1928: 9) pointed out, just about when the breach opened, “In fact, the only justification for a separation between linguistics and philology is the necessity for a division of labor – non omnia possumus omnes”. The terms of this division are at issue whether one ponders them from a meta-pedagogical apex or operates them on the ground, in the classroom: how does one divide the labor in a course on the history of English? Clark, though, has more than data for linguistics or theory for philology in mind when she talks about philology as “linguistic archaeology”; she has in mind an independently justified practice that in the synthesis of linguistics and history and more serves broader purposes of liberal education. She wrote: If one sees life as a continuum, synchronically as well as diachronically, as a seamless fabric in which language is woven together with politics, religion, economic developments and socio-cultural relationships, then all linguistic manifestations are – if rightly understood – capable of illuminating these other spheres, in the same measure as language is enriched, impoverished, reshaped by the contexts in which it is used. (Clark 1990: 65)
Research on the history of English and courses that introduce students to that research are the only sites in which Clark’s insight can be realized. To ignore that is to miss an intellectual opportunity of some significance. As Clark (1990: 65) suggests, “In order to reveal these cross-illuminations, all that is needed is appropriate technique”. Our purpose here is to consider that technique, from a pedagogical vantage.
3 The textbook Since nearly all who teach the history of English will need support in areas of the subject where they are less well prepared, and since no textbook is likely to resolve disciplinary tensions or to cover all relevant linguistics as well as all relevant history (it is difficult to imagine the textbook that would satisfy Clark), the choice of a textbook is vexed but, most teachers of the subject would agree, essential. “The issue is the extent to which a course in the history of the English language can also incorporate an introduction to linguistics” (Cable 2007: 18), and the extent to which it does depends in part on a very practical matter, the choice of a text. Were one to choose Manfred Go¨rlach’s (1997) The Linguistic History of English, for instance, one would either teach a wholly linguistic course or supplement the book
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considerably. In Go¨rlach’s book, “there is hardly any consideration of the external (social, political, cultural) background”, for though, “with due caution”, it can “be assumed to have caused, or influenced linguistic change […], the fusion of the two aspects in many handbooks has tended to lead to a certain degree of unexplained selectiveness of the data, fuzziness of terms and methods, or even chattiness of style” (Go¨rlach 1997: xvi). No one will accuse Go¨rlach of chattiness, but his clinical approach may not animate the subject for many students. Linguistics is not a naturally narrative discipline, but history is, and there may be a pedagogical advantage to use of a less linguistically oriented, more historically expansive text, such as Charles Barber’s The English Language: A Historical Introduction recently revised by Joan C. Beal and Philip A. Shaw, because “first-year undergraduates”, for instance, “need and appreciate a narrative which ‘tells a story’ simply and clearly without ‘dumbing down’ or glossing over difficulties” (Barber et al. 2009: ix). The course that balances linguistics and history would require that students read both books. Some of the best available textbooks attempt such a balance. The classic (and generally admired) attempt is Millward’s (1989), whose commonly accepted distinction between a language’s outer and inner histories informs many textbooks besides hers, notably Brinton and Arnovick’s (2006) and van Gelderen’s (2006). Millward’s longest account of external history, however, is no more than five pages long, and there is inevitably then neither sufficient historical material to please the philologist, nor any very continual integration of linguistic and historical events. The outer history of English may have a profound effect on the inner, but many textbook treatments of their relationship are neither profound nor sustained (cf. Blockley, Chapter 75). If social, political, cultural, or literary histories are not among a teacher’s strengths, the available textbooks will not fill those gaps for either instructor or students. Haruko Momma and Michael Matto believe that today, the usefulness of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ as defining conceptions within HEL may have run its course. Above we referred to a ‘feedback loop’ running between language and its ‘environment’; these terms seem salient to us because they acknowledge that a language makes up part of the environment it inhabits. Language is recognized simultaneously as an agent of history and as a product. (Momma and Matto 2008: 8)
Though some textbooks (notably Smith 1996; Leith 1997; Crystal 2004; and Mugglestone 2006) resist the binary construction of inner and outer, it is not clear that there is a trend away from it, partly because those books that resist it (and often conventional periodization, as well) represent different paradigms altogether. How does one choose a text, then? As Thomas Cable, living co-author with the late Albert C. Baugh of America’s leading textbook, A History of the English Language (5th edition 2001), remembers, The cliche´ had it that the Baugh text was strong on the ‘external’ history but weak on the ‘internal’ history. […] The problem for me was that Baugh’s text presented much more about the external history than I had ever learned, leaving me little opportunity to expand on the text in lecture and discussion. On matters that I did know something about and that my graduate education had prepared me to teach – changes in the phonological system between Old and Middle English, for example – the text did not seem to invite elaboration and complication of its succinct story. (Cable 2007: 17)
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Cable seems to argue for teaching to one’s strengths: if you are a linguist, choose a linguistically oriented book of which you can make the most; if you are a philologist, rely on a text focused on external history, and situate language history within larger histories. Alternatively, one might choose a textbook that does best what one does not do – perhaps text and teacher should complement each other. My purpose here is not to assess the available textbooks; that is the subject of another chapter in this volume (see Blockley, Chapter 75). But choosing a textbook is a significant pedagogical consideration: it defines the sort of course an instructor intends to teach. There is a good argument for teaching what one knows best exceptionally well, and so promoting student enthusiasm for the subject. Courses that balance historical and linguistic materials and methods, however, can be very dynamic, with both teacher and students relying on the textbook when they can, but supplementing it continuously from what they know of various disciplines and enacting the study of English language in that exchange.
4 Common objectives There is a very high level of agreement among those who teach the history of English about the fundamental principles any student receiving credit for a course should take away from it. There is considerably less agreement on which topics are essential to conveying those principles, as well as the fullest possible range of historical linguistic knowledge about English.
4.1 Fundamentals In the broadest terms, nearly all courses on the history of English advance three basic linguistic concepts. Glenn Davis (2007: 27–34), in “Introducing HEL: Three Linguistic Concepts for the First Day of Class”, articulates the concepts as follows: (1) “Languages are Systematic and Rule-Governed”; (2) “Spoken Languages are Constantly Changing”; and (3) “The Primary Goal of Language is Communication”. It may not be necessary to introduce all three concepts on the first day of class, and not all teachers will agree that the concepts are equally important to the course, yet they are all addressed, sometimes only indirectly, in nearly every textbook and every course syllabus I have read. Primary among the three concepts is that about “change”, and it is always introduced early in a course that relies on a textbook, if the course follows the book’s presentation of the subject. As already noted, Millward (more or less) begins with change and invests a great deal in setting the terms on which we should understand it (Millward 1989: 5–13), but it comes up quite early in Brinton and Arnovick (2006: 9–18 and 20–22), van Gelderen (2006: 7–10), and Go¨rlach (1997: 9–24). Emphasis on “change” is natural to a conventional linguistically-oriented course, which measures it in terms of the “rules” and “system” identified in Concept (1). If one mounted a critique (within linguistics) of the paradigm represented by Concept (1), thus also a critique of Concept (2), notions of “system”, “change”, and “history” would be problematic. Imagining such an unconventional approach is not idle speculation; it is entailed, for instance by William A. Kretzschmar’s The Linguistics of Speech (2009, esp. 263–271). An advanced course might interrogate assumptions
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about language change after considering Kretzschmar’s argument, as it might historicize the history of English with Giancarlo (2001) as a case study. But textbooks, by their nature, march to the conventional wisdom – orthodoxy sells, and textbooks are made by textbook publishers with profit in mind. Even more historically-minded textbooks discuss language change in conventionally linguistic terms early in the courses they outline (see Baugh and Cable 2001: 16–17; Barber et al. 2009: 32–48). After the Studies in the History of the English Language (SHEL)-3 conference, participants in the conference’s pedagogy workshop produced a collection of Teaching Materials: The History of the English Language (hereafter TM) (Participants in the HEL Pedagogy Workshop at SHEL-3 2004). Some syllabi and assignments in TM focus on change, while others assume its central role without treating it explicitly. For instance, Anne Curzan (University of Michigan) contributes a syllabus which focuses on “Language Change and Attitudes toward Language Change” in the second meeting, supplementing Millward with chapters from Jean Aitchison’s (2001) Language Change: Progress or Decay? Jeannette M. Denton (Baylor University) describes a final course project that “involves documentation of how a line or two of Old English text changes in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexis over time through to the present day”. (Unfortunately, TM is unpaginated, so no page numbers are provided here.) In a homework assignment, Betty S. Phillips (Indiana State University) asks students to investigate the relationship of “word-formation & semantic change”. In “A Random Introduction to the Uses of Dictionaries: Seeing what we can learn from a romp in the reference room”, Susanmarie Harrington (currently of the University of Vermont) asks that students investigate issues raised by chronologically various versions of the Lord’s Prayer: she doesn’t use the word change in the assignment, but questions like “What is the Old English source for Modern English loaf?” and “In general, does the ME appear to be more similar to the OE or the later version?” implicitly identify change as the exercise’s central motif. As suggested earlier, conventional notions of language change assume some version of Davis’s Concept (1): they depend on systems and rules. Nevertheless, this is a less obvious emphasis of textbooks and course materials. When it is an explicit, organizing proposition, Concept (1) appropriately appears before Concept (2), for instance in Millward (1989: 1), who observes that “All Languages Are Systematic”, Brinton and Arnovick (2006: 4), and Barber et al. (2009: 12–14). Baugh and Cable, the most philological of texts, begins with a section revealingly titled “The History of English Language a Cultural Subject” (Baugh and Cable 2001: 1–2). Still, rules are a subject throughout the book, from discussion of Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws to discussion of dialectically salient features of contemporary American English. In TM, engagement with system and rules is also often implicit, as when Curzan asks within an exercise that introduces corpora, “How many times does the form digged ‘dug’ appear in the King James [Bible]?”, which is really an invitation to consider historical change of the distribution of strong and weak verbs in English. Sometimes, though, recourse to rules is explicit, as when Denton, in the final project mentioned earlier requires that students “Apply the phonological changes to each word [in the passage of Old English selected] using the IPA to represent both the stage to which the rules apply and the output of those changes”. Davis’s Concept (3), “The Primary Goal of Language is Communication” is much less frequently an explicit subject of textbooks and course materials. It is the subject
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of van Gelderen’s (2006: 1) opening sentence, and Millward (1989: 4) addresses it cursorily under the heading “All Languages are Conventional and Arbitrary”. Still, it operates in almost all courses because textbooks (not Go¨rlach, though) and supplementary materials usually turn to texts and textual production as an external motive for linguistic change, and so ground language in communicative behavior. When teachers focus student attention on the Lord’s Prayer, as they do more than once in TM, they are joining linguistic system and language change to social contexts in which communication is a central (but not always the only) goal – a more careful formulation of the concept might reconcile “reflection”, “expression”, and “communication”. This underserved concept, however, is potentially the most important in teaching the history of English – it underpins Clark’s “linguistic archaeology”, and makes the history of English a hub of multidisciplinary inquiry rather than a narrowly specialized course in historical linguistics. To reiterate: no textbook, indeed, no course, can encompass all of the history or all of the linguistics relevant to English. For this reason, the manner in which a teacher supplements a text with “linguistic archaeology” in order to serve Davis’s Concept (3), the degree to which students are invited to go on a dig among the human social behavior packed into “communication”, is an important measure of any course’s success. Uncovering historical artifacts and reconstructing the culture to which linguistic structure and change correspond are intellectual adventures for teacher and students alike.
4.2 Essentials While those teaching the history of English language tend to agree on fundamentals, they do not always agree on what is otherwise “essential”. The vastness of the data and the brevity of the academic term require that teachers choose examples that capture, one might say, more than their fair share of linguistics and history but are thus unusually helpful in focusing the course, as well as providing students with memorable access to the subject – one would satisfy the demands of subject and students at the same time, which is, after all, the pedagogical ideal. Anyone teaching a course on the history of English, and everyone committed to the subject, should ask, as Tara Williams has recently, “What does it mean to know English as a language?” (Williams 2010: 165). The assignments, activities, exercises, and resources in TM suggest (usually obliquely) some of what those teaching the history of English consider important and instructionally useful. For instance, Robert Fulk (Indiana University) has students compare various forms and uses of the Old English subjunctive to the narrower repertoire of Modern English use, so that they can examine the effect of the shift from synthetic to analytic structure on a grammatical category like MOOD, for instance, in the decoupling of mood and inflection. Phillips expects students to understand the operations of Grimm’s Law, as an example of systematic historical sound change that connects Modern English to its Old English, Germanic, and Proto-Indo-European roots. Curzan asks students to conduct a “Historical Investigation of a Grammatical Rule or Point of Usage”, partly to expose the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive rules, partly to historicize usage, and thus to open it to linguistically and historically informed criticism. In another exercise, Curzan asks questions like “What happened during Middle English to make the spelling of these words diverge from the phonology? lamb,
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comb; sword, two (but swim, swallow); which, what” and “How did the verb go acquire the past tense went?” From questions like these, we can infer that Curzan thinks of changes in relations among inflected and uninflected forms, the rise of consistent spelling in a rising standard variety of English, processes like conversion (functional shifting) and suppletion, as something like essential to an undergraduate grasp of the history of English. Curzan’s approach is oblique because students aren’t given answers but are expected to construct them from evidence they’ve learned to muster. But it also very effectively integrates linguistic and historical issues – or more precisely, the best student answers do so. Mary Blockley (University of Texas at Austin) argues that a specific “minimal” set of issues is ‘essential’ not so much in representing core concepts of linguistics as a science, but rather in the paramedic sense of indispensible – whether or not these perceived units and processes turn out to be central to the history of English, you cannot describe the set of language changes that encompass English without knowledge of and reference to them. (Blockley 2008: 18)
Her ten essential topics are palatalization, allophones, regularized do, stress shift, grammaticalization, phonemic length, complementation, diphthongization, the putative ungrammaticality of you was, and raising and fronting. As Blockley (2008: 23) remarks, they “surface in any phase of description that goes above the level of the lexical word or plunges below the surface of standardized spelling’s imperfect record of sound”. These topics enable any number of reinforcing lectures, discussions, and assignments to plumb them; they are linguistic, of course, but even Blockley’s brief descriptions of them draw on textual and cultural history. Blockley generously admits that some other set of ten topics might do as well as hers, but the topics are less important than the pedagogical example Blockley sets in attempting to catch the most history and linguistics possible in the fewest topics. A short list of essentials won’t keep Blockley or any other teacher from engaging a long list of subjects, but serious teachers of the history of English should attempt to derive a similar short list, as a heuristic – as a model, Blockley’s article is required reading. If one’s imagination fails, one can always fall back on Blockley’s list.
5 From HEL to HOTEL The difference between HEL and HOTEL is the difference between punishment and hospitality. Unless one believes that students learn best when they think their homework is torture, one should promote the best learning attitude by using the latter acronym, the modern rather than the medieval one, and conceiving the course to justify it. According to those who teach it, the history of English has a bad reputation. K. Aaron Smith (2007: 71) (Illinois State University) believes that students “often walk away simply with the idea that Old English […] is hard and scary”, and, of course, Old English sets the tone for a chronologically organized course. Felicia Jean Steele (The College of New Jersey) revised her approach to the course because her students felt an unusually high “level of anxiety” and were “discomfited by the unfamiliar material” (Steele
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2007: 35–36). Jo Tyler (2005: 465) (University of Mary Washington) “is confronted each semester with these ‘apprehensive and resentful’ students”. Jeremy Smith (1996: x) (University of Glasgow) notes that “the subject retains a reputation for difficulty and dryness which has tended to deter students from taking it up”. One suspects that teachers are at fault, because, as March (1982: xxi) put it, “they can now make English as hard as Greek”. What strategies and practices can ameliorate students’ experience, so that, even if the history of English is hard, students understand its value and perhaps even enjoy it?
5.1 Relevance Many teachers of the history of English strive to make the subject relevant to the professional lives of students who take the course so “make[s] explicit connections between linguistic analysis and issues of concern to English majors and language arts teachers” (Tyler 2005: 465). The work for her course includes reflective essays and a “teaching portfolio” meant to project learning from the course into future teaching situations. There are pitfalls to teaching in this mode: even if one gauges students’ future needs correctly, it is unlikely that the school curriculum is as adventurous or challenging as higher education is supposed to be, so students may be shortchanged. This caveat considered, Tyler supplements her centrally linguistic materials with Leith (1997) and Geoffrey Hughes’s (2000) A History of English Words, and she also deals lightly with stylistics in a unit on literary devices, so averts the potential danger. Relevance, however, need not be understood as professional utility. Curzan’s TM syllabus, for instance, asserts Throughout the course, we will work to establish the connections between the historical events and features that we are studying and the state/status of Modern English […] On most days, we will also begin the class with questions about Modern English language and literature that we will be able to answer by the end of class through examining the day’s material.
Students know their own language; they want to know more about it. The history of English perhaps matters most to students when it helps to explain the way we talk now or our attitudes about that talk.
5.2 Engagement Students learn most when they do the work, and one way of reassuring them of the value of HOTEL is to keep them elbow deep in the language. Throughout TM, teachers send students into the library, into corpora, out into the community in order to investigate the language. Sometimes they answer questions posed by instructors; sometimes they are encouraged to come up with their own questions. Of course, such exercises introduce students to language resources, and to some protocols of actual research, but, as opposed to reading a textbook, they are effective because they focus student attention and reward that attention with knowledge about English, all the while assuring students that they have the ability to ask and answer serious questions about the
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language and its history. While the subject requires a certain amount of rote learning (terminology for processes, which vowels are low or back, etc.), the anxiety some students feel is alleviated when what they’ve learned the hard way is reinforced in the course of figuring something out.
5.3 Familiarity: the argument for words Students are familiar with words and relatively comfortable with them – more comfortable than they are with phonology, for instance. While we should not ignore other linguistic levels in HOTEL, words can illustrate a lot of what we hope students will learn, including, for instance, most of the processes and features among Blockley’s essentials. Lexis is also the least systematic of linguistic categories, the most culturally bound, and so the easiest to talk about historically. As C. S. Lewis (1960) demonstrated in Studies in Words, one can uncover a great deal about a culture by examining the etymologies and semantic development of just a few words exhaustively, though to constitute an effective history the words must be chosen carefully. Generally, HOTEL has not been designed to imitate Lewis’s approach, but many iterations of the course emphasize words. Eugene Green (Boston University) provides a syllabus in TM that addresses meaning in language broadly, but subjects listed for most weeks are focused on words: “Putting words together and English in historical contexts”, “Words in context and American conversational tendencies”, “Word meanings and concepts and creativity”, “Synonymy and word choice in dialects”, etc. In most cases, the word focus is less insistent, but Curzan requires that students write a word history, Phillips has them explore historical word-formation and semantic change, and, in the assignment described earlier, Denton’s students are required to take every word of their short Old English text through every stage of development to the present day, at least those that have lasted until the present day. Even Tyler’s assignments turn occasionally from questions of “change and stability […] rules of grammatical usage [… and] what language changes have prompted difficulties for English teachers and students” to words, idioms, and proverbs. There are many excellent resources for word study, notably the Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson [ed.] 2000–), an introduction to which is an essential ingredient of any history of English course. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Pickett et al. 2000; henceforth AHD4) is, among general dictionaries, especially historically oriented: etymologies go back to PIE, and there is an appendix dictionary of PIE roots by Calvert Watkins with copious examples of modern reflexes. (Those who want to pursue the ancient roots of English more thoroughly could supplement a history of English text with Watkins’s 2000 The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots). Throughout AHD4, there is a generous selection of “Word History Notes”, which are the model for entries in Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus (American Heritage Dictionaries 2004) and More Word Histories and Mysteries: From Aardvark to Zombie (American Heritage Dictionaries 2006). These and the word history notes in AHD4 illustrate all sorts of historical and linguistic processes and can be assigned prior to a class meeting to set up discussion, used as the basis for any number of assignments, or presented as a model for a word history assignment like Curzan’s in TM. One could easily design a wonderful exercise for advanced classes from material in Anatoly Liberman’s (2010) A Bibliography of English
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Etymology: Sources and Word List: a teacher could set a student on the trail of any of the words in Liberman’s word list; the student could check material among Liberman’s sources and consult other references and, on the basis of all of it, write a fairly sophisticated etymology (for more about Liberman’s pedagogical uses, see Adams 2011).
6 Unorthodoxies Rather than organizing HOTEL according to periods or linguistic categories, one might instead focus insistently on texts, as Russom (2007) suggests is appropriate because it best integrates the language and literary interests within a Department of English Language and Literature. David Crystal, in The Stories of English, is also more often focused on texts and literary figures than the conventional textbook, and his mode is incurably narrative, though he admits that “telling several stories simultaneously is not something which suits the linear expository method of a book” (Crystal 2004: 2), nor, one might argue, does it suit the linearity of traditional survey courses. Crystal’s book is especially good for graduate courses and an excellent resource for teachers who want to pause in the linear presentation of English, weaving something philological from the warp of inner with the woof of outer history. But one can also change the subject from historical change in the structure of English itself, to representing language attitudes, both enacted and reflected. Lynda Mugglestone (2006: 2) explains of her A History of the English Language that “the wider emphasis throughout is […] placed on the twin images of pluralism and diversity, and on the complex patterns of usage which have served to make up English”. This requires an approach to any history of English course captured by Richard W. Bailey’s (2002: 466) question, “In our histories of English, where are those people who spoke the language?”. Bailey and Mugglestone argue for particularity in a discipline that has tended to generalize; while no one denies that the generalization is necessary, one might argue so is the particularization. In a sense, they are working in precisely the opposite direction from Blockley, since, as Mugglestone (2006: 3) writes, “Any history of the language is, in this respect, enacted through innumerable voices”. Yet anyone listening to voices may invite them to speak on Blockley’s essentials, and Blockley’s essentials are undoubtedly illustrated by innumerable voices, so the two tendencies construct a useful tension – in the best courses, they are by no means mutually exclusive, and might best be seen as mutually dependent. Or one can abjure the need for periods or chronology, structural essentials, or the interpenetration of inner and outer histories and frame the course theoretically. Jeremy Smith attempts a historiographical approach to the history of English, concerned with “how the discipline of linguistic history may be pursued […] using selected phenomena in the history of English to exemplify the dynamic processes of change involved” (Smith 1996: 3). This opens up the history of English course to all sorts of sociolinguistic and historical methodologies, such as those of Kretzschmar and Giancarlo, mentioned earlier, though in a course designed on Smith’s example, one would draw on vast and eminently flexible archives of historical and theoretical texts. Or one can turn expectations inside out, into a new configuration, in a sort of intellectual cat’s cradle, as Michael Matto (Adelphi University) does: the “tendency towards” teaching the “‘social history’” of English
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challenges the scientific model, but the challenge has not to date been brought with much gusto […] I am wondering what happens if we complete a radical move towards history and as not ‘how do social forces account for language change?’ but, instead, ‘how does language affect historical, social, or cultural change?’ (Matto 2007: 63)
In any event, the survey, however well supported by textbooks, traditional approaches, and institutional assumptions, is by no means the only legitimate course in the history of English.
7 Summary Like Minkova, Richard W. Bailey (2002: 449): “argue[s] for a renewed philology, one far more comprehensive than any definition of this inquiry usually offered in the twentieth century”. Courses in the history of English can be as ambitious and as instrumental as other forms of scholarship in this renewed philology, and there are many opportunities to teach the history of English beyond the traditional survey. For instance, several universities offer at least occasional courses on English etymology, sometimes conceived as specialist courses for select students, but sometimes conceived more inclusively for large enrollments (examples of the latter include courses by John Considine at the University of Alberta and Gerald Cohen at the University of Missouri – Rolla). Following Bailey’s and Mugglestone’s advice, a course could focus on recovering historical language attitudes, with students quite active in finding the speakers and listening to their voices. In TM, Brad Benz (Fort Lewis College) describes a “Place Name(s) Project” in which students select a cluster of geographically connected names and then, for each name, examine the following: 1) the period when it was named, by whom, what it means & so on; 2) other names it has gone by and differences in meaning …; 3) the etymology of the name itself …; 4) the kind of element involved (e.g., personal name, description of landscape or vegetation, commemoration, etc.); 5) the form of the place name …; 6) an extended consideration of what the name tells us about the external – a maybe internal – history of the language, the people, and the area.
This project is only a small part of a survey, but it reminds us that the history of English can be examined usefully from a primarily philological vantage. Why not offer a full course in English historical onomastics, one that captured most (not all) of Blockley’s essentials, examined a familiar aspect of language, at least on the surface, all the while promoting student engagement through assignments like Benz’s? It would be exactly the invitation to linguistic archaeology Clark had in mind. Such a course cannot accomplish what a survey course accomplishes, but it can come close and do things survey courses can’t do. One of these is to enable the interest of students who won’t commit to a survey but who are attracted by topics such as names and naming, slang, language attitudes, usage, and others that come up in survey courses. At the end of such a course, invariably a student will say to me, “What really interested me was X”. Perhaps the student wouldn’t have known that without a survey to introduce the interest. But if it was a pre-existing interest, a survey can do little to cultivate it. It may be of pedagogical advantage to indulge in niche marketing, on the
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principle that “one size does not fit all”. If we offer more non-survey courses in the history of English, if we develop more opportunities to incorporate the history of English within a degree, we may better communicate the value and pleasure of linguistic archaeology or English historical linguistics, whichever we choose to emphasize. Further, we need not teach the history of English in whole courses devoted to language study. Instead, it can constitute part of any course on a literary subject: students can compile a historical gazetteer while studying Dickens, or explore language attitudes among Jane Austen’s characters and contemporaries, just to mention two rather obvious examples. As many of the exercises in TM suggest, the history of English is in every English text. While anyone can benefit from HOTEL, students in the humanities and social sciences (especially linguistics and anthropology) find it immediately relevant to their broad curricular concerns. Primary among these are students of English literature and culture. Recently, the Modern Language Association, with support from the Teagle Foundation, studied undergraduate majors in language and literature, finally issuing a report that noted, “As readers become cognizant of the complexities of the linguistic system – its codes, structures, and articulations – they become mindful of language and of languages as evolving, changing historical artifacts and institutions, intricately bound up with the cultures expressed through them” (MLA Teagle Foundation Working Group 2009: 289), a sentiment that converges with Cecily Clark’s “linguistic archaeology”. At its most radical, Tara Williams (2010: 169) (Oregon State University) suggests, HOTEL “not only gives students the necessary historical and linguistic foundation for their reading but also makes them aware of the contingent nature of that foundation”. Ever optimistic, Thomas Jefferson (as quoted in Bailey 2002: 466) declared, “We want an elaborate history of the English language”. Scholars tend to respond to his appeal with more books and articles, and there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, unless we forget that college and university courses, indeed our very classrooms, are excellent sites for that elaboration.
8 References Adams, Michael. 2011. Review of Anatoly Liberman, A Bibliography of English Etymology: Sources and Word List. NOWELE 60/61: 231–244. Aitchison, Jean. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? 3rd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. American Heritage Dictionaries. 2004. Word Histories and Mysteries: From Abracadabra to Zeus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. American Heritage Dictionaries. 2006. More Word Histories and Mysteries: From Aardvark to Zombie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Bailey, Richard W. 2002. A Thousand Years of the History of English. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 449–471. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Barber, Charles, Joan C. Beal, and Philip A Shaw. 2009. The English Language: A Historical Introduction. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. 2001. A History of the English Language. 5th edn. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Blockley, Mary. 2008. Essential Linguistics. In: Haruko Momma and Michael Matto (eds.), A Companion to the History of the English Language, 18–24. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1984 [1933] Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Brinton, Laurel J., and Leslie K. Arnovick. 2006. The English Language: A Linguistic History. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press. Cable, Thomas. 2007. A History of the English Language. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14(1): 17–25. Clark, Cecily. 1990. Historical Linguistics – Linguistic Archaeology. In: Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent, and Susan Wright (eds.), Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, 55–68. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Crystal, David. 2004. The Stories of English. Woodstock and New York: The Overlook Press. Davis, Glenn. 2007. Introducing HEL: Three Linguistic Concepts for the First Day of Class. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14(1): 27–34. Frank, Roberta. 1997. The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Philologist. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 96(4): 486–513. van Gelderen, Elly. 2006. A History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Giancarlo, Matthew. 2001. The Rise and Fall of the Great Vowel Shift? The Changing Ideological Intersections of Philology, Historical Linguistics, and Literary History. Representations 76: 27–60. Go¨rlach, Manfred. 1997. The Linguistic History of English: An Introduction. London: Macmillan. Hamacher, Werner. 2010. From “95 Theses on Philology”. PMLA 125(4): 994–1001. Hughes, Geoffrey. 2000. A History of English Words. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. Joseph, John E. 2002. From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History of American Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kretzschmar, William A. 2009. The Linguistics of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leith, Dick. 1997. A Social History of English. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Lewis, C. S. 1967. Studies in Words. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liberman, Anatoly. 2010. A Bibliography of English Etymology: Sources and Word List. Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press. March, Francis A. 1892. Recollections of Language Teaching. PMLA 7: xix–xxii. March, Francis A. 1865. Method of the Philological Study of the English Language. New York: Harper & Brothers. Millward, Celia M. 1989. A Biography of the English Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Minkova, Donka. 2004. Philology, Linguistics, and the History of [hw] ~ [w]. In: Anne Curzan and Kimberly Emmons (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations, 7–46. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Matto, Michael. 2007. The English Language in History. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14(1): 63–70. MLA Teagle Foundation Working Group. 2009. Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature. Profession: 285–312. Momma, Haruko and Michael Matto. 2008. History, English, Language: Studying HEL Today. In: Haruko Momma and Michael Matto (eds.), A Companion to the History of the English Language, 3–10. London: Blackwell. Mugglestone, Lynda (ed.). 2006. The Oxford History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pickett, Joseph P. et al. (eds.) 2000. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Russom, Geoffrey. 2007. Literary Form as an Independent Domain of Validation in HEL Pedagogy. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14(1): 47–54. Simpson, John (ed.). 2000–. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd edn. online. Oxford University Press. (www.oed.com/). Smith, Jeremy. 1996. An Historical Study of English: Function, Form and Usage. London/New York: Routledge.
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Smith, K. Aaron. 2007. The Development of the English Progressive: A Felicitous Problem for the Teaching of HEL. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14(1): 71–88. Steele, Felicia Jean. 2007. Studying like a Scientist: Adapting Successful Pedagogies from the Sciences to HEL. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14(1): 35–46. Sturtevant, Edgar H., and Roland G. Kent. 1928. Linguistic Science and Classical Philology. The Classical Weekly 22.2 [No. 586]: 9–13. Participants in the HEL Pedagogy Workshop at SHEL-3. 2004. Teaching Materials: The History of the English Language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Tyler, Jo. 2005. Transforming a Syllabus from HEL. Pedagogy 5(3): 464–471 and 479–481. Watkins, Calvert. 2000. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 2nd edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Williams, Tara. 2010. The Value of the History of English Course for the Twenty-First Century. Profession: 165–176.
Michael Adams, Bloomington/Indiana (USA)
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Introduction Internal and external histories of textbooks The “voice” of textbooks Textbooks in the 21st century Summary References
Abstract The disparaged yet subtly influential medium of the textbook seems poised for great changes under the complementary pressures of continual updating made possible by website-based information technology and the totalizing effect of the globalization of English. The variety and quantitative sophistication of research on contemporary varieties of the language should inspire more rigorous approaches to the analysis of historical evidence, and new answers to the questions of how and why the language has changed, though the daunting linguistic paucity of the merely written record has tended to enforce conservatism. While 19th-century exercises in linguistic periodization directed at a popular audience reveal at a first reading only the embarrassing disparity between their assumptions about the forces shaping linguistic change and ours, there now can be a historiography of English that seeks to remedy its own limitations through exploiting connections with disciplines such as archeology and language acquisition.
1 Introduction The history of English in university level departments of American, British, and European universities amounts to a truncated and circumscribed introduction to historical linguistics. Wherever taught, to students for whom it is a first language or not, forks in the road quickly present themselves, and different books make different maps of Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1178–1190
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the material. A history of the English language has at a minimum to describe sequential change in sounds, inflections, and syntax, or what is usually called internal history, which is the default assumption in current textbooks. Lining up these changes with not exclusively linguistic events is the role of external history, the role of which has lately been correspondingly minimal. The implications of this bifurcation and the effects on assumptions and methodology are there from the beginning, and become particularly acute as a textbook moves structurally above the level of the word into the sentence and its functions (Traugott 1972). The traditional support role of external history comes somewhat less in the form of referencing literarily ambitious (and legible) authors of texts and, increasingly, in timelines of events, preferably with a highly localizable place and time if not always a finite number of language-affecting agents: vernacularly literate or credibly Anglophonic kings, Chanceries, plagues, playwrights, punctuational innovations, proclamations, inoculations, immigrations, integrations, identifications, standardizations, and a host of definitions. The other academic discipline also called “English”, English literature, only occasionally gets mentioned, though for many students coursework in English literature precedes study of the history of English. While certain literary innovations such as the rise of vernacular iambic pentameter and the varieties of rhyme can feature in language histories, literary sources are more often apologized for as a necessary evil. And indeed the more that the external history surfaces in a textbook, the more we have to contend with the assumptions of the very axioms of linguistic description being at odds with some of the assumptions, predilections, and constructed objects of history.
2 Internal and external histories of textbooks History approaches language only in its diachronic aspect, the Saussurean distinction that places historical linguistics as only half of linguistics, and perhaps the lesser half of it. Additionally, the individual and communal vicissitudes that history traces pose an implicit challenge to the axiom of linguistic adequacy, the assumption that language always (physical deficit aside) meets the needs of its community. While adequacy in coexistence with change has inspired the study of the role of linguistic variation, there is less discussion of whether changes in the wider culture ever can be shown to affect language directly or even, as in a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, whether particular features of language affect the perceptions of a speech community. A fundamental linguistic axiom is that of universalism, the idea of an underlying (and synchronic) unity in the diversity of language forms, not just in English, but everywhere. Comparison with other languages is therefore crucial for analysis. The necessarily multilingual context is a matter that textbooks engage in a variety of ways. American textbooks must assume students bring little or no knowledge of other languages, even contact languages, to their study of English, and little knowledge of the cartography of the United Kingdom. Particular European histories of English naturally devote some space at a minimum to phonetic points of contrast and comparison with the student’s first language of instruction (Go¨rlach 1997 [1974]; Nielsen 1998, 2005). It remains to be seen if the Bologna process will significantly standardize language instruction in Europe to a degree that will affect the study of language history.
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The matter of earlier standard languages, and the extent to which early texts imply or embody one or more standard languages raises the question of how much social and political content necessarily accompanies an outline of the linguistic history of English. In a recent 20-page account, James Milroy (2007: 20) claims that “a standardised language has multiple origins – both linguistic and social”. For earlier stages of English, the record of the linguistic variation that contributes to that standard is partial, and the analysis of social structure is beset by anachronism as well. Linguistics itself has taken a congenially historical turn in continued developments in the analysis of change, such as the theory of unidirectionality in grammaticalization, the name that Meillet gave to the trajectory that converts syntax into morphology and more generally lexical material into grammatical material (cf. Brems and Hoffmann, Chapter 99). For history of any type, the collection and analysis of evidence is crucial, and yet history differs from sociology and psychology in being humanistic and not an experimental science. Psychologists of language have recourse to human subjects for testing their ideas, and while sound-recordings from across the world are approaching their century, the kind of variation most intensively studied still inclines to the near and now. In connecting this research with the earlier states of the language of course, the evidence is far more elusive, and, once located, complex; evidence that must be accumulated in libraries and archives. In particular, the grammatical phrase “History of X” in all its narrative and material and political associations and consequent ambiguities about what we mean by English may not seem as apt a modifier as historical or even diachronic for the internal history of English language or linguistics. Is the history of English the description of a Germanic language with interdental fricatives, the language of Shakespeare, or the lexemes and idioms in the online urbandictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com), an open-source dictionary managed by a California college student? Like the word “grammar”, the term “history” can be taken as description or analysis, as establishing both generalizations about and prescriptive judgments of the success or utility of particular developments.
3 The “voice” of textbooks History and the English Language got linked fairly early on, almost certainly in the English-speaking world with a third party (literature) playing the role of matchmaker. The mid-19th century state of the textbook documents the curious intertwining of the three disciplines. An investigation rarely is encapsulated by the title that it has in its first publication, rather, the title speaks both to its predecessors and to the new audience that its author and publisher seek to provide with its new perspective. Ten years ago Hans Nielsen memorably romped through a number of earlier textbook titles in the preface to his own book and adds an allusion to Laurence Sterne in his three-volume history, A Journey through the History of the English Language in England and America, thus far published as The Continental Backgrounds of English and its Insular Development until 1154 (Nielsen 1998) and From Dialect to Standard: English in England 1154–1776 (Nielsen 2005). Such a title as Nielsen’s has what Andrew Scheil (2007), in a survey of Old English textbooks, has termed “a voice”, a foregrounded, allusive, self-conscious written presence of the interests of a particular author in his or her rehearsal of more or less generally-agreed-upon information:
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The difference between Moore and Knott and Reading Old English is one of voice – that instructional narrator emanating from the pages of the text. In an Old English course the “voice” of the textbook must stand as a proxy for the instructor’s voice: there is so much to cover in class periods (particularly the time-consuming process of individual student translations) that one must expect that a certain burden of the teaching will be carried by the voice of the textbook itself, as the student reads and re-reads, e.g., the section on strong verbs, trying to decode what is going on and what is the point of it all, and how important it is anyway, relative to the potential time invested. (Scheil 2007)
Some history textbooks have a lot of voice; some have a lot of bullet points. The voice of historical language textbooks is heard not only in the tone of the narrative and the extent to which it addresses a particular kind of reader, but even in chronological endpoints and other seeming matters of fact. For example, Norman F. Blake (1996) in his History of the English Language confidently adduces 1873 as the beginning of the subject, with its major periods as defined by Henry Sweet even though these divisions conform too narrowly, in his view, to political events like the Norman Conquest. However, the American lawyer, Germanist, judge, ambassador, and protoenvironmentalist George Marsh (1885 [1862]) wrote a series of lectures under the same title some decades before Sweet’s periodization, and with quite different endpoints. Marsh (1885 [1862]) is potentially illuminating because so much has changed since his time, beginning with his conservatism about change in what is, admittedly, a history of the language embodying a literature. Though Marsh knew that a standard language, like society itself, and paleography, recruits from below, his tone of mild condescension to earlier states of the language sometime recalls that of other writers who highlight the idea of history as the unfortunate eddies and riffles in an otherwise laminar flow of time taking. It is almost as if a truly successful language would have no history, if by history we mean irretrievable losses or the emergence of wholly new possibilities for meaning and expression. Yet such resistance to the idea of irreversible change can be the first step to the fractal microsociology of idiolect, and even the dot maps for dialect features as in A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME, McIntosh et al. 1986) rather than the reified heavy-line isoglosses of linguistic boundaries in many books. In the study of any Western language comparisons with Latin are inevitable in assessing the penetration and stability of the standard. With the minority status (perhaps 5%) that Leith (1997 [1983]) claims for Received Pronunciation since its recognition can be compared Graham Robb’s more recent claim, in The Discovery of France (Robb 2007), that at the height of the prestige of French as the international language of culture and diplomacy in the 1790s only 11% of those resident within the boundaries of the country were considered by those in charge to be speaking French – in other words, the government judged not only speakers of Basque but those of Breton and Provenc¸al as beyond the linguistic pale. While one may wonder how Roger Wright, the historian of how Romance emerged from Vulgar Latin, would respond to this characterization, the controversy shows the potential for re-thinking what distinguishes a language from a dialect.
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Marsh recognized both literary and linguistic models of 19th-century academic industry as influences on his project. One was the, to him unattractive (Marsh 1885 [1862]: 14), model of Thomas Warton’s 1840 History of English Poetry, from the end of the 11th to the 18th century. The other was the new philology of Bopp, and particularly of Grimm’s Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language, 2 volumes, 1848, 2nd ed. [1852]). Yet surprisingly given the esteem in which Marsh held philology, his early American History of English is not solely concerned with chasing a syllable through time and space. As the tale of his long title suggests, March assumes a mutual influence of language and literature. Marsh more or less follows Craik in a pre-Sweet division of the language. English to his mind is, by its vocabulary, distinct from Anglo-Saxon, an approach reminiscent of that taken by Angelika Lutz (2002), and begins only in 1250. A second period, of more than two hundred years duration from 1350 to 1575, treats as one what now is usually separated into Middle English and Early Modern English. Marsh’s third period is the century that begins with the youth of Shakespeare and ends with the death of Milton in 1674. He describes this culminating period as the maturity of the language in a desperately Homeric simile that is a portrait of English as a not-soyoung man, yet ever strong, yet supple, that would not do today. Alzheimer’s disease and the near-extinction within the past century of Gaelic, aboriginal American languages, and many others show there is as yet no analogue of Human Growth Hormone that can prevent the metaphor of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny from completion in decay: the sequential acquisition of morphology, prepositions and syncope, in a life or a language, will be followed by loss in the other direction. I am far from maintaining that the language of England has at any time become a fixed and inflexible thing. In the adult man, physiological processes, not properly constitutional changes, go on for years before decay can fairly said to have commenced. His organs, indeed, when he passes from youth to manhood, are already fully developed, but under favorable circumstances, and with proper training, they continue for some time longer to acquire additional strength, power of action, and of resistance, flexibility, and one might almost say, dexterity, in the performance of their appropriate functions. New organic material is absorbed and assimilated, and effete and superfluous particles are thrown off; but in all this there are no revolutions analogous to those by which the nursling becomes a child, the child a man. So in languages employed as the medium of varied literary effort, here is, as subjects of intellectual discourse, practical applications of scientific principle and new conditions of social and material life multiply, an increasing pliancy and adaptability of speech, a constant appropriation and formation of new vocables, rejection of old and worn-out phrases, and revivifications of asphyxiated words, a rhetorical, in short, not a grammatical change, which, to the superficial observer, may give to the language a new aspect, while it yet remains substantially the same. (Marsh 1885 [1862]: 33; see also p. 392)
An even more extraordinary metaphor, reprised in the conclusion of the lectures, supposes a nonhuman force in the passage of the centuries developing and propelling the language into relative completeness: I do not purpose to carry down my sketches later than the age of Shakespeare, when I consider the language as having reached what in the geography of great rivers is called the lower course*, and as having become a flowing sea capable of bearing to the ocean of
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time the mightiest argosies, a mirror clear enough to reflect the changeful hues of every sky and give body and outline to the grandest forms which the human imagination has ever conceived. (Marsh 1885 [1862]: 144)
He glosses in a footnote the lower course as follows: In German, Unterlauf, or with some writers, Strom, is that lowest and usually navigable part of the course of a river, where its motion is due less to the inclination of its bed than to the momentum acquired by previous rapidity of flow, and to the hydrostatic pressure of the swifter currents from higher parts of its valley. (Marsh 1885 [1862]: 144)
In other words, to unpack this figure, Marsh saw the pre-Shakespearian history of stillread English as causing the success of the distant stages, and presumably he offered this idea to justify his inclusion of material on the earlier stages of the language, claiming for it a sort of action at a distance. There may also be an implicit comparison with the development through change detectable in other literary traditions of other European vernaculars. Marsh seems to have picked his endpoints to establish the achieved stability of his own standard language as having existed for the statutory period of more than two centuries. March’s segmentation is noteworthy therefore for where it ends as well as where it begins. Not only does he cut off Old English altogether (presumably as insufficiently English for his American audience), but he declares that the history of the language, in its essentials, ended some two hundred years before his writing. This ukase saves him the trouble of characterizations and descriptions of the near past that will date quickly, a difficulty that modern mass market and textbooks seldom avoid. Extravagant ideas about the life and death of languages had been in the air. Silly as Marsh’s segmentation of the field may look, he was familiar with the work of Rasmus Rask and there is the melancholy possibility that early 21st century statements of consensus may look at least as peculiar from the far-off perspective of our own linguistic sesquicentennial when so much more of the detail of language will be recorded, inventoried, parsed and searched. Current axioms of linguistic practice include the adequacy of each stage of every language to its community and the constant of the s-curve in the variable rate of change of an item as it becomes part of the standard. Why were Histories of English written first just from the 19th century on, and why do the first ones end as they do, so much earlier than their own moment of composition than do those of the 20th century and after? Changing notions of literacy, of reconstruction, and, I think, of language death attend these choices. Perversely, given the variation in any language, it is easier to speak confidently of its nature when, like Latin, it is on Vatican life support, as can be seen in a flurry of recent books, such as Janson (2004), written for a popular audience. The impulse to write the history of a living language begins in the discovery that it too is dead in some respects, as can be seen in Fichte’s Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807–08): Looking upon modern European civilization as a product of the Latin and Germanic peoples, all of them formed by the migration of German tribes after the downfall of the Roman empire, Fichte found that among them all the Germans alone had preserved
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On morphological grounds, then, Lithuanian speakers might be said to have a still better case for deep and living roots. Still, the next best thing to relative isolation for making a language emerge in workable clarity as a subject is for it to be partially dead, which puts it not beyond all change but at least safely out of the journalistic first draft stage, and limits the scope with a manageable corpus of material declared worthy by time, and even more worthy by its economic clout. English triumphed, if we are to believe Richard Foster Jones, in 1588 (Jones 1953). In a move noticeable in 16th-century translators’ prefaces that is not much accredited by linguists but welcome to historians, writers in English began to look back on its modest past and retroactively “ennoble” the vernacular. As with many European languages, the bursting of its national borders played a part in leading first-language speakers to consider extra-national developments and gave a new impetus to standardization. The language of the colonies became worthy of notice only after they not only created wealth for the empire but found a measure of political independence for themselves, so that their innovations were perceptible as something other than disfluencies. The role of the present day, when English regards itself in a textbook and is not manifested solely in the facts most congenial with its own assumptions, has been the defining character of comprehensive textbooks since Albert Baugh’s first American textbook in the thirties (Baugh 1935). Marsh’s now-embarrassing exposed assumptions contrast with later, more social, and less literary treatments of the history of English, such as Ishtla Singh’s 2005 outline, which gives equal space to the first and last segments, beginning with Proto-IndoEuropean and ending with English after 1700, so that the emergence of an insular English, let alone its literary tradition, is less emphasized. Singh does quote from the literary criticism surrounding some Old English poems and gives a page each of titles of Middle English and Early Modern English writings. But these references seem a concession to literature students seeking paper topics. Go¨rlach had already illustrated his Linguistic History with Biblical translations that “make no claim to literary excitement” (Go¨rlach 1997 [1974]: preface xvii), reminiscent of Sweet’s “Preface” to his edition of the Alfredian Pastoral Care and its “exclusively philological interest” (Go¨rlach 1997 [1974]: ix). The advent of quantificational studies has reduced the extravagances of interpretation of the past. Discoveries worthy of the ages, or at least of the textbooks that purport to give the facts, remain to be made in describing as neutrally as possible the first or last appearance of distinctive forms or registers. For example, a recent study argues that the 20th century textbook writers projected their contemporary characterization of phrasal verbs as more informal alternatives to simplex verbs, native or borrowed, back into the Early Modern English period in which they emerge in numbers. Stefan Thim’s (2006) contention that the to-be-stigmatized phrasal verbs register was originally neutral requires subtlety; how are we to know from silence that such verbs enjoyed prescriptive acceptance?
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4 Textbooks in the 21st century A look at books published in the 21st century suggests that three trends are currently emerging. The trajectory from the integrating narrative has been taken up by a number of mass-marketed books with more footnotes than photographs or exercises appealing to an audience without a classroom or research libraries (Crystal 2004; Bragg 2002; Lerer 2005; McWhorter 2008). This market does not mean that the academic textbook’s day is over, but rather that it increasingly shares space with accounts that frequently but not always simplify the descriptive detail and that often add an explicit point of view, a voice that not only instructs but entertains or corrects. Second, there is a movement within the newer textbooks towards contextualizing “facts” by several means. A ubiquitous feature is the timeline of events familiar in US literary anthologies, such as the Norton series, but also now given prominence in textbooks such as van Gelderen (2006), Curzan and Adams (2005), Momma and Matto (2008), and Millward and Hayes (2010). Lists of dateable political and cultural events appear sometimes in the absence of any other external history, and the links to be made to internal change are left open. The function of some timelines is hard to see, save as a peg for memory and the danger offered for correlation as causation is great for the naı¨ve student. Other schemas are more linguistically relevant and potentially powerful. Though Brook (1957) self-described his summary of changes from Germanic through Modern English as “indigestible” schemas of sound change taking the form of charts and graphs (for example, Go¨rlach’s (1991: 70) schematic reduction of the Early Modern English work of Dobson), they are an attractive model, particularly with visual and aural illustrations. One such contextualization is by foregrounding a plurality of approaches, a move especially important for a student audience potentially interested in taking the conversation further, particularly in the intermediate periods of the past six centuries, for which literary works frequently provide the impetus for linguistic study. This approach has antecedents in Bloomfield’s curious pattern, seen again in different ways in Fennell (2001), of matching each traditional historical period with a mode of theoretical inquiry developed to account for it. Several books (e.g. Cusack 1998; Graddol et al. 1996; Sacks 2003) address the material culture that affected the conditions of writing in the medieval and early modern period. Another is the foregrounding of themes within subtypes of academic textbooks, such as Blake (1996) on standardization, or the compact linguistic introductions to single periods, e.g. Smith (1999), Nevalainen (2006), and Beal (2004). In a time of change the material in textbooks has several functions that reflect differences in audiences, in preparation, theoretical orientations and in the time they can allot to whatever historical segments they teach. The new textbooks seem to present somewhat less in the way of data, and more attention to generalizations about change, as well as a focus on describing the final stage of standardization. For example, even one of the most comprehensive new textbooks (Brinton and Arnovick 2011), with a remarkably full treatment of Proto IndoEuropean vowels, presents a more limited selection of the Old English noun paradigms than do some books of 50 years ago whose authors could presume a certain study of and interest in the morphology of Old English for itself. Labov’s refusal to accept a sidebar status for his approach (“I have resisted the term sociolinguistics for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social”
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[Labov 1972: xiii]) has been followed by decades of historical sociolinguistic inquiry that is only now finding its way into mainstream accounts. As literary scholarship in the United States continues to address matters of race, social class, and gender, the full integration of sociolinguistics with earlier forms of historical linguistics will remain an issue for introductory textbooks. Thirdly, while current textbooks treat a wealth of topics, none to my knowledge have yet taken the opportunity to explore long-standing points of contact with research in the neighboring disciplines of language acquisition and loss, archaeology, and anthropology. I hope future work will come to assess both the impact of synchronic work on diachronic material and the implications of diachronic data for current issues in linguistic research, particularly in the continuing global spread of English. Here are a couple of points of potential interest. The early acquisition of verbal -ing by children has been confirmed for several generations. In particular, the psychologist Roger Brown’s work on politeness theory is well-known in linguistic circles, so the apparent absence of reference by history of language surveys to his introduction to child language acquisition (Brown 1973: 259–260; 271–293) or its successors is a little puzzling. The acquisition of verbal –ing contrasts with the historical introduction of the periphrastic progressive tense into Standard English well after the perfect and passive in a reverse of the expected ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. There is even less cause for neglect in considering the implications of Philip Lieberman’s work on the role of the supervowel [i] in supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT) normalization (Liebermann 1984: 111), particularly in the acquisitional tuning of formants so that the variety of formant frequencies made by small and large people are nonetheless perceived as belonging to distinct shared phonemes. What was the impact of the late medieval diphthongization stage of the Great Vowel Shift on the perception of the “carrier” [i] (Liebermann 2006: 164–165) that enables this scaling? The anthropology of the past quarter-century is underrepresented in accounts of the early medieval external history in current textbooks, though here the contentiousness of studies in Celtic-Germanic contact may impede producing a well-balanced summary account. The description of the adventus Saxonum is generally accompanied by a prudent silence about the possibility of any Celtic influence on the early deviation of Old English from Continental Germanic in even recent core vocabulary studies (Polzin et al. [2006]; popularly in Ostler [2006; 2007] and McWhorter [2008]), leaving aside syntax, with its difficulties of reconstruction from slim early records. Updating of the first textbooks continues, in some cases through many editions (Baugh and Cable 2012; Pyles and Algeo 2004). Whether preserving the original section or paragraph order of books that are segmented permits intercalation that will consistently reflect the best or most useful order of information is an open question, and may be moot if electronic media replace paper pages, but parallelism does facilitate crossreference between sections. Whether the next generation of textbooks will continue to have a national curriculum model, like Wikipedia, or whether a designedly global or at least transatlantic textbook will establish itself remains to be seen. Since the Early Modern period there is evidence for L2 users of English, but language contact outside the British Isles has generally merited diachronic textbook discussion only in chapters on (contemporary) World English. The 1988 Braj Kachru diagram representing global English as three overlapping inner, outer and expanding
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circles is ubiquitous in synchronic treatments (McArthur 1988: 97–100 for discussion). Svartvik’s 2006 revision in collaboration with Leech has a three-dimensional version of Kachru’s expanded circle combined with a peak: an apparently single World Standard English rising out of the supra-national regional standards, in order to show an affinity with standardization and the creation of acrolect (Svartik 2006: 226). But is the age of national standards indeed over? The effect of technology on the size and currency of textbooks is certainly a work in progress. The three-year cycle of Samuelson’s Economics is famous among American textbooks. Dictionaries were once said to have a ten-year lifespan, but as of this writing the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED) will not come out again in paper, continually updateable as it now is online. At what point in the scholarly volleying does its bibliographic representation in a textbook cease to be useful, and do the potentially infinite resources for storing data urge inclusiveness? A case in point is the growth of borrowed vocabulary in Middle English. Otto Jespersen’s 1909–49 study found a place in the first edition of Baugh (1935); in the 4th edition (1993) the co-author added a 1986 reference to Xavier Dekeyser from the Fisiak Festschrift, but nothing in the 5th edition (Baugh and Cable 2002), even omitting mention of Dalton-Puffer’s 1996 discussion of Dekeyser. In a climate of globalization it should at least become desirable as well as possible to acknowledge and facilitate reference between books written for different audiences, as in Kortmann’s (2005: 60) conversion chart of British and American transcription systems, to which could be added the charts in Bronstein (1988).
5 Summary The ideal text will describe the various levels of linguistic organization efficiently as well as provide a survey of current theories for causes and mechanisms of change internal and external. At present, introductory textbook coverage is generally richest for phonological and, to a lesser extent, semantic change, and until very recently virtually nonexistent on pragmatics. Whatever number of paradigms of inflection are provided, basic help needs to be provided for many students on morphological and syntactic fundamentals, such as the role of analogy, grammaticalization, or conservative and innovative change. An order of presentation matters and a strong cross-referencing system of links leading back as well as forward aids with connecting the necessarily discontinuous discussions of the building blocks of the language at different stages. Another desideratum that would help instructors customize the focus appropriate to their students and curricula would be more and more kinds of sections, arranged by form or by function, somewhat along the lines of several texts, including even the present-to-past order of description in Strang (1970). The best textbook view may be one that while acknowledgedly partial, reflects the scholarly work of centuries and yet can still serve, as often it must, as the introduction to many aspects of the study of language.
6 References Algeo, John and Thomas Pyles. 2004. The Origins and Development of the English Language. 5th edn. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing. Baugh, Albert. 1935. A History of the English Language. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company.
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Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. 2012. A History of the English Language. 6th edn. London: Longman. Beal, Joan C. 2004. English in Modern Times. 1700–1945. London: Hodder. Blake, Norman F. 1996. A History of the English Language. London: Macmillan. Brinton, Laurel J. and Leslie K. Arnovick. 2011. The English Language: A Linguistic Introduction. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Britain, David (ed.). 2007. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bronstein, Arthur J. (ed.). 1988. Conference Papers on American English and the International Phonetic Alphabet. Tuscaloosa, Alabama/London: University of Alabama Press. Brook, George L. 1957. English Sound-Changes. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Crystal, David. 2004. The Stories of English. London: Overlook. Bragg, Melvyn. 2002. Adventure of English. The Biography of Language. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. History of English, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Curzan, Anne and Michael Adams. 2005. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. 2nd edn. New York: Longman. Cusack, Bridget. 1998. Everyday English, 1500–1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane. 1996. The French Influence on Middle English Morphology. A CorpusBased Study of Derivation. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fennell, Barbara. 2001. A history of English. A sociolinguistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell. Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman, and Wim van der Wurff. 2000. The Syntax of Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisiak, Jacek. 2005. An Outline History of English. 4th edn. Poznan´: Wydawnictwo Poznan´skie. van Gelderen, Elly. 2006. A History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. van Kemenade, Ans and Bettelou Los. 2006. Handbook of the History of English. Oxford: Blackwell. Go¨rlach, Manfred . 1991. Introduction to Early Modern English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Go¨rlach, Manfred. 1997 [1974] Linguistic History of English: An Introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Graddol, David, Dick Leith, and Joan Swann. 1996. English. History, Diversity and Change. London: Routledge. Hogg, Richard. M. and David Denison (eds.). 2006. A History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Janson, Tore. 2004. A Natural History of Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jespersen, Otto. 1909–49. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. 7 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winter (later vols. by Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgard, and London: George Allen & Unwin). Jones, Richard Foster. 1953. Triumph of the English Language. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Knowles, Gerry. 1997. A Cultural History of the English Language. London: Arnold. Kohn, Hans. 1949. The Paradox of Fichte’s Nationalism. Journal of the History of Ideas 10(3): 319–343. Kortmann, Bernd. 2005. English Linguistics: Essentials. Berlin: Cornelsen. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Leith, Richard. 1997 [1983] Social History of English. London: Routledge. Lerer, Seth. 2005. Inventing English: A Portable History of English. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Lieberman, Philip. 1984. The Biology and Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lieberman, Philip. 2006. Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Lutz, Angelika. 2002. When Did English Begin? In: Teresa Fanego, Belen Mendez-Naya, and Elena Seoane (eds.), Sounds, Words Texts and Change Selected Papers of 11 ICEHL Santiago, 145–172. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Marsh, George. 1885 [1862]. The Origin and History of the English Language and of the Early Literature It Embodies. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons. McArthur, Tom. 1998. The English Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels and Michael Benskin. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. 4 vols. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. McWhorter, John. 2008. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. New York: Gotham. Millward, Celia M. and Mary Hayes. 2010. A Biography of the English Language, 3rd edn. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing. Milroy, James 2007. The History of English in the British Isles. In: David Britain (ed.), Language in the British Isles, 5–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moessner, Lilo. 2003. Diachronic English Linguistics: An Introduction. Tu¨bingen: Narr. Momma, Haruko and Matthew Matto (eds.). 2008. A Companion to the History of the English Language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Moretti, Franco. 2005. Graphs, Maps, Trees. Abstract Models for a Literary History. London: Verso. Mugglestone, Linda (ed.). 2006. The Oxford History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2006. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Nielsen, Hans Frede. 1998. A Journey through the History of the English Language: The Continental Backgrounds of English and its Insular Development until 1154. 2 vols. Odense: Odense University Press. Nielsen, Hans Frede. 2005. From Dialect to Standard: English in England 1154–1776: A Journey Through the History of the English Language in England and America, Vol. II. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark. Nunberg, Geoffrey. 2000. The Persistence of English. Introduction to: M. H Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt (eds.), The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th edn. 2 vols. New York: Norton. Ostler, Nicholas. 2006. Empires of the World. A Language History of the World. London: Harper Perennial. Ostler, Nicholas. 2007. Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin. London: Harper Collins. Polzin, Peter, Tobias Forster, and Arne Ro¨hl. 2006. Evolution of English Basic Vocabulary within the Network of Germanic Languages. In: Peter Forster and Colin Renfrew (eds.), Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages, 131–138. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Rastorgueva, Tatiana Andrapova. 1983. Istoriya Anglijskogo Yazika. Robb, Graham. 2007. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography. New York: Norton. Sacks, David. 2003. Letter Perfect. The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z. (originally published in hardback as Language Visible). New York: Broadway Books. Schaefer, Ursula (ed.). 2006. The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth Century England. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Scheil, Andrew. 2007. Old English Textbooks and the 21st Century: A Review of Recent Publications. Old English Newsletter 40.3. http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/archive.php/essays/ scheil40_3/ (last accessed 17 May 2011). Schlauch, Margaret. 1964. The English Language in Modern Times. London: Oxford University Press.
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Singh, Ishtla. 2005. The History of English: A Student’s Guide. London: Arnold. Smith, Jeremy J. 1999. Essentials of Early English. London and New York: Routledge. Strang, Barbara. 1970. A History of English. London: Routledge. Svartvik, Jan and Geoffrey Leech. 2006. English: One Tongue Many Voices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Thim, Stefan. 2006. Phrasal Verbs in Everyday English 1500–1700. In: Andrew James Johnston, Ferdinand von Mengden, and Stefan Thim (eds.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives in English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology, 292–306. Heidelberg: Winter. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1972. A History of English Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Mary Blockley, Austin, TX (USA)
76. Resources: Online resources for teaching 1. Introduction 2. From using web-based material to designing a virtual online environment – points to remember 3. Taking stock – useful tools 4. Summary 5. References
Abstract This chapter describes a selected number of web-based resources for teaching and studying the history of English and English historical linguistics. The chapter begins with an overview of criteria that need to be observed when developing and implementing a web-based environment for teaching the history of English. Online dictionaries and corpora of English are seen as important sources of and tools for (blended) learning environments that focus on the history of English and English historical linguistics. Drawing on a number of representative examples of web-based introductions to the history of English, this chapter also describes the potential of web-based and especially blended learning frameworks.
1 Introduction This chapter focuses on available web-based resources for teaching and studying the history of English and English historical linguistics. It will show that the concept of e-learning and English historical linguistics and the history of English needs to be seen on a continuum with the mere use of electronic materials in class or in blended learning environments at the one end and the implementation of virtual classrooms at the other end. There is a vast number of online historical resources ranging from surveys, dictionaries, thesauruses, corpora, digitized manuscripts and so on (see Traxel, Chapter 72) which can also be used for studying and teaching English historical linguistics and Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1190–1200
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the history of English. However, the number of real web-based classrooms that focus on the history of English is much smaller; possible reasons being the time, effort, and money it takes to develop and encourage an incentive for creating a web-based course. And yet, the scarcity of web-based virtual classrooms is also somewhat surprising because an affiliation between linguistics and e-learning environments has often been claimed (Barbereau and Lamb 2005). (Perhaps this is also one reason why we find a number of web-based environments which introduce to general linguistics, Modern English language teaching and/or grammar courses or which are designed for distance education and language teaching programs; see Chemnitz Internet Grammar at http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/InternetGrammar/shared/, or MiLCA Lehrmodule at the department of computational linguistics at http://milca.sfs.uni-tuebingen. de/module.html, both pages last accessed 29 January 2012). Also, e-learning has long been seen as a didactic panacea for improving teaching and learning and for meeting with the shortage of staff at universities. Interestingly, there are a number of recent textbooks which introduce to the history of English (van Gelderen 2010; McIntyre 2008). The efficient utilization and functions of e-learning in general have been rather extensively researched and various national and international communities have been set up. See, for example, The European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) at http://www.eadtu.nl/; see also http://www.e-learning.org. There are also various handbooks, such as the Sage Handbook of E-Learning Research (Haythornthwaite and Andrews 2007) and The AMA Handbook of E-Learning (Piskurich 2003). But the possible interplay between e-learning and English historical linguistics/the history of English has been neglected. Therefore, in this overview, a number of didactic, technical, and content-related issues are stressed. These should be taken into consideration when developing web-based courses, when drawing on web-based teaching methods (including technical aspects as well as functional and didactic aspects) or when simply using online material. Also, this chapter shows some representative examples of electronic and e-learning resources, which can be creatively used when teaching and studying English historical linguistics and the history of English.
2 From using web-based material to designing a virtual online environment – points to remember The continuum of using web-based material, on the one hand, and the implementation of a virtual classroom, on the other, as well as the decision about the extent to which web-based learning should be integrated into teaching the history of the English and English historical linguistics embrace some important considerations: • Intended use: decisions have to be made as to when, where, why, and how to use an online environment. • Format: studies (e.g. Short et al. 2006) have shown that a blended learning format – a combination of web-based learning and face-to-face teaching and learning – is most efficient. • Mode of learning: it has been claimed that an emphasis on collaborative learning and constructivist learning (Bremer 2002: 18) is most efficient. Students engage in a
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IX. Resources continual process of constructing their own views and analyses, and they compare their results with those of the instructor and other students. The students: the students’ pre-experience with web-based learning environments needs to be taken into account as well as the different types of learners and their styles of learning. Different models have been used to describe these types of learners. For example, one model that is especially relevant when constructing a webbased environment is that which differentiates between the various perception channels a learner may use to acquire knowledge. There are auditive, visual, and tactile types of learners, who prefer one or the other sensual mode when learning (Bremer 2002: 18). In view of these different models, it is important to stress that each learner works individually when studying. In turn, this implies that the student should also be aware of his/her learning situation (for example, the time to spend on the course) as well as his/her technological prerequisites. It is necessary to advise students on how to proceed and on how to organize their cooperative work in a web-based environment. The creator of the course and the instructor(s): there is a definite increase in workload, in managing the students’ learning experience and in applying this to the modules and units of historical English linguistics under construction. Knowledge of the social, didactic, technical, financial, and thematic contexts and parameters is needed for the creation of a web-based environment. The team: in case a virtual classroom is aimed at an enthusiastic and multi-disciplinary team is needed. This group should at least include technologists, designers and academics teaching English linguistics and the history of English. Good practice and sustainability: due to the amount of time and money needed when creating a web-based course creators need to be realistic about whether the course will be continuously used. Variety of formats: the content of the course should be presented in a variety of formats (audio-files, visual representations and text files etc.) so that the individual types of learners are equally addressed. Photographs, illustrations, and other visual effects promote understanding and lighten up the learning process. The outline of the content and individual sessions should be presented as audio-files. Breaking up the text: the texts should be broken up in meaningful chunks – not only because it is more difficult for a reader to read on the screen but also in order to create coherent learning units. This aspect of coherence could be enhanced by links to other pages within and outside the online environments, so that the navigation gives a sense of movement to the learning process. Teaching methods: a variety of teaching methods, e.g. problem-oriented or cognitivist learning methods, should be used. Navigation: the site navigation, or what Pajares Tosca (2000) calls the “pragmatics of links,” needs to be carefully planned and should include a coherent design of the pages to be navigated so that the user is able to reconstruct the passages and their structure. Color coding is a good strategy to connect thematic sections. It is also helpful to install permanently visible as well as fast links to constant content pages (e.g. to a glossary, the table of contents page, etc.). Frequently, courses can take their students to the next page by means of a link to follow the sequences recommended by the course designer. A “menu” (often found at the left hand side of each
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session page) indicates the sub-sections worked on and the suggested arrangement for exploring topics. “Printer-friendly” notes: they ease the download of the content material and are especially useful for students with passive learning styles. Exercises: these should be created in an interactive way (e.g. cloze-procedures, or test where students can move chunks themselves). Means of self-evaluation (e.g. self-tests, self-assessment mechanisms) are indispensable to guarantee interactivity and a guided learning process. Handbook: a detailed course reader or workbook should be provided in which the instructor informs the student about aims, workload, assessment, deadlines etc., and in which additional material is presented. The instructor should plan carefully and well ahead when to provide the students with course exercises, essay questions, and term-paper topics. Communication: a web-based course should also allow online synchronous (chat, wikis) and asynchronous modes of communication (e.g. e-mail) among students and instructors, because the social element of teaching face-to-face will be lost when teaching and studying online. This situation necessitates the careful choice of a suitable system for synchronous communication (often provided by the local university).
The advantages and disadvantages of web-based learning depend on the institutional and web-based contexts as well as on the instructor and the student. Therefore, in certain institutional settings, a generally perceived advantage may become a disadvantage and vice versa. Nevertheless, in order to raise awareness it is useful to discuss some of the arguments that are traditionally listed in favor of and against web-based learning. As regards disadvantages of web-based learning, students often only read what is actually presented in the online environment. Instead of consulting additional books, some of them are inclined to assume that all knowledge is simply available online. What is called the “serendipity effect” is reinforced, and often students complain about a cognitive overload. As to the advantages of web-based learning it is a clear gain that students have access to the course from anywhere and at any time and can revisit the materials in a multi-modal way. To spread knowledge worldwide and to follow a global pedagogy that would help to reduce costs, human assistance and marking could be seen as a laudable development. There is still not enough research on how learners respond to e-learning and its various manifestations. New technologies may partly exceed our understanding and visualization of how best to use them in order to achieve high quality learning, and often the focus of designers is on technology to the detriment of content and pedagogy (Barbereau and Lamb 2005: 101–114). Evaluation should take account of cultural diversity as well as to the students’ and instructors’ pre-experience with and responses to web-based learning. It should also include different practices within subject disciplines and varying institutional policies. That is, global differences and local circumstances play an important role in whether and how online courses are produced and used pedagogically effectively. Questionnaires as well as focus-group interviews are suitable means of evaluation (Short et al. 2006).
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3 Taking stock – useful tools 3.1 Online dictionaries and corpora The number of useful tools to be incorporated in teaching and studying the history of the English language and English historical linguistics grows rapidly, and they range from surveys and dictionaries, over thesauruses and corpora to digitized manuscripts. Due to digitization initiatives, on the one hand, and corpus research, on the other, e-texts of older books, historical corpora and databases of English historical dictionaries are now electronically accessible. In addition, many English historical dictionaries can now also be accessed online. It comes as no surprise that their potential for studying and teaching word-meaning is not the only way of exploring the history of English and that it is through various electronic search interfaces that study questions in, for example, lexicology and morphology or even the history of speech acts can be more elaborate and efficient than the use of book versions of the respective dictionaries. In electronic dictionaries, like, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) at www.oed.com or the Middle English Dictionary (MED) (see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med; see also The Dictionary of Old English at http://www.doe.utoronto.ca) so-called “advanced searches”, which may go beyond the Boolean search once one has acquired more than basic knowledge of how to use these interfaces, allow users to investigate, among others, a number of lexicological enquiries. For example, it is possible to search for new lexemes that have been taken up in the OED from the 1970s onwards or blends that have been compiled in the OED since whatever period one is interested in (see also van Gelderen 2010). Jucker and Taavitsainen (2007), for example, have used the OED to collect “speech act verbs” and Mair (2007) uses the OED quotation database on CD-ROM to investigate lexical change of English in the 20th century. The OED (www.oed.com) also provides a “quiz” site which shows users the various functionalities of lexicological and lexicographical research possible with the OED. The “help” website, which elaborates on the range of (historical) searches that can be made, is equally fruitful. The online edition of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) (Kay et al. 2009) is an equally fruitful source for the historical study of English. The HTOED arranges the English found in the second edition of the OED into a network of semantic categories and incorporates the diachronic development of words and concepts. With the OED we can trace the meaning of a word. With the HTOED we can now see how a meaning came about and which meanings were among the first to express a particular concept. This is extremely useful because the lexical history of a concept is usually supressed by the alphabetical structure of a dictionary and one needs a certain amount of expertise to extract this kind of information from dictionaries. The Lexicons of Early Modern English (see http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/public/ intro.cfm, last accessed 29 January 2012) is a “historical database of monolingual, bilingual, and polyglot dictionaries, lexical encyclopedias, hard-word glossaries, spelling lists, and lexically-valuable treatises surviving in print or manuscript from the Tudor, Stuart, Caroline, Commonwealth, and Restoration periods” (Lancashire 2008). It serves as one example of how a compiled historical database of Early Modern dictionaries provides not only an impressive overview of the character of
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dictionaries in Early Modern England, but also the opportunity to acquire a variety of lexical and pragmatic information. A look at the entry welcome in the database, for example, reveals a rather long list of occurrences of welcome and its collocations – in the main entries of the respective dictionaries or in the definitions. The dictionaries in which welcome occurs range from 1530 to 1702 and among them are Palsgrave’s (1530) Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse and Florio’s (1598) Worlde of Wordes. In a sub-entry of welcome, Palsgrave (1530) even elaborates on how the speech act of a welcome is paralinguistically supported by opening one’s arms in: I Welcome I take one vp or receyue hym with myn armes |{yt}| maketh courtesye to me/ as the frenche men vse to do/ Ie accueuls, iay accueilly, accueyllir, c|_o|iugate lyke his symple ie cueulx, I gather/ and ie recueulx, c|_o|iugate lyke his symple ie cueuls, I gather. Let hym come whan Fo.CCCC.vii. whan he wyll he shall be welcomed on the best facyon: Viengne quant il vouldra il sera recueilly, or accueilly de la meilleure sorte. (Palsgrave 1530)
This quotation also illustrates the potential in historical dictionaries for what Trudgill and Watts (2002) call “alternative histories of English” and the need for an emphasis on the pragmatic aspects of the history of English. As regards historical corpora, access to ARCHER: A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (Biber and Finegan 1990–93/2002/2007/2010; Biber et al. 1994), for example, the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 (Kyto¨ and Culpeper 2006), or the Helsinki Corpus (Rissanen et al. 1991) and knowledge of tools that help search them and explain how to interpret the respective results are necessary prerequisites (see Kyto¨ 2010, and chapter 96) for a complete overview of historical corpora). In recent studies of English historical pragmatics, these play a crucial role and they may also be used for web-based teaching purposes. Jucker and Taavitsainen (2000) and Kohnen (2006) have pointed to the methodological caveats involved in applying speech act theory diachronically. Taavitsainen and Fitzmaurice (2007) elaborate on the general caveats of historical pragmatics. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies 2009) and its historical clone the Corpus of Historical American English (Davies 2010) allow for diachronic search to draw conclusions about language change.
3.2 Web-based courses of the history of English and other databases – a selection Web-based courses of English historical linguistic or the history of English introduce to or teach aspects of the history of English, language change, or English historical linguistics. The following list of references is a selection of notable courses or relevant sources which can be used to enhance historical linguistic teaching. Visual documentation of the respective features described in the following courses will not, for reasons of space, be given. However, the reader will be referred to the respective URL; all web links were accessed on 29 January 2012. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to present a comprehensive list of all available courses. Old English Online (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/engol-0-X.html), developed at the Linguistics Research Center in Austin, Texas, by Jonathan Slocum and Winfred P. Lehmann, gives an overview of the most important differences between
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Old English and Present-day English focusing on syntax and phonology. It also contains pointers to Proto-Indo-European roots identified by Julius Pokorny. The site is remarkable for its valuable form-index dictionary, in which, for each English word, base forms containing that word in their general meaning are shown, along with a link to everyday usage. In a user-friendly way, general meanings correlate with links to each usage in the numbered lesson. The suggested study of various OE texts is divided up into two to three sentences, which are then translated literally. Words in English Website (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/), developed at Rice University, Houston, Texas, by Suzanne Kemmer, focuses on language change in general and the change of word meanings in particular. Through a modern userfriendly interface, the general developments of the history of English are explained alongside the meaning change of words. The module “History of English” of The Virtual Linguistic Campus (http://linguistics. online.uni-marburg.de) developed at the University of Marburg, Germany, by Ju¨rgen Handke and collaborators is categorized according to the classic periodization of the history of the English language and focuses on the core linguistic areas of phonology, morphology and syntax. It also contains modules about “The Evolution of Language”, “Proto Languages”, “The Classification of Languages”, “Principles of Language Change”, and a section on “Varieties of English”. The main linguistic developments of each of the respective stages of the English language are described. Although there is a bias on phonology, the sessions on the phonology of the respective stages of the English language contain, for example, well-researched audio-files of each spoken phoneme, which are easily clickable. In addition, suitable exercises guarantee that students are able to control the learning process. Although it is doubtful whether the aim of an online environment should be to reduce textual information to a minimum and to do entirely without external links, the highly sophisticated design and the general teaching philosophy behind this and other modules are fruitful. Each session adheres to a common corporate design structure, which enhances the readerfriendly structure and the coherence of what is presented. There is also a general overview of the topics to be discussed in the session. A permanent bar contains links to “Glossary”, “Language Index”, and “Important Linguists”. Each unit within a module contains a worksheet (including the solutions on a separate page). It is also possible to send (via e-mail) feedback to the Marburg team (a pre-created form can be used). There are even audio-versions of the respective sessions, including music. Also, animations are successfully inserted. Each unit is accompanied by a workbook which focuses on the reading and analysis of texts from the respective periods. It informs the users again about the unit they have been studying online, and explains various symbols, before moving on to exercises and sequential print-offs of the content in the online environment. Thus, having to print the hypertexts is avoided. It is therefore a useful supplement to the e-learning environment, which focuses on interactivity and visual information. Knut Hanneman’s EHL Project (English Historical Linguistics) developed at the University of Du¨sseldorf (http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/anglistik1/e-learning/ ehl/) enables BA students to broaden their knowledge of English historical linguistics by using specifically devised web-based modules which include interactive elements, such as self-tests, podcasts, and flash animations.
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Raymond Hickey (http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/) offers a comprehensive website which covers the main findings about language change in general and about the history of the English language. Despite the fact that this website is text-centered, it offers a wealth of material which can be used for blended learning environments or as reference tools. Another outstanding project are eHistLing web pages “English Historical Linguistics” of the University of Basel at http://www.ehistling-pub.meotod.de/. The project is based on a blended learning approach. It promotes online communication and cooperation and supports cognitive and social network processes by including lecture scripts, online tutorials, a key word section, an extensive bibliography, illustrative images, diagrams, and well-chosen hyperlinks. The course gives a systematic overview of the phonological, morphological, and semantic development of the history of English and situates it within the socio-historical contexts. The website focuses on the acquisition of historical linguistic knowledge and analytical techniques. It is based on behaviorist and cognitivist learning theory. Classroom lectures on the history of English and corresponding webbased tutorials are provided to supplement the web-based sessions. Constructivist learning theory guides the second part of this course in which the students are asked to write a research paper on a historical linguistic research question. Students have to form research groups and they act as authors and reviewers at the same time. Furthermore, the publication process is simulated because the papers are discussed in a classroom conference and uploaded to be accessible for all students. Students are also provided with tutorials on, for example, James Murray, one of the first editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. Elly van Gelderen’s classic website History of English at http://www.historyofenglish. net/ is a companion to her textbook History of English. Next to chapters explaining the history of the English language and the varieties of English and their development, this website contains useful links which, for example, guide the user towards relevant historical corpora, towards other web-based introductions to the history of English, towards websites that represent the classic “Elizabethan accent”, or towards historical textual editions, early printed pages and manuscripts. The website also contains a glossary and illustrated time-line of the development of the history of English as well as a manual of how to do searches in the Oxford English Dictionary online. Furthermore, excerpts from classic texts important for or representative of each period of the history of the English language are listed electronically. Basic tenets of historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics have not frequently been incorporated in an interactive web-based environment. The module “Historical pragmatics, language change and historical linguistics” of my own web-based course IELO (“Introduction to English linguistics online”) contains an introduction to theoretical frameworks such as historical pragmatics, grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. The general concept of welcome is used to show how the interplay between lexis, grammar, discourse, and context, that is, the patterns of human interaction within the social conditions of earlier periods, is meaningmaking. As an exemplary case, the first session focuses on students’ general knowledge of welcome. Students are asked to write down their initial impressions after watching a video-sequence of the musical Cabaret, in which the conferencier greets the visitors with the famous song “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!” Following this first introduction to the concept of welcome, the French, German and English
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etymological interconnections between these concepts are explored with the help of the OED. There is also a separate unit which aims at studying the uses and functions of welcome through time. Text passages from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other historical sources are given to highlight the attributive, adjectival, and nominal usage of welcome, as well was the to-construction and respective speech-act realizations. Following the guidelines for web-based learning, students are given continuous feedback, the course is interactive and addresses the different types of learners. Despite the fact that Language and Style (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/ stylistics/, last accessed 29 January 2012), developed by Mick Short at Lancaster University, UK, does not explicitly focus on the teaching of “The History of English”, but touches on stylistic analyses of literary texts from older stages of the English language only in passing, the website illustrates how complex linguistic concepts can be successfully transferred to an online environment. In its focus on the stylistics’ tool-box and its application to the three main literary genres, the course consists of 13 topics relevant to stylistic analyses. The topics are color-coded for each literary genre. Other navigation links, such as a permanent bar at the top right side and initial guidance as to how to go through the course, help create coherence. Printer-friendly notes, graphics, audiomaterial, and self-assessments activate and enhance the learning process in a variety of ways. In the poetry sub-sections, poems from various centuries introduce the stylistician’s tool-box for a stylistic study of poems. Also, the section on the analysis of drama introduces how pragmatic approaches to language study, such as turn-taking management, speech acts and politeness theory, help readers to understand a play-text. For the study of the history of English, the analysis of an excerpt from G. B. Shaw’s Major Barbara (1905) is used to introduce the interplay between turn-taking mechanisms and power structures in a highly rank-conscious society. Grice’s (1975) Cooperative principle and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory are introduced through C. Churchill’s modern play Top Girls (1982).
4 Summary As illustrated, the interplay between English historical linguistics and web-based learning is far from being extensively studied. This is partly due to the fact that, on the one hand, there is a wealth of online material which can be used in a variety of teaching environments. On the other hand, the implementation of virtual classrooms is part of this continuum, but not as frequently realized within English historical linguistics and the study as well as teaching of the history of English. There can be no doubt that the advantages and disadvantages of any kind of web-based learning need to be carefully weighed, taking account of pedagogical requirements and users’ needs.
5 References Barbereau, Danielle and Terry Lamb. 2005. Re-thinking Pedagogical Models for Elearning. Sheffield: Modern Languages Teaching Center, University of Sheffield. Benson, Philip. 2001. Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Language Learning. London: Longman.
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Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan. 1990–93/2002/2007/2010. A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (ARCHER). Version 3.1. Consortium of fourteen universities, see http:// www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/archer/ (last accessed 7 February 2012). Biber, Douglas, Edward Finegan, Dwight Atkinson, Ann Beck, Dennis Burges, and Jena Burges. 1994. The Design and Analysis of the ARCHER Corpus: A Progress Report. In: Merja Kyto¨, Matti Rissanen, and Susan Wright (eds.), Corpora across the Centuries, 3–6. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Bremer, Claudia. 2002. Online Lehren Leicht Gemacht! Leitfaden fu¨r die Planung und Gestaltung von virtuellen Hochschulveranstaltungen. In: Brigitte Berendt, Hans-Peter Voss, and Johannes Wildt (eds.), Neues Handbuch Hochschullehre: Lehren und Lernen effizient Gestalten, 1–40, D 3.1. Berlin: Raabe. Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Busse, Beatrix and Patricia Plummer. 2005. More Teaching Power than Anything that Could Ever be Printed on Paper?: (E-)Teaching in a Hypertext network. In: Lilo Moessner (ed.), Anglistentag 2004 Aachen Proceedings, 359–379. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Davies, Mark. 2008–. The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 425 million words, 1990– present (COCA). http://corpus.edu/coca (last accessed 7 February 2012). Davies, Mark. 2010. Corpus of Historical American English (1810–2000) (COHA). http://corpus. byu.edu/coha/ (last accessed 7 February 2012). van Gelderen, Elly. 2010. A History of the English Language. 2nd edn. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Handke, Ju¨rgen. 2003. Multimedia im Internet: Konzeption und Implementierung. Mu¨nchen: R. Oldenbourg Verlag. Haythornthwaite, Caroline and Richards Andrews (eds.). 2007. The Sage Handbook of E-Learning Research. London: Sage. Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen. 2000. Diachronic Speech Act Analysis: Insults from Flyting to Flaming. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1: 67–95. Kay, Christian, Jane Roberts, Michael Samuels, and Irene Wotherspoon (eds.). 2009. Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kohnen, Thomas. 2006. Variability of Form as a Methodological Problem in Historical Corpus Analysis: the Case of Modal Expressions in Directive Speech Acts. In: Christian Mair and Reinhard Heuberger (eds.), Corpora and the History of English: Papers Dedicated to Manfred Markus on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday, 221–233. Heidelberg: Winter. Kyto¨, Merja. 2010. Data in Historical Pragmatics. In: Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics, 33–68. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton. Kyto¨, Merja and Jonathan Culpeper. 2006. A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. With the assistance of Terry Walker and Dawn Archer. Uppsala University and Lancaster University. http://www.engelska.uu.se/Research/English_Language/Research_Areas/Electronic_Resource_ Projects/A_Corpus_of_English_Dialogues/ (last accessed 7 February 2012). Lancashire, Ian. 2008. Lexicons of Early Modern English. http://leme.library.utoronto.ca (last accessed 30 September 2011). Mair, Christian. 2007. Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation and Standardization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McIntyre, Dan. 2008. History of English. A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge. Pajares Tosca, Susana. 2000. Pragmatics of Links. Journal of Digital Information 1.6. http://jodi.ecs. soton.ac.uk/Articles/v01/i06/Pajares/ (last accessed 24 June 2010). Piskurich, George M. 2003. The AMA Handbook of E-Learning. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.
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Plummer, Patricia and Beatrix Busse. 2006. E-learning and “Language and Style” in Mainz and Mu¨nster. Language and Style 15(3): 257–276. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpio¨, Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1991. The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. In: ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora (CD-ROM), 2nd edn., Knut Hofland, Anne Lindebjerg, Jørn Thunestvedt (eds.), The HIT Center, University of Bergen, Norway. For manual, see http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/hc/index.htm (last accessed 7 February 2012). Short, Mick, Beatrix Busse, and Patricia Plummer. 2006. Preface: The Web-based “Language and Style” course, e-learning and stylistics. Language and Literature 15(3): 219–233. Taavitsainen, Irma, and Andreas H. Jucker. 2007. Speech act verbs and speech acts in the history of English. In: Susan M. Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Methods in Historical Pragmatics, 107–138. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Taavitsainen, Irma and Susan M. Fitzmaurice. 2007. Historical Pragmatics: What It Is and How To Do It. In: Susan M. Fitzmaurice and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Methods in Historical Pragmatics, 11–36. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Trudgill, Peter and Richard Watts. 2002. Introduction. ‘In the Year 2525’ In: Peter Trudgill and Richard Watts (eds.), Alternative Histories of English, 1–3. London/New York: Routledge.
Beatrix Busse, Heidelberg (Germany)
X. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography 77. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography: Literature 1. Introduction 2. Literature of the past: basic methodological problems 3. References
Abstract This chapter discusses some of the central problems readers – both historical linguists and literary scholars – encounter when dealing with the literature of the past, especially with that of the very distant past such as the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period. It focuses on the key issues of (1) periodization, (2) geography and language, (3) notions of the literary, (4) method and theory, (5) canon formation, and (6) authorship and subjectivity, since these are the problems typically invoked when it comes to defining what makes the literature of the past so different from our own (post)modern notions of the literary. The chapter invites readers, first, to develop a methodological awareness of the alterity of the literature from the past; second, to avoid defining that alterity as the mere Other of the (post)modern; and, third, to make use of (post)modern theory and methodology in the service of better understanding that alterity.
1 Introduction The relationship between historical linguistics and literary studies is fraught with problems. Although the two fields go back to the same disciplinary roots – both are (grand) children of 19th-century philology – they have developed in ways so different as to make a dialogue between them dauntingly complicated. This chapter will sketch some of the theoretical and methodological issues which render that dialogue difficult. The perspective chosen here is, however, a decidedly literary one. The situation may look very different if approached from a historical linguist’s point of view. Moreover, I do not claim any kind of objective stance on literary history or theory. Indeed, this chapter is based on the unoriginal premise that such an approach is impossible. Hence, this text is not meant to equip historical linguists with a toolkit enabling them to overcome whatever literary obstructions they might encounter in the course of their research. Yet I do hope that the issues raised here will increase their awareness of some of the methodological problems involved when dealing with literature and that this awareness may help to generate new forms of co-operation between the disciplines. The principal focus is on a set of specific methodological issues whose common denominator is the alterity of the literary text composed in the distant past. When historical linguists come across literary texts they face a twofold problem: first, they are confronted by literary artefacts whose very literariness precludes a straightforward appropriation as linguistic data, and second, they encounter notions of the literary Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1201–1213
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which may differ considerably from those prevailing nowadays. Because historical alterity must always be seen as the central obstacle for the understanding of literature from the past (Jauss 1979), the issues highlighted in this chapter are illustrated mainly by examples from medieval and early modern literature and culture, i.e. from periods whose alterity is most plainly visible. These examples have, however, been chosen such that they throw light on questions relevant to all who study the relationship between literature and historical linguistics, not merely those interested in medieval or early modern English phenomena. Six principal problems will be discussed: (1) periodization, (2) geography and language, (3) notions of the literary, (4) method and theory, (5) canon formation, and (6) authorship and subjectivity. These problems are especially relevant because of the basic role they play in shaping our understanding of the literature of the past. This list could easily be extended and there are sure to be overlaps with other chapters in this volume, such as Curzan (Chapter 79) on periodization, Williamson (Chapter 91) on historical dialectology, and Britain (Chapter 129) on diffusion. Other questions relevant to a discussion of literature from the past, e.g. orality and literacy, are dealt with by other contributors (see, e.g., Schaefer, Chapter 81, on orality and literacy). None of the six topics is treated exhaustively. Instead, each of the chapters draws attention to a few poignant features exemplifying specific aspects of alterity.
2 Literature of the past: basic methodological problems 2.1 Periodization Time and space are two of the most important categories that historians of any aspect of human culture grapple with. Neither can be seen as a given. Each must be viewed as a construct reflecting the specific interests of those who operate with the category. Even though history evolves under conditions imposed by time and space it is history that gives shape to these notions in the first place. This may sound like a truism, a well-worn cliche´ of poststructuralist cultural analysis, but it is nevertheless worth remembering, if only because the major periods of English literary history have remained surprisingly stable. Our basic ideas on the beginning and the end of the literary Middle Ages, for instance, have not changed within the last century and a half. Indeed, the very fact that we still employ the term “Middle Ages” when we deal with literature written between c.500 and c.1500 is remarkable. After all, the term was invented in the Renaissance in the context of a very specific, ideologically driven cultural polemic (Starn 1994: 132–133). Our period boundaries’ relative stability appears even more impressive if seen in the face of the massive paradigm shifts that have taken place both in cultural history and in literary studies. Many of these conceptual shifts were accompanied by sweeping iconoclastic claims to methodological innovation. Yet the major schools of literary interpretation succeeding one another after World War II have left the periodization of English literature virtually untouched. One reason for this is literary history’s precarious status in the academy. “Literary History” is a body of knowledge implicitly taken for granted and usually relegated to introductory courses or lecture series for undergraduates. But it is something few critics are actively involved in since even scholars dealing with the literature of the past display
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a strong tendency to approach their object in a synchronic fashion. Truly diachronic studies which seek to cover long-term change and development in literature are few and far between and usually focus on rather narrow problems. Besides, they are frequently pursued by students of Comparative Literature rather than by scholars who concentrate on a single national literature. This is all the more surprising since the traditional period boundaries in literary studies are anything but innocent. They are ideologically charged and ought, therefore, to be especially sensitive to methodological debate. Precisely because the Middle Ages as a concept is a Renaissance invention do they still tend to play the role of the Other of all that is complex and valuable about modern literature and culture. Not surprisingly, attempts to transgress the well-policed boundaries between the periods are predominantly undertaken by medievalists moving forward in time rather than by early modernists moving backwards. Helen Cooper’s (2004) recent book on romance in English literature, for example, clearly shows how that genre extends far beyond the temporal demarcations that traditionally mark the end of the Middle Ages. But such a line of inquiry is not adopted very frequently. Hence, it is one of the more tragic ironies of literary historiography that the tendency to identify revolutionary breaks in the development of literature is most pronounced amongst scholars whose expertise is limited to only one fairly narrowly defined literary period, i.e. scholars who know very little of the past they are ostensibly using as a backdrop for the revolutionary changes they claim to be identifying. The disconcerting durability of period boundaries has many causes – not least the exigencies of the academic job market and the general drive towards specialization to be witnessed particularly but not only in the English-speaking countries. The huge and ever-widening divide between Anglo-Saxonists and students of Middle English literature is a case in point. It is interesting to note in this context that the barriers segregating students of Old English literature from Chaucerians are not mirrored in the field of historical linguistics where the divide separating Old English from Middle English is transgressed much more easily. Thus, the drive towards ever more narrowly defined fields of research has adverse consequences for literary history. However much individual schools of thought might proclaim a focus on ruptures or shifts – as does the New Historicism with its Foucauldian roots – they are prone happily to reproduce the traditional chronological patterns of literary historiography that have been accepted all too long. Literary scholars are not the only ones to blame, however. After all, the periodization of literary history tends to follow fundamental patterns and basic assumptions developed in neighboring fields such as political, social, or cultural history or even historical linguistics. To be sure, there is a certain logic to this. If we see literature as one cultural phenomenon amongst others then it is obvious that it should be influenced by the pressures of the political, social, economic, and cultural world it is produced and read in. But at the same time, there is something rather uncanny about the odd parallels we discover when we realize that the beginning of the Tudor monarchy in 1485, the introduction of the printing press into England, the transition from Middle English to Early Modern English and the end of medieval literature are all supposed to have happened within a space of ten years. Not all literary scholars have accepted this happy fit of paradigm shifts and ruptures. C. S. Lewis (1954: 55–56), for instance, writing his history of 16th-century English
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literature in the mid-20th did not think that these changes mattered all that much. In fact, Lewis called into question the very validity of the concept of the Renaissance for English literature. For him there was nothing really new about the Renaissance, except perhaps the introduction of Greek learning – and that supposedly affected only a small and select band of humanists. I mention this not because I think Lewis was right, nor because I wish to argue that he was mistaken (which, by and large, he was), but to point out that the problem of literary periodization always rests on a choice of criteria, many of which are quite arbitrary, and more importantly, most of which are derived from human activities whose links to the literary are more or less indirect. Furthermore, the way we describe these external factors’ impact on literature depends entirely on the theoretical framework we employ. New Historicists, for instance, have for the last three decades or so been engaged in breaking down the barriers between text and context. Ostensibly, for them the principal issue is not that of determining literary period boundaries on the basis of extra-literary phenomena. But this has not led them to redefine or even to question traditional period boundaries.
2.2 Geography and language The relationship between literary history and linguistic geography is just as problematic as that between literature and its temporal boundaries. Since our concept of “literature” as an object of academic research originated in the 19th century it tends somehow to be linked to a national language. In the 19th century a nation’s literature gained its particular importance as the highest expression of a national culture and, therefore, as an expression of a national identity which was linked to a national language. Literature as an institution, as an object valued and protected by official authority, is thus a product of the 19th-century nation state – as is the philological origin of historical linguistics, one of whose prime purposes, originally, was to make accessible the treasures of medieval literature as the supposedly undiluted expression of a nation’s spirit. A closer look at the English Middle Ages teaches us how problematic such an assumption is. At the end of the 12th century, when the great works of early French literature were being composed, Angevin England was part of the French literary landscape (Symes 2007: 10–18). Chre´tien de Troyes spent some time in England, Marie de France composed all her works there, and the earliest manuscripts of the Chanson de Roland were also written in England. French, like Latin, was a literary language of England and a huge body of macaronic verse and of multi-lingual manuscripts testifies to how difficult it is from a literary point of view to draw clear distinctions between the cultural spheres of these languages. More often than not they seem to have shared common audiences. And as late as the end of the 14th century we find John Gower composing works in all three of England’s literary languages, i.e. in Latin, Anglo-French, and English. Besides, not only did medieval literary culture not adhere to the geographic, political, and even linguistic boundaries we take for granted at the beginning of the 21st century, but the very role of those geographic boundaries was different. In an age when transport and travel over land was arduous and time-consuming, a topographical feature such as the English Channel was more likely to bring people together than to keep them apart. In the absence of powerful navies and coastal defences the sea was the easiest access for invaders and the many invasions that the
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British Isles were subjected to from the migration period down to the end of the Middle Ages illustrate this fact. One of the well-known results of these many invasions and conquests is that English linguistic history has a strong Scandinavian component (see Dance, Chapter 110). And yet, while the powerful Scandinavian impact on the English language is easily identifiable today through the presence of such basic words as they or till in the English lexicon, the literary influence exerted by the Danes is much less tangible. Beowulf, a poem which like no other epitomizes Anglo-Saxon literature for modern readers (especially for readers who are not professional Anglo-Saxonists) serves as a perfect example. The poem is set in early 6th-century Scandinavia and events at the Danish court play a central role. Consequently, when the epic was first subjected to rigorous academic scrutiny in the early 19th century, Danish scholars actually claimed it as a monument of their own national history and culture. Yet a closer look at the Danes in the poem suggests that the text seems to know hardly anything of Scandinavian culture – contemporary or otherwise. Whatever the Beowulf-poet was trying to do, he was evidently not attempting to give his Danes any recognizable contemporary coloring. This is an important observation because in their eagerness to identify the contexts of historical poems even literary scholars often underestimate the powerful role of fictionality. The Beowulf-poet may have refrained from making his Danes look more authentically Scandinavian because he simply lacked the cultural expertise to do so. At the same time he may not have been particularly interested in any kind of historical specificity at all but rather in using his Danes for fictional purposes of his own. Since the New Critics (Wellek and Warren 1956: 147–150) have taught us that the quest for authorial intent is not only futile but risky, we need not pursue the question any further. What matters is the literary effect. And as far as Beowulf is concerned, that effect results in a fictional universe that manages to be both intensely historical and oddly ahistorical at the same time. It conveys a deep sense of multilayered history since it affords us a glimpse of a past that is distant even from the narrator’s point of view. Yet it also presents us with a legendary landscape that remains ultimately vague and unspecific. In other words, we have no reason to believe that the Denmark in Beowulf is any more realistic than the one that Shakespeare depicts in Hamlet. And this is the case even though the ties between 10th-century England and Danish culture were much stronger than those between England and Denmark in the early 17th century. As John D. Niles (1997: 225–226) states, despite all the Scandinavian places and peoples Beowulf mentions, we never really get a clear idea of how those different places or peoples are supposed to be related to each other geographically, ethnically or linguistically. The fact that many of the names in the poem can actually be identified historically does not automatically mean that the Beowulf-poet and his audience would have interpreted them in the same way as we do. At the end of the day, there is no doubt that in some sense Beowulf is a witness to historical relations between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian cultures, but because of its brilliant exploitation of fictionality and its general aesthetic complexity, the poem defies any attempts to use it as a source that might help us understand the cultural relations between Englishmen and Danes at the time the poem’s manuscript was produced. Given the complex forms of cultural hybridity that obtain in medieval England especially after 1066, it is not surprising that the situation of Middle English literature has been described as essentially post-colonial (Bowers 2000: 53–66). Helpful as
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postcolonial terminology may be for an understanding of how different the Middle Ages were from what we have come to accept as the standard cultural situation of the modern West, postcolonial associations also threaten to obscure medieval and early modern cultural and literary specificity. This is because postcolonial concepts imply notions about identity formation, about the relationship between the center and the margins and about the role of literature in society and within the educational system that are largely useless when it comes to describing the medieval or early modern experience. More importantly, postcolonial criticism’s very focus on a world shaped by the European conquest of a vast expanse of overseas territories tends to reify the period boundaries which, according to postcolonial theory’s own theoretical claims, it should be seeking to deconstruct. As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (2003: 19) has argued persuasively, postcolonial theory “has neglected the study of the distant past, positing instead of interrogating the anteriority against which modern regimes of power have supposedly arisen”.
2.3 Notions of the literary One of the central difficulties all students of the literature of the past – including historical linguists – have to grapple with is that the very idea of “literature” is a fairly recent one, one that is changing and shifting even as I write. Ever since Romanticism at the latest, the study of literature has revolved around the privileging of literature as an aesthetic object easily accessible in the form of printed books and largely enjoyed through practices of private reading. This has resulted in a special emphasis on self-conscious formal experimentation, on the one hand, and on fictionality, on the other, as typical markers of “literariness”. To be sure, literary works have shown an awareness of these aspects from the earliest times, but there have always been other criteria, too, which have served to distinguish the “literary” from the “non-literary”, such as the use of an elevated style or that of specific topoi. Many types of texts which had still been considered of high literary value right up to the 18th century – letters, historiographical works, speeches or sermons – were considerably demoted in status and it is only in recent times that they have begun again to receive increasing attention. John Donne’s contemporaries valued him as a preacher just as much, or perhaps even more than, as a poet. Similarly, our (post)modern reading habits are ill-attuned to the strong presence of the didactic or even encyclopaedic in literature from the earliest times down to the 18th century. In the same vein, the romantic and post-romantic cult of originality saw a reduced artistic relevance of translation. While the Middle Ages possessed a sophisticated relationship to the question of translation, encapsulated, for instance, in Eustache Deschamps’ famous praise of Chaucer as a “grand translateur” (Pearsall 1992: 81), for a long time modern critics tended to see translation as derivative and paid little attention to the complex theoretical questions medieval and early modern authors debated in the context of scriptural translation, but not only there. It is only within the last two decades that medieval ideas on and practices of translation have received growing attention, a development that has taken place within the larger translational turn which we witness in the humanities and which is to a certain extent driven by increasingly complex notions of intertextuality. Translation is now seen as a highly creative and self-conscious activity that cannot be reduced to the mere act of finding equivalents
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in one language for the words and phrases of another. In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, when cultural boundaries were much more fluid and the relationships between the European vernaculars on the one hand and Latin on the other, but also between the vernaculars themselves, were constantly being readjusted, translation was the site of complex ideological and aesthetic negotiation. Some scholars have called into question the applicability per se of the modern notion of “literature” to the medieval and early modern periods. I shall single out one especially brilliant and also very radical example illustrative of this approach. Christopher Cannon (2004) has recently suggested that modern notions of literature ignore the cultural specificity of medieval texts, especially of those problematic medieval texts written in English during the 12th and 13th centuries, i.e. at the very beginning of the linguistic period we call “Middle English”. Cannon argues that we ought to see these works not as representative of some over-arching literary tradition, according to whose standards they are fairly unsophisticated products, but rather as highly individual textual entities meriting individualized critical responses. According to Cannon, the subsequent rise of romance – supposedly the first genre in English literary history to actually identify itself as such – dealt the death blow to that prelapsarian world of individualized textuality. I refer to Cannon’s theory not because I agree with him – I don’t – but because his fascinating Hegelian interpretation of one of the most crucial and yet least studied phases of English literary history represents a challenging attempt to come to terms with the fundamental problem of medieval literature’s alterity: how can we study the literature of the past if we cannot even be sure that the object of our study is what we think it is? Important as his contribution is, Cannon’s theory has at least two fundamental weaknesses. One is that it disregards the multilingual situation of the literary field of medieval England. Latin literature – and to some extent French – was capable of providing a powerful, well-developed and highly – if often implicitly – theorized notion of the literary to the authors who produced works like the Orrmulum or The Owl and the Nightingale. Precisely because medieval English literature did not exist in the comparative isolation of a 19th-century national culture can its notions of textuality and literariness be studied only if seen in conjunction with contemporary developments in Latin or French. The other reason why Cannon’s valiant attempt to rewrite medieval English literary history has to be approached with care is that for all its Hegelian terminology it actually shares in a Foucauldian tradition of romanticizing a state of lost innocence. Just as Foucault (1990: 42–43) proclaimed the absence of homosexual identities for the periods preceding the 19th century, positing instead that there had before been merely individual male-male sexual acts, so does Cannon proclaim the absence of a concept of literature in favor of individual texts. Foucault and many other theorists and historians of culture thus apply what one might arguably call the oldest model of periodization available to Western culture, that of the Fall. But as Jacques Derrida (1974) famously pointed out in his critique of Claude Le´vi-Strauss’s (1973 [1955]: 294–304) equally famous Writing Lesson, there is no point of origin in cultural history, no moment of absolute beginning and, therefore, no state of innocence nostalgically to be invoked. Obsessed with radical breaks and revolutionary ruptures, modern and postmodern historians of culture and literature are too prone to confuse difference with absence. In other words, when studying the literature of the past we must be careful not to cast our notion of alterity in terms of binary oppositions and thus simply define the “medieval” as all we think the modern is not.
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2.4 Method and theory The problem just sketched leads us to another of the basic issues that makes literary history so complex: to what degree are literary critics permitted to employ (post)modern critical tools on literary texts from the past? How anachronistic do we allow ourselves to become? In the early 1960s, an influential American scholar of medieval literature, Durant W. Robertson Jr. (1962), flatly denied the applicability of any kind of modern theory to medieval texts, suggesting instead that all medieval texts had to be read according to a hermeneutical key provided by the Middle Ages itself, namely biblical exegesis. Robertson and his followers argued that all medieval literature had to be read for allegorical Christian messages to be uncovered with the help of the fourfold sense of scripture. In effect, all medieval literature thus meant the same, it was an expression of the Christian religion. For obvious reasons, Robertsonian criticism never spread beyond the confines of medieval studies and was more popular in North America than elsewhere in the world – though it did in a way parallel the conservative, history-of-ideas style of approach expressed, for instance, in E. M. W. Tillyard’s (1959) The Elizabethan World Picture. Today Robertsonian forms of critique have either vanished or been absorbed into the more philologically rigorous types of contemporary medievalist historicism. The reason why Robertson is nevertheless worth mentioning is because he has become something close to the whipping boy of enlightened medieval studies, a spectre invoked when one wishes to attack one or another form of historicism as being too conservative. The ghost of Robertson still haunts Anglo-American medieval studies – he is virtually unknown in Germany – because, erroneous as his totalizing system of hermeneutics was, it did at least attempt to address the question of affording the literature of the past an interpretative system of its own, one not dominated by (post)modern notions of textuality and hermeneutics (Patterson 1987: 26–39). The fundamental question of alterity and anachronism thus addressed cannot be answered here. Much of the history of post-romantic literary theory and criticism can, to a certain extent at least, be read as a continuous engagement with or conscious rejection of this issue. If I nevertheless adopt a provisional stance in this matter, it is in order to remind historical linguists of the slipperiness of the texts they so often deal with as mere sources for their research into the earlier stages of the English language. These sources were not written with a view to becoming sources for historical linguists. Consequently, they will yield evidence – including the most basic forms of linguistic evidence – only to readers prepared to engage with them at their level of cultural complexity, even though it is ultimately impossible to reconstruct that level with any claim to accuracy. This is why literary medievalists will often sniff at the notion of corpus linguistics with its practice of prizing linguistic utterances out of their textual environment and thus divorcing them from a cultural and historical context without which they cannot be understood. Looking back on two decades of New Historicist literary studies, Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt (2000) attempted a pragmatic statement on how to view literature from the past, one that derives much of its persuasiveness from the fact that it is not overly theorized. According to Gallagher and Greenblatt, the relationship between a historical work of literature and the discourses of a given time must always be seen in the light of a relative aesthetic autonomy of the literary text. The term “relative aesthetic autonomy” is one they would probably not use themselves,
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but it does seem to express the general current of their argument. This “relative aesthetic autonomy” matters not because it inoculates the text against the vicissitudes of history or because it removes the work of art onto some kind of timeless, universal plane, as the New Critics would have had it. On the contrary, – and this is very much my interpretation of Gallagher’s and Greenblatt’s statement – the text’s specific aesthetic qualities make it possible for it to express more than it would be capable of saying if it were wholly reducible to a period’s stated ideological concepts or even its discursive framework as explicitly or implicitly expressed in so many different non-literary texts. As Gallagher and Greenblatt (2000: 17) explain, a historical work of literature is, therefore, “at once immersed in its time and place and yet somehow pulling out and away”. Modern readers “feel at once pulled out of our own world and plunged back with redoubled force into it” (Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000: 17). The fact that modern readers are capable of this exhilarating experience when they encounter the strange aesthetic object from the past, the two authors stress, suggests that similar feelings might actually have been generated in the past itself: “It seems arrogant to claim such an experience for ourselves as readers and not to grant something similar to the readers and the authors of the past” (Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000: 17). To speak of a “relative” autonomy of the aesthetic, as I did in rephrasing Gallagher and Greenblatt can, therefore, sound misleading. What is important here is precisely the literary text’s ability to give expression to ideas, concepts, and notions in an indirect or even performative way by employing specific aesthetic strategies and devices. And though these aesthetic devices need not be the exclusive property of literary texts, they do enable a literary text to expand and critique the conceptual frameworks of its period in ways not as readily available to text-types from fields where the ideological premises and norms of a given age are more directly and explicitly phrased, e.g. learned treatises, academic textbooks or legal compendia. And this helps us to understand why interpretations relying on (post)modern methods and theories, or interpretations that seem to contradict overwhelming evidence about the ideological structures of a given period cannot automatically be called anachronistic. If literature is capable of expressing through aesthetic means messages and ideas that would (have) be(en) inexpressible in any other form within a specific historical period, then the critic is justified in using every conceivable means of decoding the aesthetic structures which convey these particular meanings and that includes the complete panoply of (post)modern theory and linguistic methodology. By doing so, the critic is not disregarding or erasing historical specificity but rather bringing it into a fuller and more comprehensive view. My reading of Gallagher and Greenblatt is not entirely orthodox since, by and large, the New Historicists have not been too eager to stress the literariness of literary texts. Affirming the general textuality of culture, New Historicist critics have sought to treat supposedly non-literary texts very much like literary ones and vice versa. Thus, works of literature are frequently read in conjunction with e.g. contemporary medical, legal, or theological texts. Inspiring as this critical work has often been it has also permitted critics to let the literary work “rest easy within a contemporaneous sign system” (Strohm 2000: 150). Erasing the text-context-dichotomy has proved, therefore, to be much less of a liberating move than is often claimed. In many New Historicist readings, contemporary discourse has become the text’s new prison, confining its potential meanings in just as rigid a fashion as some of the dominant contexts from the so-called “Old Historicism” had done.
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2.5 Canon formation The anonymous romantic comedy Mucedorus, first printed as a quarto in 1598 and reprinted in 16 quarto editions by 1668, was five times more popular with Shakespeare’s audience than Hamlet (Gurr 2004: 88). This can mean two things – and they are not mutually exclusive. First, it draws attention to the fact that an Elizabethan audience’s tastes differed from ours and that what we consider canonical might not have been seen as important by contemporaries. Second, the observation highlights the issue of popularity versus canonicity, i.e. the problem that even in Elizabethan times there was a clearly felt difference between literary works with a high degree of cultural prestige and texts addressing a less sophisticated audience. In other words, both is true: namely that Shakespeare’s canonical status amongst contemporaries was not what it is today and also that the Elizabethan literary field already distinguished between high-brow and low-brow forms of literary production. Canon formation is thus one of the central and one of the trickiest questions in literary studies, but it is also of interest to historical linguists because it helps them to assess the status of their sources. I do not have the space to expound in detail on how within the last three decades or so not only the canon as such but the very notion of the canon has become the target of harsh, often politically inspired criticism. The traditional canon is seen to contain almost exclusively the works of male writers belonging to the cultural heritage of the great imperialist powers of the 19th century while authors representing ethnic or racial minorities within the great metropolitan centers of the West, authors from outside these metropolitan centers and women were afforded no more than a marginal status. These debates are driven by the legitimate desire to introduce into the canon works previously excluded, yet the discussions thus raised alert us to the complexity and contingency of canon-formation in general and this is just as relevant for our perspective on the literature of the past as it is for the question of what to teach modern high school students and undergraduates. That a poem like Beowulf should be considered the most canonical of Old English texts is an entirely modern phenomenon that disregards both the poem’s manuscript context and, perhaps even more importantly, our huge lack of knowledge with respect to the literary field of Anglo-Saxon England. Because so much medieval literature is irretrievably lost, we can never be quite sure whether the surviving texts were considered of high quality by contemporaries or not, or whether their survival is due to sheer coincidence. For the later Middle Ages, popularity and, to a certain extent, canonicity can often be gauged through the survival rate of manuscripts. But even here we have to be careful: one of the most canonical works of late Middle English literature (in modern eyes), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, survives in only a single manuscript together with the anonymous poet’s other extant works. Does this mean that the poem was unpopular in its time, or even uncanonical? Is it possible at all to employ the notion of the canonical for the time period in question? Our canon of medieval English literature obviously looks different from what medieval audiences would have considered important. And the same is true of Renaissance literature. The privileged status we accord to the Elizabethan and the Jacobean stage would have seemed decidedly odd to contemporaries who would have assigned a much higher status to narrative verse than to drama. That some notion of a canon did actually exist even in the early Middle Ages is beyond question. When Alfred the Great instigated his great translation project he
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obviously considered a certain body of texts more important than others. But those were Latin texts. It is far more difficult to assess whether there was a sense of vernacular canonicity and if so, when it came into being. Chaucer’s work definitely betrays a strong sense of the canonical and imitates Dante in attempting to elevate vernacular poetry to a status comparable to that of classical literature. Changes in the literary canon have been brought about not merely by attempts to include women or representatives of racial and ethnic groups previously marginalized. Fluctuating tastes and interests often lead to a retrospective reshuffle even of the traditional canon. One of the most prominent cases of such a change in appreciation is the fate of the Metaphysical Poets of the early 17th century. Within a few decades their reputation had become tarnished since their dark and complicated metaphors did not conform to the neoclassical taste that dominated the end of the 17th century and much of the 18th. It was only high modernism as embodied by T. S. Eliot that brought the Metaphysicals back into view and elevated them to an illustrious literary status (Eagleton 1983: 37–40). A more recent example of such shifting sensibilities is the case of the late romantic poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Beddoes spent most of his life working on the sprawling and intricately crafted drama Death’s Jest Book, which until recently was largely considered an unstageable and chaotic failure. Now, however, the play is in the process of being completely re-evaluated and raised to the status of an undisputed masterpiece (Berns and Bradshaw 2007: 10–24). Hence the process of restructuring the canon proves to be a complex one. As newly developing aesthetic sensibilities seek hitherto unexposed aesthetic principles in historical texts, new vistas are opened on aesthetic structures previously unrecognized. Natural as this may sound it is actually quite a dramatic and often even painful process.
2.6 Authorship and subjectivity Despite these shifts in the canon, many traditions of 19th- and early 20th-century criticism linger on and still inform much of our thinking about the canon. Until fairly recently, for instance, the vast body of anonymous Middle English lyrics was deemed to be “popular”, i.e. written by simple people for simple people. Only within the last decade or so have scholars begun to understand the full implications of the fact that anonymity is not necessarily a witness to social or aesthetic irrelevance but may simply be due to different notions of authorship (O’Donoghue 2005: 212–222). And these notions of authorship might actually vary from genre to genre more considerably than they do from period to period. But if anonymity can be linked to genre, then anonymity must also be seen as an aesthetic device producing, for instance, the effect of a disembodied voice. And disembodied voices may make very specific demands on a text’s pragmatics. Anonymity plays such an important role in discussions of medieval and early modern authorship because it has been seen as evidence for the supposed absence of subjectivity in the Middle Ages and, to some degree, in the early modern period. This is a view that goes back to the 19th century and was famously expressed by Jacob Burckhardt (1990: 98). He argued that medieval human beings possessed only collective identities determined by their families, tribes, or cities and that they were incapable of seeing themselves as (individual) subjects. Even though Burckhardt’s theoretical premises have become obsolete his basic ideas linger on. Poststructuralists, New Historicists
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and Cultural Materialists all have voiced similar views within their own theoretical frameworks. Critics who deny the existence of subjectivity to the Middle Ages subscribe to a notion of subjectivity shaped by the rise of 18th- and 19th-century bourgeois individualism. They adhere to a model that posits a linear development of subjectivity as a kind of unbroken vector rising in one direction only. That such a view is teleological is obvious; again difference is primarily conceived of in terms of absence and not in terms of an alterity that may, in fact, defy the very categories we bring to bear on it. One possibility these critics do not usually entertain is that of a subjectivity not linked to individuality (Spearing 2005: 1–34), or of a subjectivity that does not express itself through a self-conscious celebration of the individual but, for instance, through a troubled meditation on the conflicted experience of the collective. Nor do they realize that subjectivity and the degree to which it is discussed in literature might vary even within such time periods as the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the Enlightenment instead of moving forward in an unbroken continuity (Aers 1992: 177–202). Finally, and this is by far the worst problem from a literary point of view, they do not grant the literary text of the past the ability to stage and construct forms of subjectivity rather than merely to mirror them. To argue that a notion or idea did not exist in the past because it is supposedly absent from the texts of a given period, means falling prey to a whole set of fallacies. First, such a view confuses literary fictions with extra-textual reality. Second, such an approach overlooks the fact that something may actually be hidden under the surface level and, third, it neglects the possibility that a text from the past may be using a form of conspicuous absence as a form of highlighting the very phenomenon it apparently lacks. This, for instance, is what Lee Patterson (1991: 165–230) argues in his classic discussion of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. This brings me to the end of my discussion. Ultimately, what makes our understanding of the literature of the past so complicated is not only the alterity of that literature but also the fact that many of the features we are prone to consider as straightforward evidence of that alterity may, in fact, be the products of self-conscious aesthetic strategies. In other words, when studying literature from the past we must be aware not merely of the possibility of fundamental cultural difference, but also of highly sophisticated forms of artistic expression which actually produce some of those effects we like to associate with the pastness of the past. And this would mean that the past already creates its own fictions of alterity (Johnston 2008: 1–16).
3 References Aers, David. 1992. A Whisper in the Ear of Early Modernists; or, Reflections on Literary Critics Writing the “History of the Subject”. In: David Aers (ed.), Culture and History 1350–1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing, 177–202. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Berns, Ute and Michael Bradshaw. 2007. Introduction. In: Ute Berns and Michael Bradshaw (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1–31. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bowers, John M. 2000. Chaucer after Smithfield: From Postcolonial Writer to Imperialist Author. In: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.), The Postcolonial Middle Ages, 53–66. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Burckhardt, Jacob. 1990 [1860]. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. London: Penguin. Cannon, Christopher. 2004. The Grounds of English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. 2003. Medieval Identity Machines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cooper, Helen. 2004. The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1974 [1967]. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. [De la Grammatologie. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit] Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality: Vol. I: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books. Gallagher, Catherine and Stephen Greenblatt. 2000. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Gurr, Andrew. 2004. The Shakespeare Company, 1594–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jauss, Hans Robert. 1979. The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature. New Literary History 10: 181–229. Johnston, Andrew James. 2008. Performing the Middle Ages from Beowulf to Othello. Turnhout: Brepols. Le´vi-Strauss, Claude. 1973 [1955]. Tristes Tropiques. Harmondsworth: Penguin. [Tristes Tropiques. Paris: Librairie Plon.] Lewis, Clive Staples. 1954. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Niles, John D. 1997. Myth and History. In: Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles (eds.), The Beowulf Handbook, 213–233. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. O’Donoghue, Bernard. 2005. “Cuius Contrarium”: Middle English Popular Lyrics. In: Thomas G. Duncan (ed.), A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, 210–226. Cambridge: Brewer. Patterson, Lee. 1987. Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Patterson, Lee. 1991. Chaucer and the Subject of History. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pearsall, Derek. 1992. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell. Robertson, Durant W, Jr. 1962. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Spearing, Anthony Colin. 2005. Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Starn, Randolph. 1994. Who’s Afraid of the Renaissance. In: John Van Engen (ed.), The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, 129–147. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Strohm, Paul. 2000. Theory and the Premodern Text. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Symes, Carol. 2007. Manuscript Matrix, Modern Canon. In: Paul Strohm (ed.), Middle English, 7–22. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tillyard, Eustace M. W. 1959. The Elizabethan World Picture. London: Vintage. Wellek, Rene´ and Austin Warren. 1962. A Theory of Literature. 3rd edn. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Andrew James Johnston, Berlin (Germany)
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78. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography: Music as a language – the history of an idea 1. Music, language, literature 2. The separation of literature and music 3. Beginnings of the (mis-)understanding of music as language: the comparison of musica and grammatica 4. The development of the idea of a musical semantics: music becomes language 5. Summary 6. References
Abstract The close relationship of music and language is a commonplace paradigm in many disciplines from the humanities and social sciences to biology. In musicology it has been one of the central fields of study ever since the beginning of rational thinking about music. This chapter will show that the idea of a relationship or even an identity of music and language originates in our conception about what music and language actually are. The fact that today we think about music and language as closely related communication systems with a common origin is the result of a long history of communication not within but about these systems; it is part of the history of scholarly and scientific communication. As this history is, of course, not specific to the English language or to English speaking countries the view of this chapter will be rather international albeit with a focus on English sources.
1 Music, language, literature Papers concerning music and language only rarely ask the question whether the two are actually comparable and can thus be related. When considered accurately, the term “music” does not stand for a single medium of communication, even if it is usually understood that way in everyday discourse. “Music”, first of all, is a symbolic generalization of a number of different systems of communication operating on the basis of diverse media. Often, it utilizes several media simultaneously: between composer and musician it is the medium of the musical tone and its script, the notation; between musician and listener it is, among other things, the medium of sound and its writing, that is the sound recording; between band or DJ and dancers it is the movement and the rhythm, sometimes put into written form as a choreography or as a music video through which new kinds of dancing can be conveyed (cf. Helms 2003). In the face of popular music and the diverse systems of non-European musics one may rightly doubt definitions of music as art, as some authors have done in the past. However, one may at least say that all communication systems of music mark parallel worlds outside of everyday communication. Music transports the listener out of everyday life and into a gamelike, temporally limited and ritualized sphere with distinct rules: dancing music turns a celebration into a festivity; the liturgy and its songs turn the church service into an exhilarating experience; the concert unites rites of festivity Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1214–1232
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and of service; the pop-song transports the audience into dream worlds; and the music in a department store tries to turn the banality of trade into a pleasant experience. In contrast, language is, first of all, a medium of everyday communication. However, within distinct systems of communication it can be transformed into fiction, whether in speech or in writing, in verse, drama or prose. Many comparisons of language and music become dubitable precisely because the scope of “music” is reduced to a medium that consists only of musical tones and notation, while that of language is extended to include the communication system of literature. When evolutionary biologists in the field of so-called “biomusicology” claim a mutual origin of language and music, or even the origin of language from music, their understanding of the term “music” neglects great areas of its extension. The “songs” of birds, whales, or monkeys are communicative systems like language and like the diverse media which constitute the musical systems of communication. To equate those “songs” with music, though, would be the same as to refer to them as literature, which indeed consists of language and yet is so much more than language. Animals communicate through tones, sounds, and rhythms, yet they do not produce music as long as these tones, sounds and rhythms are not used to mark off a communicative situation that is distinguished from everyday life. Music is a communicative act that transcends everyday life using set rules and a clear terminability – similar to a game. Comparisons of literature and music, however, stand to reason. Before the invention of film, these two were the only arts proceeding dynamically through time. Because of their form, which renders them perceivable, both constitute ritualized spheres which are differentiated from everyday communication. Literature describes fictive acts as if they were real whereas music turns real acts into fiction that are not commonplace and sometimes non-committal. Hence the detachment of music and language marks the beginning of the history of the comparison of music and language.
2 The separation of literature and music A comprehensive concept of music that expands with every invention of new broadcasting media – from the first notations to the MP3-file – is characteristic of our culture. However, this cannot be taken for granted. That is, although many cultures have special words for singing, dancing, and playing an instrument as well as for certain rites which comprise singing or dancing, they do not have a superordinate term for the concept of music (cf. Kaden 2006). If singing as one concept in a communication system is only denoted as and understood through the notion of a rite, for instance a prayer, then for the members of that communication system the concept collapses into parts of the prayer but not into melody and text. If singing is understood to be an action which has nothing in common with the activities of playing an instrument or dancing, there is no need for a differentiation between melody and text which would have rendered it comparable to melody and sound of instrumental playing, and melody and movement of dancing. In singing, it is the musical media tone, sound and rhythm that are markers of nonstandard spheres of communication rather than the words of the text. However, pitch and length of the tone are not categorically separated from the articulated sound of the linguistic syllable: they are part of an entity within the prosody. The division of the perception of singing as duality of text and music is a relatively late phenomenon in history. One might presume that the text and music of a song or an opera are
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experienced holistically by a great number of recipients to this day. This holistic perspective is only problematic for those who interpret music and text in written or spoken words; that is philosophers, critics, literary scholars and musicologists. This problem arose in the historic moment of Greek antiquity when a song was no longer only sung, danced or listened to, but also analyzed, which meant that it was broken into parts in order to describe its effect and significance. First evidence of the claim that music can be appreciated without text (and without dance) can be found in the myth about the competition between Apoll (the Greek god and head of the nine Muses) and Marsyas (a minor deity living in springs) – despite the fact that the claim is still negated by Apoll’s victory, who sang and simultaneously plucked the kithara, while Marsyas played the aulos, a wind instrument. The writings of Greek philosophers that have been handed down through history, and particularly those of Plato, extensively reflect the emancipatory process of thinking and talking about music. Plato argues against the separation of text and music which, in his day, had already become an established fact. Plato defines melos (here: the song) as a unity of logos (word), harmonia (melody/manner of singing), and rhythmos (metre/ rhythm) (Politeia 3.398d) and defends this entity arguing that it is hard to identify what harmonia and rhythmos alone, excluding logos, would want to express and imitate. He condemns pure instrumental music that does not accompany vocals or dance and derives its quality from the musician’s virtuosity alone as crude and unwrought (Nomoi 2.669e-670a). In the Nomoi, he uses the term mousike´ for the unity of tone, rhythm, and text. Consistently, he applies the term poieˆteˆs to the concept of the “poet-musician”. Yet he cannot prevent the departure of the enigmatic notion of mousike´ from the unity of the arts of the muses towards autonomy, that is, becoming independent of poetry – both in thinking and with the participants and institutions in the field of artistic practice. The time of Aristotle, then, marks the manifestation of a concept of mousike´ that generally comprises practical musical skills like playing an instrument and singing on the one hand, as well as harmony in its full scope, from the theory of harmony related to practice to the Pythagorean philosophy of numeraries, on the other. The discovery that musical intervals can be conveyed through mathematical proportions (e.g. the octave as a relation of 2:1, the fifth as 3:2, the fourth as 4:3), which in Greek philosophy was ascribed to Pythagoras, led to a further autonomization of the reasoning about music through the introduction of a mathematical reference system. The theory of harmony built on mathematical laws as it was put into writing by Aristoxenos of Tarent (who lived a generation after Aristotle) eventually led to the irrevocable emancipation of the theory of music from poetics. The Pythagorean mysticism of numeraries helped to establish the first theory of the effects of music that was independent of its linguistic meaning: if Creation as a whole is organized through harmonic partition, then the soul of Man is organized harmonically as well (cf. Plato, Timaeus), and, accordingly, can be modulated by the harmony of music. Differences in music can, as a consequence, have different effects on the listener (Politeia 3.398c–399d). The mathematic paradigm of speaking about music as a musica speculativa, from the four Pythagorean mathemata of Archytas of Tarentum (geometry, numeraries, spherical geometry, and mousike´) to the quadrivium of the artes liberales, was propagated until the Renaissance and at some universities even until the Enlightenment. Medieval authors used the term musica to indicate a philosophy of music based on mathematics.
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Until the 15th century, and sometimes beyond that, the English language normally used the terms “musike” or “musique” to denote a scientific-mathematical discipline. John of Salisbury, in his mirror for princes Policraticus sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum (c. 1159), for instance, finds fault in the alleged debauchery and licence of his contemporary music and relates this to missing measure, i.e. the missing numerical order (John of Salisbury 1965: vol. 1, 41–42). In the Middle Ages, practical music, just like the status of a practicing musician, was not worth mentioning. Yet we can assume that the unity of poetry and music was initially perpetuated in mental concepts of singing. The two forms of notation in Ancient Greek that were common in the 5th century BCE, and were sporadically used until the 4th century CE, borrowed their symbols from the Doric and the Ionic alphabet. The next step in developing a script for notation were the neumes which were the first occidental musical notation after a long period without any form of writing. Their principles were developed simultaneously in the Ecclesiae Orientales, that is the churches in the East of the Roman Empire, and in Francia during the 9th century CE. The neumes, as opposed to the ancient Greek notations, were based on the prosodic symbols of the reciters of ancient Greek literature. Early neumes are adiastematic, i.e. they run parallel to the text like prosodic symbols, while the position of the symbol does not denote the pitch. They are simply musical gestures (neuma = gr. nod, sign) designed to help the memorizing of the text. The characters of neumatic notations demonstrate that they were not invented for a notation in the sense of our contemporary understanding of written music. They were rather a mnemonic device for an exalted, ceremonial recitation of text. Yet the tendency to think in tones in applied music, which otherwise can only be found in music theory, can already be observed in notations from before the year 1000 CE: the linear neume-symbols, suggesting movement, yield to the punctum (a loan-word from geometry), which through its arrangement allows for a more precise representation of tone pitch. Especially after the development of staves in intervals of a third, which took place shortly after 1000 CE, the representation of pitch was presumably exact. As opposed to the adiastematic neumes, the note is now constructed mathematically and can be read independently of the text and the memory of its prosody. As long as music and text were still thought of as one it was not necessary to put the rhythm into writing since the syllables provided indications for the approximate lengths and brevities in the performance. It was the implementation of mensural notation in the 13th century that permitted the writing of the durations of tones as mathematically precise parts of a whole and hence led to the ultimate separation of music and text in musical praxis. It became both thinkable and practicable to compose music without a text, that is without the substructure of a pre-existing vocal melody, a cantus firmus; and polyphonic music became an art that was increasingly independent from text. It was not until the advance of humanistic education among musicians around the end of the 15th century that composition and literature converged again. Yet these attempts at unification were always made with awareness of the existing diversities of both systems, and the separation was now considered to be a problem. The comprehensibility of text became an important issue in times of humanism and reformation and from around 1400 the composers increasingly took meaning, form, and metre of the text they chose for their composition into account. During the first half of the 1580s, the members
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of the Camerata fiorentina – an academy-like group of musicians, poets and scholars led by Earl Giovanni Bardi – discussed the relation of text and music on the basis of the antique tragedy. In France, the Acade´mie de Poe´sie et de Musique, which formed around the poet Jean-Antoine de Baı¨f, began testing the use of antique metre in their Musique mesure`e a` l’antique, in 1570. In England it was most notably the composer and poet Thomas Campion who seized these ideas in his measured verse, as he explains in the preamble of his Two Bookes of Ayres: “I have chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes lovingly together” (London c. 1613). In Germany, it was already around the beginning of the 16th century that composers tried to confer antique metre to music, as odes by composers like Conradus Celtis show. In Italy, and later on also in France, these discussions led to the development of a new musico-dramatic art, the “favola in musica” and respectively the “trage´die en musique”, i.e. the Italian and the French opera. French literary theory of the 18th century even acknowledged opera as a third genre of drama besides tragedy and comedy. From 1850 onwards Richard Wagner’s concept of the Music Drama marked a climax of the attempts to unify music and literature: all parts of music, from a single tone and its duration, to keys and harmonies, to the sound of orchestra and leitmotiv, as well as all parts of libretto, from the sound of vocals and consonants to the form of alliteration to the proceedings, should serve the idea of the drama (Wagner 1852).
3 Beginnings of the (mis-)understanding of music as language: the comparison of musica and grammatica The disconnection of the literary text from music was not necessarily the basis for the understanding of music as a language. The separation of both arts was mainly facilitated through the mathematical understanding of the musical parameters of pitch and length. But although the treatises of medieval theorists followed the antique tradition of describing music as a mathematical discipline, their texts ever and anon contain linguistic terminology used for comparison and for the exemplification of musical concepts. Here, the medieval authors tie in with antique traditions: both the commented translation of Plato’s Timaeus by Chalcidius (4th/5th century CE) and Boethius’s five books De institutione musice (500 CE), standard works of the “musica speculativa” in medieval times and Renaissance, describe the sonus as the smallest unit of the cantus by comparing the former with the phtongi of language. This comparison becomes a commonplace which can be found in many medieval writings (Maier 1999: 149–152) like for instance in the Carolingian “Musica enchiriadis” (9 CE), the most prominent treatise of musical theory in the late Middle Ages, which was also known in England in the 11th century at the latest; or in a fragment of a book entitled Musica, which was probably wrongfully assigned to Alcuin and contained many sections that correspond to the Musica disciplina of Aurelianus Reomensis of the 9th century; or in Walter Odington’s Summa de speculatione musicae (around 1300). The English monk writes the following about musical performance: Et sunt apud nos partes cantilenae sic enim syllabae et pedes sunt partes metri, ita in vocibus phtongi, id est soni, quorum duo vel tres neumam, id est partem cantilenae, constituunt, et pars una vel plures distinctiones faciunt, id est congruum respirationis locum. (Odington 1970: 103)
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And we have parts in song which are like syllables and feet as parts of metre. In voices there are phtongi, that is tones, of which two or three make a neum, that is a part of song, and one or more of them make a distinction that is a joint place of breathing. (my translation, DH)
Especially when mathematical explanatory models prove to be insufficient, for instance when it comes to the description of design features that go beyond single tones, or to breaks and cadences, the theory of music of the Middle Ages uses grammatical terms for explanations. Often theorists also discuss the different meanings of terms in linguistics and music, as for instance with Johannes de Muris, who in his Summa distinguishes the grammatical term “tonus”, which he equates with the three forms of accents, from the same term in music, which he defines as interval, as it is still customary today with the terms semi-tone and whole-tone (de Muris 1963: 210). Fritz Reckow ascribes the prevalent borrowing of grammatical terms by medieval music theorists to their wish for a regulation of musical knowledge. He writes that the educational movement of the Carolingians had already led to a systemization and standardization of knowledge. In the wake of this systemization, music theorists would often refer to the model of the grammatica as a regulated and regularized discipline (cf. Reckow 1992: 84–86). Roger Bacon, however, Aristotelian and strongly influenced by Augustinus’s De Musica, describes the relation between linguistic disciplines and music from a wholly different perspective: in his Opus tertium he classifies music as consisting of melody (“melica”), text (“prosaica”), metrics (“metrica”) and rhythm (“rhythmica”). While melody can be found in singing, the other three paradigms belong to speech. Bacon argues that the musicus, who in all four areas searches for reasons and causes on the basis of numerical principles, is for the grammarian what the geometrician is for the carpenter: “grammaticus est mechanicus in hac parte, et musicus est artifex principalis” (Bacon 1859: 231). For Bacon musica as the theory of harmonical proportions is also the fundament of linguistic disciplines. Grammar, according to Bacon, cannot explain its reasons and causes, the mathematical discipline of music, however, can. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance compared single terms and basic properties of both disciplines to each other, without, though, equalizing the disciplines. It was not before the 17th century that music was no longer seen as just being comparable to linguistic disciplines; establishing the notion that music is a language of its own (see Section 4) was pre-conditional for transferring the term of grammar as an elementary regulating system of language to the elementary tenets of music as well as for explaining the form of compositions with the help of syntactic terms. The publication of the manuscripts The Musical Grammarian written by Roger North in 1726 and 1728 (North 1990) and William Tans’ur’s A Compleat Melody (1734), which was also published with the title A New Musical Grammar, marked the beginning of a production of dozens of basic teachings in music coming up in the 18th and especially the 19th century up to this day, which promise to introduce the reader to the “grammar” of music. The equation of music and language led to the transfer of a large number of linguistic terms to musical terminology, which, most notably, describe the “syntax” of music: the terms period, theme/subject, thought, exposition and recapitulation are examples from English. Examples from German like Hauptsatz ‘main clause’ and Seiten-/Nebensatz ‘side/subordinate clause’ articulate the concept even more clearly. It is no coincidence
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that these terms are mostly associated with the music of the pre-classical (from about 1730 onwards) and the classical period. The new structural orientation of composition on harmony rather than melodic lines led to a symmetrically textured construction of periods (Periodenbau) and easily comprehensible forms like the sonata form, while both techniques suggested the comparison with syntax and the borrowing of its terms for new phenomena. Because of the development of a grammar of music which was build on mere musical parameters the instrumental music could separate from vocal music since it was no longer dependent on words to develop form. The book A Treatise on the Art of Music by the English author William Jones suggested that this development in music marked the close of the golden age of English music from Bird to Handel: “Ever since Instrumental Music has been made independent of Vocal, we have been in danger of falling under the dominion of sound without sense” (Jones 1784: iv). The Scottish writer Alexander Malcolm anticipated this criticism in his A treatise of musick, speculative, practical, and historical in 1721. He argued that, as a matter of course, almost every melody would provoke feelings but the beauty of the new music should be recognized by its design. For him, the aim of the new music was rather “to entertain the Understanding, than to move particular Passions” (Malcolm 1721: 600). The numerous grammars of music that introduce the reader to the basics of musical construction also react to this new demand on the listener to permeate a composition structurally. Accordingly, William Jones writes: “If you play an Adagio of Corelli to a person who knows nothing of Harmony, you will raise no Admiration; for the same reason, as if you were to read Milton or Shakespeare to a man who does not understand the Grammar” (Jones 1784: i–ii). After all, educated people would not need to listen to the music but would be able to get “satisfaction and improvement” only from reading a score (Jones 1784: ii). When the performative element can be omitted and when the delights of music can accrue from the study of the score only, then music has at last drawn level with literature: it becomes an opus. In An Essay on Musical Harmony from 1796, Augustus F.C. Kollmann discusses at length the equation of linguistic form and music. In his chapter about rhythm, for example, he compares musical bars with metrical feet, periods with lines, and episodes with stanzas (Kollmann 1796: 80–81). Eventually John Wall Callcott tags the musical episodes with signs which he compares to punctuation marks (Callcott 1817: 276). Since the audience of the pre-classical and the classical period was increasingly composed of music lovers with little musical education one might speculate that the borrowing of terms from grammar and poetics in the elementary tenets of music facilitated the comprehension and understanding of music for this audience. If on the one hand music can be described with terms of grammar, then, conversely, grammar can use concepts and signs of music – especially in areas where the terminology and the character set of linguistics are insufficient. From early on, notes were used in grammars and language schools, as for example in Franciscus Niger’s (1480) Grammatica brevis, which described the length, stress and melody in the recitation of Latin poetry with the help of musical notation (cf. facsimiles in Littleton 1911: 15). Particularly for the demonstration of the parameters of a language, like its intonation, it was and still is common to revert to parallels in music, like e.g. Joshua Steele did in his An Essay towards Establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech to be Expressed and Perpetuated by Peculiar Symbols, which influenced many succeeding linguists. Steele
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developed a complex notation system for linguistic intonation and rhythm based on musical notation, and postulated a close link between practical music and linguistics to aim at a more detailed description of language (Steele 1775: xiv-xvi) and to refine language in general (Steele 1775: 173): Moreover, having never yet blended the study of music and language together, so as to treat the modulation of speeche as a genus of music under the rules of Melopœia, it is not to be wondered at, that the Greek writers in this learning have been overlooked or misunderstood. (Steele 1775: xvi)
Steele’s method was enhanced in the 19th century by John Thelwall (1812) in his Course of Instructions on the Rhythmus and in James Chapman’s (1976 [1821]) The Original Rhythmical Grammar of the English language; or the Art of Reading and Speaking, on the Principles of the Music of Speech.
4 The development of the idea of a musical semantics: music becomes language Since antiquity, the question of the effect on the listeners of music emancipated from the text had been a problem. Only when composers in the renaissance strove to cause this effect by using palpable musical signs was the idea of semantics ascribed to music. The myth of Orpheus, who was able to influence humans, animals, gods and even inanimate nature by his singing, proves the power that was already ascribed to the art of the muses in ancient times, i.e. the power to influence human beings as well as both animate and inanimate nature. Along with the associated detachment of harmonia and logos (see above) the question of the degree of involvement of harmonia in relation to influence and meaning became virulent. The philosophers in ancient Greece did not deny the great effects of non-textual music. However, Plato accused virtuosic music of crudity (Nomoi 2.670a); Aristotle at least ascribed the function of catharsis to this kind of music (Politika 8.1341b, 30–40). The verbal concretion of this effect and its meaning, however, becomes somewhat problematic. In the Nomoi (2.669e), Plato argues that it is difficult to judge what rythmos and harmonia try to express and imitate without text. In Politeia he refers to Damon when he ascribes certain characteristics to the modes: the Mixolydian and the Hyperlydian are described as mournful, the Lydian and Ionic as limp and softish, the Doric as heroical, and the Phrygian is considered to be the tonality of leisure. He also assumes the imitation of certain characteristics in rhythm, without, though, concretizing his assumption (Politeia 3.398d–3.401a.). Although not always consistently, the ascriptions of characteristics to tonalities were passed on from antiquity and through Boethius to medieval times, often enriched with anecdotes about the astonishing effects of music. In their theories of state, both Aristotle and Plato draw conclusions about the use of music in education using the effects of music. Both see the major aim of education in training the faculty of judgement, above all to identify the ethical values of a song. In addition, the evaluation of ethically aesthetic forms and the ascertainment of the effects of music allowed music theorists to draw parallels to poetics and rhetoric. Cicero (De oratore III, (LX) 224–227) and Quintilian (Institutio oratoria I, 10) for example
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pointed to the benefits of musical knowledge for public orators, who were advised to find the most appropriate and striking delivery of their speeches through music and its effects. The assertions of the antique authors about the characteristics of tonalities are heterogeneous and vague, and it is difficult to transfer them to the Gregorian Choral of Christian liturgy. Consequently, many medieval authors referred to them with rather little enthusiasm. However, some evidence on how music can be adjusted to the “materia” of the text through choosing mode and melody can be found very early on in the writings of Johannes Affligemensis, who in his treaty De musica cum tonario, written around 1100, provides some hints on how these adjustments were conducted (Affligemensis 1963). From the end of the 12th century onwards, scholasticism intensified the discussion about the adequacy of music and text. Hieronymus of Moravia for instance argued in the 13th century that music should be written in accordance with the content of the text – i.e., according to the beauty or unseemliness of the text – without the mechanical assignment of modes to characteristics (Reckow 1992: 90). These beginnings of a musical poetics, whose realization still constitutes a desideratum of research in musical practice (see e.g. Stevens 1986; Hughes 1990), certainly never reached a stage in theory in which designated contents of texts would be allocated to concrete musical phenomena. In the beginning of the 14th century music theory went a step further and approved – in conscious imitation of rhetoric – of the deliberate violation of rules in order to cause effects and sketch characters. When medieval authors utilize rhetoric terms in their music treatises, however, they use them as an example for a comparable phenomenon in the adjoining discipline of rhetoric, and not as an attempt to establish a rhetoric of music. Around 1100, for instance, Johannes Affligemensis argued that the homoioptoton, the “apud musicos”, conforms to the homoiophthongon, and in 1417 Gobelinus Person mentions antonomasia and exclamatio in combination with the description of musical means of expression (Person 1907: 195). While grammar and rhetoric are used for comparison and as reference in the Middle Age, and the agreement of music and text was actually more a desirable “ornatus” than a condition (Reckow 1998: 30), the development that concludes with the idea of music as language eventually begins with the advancement of the Renaissance. Shortly before the 16th century, indications in the field of music theory as well as in other disciplines, suggestive that contemporaries expected something different from practical music than they did before, proliferate. Typical examples are Thomas More’s oft quoted propositions in Utopia (1516), in which he presents his ideal of music as an expression of natural feelings so expressive that it touches the hearts of the listeners (More 1965: 236–237). A year later it is More’s friend Richard Pace who substantiates these thoughts. After an elaborate praise of music and its wonderful effects in De Fructu (1517), he bemoans the triviality of the music of his coevals in comparison to the arts of the elder, excoriating that hardly any living musician was able to understand the harmonies he was singing (Pace 1967: 44). This criticism of contemporary music cumulates and becomes a commonplace in music theory and beyond. Humanists rediscovered old reports about the effects of music during their debate about antique literature. Although these reports – generally mediated by Boethius – were also known in the Middle Ages, they gained new authority after the writings of Aristotle and especially those of Plato had been made accessible in the 13th and 15th centuries respectively. Humanists collect extensive
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florilegia concerning the effects and advantages of music, and the longer these lists of its miraculous powers get, the more pressing seems the question why contemporary music is not able to produce such effects and by which means it could gain such powers again (Helms 2001). While the beauty of medieval composition is represented by its (mathematical) mensurability, in the harmonic proportionality of its parts, and in the splendour and festive context of its performance, what matters now in the 15th and 16th centuries is the effect and expression that music reaches through imitation – the Aristotelian principle of mimesis. The idea that music could refer to the subjectivity of the composer or the listener, and that it gains its meaning through this reference, is still foreign in the Renaissance, that only just “invented” the concept of the composer being the creator and owner of his work – eventually, music can thus only imitate what is indicated by its text. However, as the anonymous author in 15th century De origine et effectu musicae writes in the chapter De imitatione rerum effectus in neumi, imitatio is no longer just concerned with the underlying affect, represented through choice of the mode, a certain tempo or a high or low pitch of melody (Anonymous 1983: 111). Now, intelligibility in composition increasingly corresponds to the single phrase, and even the single word. Among the prevailing mood, the affect, attention is also focused on detail. In his Practica Musicae, Franchino Gaffurio (1496: fol. eeiiijv) states that singing has to be adapted to the word of the song, and Gioseffo Zarlino (1588: Chapters VII/II) eventually coined the catchphrase of the “imitazione della parola” in his Sopplimenti musicali. Just like the poet, who imitates things with words ordered in verse, the musician could imitate the expression of the words he wants to compose in music by means of melody and harmony (cf. Du¨rr 1994: 53). With the demand for imitation of the word in music, the step from the effect of music to its meaning is taken. Composers already and increasingly start to experiment with musical means of expression during the first half of the 15th century. Even if more detailed research is still required, one can assume that most means of expression were already known in the first decades of the 15th century before the beginning of the musical Renaissance. The meaning of these, however, changed from being additional ornatus to constituting a central aspect of composition. Composers like Josquin Desprez, a role model for the entire 16th century, were very sensitive towards syntactical units and the metre of their texts, but also towards their semantics. Thus, the meaning of music is generated through different systems of signs. Mathematics not only gives a composition its formal order of its single parts in mathematically beautiful proportions, but also a meaning through number symbolism, which can manifest itself in a distinct repetition of notes or through the choice of a certain metre. Some composers like to apply the secret science of gematria. They transfer e.g. the name of a person into a number by adding up the positions of its letters in the alphabet and representing this figure in their composition e.g. in the number of notes of a melody. “Word painting” is also frequently applied for iconic signs, for instance in depicting a wave through a wavelike progress of a melody. So-called “eye-music” uses musical notation for pictorial symbols like a cross, or two eyes, or blackened notes that are employed to visualize mourning within the notation. Gestural signs can be found, like e.g. slow, low notes symbolizing mourning, or fugued paragraphs to express the concept of flight, as well as musical onomatopoeia, utilized to imitate sighs, cries, or animal sounds. “Soggetti” are created as a theme for a composition by transforming the syllables of a
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name (e.g. “Hercules Dux Ferrariae” in the corresponding mass by Josquin) into solmization syllables and then into notes (in this case: re ut re ut re fa mi re). Further references can be made through quotation of melodies or parts of the polyphonic setting of other pieces and links to their texts. Music can react to form or content of single paragraphs of text through changes in rhythm or contrasts in setting methods, through deliberate violation of rules and creation of dissonances to express violence or agony. Characteristics of modes, though, were the only sign system which was ever used to ascribe intersubjectively accepted meaning with the help of a purely musical phenomenon without reference to another system of signs (like e.g. numbers, pictures or movements). Yet, this system never accomplished unambiguousness. During the 16th century the word is increasingly moving into the center of planning a composition: in his Le istitutioni harmoniche from 1558, Zarlino states that “harmonia” and “numero”, i.e. harmonic setting and rhythm, should serve the “oratione”, not the other way around (Zarlino 1562: 339). Music and text are now understood as distinct artistic systems, yet closely related through the common content of meaning, while it is the music that interprets the text. The members of Camarata Fiorentina went even further in the last two decades of the 16th century in their attempt to revive antique tragedy and its effects, that is the ideal of a “recitar cantando” (Cavalieri 1600: title) for one voice, closely related to the recitation of an actor, focusing more on the expression of music through the artistic ability of the singer and less on the signs of the composer, and thus constituting the tradition of the recitative. A survey of this new ideal can for instance be found in the foreword of the first preserved opera, Jacopo Peri’s Le Musiche Sopra L’Euridice (Florence 1600). Peri, analyzed somewhat hyperbolically, reduces the music to a ‘paratext’ to enhance the effect of the words which can only be done authentically in the display of intense emotion – a factor still mirrored in the libretti of opera up to the present day. While Franco-Flemish and especially Italian composers experimented with their repertoire of possibilities to imitate text and its basic topic, the other side of the communication circle developed the ideal of the critical audience. The state theories of ancient Greece, especially those written by Plato and Aristotle, saw the goal of musical instruction in the education of skilled critics who could judge the ethical value of a composition, and not in the training of virtuoso musicians. This objective was picked up by the humanists in the 15th and 16th century. The development of an urban, educated elite advocated the evolution of this new type of amateur and connoisseur. During the 16th century, the notions about what this connoisseur actually should judge in music diverged. Yet there was general consensus about the assessment of the ethical value of a composition. Nevertheless, Baldessare Castiglione, in his Libro del Cortegiano requires the same skills from his courtiers that modern music critics would need today: analytical hearing that is concentrated on both the construction of the composition and the execution of the interpreter (Helms 2001: 342–3). A similar goal in education is described by Thomas Elyot in The Boke Named the Governour (1531), the major British humanist pedagogical work. Apart from the task “to gyue iugement in the excellencie of their [musicians, D.H.] counnynges”, though, he calls for an interpretation of the allegory of music as a symbol for a well-regulated state and the harmony of its estates (Elyot 1967: Volume 1; 42–43). In his seven chapters about dance, Elyot explicitly shows what such an allegory could look like: every step of man and woman is assigned a corresponding male and feminine virtue. Combined they symbolize the holy sacrament of
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marriage (Elyot 1967: Volume 1, Chapters 19–25). Elyot’s proposition is unique and not imitated in the discussion about the role of music in education throughout the history of communication between composers, musicians and listeners. Yet, his example illustrates the complex of problems of the 16th century: educated musical amateurs try to acquire musical compositions, not by playing music, but ideally by listening, reading and understanding. There is an agreement that music does have an effect which it accomplishes through mimesis. Yet what is lacking completely is a theory that renders understanding possible, a theory that transcribes musical signs into verbal meaning. It thus seems only natural that people orientated themselves towards the linguistic disciplines of rhetoric and poetics where this communicative problem was solved. In treatises by German authors, the term musica poetica first occurs in Nicolaus Listenius’s writings in 1533 and 1537 (Rudimenta musicae and Musica). Although its exact meaning is still a matter of debate in musicology, it remains unquestioned that the musica poetica relates the musica theorica, the speculative science, with the musica practica, which teaches how to make music. It describes the production of an “opus”, relating to both a written piece of music or a written piece about music. Originally, the musica poetica denotes more than a theory of composition. Subsequent authors of the 16th century, like Heinrich Faber in his Musica poetica of 1548 (see Stroux 1976), even more clearly than Listenius include the perspective of the recipient in their notion of the term: in analogy to poetics as a linguistic discipline, which is a set of rules for production and understanding at the same time, they add judgement and correction of a composition to the area of the musica poetica (see in particular Loesch 2001). The musica poetica thus is in its design a method to solve the communication problem between composers and, respectively, musicians and their recipients. When music liberates itself from the text, and when its effects are attributed to the imitation of single words and phrases of the text, music becomes a text itself; a text that is not only effective but also, little by little, reveals meaning. Rather than featuring a structure comparable to syntax, as it was seen in the middle ages, music now consists of a form that in itself becomes a syntax. Instead of decorative elements, music develops terse signs which both the composer and the recipient have to be familiar with. It is surprising that to this day we can find very little explicit communication that resolves and conventionalizes such signs which mediate between listener and musician – despite the calls for this in musical theory in many treatises on political theory and pedagogy, and in other more general writings. More elaborate attempts that lead into this direction were only made by German musical theorists since Joachim Burmeister’s (1606) Musica poetica. Burmeister describes and systematizes music through linguistic terminology. He calls the theory of composition “syntax”, while “orthography” is the instruction for the correct addition of text to music. Finally, he employs terminology from rhetoric to describe 26 musical figures, systematized as melodic, harmonic, and melodicharmonic figures. In these descriptions, Burmeister often refers to paragraphs of compositions by earlier and contemporary composers. In the end, he provides one of the first detailed analyses of music history by describing the structure and rhetoric devices of a composition by Orlando di Lasso. Burmeister’s poetics of music with his theory of what is called musical figures instigates a tradition in German musical theory with authors like Michael Praetorius, Johannes Nucius, Johannes Lippius, and Johann Mattheson. Its climax of a fully systematized theory, though, was only reached at a time when musical aesthetics had long abandoned the theory of musical figures in the
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introduction to Nikolaus Forkel’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (1788). The theory of musical figures subsumes musical signs under terms of rhetoric and poetics. Thus, it manifests the linguality of music, despite the fact that many signs in baroque compositions are of numeric, gestural or iconic nature. Also, the violation of rules, often legitimized as a rhetoric device or as a special effect since the Middle Ages, is eventually the breaking of purely musical rules and applies to language only in the figurative sense. Systematically elaborated theories of musical figures remain a uniquely German tradition. Although English authors also draw parallels between music and language and they also allude to rhetorical devices, none of their texts can be called a theory of the comprehension of music. Thomas Morley (1597: 177–182) advises aspiring composers how to best adjust text and music, but does so only at the very end and on a few pages of his A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, which was to become a standard work in later years. He highlights the expressiveness of modes, keys and, respectively, intervals, as well as that of tempo and rhythm, and recommends word painting in music. When Morley declares that every composer should be in the mood of the words set to music, or that composers should at least try to put themselves in the respective mood and when he explains that the gifts of certain composers to excel in certain musical genres are rooted within their characters it becomes evident that he does not consider music to be a language, but understands literature and composition as two distinct systems whose commonality is the expression of emotion and character. For this, it is fundamentally important that the composer succeeds in putting himself into the correct mood; the appliance and implementation of a theory of musical figures defining exact signs comes second. Only in his “annotations”, Morley speaks of a second practical music following the elementary tenets of music, which he – just as subsequent German authors – describes as the Syntactical, poeticall, or effectiue; treatinge of soundes, concordes, and discords, and generally of euery thing seruing for the formal and apte setting together of parts or soundes, for producing of harmonie either vpon a ground, or voluntarie. (Morley 1597: without page)
The most important indications of the association of musical signs with rhetoric in 17th century England are found outside of the theory of composition with Francis Bacon and Henry Peacham the Younger. In The Compleat Gentleman (1622) Peacham tries to picture music as adequate avocation for the ideal gentleman: Yes, in my opinion, no Rhetoricke more perswadeth, or hath greater power of mind: nay, hath not Musicke her figures, the same which Rhetorique? What is a Revert but her Antistrophe ? her reports, but sweet Anaphora’s ? her conterchange of points, Antimetabole’s ? her passionate Aires but Prosopopoea’s ? with infinite other of the same nature. (Peacham 1906: 103)
Peacham’s focus is on the compensational and recreational effects of music, which renders it the adequate avocation for a gentleman. The allusion to rhetoric is first and foremost used because a publicly active gentleman should be sufficiently proficient in that discipline. Francis Bacon’s reference to the similarities of music and rhetorics can be found in his Sylva Sylvarum (1627). In the second chapter of this history of nature he
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describes ‘sound’ at length. In relation to a discussion about the effects of sounds and especially music he refers to the similarities of musical figures and rhetoric: There be in Musick certain Figures or Tropes, almost agreeing with the Figures of Rhetorick, and with the Affections of the Minde, and other Senses. First. The Division and Quavering, which please so much in Musick, have an agreement with the Glittering of Light […]. Again, the Falling from a Discord to a Concord, which maketh great sweetness in Musick, hath an agreement with the Affections, which are reintegrated to the better, after some dislikes; it agreeth also with the taste, which is soon glutted with that which is sweet alone. The sliding from the Close or Cadence, hath an agreement with the Figure in Rhetorick, which they call Prater Expectarum; for there is a pleasure, even in being deceived. (Bacon 1670: 31)
Here, Bacon does not subsume every musical effect under the system of rhetoric, but describes three forms of signs constituting the effects of music: iconic, harmonic (i.e. purely musical), and rhetorical. In the following he reinforces the proposition that music can have a distinct effect by itself since it appeals directly to the soul: And therefore we see, that Tunes and Airs, even in their own nature, have in themselves some affinity with the Affections : As there be Merry Tunes, Doleful Tunes, Solemn Tunes; Tunes inclining Mens mindes to Pity, Warlike Tunes, & c. (Bacon 1670: 32)
English authors do not share the German enthusiasm about the applicability of rhetoric to music, which can be seen in the work of Charles Butler’s 1636 The Principles of Music. Even Butler, author of a comprehensive textbook about rhetoric from 1598, draws only weak parallels between music and rhetoric. He describes the characteristics of modes right in the beginning of his Principles; however, in the following he does not address the issue of the elements which cause effects in music anymore. In the fourth paragraph Of đe Ornaments of melodi and harmoni he depicts “Consecution”, “Syncope”, “Fuga” und “Formaliti” (Butler 1980: 55). Consecutio, Synkope and form are also linguistic terms (cf. Butler 1980: 62–64), however, Butler understands them purely in musical terms as theory of harmonic progressions, of syncopes or suspended dissonances and of the formation of musical sections. In the first chapter of his second book he eventually mentions the setting of text to music: the composer “must have a spezial care đat đe Note[s] agræ to đe nature of đe Ditti” (1980: 95–98). His indications of how music should relate to text are similar to Morley’s. Butler, being a Rhetorician, does not provide a rhetorical understanding of musical signs either. (Butler’s book is, by the way, not the only one about music transcribed phonetically. In the late 16th century the lutenist Thomas Whythorne also wrote his autobiography in a self-designed phonetic system [see Whythorne 1961]). Four years before Nikolaus Forkel’s extensive 1788 work about a rhetoric in his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, William Jones also briefly mentions rhetorical signs in music in his A Treatise on the Art of Music: “How far the figures of Rhetoric are transferable to Music, and how many of them, it may be difficult to ascertain” (Jones 1784: 43). Especially since the second half of the 16th century English composers have set their texts to music rather consciously – albeit more reserved than for instance their Italian coevals – and utilized text interpreting signs in their compositions. To fully describe
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these with the help of philological disciplines, and especially with that of rhetoric (see e.g. Toft 1993; Klotz 1998), though, would miss the attitudes of their time (cf. Bose 1996). Originally, the theory of musical figures, the German Figurenlehre, did not aim for meaning; its referential discipline was rhetoric. The imitation of the text’s subjects was aimed at the effectiveness of a close relation with literature achieved through a striking and optimized musical performance. Yet the reverse was obvious, too: if music could imitate words and thoughts, the signs developing hereby could just as well represent words themselves. Music itself could bear meaning – an idea of crucial importance for the formation of an autonomous instrumental music. Around 1700, the French clavecinists experimented with compositions of instrumental works with characterizing titles. The musical structure of L’Angiune ‘The Eel’, Les Tricoteuses ‘The Knitters’ or L’Arlekin ‘The Harlequin’, for instance, imitates the subject of the titles mainly through musical gestures. Also around 1700, Johan Kuhnau published his six sonatas for harpsichord, Musicalische Vorstellung einiger Biblischer Historien. Each one is preceded by a biblical story, whose actions and effects were to be expressed by the following composition. As phrased in Johann Mattheson’s Kern melodischer Wissenschaft, instrumental music was increasingly seen as a ‘tone-language’ (Ton-Sprache) or ‘soundspeech’ (Klang-Rede), i.e. a semantic and syntactic system in its own right. However, music achieves semantic unambiguousness only at the boundaries of its communication system, e.g. in the non-verbal signalling languages of military or hunting music. Hence, instrumental music was declared a medium of emotional expression, contrary to the antique ideal of music as a catalyst or activator of feelings. The objective imitation of emotion in the Baroque developed towards the subjective expression of the composers’ inwardness in the pre-classical era. “Aus der Seele muss man spielen”, writes Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1753, 3. Hauptstu¨ck, Section 7, page 119), Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1812: 89) demands “Ichheit auch in der Musik herauszutreiben”. English authors assumed a more conservative position. Charles Avison, in his An essay on musical expression (1752), describes at length the means of imitation of words through music, yet adopts a rather critical position towards it. Ultimately, he states that the expressiveness of music can be captured less through recipes and rules than through extensive study of famous compositions (Avison 1753: 71–72). The expression within music, he states, is exemplifed rather through its effects on the listener than through distinct signs. In German Romanticism, music was declared to be a language of all those things inexpressible in speech. For the Romantics, music was the ideal and supreme language, as it could bring “das tiefste Innere unsers Wesens zur Sprache”, and would have a “sich auf das innerste Wesen der Welt und unsers Selbst beziehende Bedeutung” (Schopenhauer 1977: 322; Section 52). However, Schopenhauer’s (1977: 322) idea of music as “ganz allgemeine Sprache, deren Deutlichkeit sogar die der anschaulichen Welt selbst u¨bertrifft” is not new. In the 15th century, Johannes Gallicus in his Ritus Canendi already considers music as the universal language due to its mathematical precision (Gallicus 1981: 4). Marin Mersenne (1636) analyzes this aspect extensively in the first book of Hamonie universelle: every body would consist of weight, number, and mesure. Sound would represent those three features, and because of that one could illustrate everything with sound. The ideal, perfect musician would thus be able to devise a natural language with his instrument, which could present everything in its natural form (Mersenne 1636: 43; Proposition 24). Such a language could be understood by every
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human being and by the angels. It would be an immediate medium to transport thoughts and feelings without impediment by reason (Mersenne 1636: 65; Proposition 47). According to legend, Joseph Haydn expressed this in a conversation with Mozart, saying “Meine Sprache versteht man durch die ganze Welt” (Dies 1976: 78). Up until today, the idea of the universality of music versus its “non-universality” is in the center of discussion (cf. Nettl 2005). In the 1960s this idea even led to the attempt to develop a universal writing system based on notation (Juhl 1960). The concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (a ‘total work of art’), developed by Richard Wagner (1852) in his Oper und Drama, historically marks an endpoint of attempts to unite literature and music, by placing every participating medium and their systems, from musical tones to a language’s phonemes, into the service of the expression of the drama, which he understood to be the central proposition of an opera. At the same time, the semantics of music were challenged by other theorists and musicians. Eduard Hanslick always doubted the value of music as a medium that expresses nonmusical qualities. In his writing Vom Musikalisch-Scho¨nen (1854), he claims that music’s beauty is specifically musical; not a single musical rule could be deduced from the emotional aesthetics of Romanticism. Music, he says, only consists of music: “To¨nend bewegte Formen sind einzig und allein Inhalt der Musik” (Hanslick 1858: 38). Until today, the separation of the aesthetics of expression and of autonomy shapes the writing about music. Is the pure, apparently objective analysis of musical structures enough, or is it also necessary to go a step further and interpret? Is it about meaning and expression, or is the description of form sufficient? Linguistics remains important for the development of musicological methods, as music is still primarily understood to be a language. One extreme view on analyses, for instance, was Werner Korte’s idea of a structural scientific method, which tries to illustrate the “syntax” of musical movements following Noam Chomsky’s approach. The works of Jean-Jaques Nattiez (1975) about the semiotics of music in particular rekindled the discussion in the 1970s and 1980s about the semiotic character and the meaning of music, a discussion that lasts until today (see, e.g. Agawu 2009).
5 Summary Philology has been a great source of inspiration to the theory and praxis of music ever since music has been considered a language in its own right. This chapter for a handbook of historical linguistics tried to sketch the history of this idea that is fundamental to our thinking about music even today. Even the most sketchy survey of linguistic ideas applied and discussed in musicology during the 20th and 21st centuries would require a book length study. Seen in a historical perspective, it becomes clear that the idea of music as a language is not an ontological truth but just a way of thinking and describing certain facilities of music. Music and literature are closely related sister arts, but is music a language? In the past it was only natural that authors turned to linguistics for theories and methods to describe and construct the communicational capacities of music in the absence of general communication theories. Their approaches proved highly productive and inspired even practical music. But most of them leave the critical reader with the feeling that music and language are comparable only to a certain, often rather basic, degree. History shows that music is not a language; it is a communication system just as language is.
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Thus it needs theories with a more general approach to the functioning of communication like e.g. Niklas Luhmann’s (1987) system theory or George Lakoff ’s and Mark Johnson’s (1980) theory of metaphor to do justice to music and its roles in human societies.
6 References Agawu, Kofi. 2009. Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bose, Mishtooni. 1996. Humanism, English Music and the Rhetoric of Criticism. Music & Letters 77: 1–21. Butler, Gregory G. 1980. Music and Rhetoric in Early Seventeenth-Century English Sources. Musical Quarterly 66(1): 53–64. Du¨rr, Walther. 1994. Sprache und Musik. Geschichte – Gattungen – Analysemodelle. Kassel: Ba¨renreiter. Helms, Dietrich. 2003. Auf der Suche nach einem neuen Paradigma: Vom System Ton zum System Sound. In: Thomas Phleps and Ralf v. Appen (eds.), Pop Sounds. Klangtexturen in der Pop- und Rockmusik, 197–228. Bielefeld: transcript. Helms, Dietrich. 2001. Die Rezeption der antiken Ethoslehre in staatstheoretischen und pa¨dagogischen Schriften und die Beurteilung der zeitgeno¨ssischen Musik im Humanismus. In: Ulrich Tadday and Ares Rolf (eds.), Martin Geck. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag, 325–351. Dortmund: Klangfarben. Hughes, Andrew. 1990. Word Painting in a Twelfth-Century Office. In: Bryan Gillingham and Paul Merkley (eds.), Beyond the Moon: Festschrift Luther Dittmer, 16–27. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music. Kaden, Christian. 2006. Musik bei denen, die keine „Musik” haben. In: Michael Beiche, Albrecht Riethmu¨ller (ed.), Musik – Zu Begriff und Konzepten. Berliner Symposion zum Andenken an Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, 57–72. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Klotz, Sebastian. 1998. “Music with her silver sound”: Kommunikationsformen im Goldenen Zeitalter der englischen Musik. Kassel: Ba¨renreiter. Korte, Werner F. 1964. Struktur und Modell als Information in der Musikwissenschaft. Archiv fu¨r Musikwissenschaft 21: 1–22. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Loesch, Heinz von. 2001. Musica poetica – die Geburtsstunde des Komponisten? In: Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts fu¨r Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 84–91. Schott: Mainz. Littleton, Alfred Henry. 1911. A catalogue of one hundred works illustrating the history of music printing from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, in the library of Alfred Henry Littleton. London: Novello. Maier, Michael. 1999. Die Elemente von Sprache und Musik – drei Vergleiche. In: Albrecht Riethmu¨ller (ed.), Sprache und Musik: Perspektiven einer Beziehung, 141–156. Laaber: LaaberVerlag. Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. 1975. Fondements d’une se´miologie de la musique. Paris: Union Ge´ne´rale d’E´ditions. Nettl, Bruno. 2005. The study of ethnomusicology: thirty-one issues and concepts. Champaign: Univ. of Illinois Press. Reckow, Fritz. 1992. Vitium oder Color rhetoricus? Thesen zur Bedeutung der Modelldisziplinen grammatica, rhetorica und poetica fu¨r das Musikversta¨ndnis. In: Michael Walter (ed), Text und Musik. Neue Perspektiven der Theorie, 77–94. Mu¨nchen: Wilhelm Fink. ¨ ber die erstaunliche Karriere eines preka¨ren muReckow, Fritz. 1998. Musik als Sprache. U siktheoretischen Modells. In: Hermann Danuser and Tobias Plebuch (eds.), Musik als Text.
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Bericht u¨ber den Internationalen Kongreß der Gesellschaft fu¨r Musikforschung, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993. Vol. 2, 28–33. Kassel etc.: Ba¨renreiter. Stevens, John. 1986. Words and music in the Middle Ages: song, narrative, dance and drama, 1050– 1350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stroux, Christoph. 1976. Die Musica poetica des Magisters Heinrich Faber. Port Elizabeth: C. Stroux Toft, Robert. 1993. Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart: the Art of Eloquent Singing in England 1597– 1622. Toronto, Buffalo, London: Univ. of Toronto Press. Zaminer, Frieder. 1999. Μουσική. Zur fru¨hen Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte. In: Albrecht Riethmu¨ller (ed.), Sprache und Musik: Perspektiven einer Beziehung, 157–166. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag.
6.1 Sources Affligemensis, Johannes. 1963. Musica. In: Martin Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, 3 vols., St. Blaise: Typis San-Blasianis, 1784; reprint edn., Hildesheim: Olms. 2: 230–265. Anonymous. 1983. De origine et effectu musicae. In: Gilbert Reaney (ed.), The Anonymous Treatise De origine et effectu musicae, an Early 15th Century Commonplace Book of Music Theory. Musica disciplina 37: 109–119. Avison, Charles. 1753. An Essay on Musical Expression. [London 1752], 2nd edn. London: Davis. Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. 1753. Versuch u¨ber die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen. Berlin: no publisher. Bacon, Roger. 1859. Opera quaedam hactenus inedita. Vol. 1. containing 1. Opus tertium. 2. Opus minus. 3. Compendium philosophiae. Ed. by J.S Brewer. London: Longman et al. Bacon, Francis. 1670. Sylva Sylvarum or A Natural History in Ten Centuries. Ed. by William Rawley. London: William Lee. Burmeister, Joachim. 1606. Musica poetica: Definitionibus et divisionibus breviter delineata, quibus in singulis capitibus sunt hypomnemata praeceptionum instar [sunoptikos] addita, edita studioˆ et opera. Rostock: Stephanus Myliander. Butler, Charles. 1980 [1636]. The Principles of Music in Singing and Setting. London: John Haviland. Callcott, John Wall. 1817. A Musical Grammar in Four Parts. [1st edn. London 1806]. London: Robert Birchall. Castiglione, Baldessare. 1528. Il libro del cortegiano del conte Baldesar Castiglione. Venice: Aldo Romano and Andrea d’Asola. Cavalieri, Emilio del. 1600. Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo. Nuouamente posta in musica dal Sig. Emilio del Caualliere, per recitar Cantando. Rome: Nicolo` Mutij. Coclico, Adrian Petit. 1552. Compendium musices descriptum ab Adriano Petit Coclico, discipulo Josquini de Pres. Nu¨rnberg: Johann Berg and Ulrich Neuber [reprint Kassel: Ba¨renreiter, 1954]. Chapman, James. 1976. The Original Rhythmical Grammar of the English language; or the Art of Reading and Speaking, on the Principles of the Music of Speech. Hildesheim: Olms [Edinburgh: James Robertson 1821]. Dies, Albert Christoph. 1976. Biographische Nachrichten von Joseph Haydn nach mu¨ndlichen Erza¨hlungen desselben entworfen. [Vienna 1810], Kassel u.a.: Ba¨renreiter. Elyot, Thomas. 1967. The Boke Named the Gouernour [London: Thomas Berthelet 1531]. Ed. by Henry Herbert Croft, 2 vols., London 1883, Reprint New York. Forkel, Nikolaus. 1788. Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik. Leipzig: Schwickert. Gaffurio, Franchino. 1496. Practica musice. Mailand: Guillaume Le Signerre for Johannes Petrus de Lomatio. Gallicus, Johannes. 1981. Ritus canendi [Pars prima]. Ed. by Albert Seay. Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press.
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Hanslick, Eduard. 1858. Vom Musikalisch-Scho¨nen. [1st edn. Leipzig 1854] Leipzig: 2nd. revised edn. John of Salisbury. 1965. Ioannis Saresberiensis episcopi carnotensis Policratici sive de nvgis cvrialivm et vestigiis philosophorvm libri VIII. Ed. by Clemens C. I. Webb. London: Oxonii e Typographeo Clarendoniano 1909, reprint Frankfurt: Minerva. Jones, William. 1784. A Treatise on the Art of Music. Colchester: W. Keymer. Juhl, Peer c.1960. Die Globalschrift. Friedrichstadt/Eide. Kollmann, Augustus Frederic Christopher. 1796. An Essay on Musical Harmony, According to the Nature of that Science and the Principles of the Greatest Musical Authors. London: J. Dale. Listenius, Nicolaus. 1533. Rudimenta musicae in gratiam studiosae invventutis diligenter comportata. Wittenberg: Rhau. Listenius, Nicolaus. 1537. Musica Nicolai Listenij. Wittenberg: Rhau. Luhmann, Niklas. 1987. Soziale Systeme. Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Malcolm, Alexander. 1721. A Treatise of Musick, Speculative, Practical, and Historical. Edinburgh: A. Malcolm. Mattheson, Johann. 1737. Kern melodischer Wissenschaft. Hamburg: Herold. Mersenne, Marin. 1636. Hamonie universelle, contenant la theorie e la pratique de la musique. Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy. More, Thomas. 1965. Utopia. Ed. by Edward Surtz. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Morley, Thomas. 1597. A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. London: Peter Short. de Muris, Johannes. 1963. Summa. In: Martin Gerbert (ed.), Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, 3 vols., St. Blaise: Typis San-Blasianis, 1784; reprint edn, Hildesheim: Olms. 3: 190–248. North, Roger. 1990. Roger North’s The Musicall Grammarian 1728. Ed. by Mary Chan and Jamie C. Kassler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Odington, Walter. 1970. Walteri Odington, Summa de speculatione musicae, 42–146. Ed. by Frederick F. Hammond. Rome: American Institute of Musicology. Pace, Richard. 1967. De fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur. Ed. by Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester. New York: Frederick Ungar. Peri, Jacopo. 1600. Le Musiche Sopra L’Euridice. Florenz: Giorgio Marescotti. Person, Gobelinus. 1907. Tractatus musicae scientiae. In: Hermann Mu¨ller (ed.), Der tractatus musicae scientiae des Gobelinus Person. Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 20: 180–196. Peacham (the Younger), Henry . 1906 [1634]. Peachams Compleat Gentleman. Ed. by G.S. Gordon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1977. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. (= Zu¨richer edn., Vol. 1). Zu¨rich: Diogenes. Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel. 1812. Klavierrezepte. In: Ludwig Schubart (ed.), Vermischte Schriften. Vol. 1, 83–91. Zu¨rich: Geßner. Steele, Joshua. 1775. An Essay towards Establishing the Melody and Measure of Speech to be Expressed and Perpetuated by Peculiar Symbols. London: J. Almon. Tans’ur, William. 1738. A Compleat Melody, or The Harmony of Sion. [1st edn. London 1734]. London: James Hodges. Thelwall, John. 1812. Selections for the Illustration of a Course of Instructions on the Rhythmus and Utterance of the English Language. London: Arch. Wagner, Richard. 1852. Oper und Drama. Leipzig: Weber. Whythorne, Thomas. 1961. The autobiography. Ed. by James M. Osborn. Oxford: Clarendon. Zarlino, Gioseffo. 1588. Sopplimenti musicali. Venice: Francesco de’Franceschi. Zarlino, Gioseffo. 1562. Le Istitutioni harmoniche. Venice: Franchesco Senese [1st edn. Venice 1558].
Dietrich Helms, Osnabru¨ck (Germany) translation Nadja Hekal, Osnabru¨ck (Germany)
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79. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography: Periodization in the history of the English language 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Introduction The rationale for periodization Critiques of periodization in history of English Origins of canonical periods in history of English Debates over criteria for periodization Debates over boundary dates for historical periods Reference work perspectives on periodization Final reflections: the need for one solution? References
Abstract The question of periodization in language, and in the history of the English language specifically, has brought into conversation some of the most eminent historical linguists and historians of English over the past two centuries, dating back to Jacob Grimm, and has raised some of the most fundamental questions one can ask about the history of English, including: What is “English”? This chapter surveys both critical scholarship on periodization in the history of English and published histories of English to summarize the development and current status of the now canonical three-/four-part historical model and to address the theoretical and pragmatic questions that periodization has raised for historians of English. Issues at the crux of scholarly debates include: how the concept of periodization can be reconciled with the realities of language variation and change; the proper criteria for identifying historical periods and/or period boundaries; the best boundary dates to use for both canonical and non-canonical historical models; and the definition of the stated object of inquiry, “English”. In its conclusion, the chapter offers some reflections about the state of the discussion, the extent to which “solutions” are needed, and possible future directions.
1 Introduction The history of the English language, in theory, could be broken up into as many historical periods as the imagination allows. Defined historical periods could span a year, a decade, a generation, a century, or multiple centuries. Or, again in theory, the history of English could be told as one continuous narrative, with no defined historical periods at all. It could, instead, be told as the continuous history of English sounds, grammar, vocabulary, and so on. In practice, however, most histories of English rely on historical periods as a heuristic, a means for parsing, interpreting, and narrating language change. Since the 19th century, the history of English has traditionally been broken into three or four major historical periods (depending on whether early and later Modern English are viewed as one period or two), each spanning several centuries: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. How did the almost infinite Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1233–1256
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possibilities for periodization in the history of English become so dramatically limited through the canonization of one particular schema? And to what extent has that schema been challenged? The question of periodization in language, and in the history of the English language specifically, has brought into conversation some of the most eminent historical linguists and historians of English over the past two centuries, dating back to Jacob Grimm in the early 19th century. Later that century, Henry Sweet and James A. H. Murray established some of the canonical foundations; in a flurry of articles in the past two decades, central figures in history of English scholarship such as Norman Blake, Jacek Fisiak, Manfred Go¨rlach, and Roger Lass have all weighed in on the question. This scholarly conversation has raised some of the most fundamental questions about the history of English, including: What is “English”? And what qualifies as “linguistic” evidence? This chapter surveys both critical scholarship on periodization in the history of English and published histories of English (a) to summarize the development and current status of the now canonical three-/four-part historical model, and (b) to address the theoretical and pragmatic questions that periodization has raised for historians of English. Issues at the crux of scholarly debates include: how the concept of periodization can be reconciled with the realities of language variation and change; the proper criteria for identifying historical periods and/or period boundaries; the best dates to use for both canonical and non-canonical historical models; and the definition of the stated object of inquiry, “English”. In its conclusion, this chapter offers some reflections about the state of the discussion, the extent to which “solutions” are needed, and possible future directions.
2 The rationale for periodization In practice, scholars across many fields have reached general consensus about the usefulness of periodization as an interpretive device. Periodization has become standard in all forms of history, including literary and linguistic history, although the dates for period breaks vary across disciplines. As detailed below, the periodization of the history of the English language sometimes dovetails and sometimes deviates from the periodization of English literary history. To clarify the terminology, Nicolaisen (1997: 160) usefully distinguishes periodization from stratification: stratification involves “the mostly pragmatic aspect of the chopping up of continuous change”, often by a set length of time (for example, unlike most histories of English, Strang [1970] structures the historical narrative by two hundred-year blocks: 1970–1770, 1770–1570, etc.); periodization, by contrast, involves “certain interpretative and evaluative ingredients” in the definition of historical periods. Of key importance is the recognition that periodization is inherently an artificial, interpretive device imposed upon history, be that the history of a people, a culture, a nation, literature, art, or language. It allows scholars and their audiences to create meaningful schemas for organizing historical information, and once certain periodizations become canonical, they become part of the history itself: part of telling a responsible history is explaining how that history has been told by preceding scholars. In linguistics, historical periodization is often justified through the analogy with the practice of drawing isoglosses in dialectology (Fife 1992; Lass 1994; Wright 1999). As Wright (1999: 25) puts it: “Periodizations are the chronological counterpart of the nearly necessary fictions used in dialectology”. Dialect variation occurs more continuously than
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the isoglosses on any dialect map suggest, yet isoglosses capture something important about the coming together of dividing lines for multiple distinctive variables along a particular regional boundary. Isoglosses obviously require a level of idealization, both about the coherence of a dialect within a given region and about the distinctiveness of that dialect from a neighboring one along a given boundary. Dialectologists do not rely solely, if at all, on purely geographical factors to draw dialect boundaries, although geographical features such as bodies of water and mountain ranges are known to sometimes correspond to dialect boundaries given their effects on population movements and contact between speech communities. Periodization relies on similar idealizations about the coherence of a particular chronological period, as well as about the ability to categorize linguistic features/change into binary categories that correspond to a chronological boundary. In other words, period breaks, like isoglosses, can suggest the presence of a given linguistic feature in one historical period and its absence in the subsequent one, whereas language change also typically demonstrates a gradient-effect, with new and old features overlapping and fuzzy boundaries. Also similar to practices in dialectology, while language historians rarely take external political or social events as adequate for marking chronological boundaries, looking also if not primarily at “purely linguistic” factors, some significant historical events are known to have had dramatic effects on languages and may, as a result, coincide with the historical breaks or boundaries imposed on the language’s history. The imposition of artificial, interpretive schemas onto a continuous entity, be that a language in all its variation at one moment in time or a language as it changes over its history, and the idealization required to do so inherently involve limitations, which have been critiqued in detail for more than a century by historians of the English language.
3 Critiques of periodization in history of English A handful of scholars have directly challenged the concept of periodization as a premise in the history of the English language (Hockett 1957; Jones 1972; Wright 1999), but most critiques of periodization have focused more specifically on how historical periods are presented in histories of English and the potential misleading implications of named historical periods. Fisiak (1994: 47), based on a survey of over one hundred relevant texts such as histories of English and historical grammars, presents one of the most detailed examinations of, and critiques of, scholars’ justifications of periodization. He finds that stages in the history of English are usually justified by “such vague notions as ‘convenience’ (… by far the most widely used justification among historians of English …), ‘clarity of presentation’, ‘pedagogical’ or other unspecified ‘advantages’ ”. Of particular concern are claims such as that in C. M. Millward’s (1996 [1989]: 13) canonical textbook A Biography of the English Language that the dating of breaks at events such as the Norman Conquest or printing is “neither accidental or arbitrary”: for Fisiak, such wording suggests too strong a correlation between external events and language change and may go so far as to imply cataclysmic change in the language around a specific date. Many scholars over the past half century have raised similar concerns about the ways in which the creation of historical periods with discrete chronological boundaries can create the false impression that the language was stable for several centuries during that period and then underwent fairly dramatic change over a short period of time right around the boundary date. Scholars of language variation and change know this
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picture of language change to be false: language change occurs (a) continually, with older forms competing with newer forms at any given moment in time; and (b) gradually, often below the level of consciousness for the speakers involved. At any moment in time, parts of a language’s grammar (including phonology and morphosyntax) demonstrate greater stability and parts are in flux; and speakers are forever creatively manipulating a language’s lexical resources to create new words. While factors such as language contact or social upheaval can accelerate language change for a given speech community, the rate and spread of change is still probably better described as gradual than cataclysmic. Hockett (1957: 63) usefully explains how periodization can belie this linguistic reality: “It does not occur to the layman, however, to doubt that in general a period of stability and a period of transition can be distinguished; it does not occur to him that every stage in the history of a language is perhaps at one and the same time one of stability and also one of transition”. Closely related to this misperception about how language change works is what Wright (1999: 26) calls the “structuralist fallacy”: “the assumption that if there happens to exist now a single name for a linguistic state in the past, there must have existed then a complete single language system which that name is used to refer to”. As all scholars acknowledge, the description of any language variety, be that a historical stage in a language or a dialect of a language, is an idealization: in order to create a coherent description, linguists must assume a level of homogeneity and stability. As modern sociolinguistics has convincingly demonstrated, within any speech community, there will be variation. It is as false to suggest a coherent variety called Early Modern English as to describe Southern American English as one coherent regional dialect of American English. Yet language scholars do both because it is equally true that an idealized prototype of that variety of English (which may or may not correspond to the actual language of any one speaker or speech community) is definably distinct from other varieties of English. Change at different levels of language also occurs at different rates and at different times. For example, in the Early Modern English period, the rise of periphrastic do and the Great Vowel Shift did not perfectly coincide chronologically, happened at different rates in different dialects, and spread according to different sociolinguistic patterns; yet generic descriptions of “Early Modern English” will include both as characteristics of “the language” during that period. History of English scholars must also always take into account the limitations of the available evidence: the surviving written record does not necessarily accurately reflect changes in the spoken language and typically captures more conservative forms. In addition, histories of English, to enhance coherence, tend to tell the history of only selected dialects, specifically those that functioned as standards and/or are the ancestors of Standard English, creating a sense of a teleological progression – and as a result a deceiving sense that the history of English is the history of how we arrived at Standard English rather than the history of all the many varieties of English, past and present (cf. Milroy 1992, 1999). The canonical names for stages in the history of English can also create false impressions about the nature of language and of language change, specifically in terms of the teleology they can imply. The term “middle” in Middle English suggests the movement of the language from a beginning, through a middle, to an end, through this transitional period. As Hockett asserts above, all periods can and should be seen as transitions, and Modern English is just one more stage in the language’s history, not in any way an endpoint. If one imagines a horizontal timeline, the middle of any language’s history is also
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always shifting to the right as the language continues (Lass 2000); if “Middle English” retains that name for several more centuries, it will be much closer to Old English than to the English of that future moment – i.e., it will no longer clearly be in the middle of the language’s history, no matter whether one starts that in the 5th century or the 8th. The other canonical names for periods in the history of English are equally problematic. A period can only be “old” from the perspective of a future moment; as Nicolaisen (1997: 165) points out: “[…] each phase of a language is ‘modern’ to its speakers in its contemporary setting”, which highlights both the problem with “old” and “modern”. At some point, scholars will need to draw a boundary to end Modern English (cf. Curzan 2000), which means that either the new period will become the “modern” period and what we now know as Modern English will need a new name, or the new period will be forced into a label such as “Postmodern English”. To draw such a boundary, however, scholars will need to use criteria different from those Henry Sweet employed over 130 years ago when he first proposed “Modern English” as the third major historical period of English.
4 Origins of canonical periods in history of English Henry Sweet, the renowned phonetician and philologist working in the late 19th century, is generally acknowledged as the creator of the now canonical historical framework of Old, Middle, and Modern English, and most recent scholarship on the topic uses his work as a starting point. However, James A. H. Murray, Sweet’s colleague in London’s philological circles, seems to be equally important in the development of the canonical periodization, as detailed below, offering not only dates for period breaks but also an alternative perspective on the appropriate criteria for setting those boundaries. There were, of course, also other models proposed during the period that did not become canonical. For example, Oliphant (1886) offers a ten-period model in The New English and structures his chapters around authors (e.g., “Caxton’s English”, “Dryden’s English”). Before Sweet and Murray, 19th-century scholars generally relied on a two-period model with five subperiods, schematized by Fisiak (1994: 48) as follows: Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Half-(Semi-)Saxon English Old English Middle English Modern English
7th century –1150 1150–1250 1250–1350 1350–1500 1500–
This model can be traced back to Jacob Grimm’s division of Germanic languages into Old, Middle, and New/Modern phases from 1819 (Matthews 2000) and to his 1830 twoperiod model for English: Anglo-Saxon (up to the end of 12th century) and “English”, with Old English spanning the 13th and 14th centuries and English from the 14th century onwards (Fisiak 1994). The term “Anglo-Saxon” can be dated back to the 16th century, and 19th-century scholars developed the term “Semi-Saxon” to describe texts that weren’t Anglo-Saxon but were not “English” either (Lass 2000). Murray (1910) traces Anglo-Saxon back to Angul-Seaxan ‘English Saxon’ (in contrast to the Saxons of the continent), first adopted by 16th- and 17th-century scholars studying the works of
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Alfred and Ælfric. Many modern scholars, including Henry Sweet, have expressed concerns about the term Anglo-Saxon, from the false suggestion that the language of that period was spoken only by the Angles and the Saxons or that it was a mixture of those two Germanic dialects, to the inappropriate break in language continuity it may imply between the earliest forms of the Germanic dialect(s) spoken in the British Isles and what later is called “English”. Lass (2000: 14) dates the first appearance of the term “Middle English” to 1839, in Thomas Wright’s Literature and language under the Anglo-Saxons; Matthews (2000: 3) notes that the term “Middle English” remained rare until the 1870s and was not uniformly used after that for several decades. Henry Sweet (1874), in A History of English Sounds, supports the rejection by fellow scholars of Anglo-Saxon and argues against any loose application of “Old English”: it should be reserved for the inflectional stage of the language. This premise leads him to the following proposal for periodization, which laid the groundwork for the model still employed today: I propose, therefore, to start with the three main divisions of Old, Middle, and Modern, based mainly on the inflectional characteristics of each stage. Old English is the period of full inflections, (nama, gifan, caru), Middle English of levelled inflections (naame, given, caare), and Modern English of lost inflections (naam, giv, caar). We have besides two periods of transition, one in which nama and name exist side by side, and another in which final e is beginning to drop. (Sweet 1874: 56)
Nowhere in this first edition does Sweet provide specific dates for these three historical periods, although he refers to “the Transition English [between Old and Middle] of the twelfth century” (Sweet 1874: 39). Later in the book he distinguishes five periods of Modern English with specific dates – e.g., the Earliest (1450–1500), the Early (1550– 1650) – all described purely by phonological characteristics, specifically the development of vowels. Fourteen years later, in the second edition of A History of English Sounds, Sweet (1888) retains the loss of inflections as the determinative criterion for periodization and adds dates for the three major periods, as well as “early”, “late”, and “transitional” subperiods: It is impossible to draw any absolutely definite line between ME and OE on the one side and MnE on the other, but, roughly speaking, fully developed ME may be said to extend from 1150 to 1450, the period between 1200 and 1400 being especially well marked and well represented by written documents. The period from 1050 to 1150 may be distinguished as Old Transition (OTr), that from 1450 to 1500 as Middle Transition (MlTr). The difficulty of drawing a line is increased by the varying speed of change of the different dialects. […] Taking the SthE [Southern English] dialects as the standard we may call everything before 1300 early Middle English (eME), everything after 1300 late Middle English (lME). (Sweet 1874: 154)
Equally interesting, but rarely noted, is Sweet’s reworked description of the line between late Middle and early Modern English, in which he broadens the criteria to include not only phonology and inflections but also historical events. He writes: It is still more difficult to draw a definite line between late Middle and early Modern E. than between OE and eME. The most marked criterion is, no doubt, the loss of final e in name, names etc. The loss of final e – of which we see the beginnings in Ch[aucer],
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and which was completely carried out by the middle of the 15th cent. – broke down the metrical system brought to perfection by Chaucer, and made a new departure necessary. The break between old and new was made more abrupt by the social confusion caused by the Wars of the Roses (1450–71), which, at the same time, helped to level differences of dialect – at least, in the upper classes. When printing was introduced – in 1476 – the language had almost completely settled down into its Modern, as distinguished from its Middle, stage. The diffusion of printed books made the want of a common literary language more and more felt, and, at the same time, greatly facilitated the realization of the ideal – an ideal which was, however, not fully realized till the appearance of Tindal’s translation of the New Testament in 1525 – a work which is wholly modern both in vocabulary and diction. (Sweet 1874: 199)
Sweet is quoted by subsequent scholars as advocating solely inflectional criteria for periodization, but here he clearly introduces historical events as factors in periodization, working in conjunction with language-internal factors. It is impossible to know what prompted this revision in the second edition, but it is hard not to hear echoes of James A. H. Murray’s framing of the historical periods, published ten years before. In between the two editions of Sweet’s A History of English Sounds, James A. H. Murray, shortly to become chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, wrote the entry “English Language” for the ninth edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1879. Murray’s piece appears to be ground-breaking both for presenting a more detailed periodization of the language, with dates, and for offering an alternative to the purely internal criteria that underlie Sweet’s original model. But Sweet does not mention it in the second edition of A History of English Sounds, and Murray’s work is not picked up in any of the subsequent critical linguistic scholarship on periodization in the history of English. (An excerpt from Murray’s entry does appear in Matthews’s (2000) collection of primary texts focused on the construction of “Middle English”. I am indebted to Richard W. Bailey for first bringing Murray’s entry to my attention.) Yet it is hard to imagine Sweet did not know the work. Sweet reviewed Murray’s book The Dialects of the Southern Counties of Scotland in 1874, and Sweet and Murray were in fairly extensive contact in the late 1870s as negotiations with Oxford University Press over a contract for the New English Dictionary came to a head (see E. K. M. Murray 1977). Murray begins the entry with many of the now standard caveats about periodization: the drawing of distinct lines for successive stages is inherently artificial; the progression of a history of English is disrupted by shifts in focus on different dialects as central; language change is gradual and therefore hinders precise dating; changes happen in some dialects earlier than others. Murray then summarizes Sweet’s three-part distinction based on inflectional loss, notes that each period can be divided into an early and late period, and presents the following model with approximate dates, noting that the dates varied considerably for different dialects (recall that Sweet does not provide exact dates in the first edition): Old English or Anglo-Saxon Transition Old English, or “Semi-Saxon” Early Middle English, or “Early English” Late Middle English Early Modern English, “Tudor English” Modern English
–1100 1100–1200 1200–1300 1300–1400 1485–1611 1611–onward
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Murray goes on to explain that some carry Transition Old English down to 1250, Early Middle English to 1350, and Late Middle English 1350 to 1485. He then adds: “But the division given above, which was, I believe, first proposed by Mr Sweet, represents better the development of the language” (Murray 1879: 392). Perhaps more importantly, Murray’s detailed notes on the rationale for the boundary dates include a mixture of internal and external criteria, a striking departure from Sweet’s use of purely internal criteria in the first edition of A History of English Sounds. For example, Murray writes of the first boundary date: “The Old English period is usually considered as terminating 1100, – that is, with the death of the generation who saw the Norman Conquest” (Murray 1879: 393). The precise boundary for the end of Middle English at 1485 is explained as follows: “[…] and the year 1485, which witnessed the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, may be conveniently put as that which closed the Middle English transition, and introduced Modern English” (Murray 1879: 398). The transition to Early Modern English, however, is also described using internal criteria: Early Modern English captures the decay and disappearance of final e and most syllabic inflections, such that “[i]n the productions of Caxton’s press, we see the passage from Middle to Modern English completed” (Murray 1879: 398). As opposed to, or in addition to, Sweet’s description of Middle English as the period of leveled inflections, Murray describes it as “the Dialectal period of the language” (Murray 1879: 394). This description of the boundary date for Modern English effectively captures the mix of criteria that characterize Murray’s model: The date of 1611, which coincides with the end of Shakespeare’s literary work, and marks the appearance of the Authorized Version of the Bible […], may be taken as marking the close of Tudor English. The language was thenceforth Modern in structure, style and expression, although the spelling did not settle down to present usage till about the Restoration. (Murray 1879: 399)
In the eleventh edition, Murray shifts the date to “the Revolution of 1688” and adds: “The latter date also marks the disappearance from literature of a large number of words, chiefly of such as were derived from Latin during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of these nearly all that survived 1688 are still in use” (Murray 1910: 596). At times, Murray’s wording can suggest an oddly precise use of boundary dates: This shifting of the literary vocabulary and gradual fixing of the literary spelling, which went on between 1611, when the language became modern in structure, and 1689, when it became modern also in form, suggests for this period the name of Seventeenth-Century Transition. (Murray 1879: 596)
Murray also provides a visual representation of the language’s periodization (see Figure 79.1), which juxtaposes the chronological names (with Sweet’s terminology about full/leveled/lost inflexions) with literary developments in three major dialects of English. A second image appears in the eleventh edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1910, which captures the influence of other languages on different historical periods and includes notes on both literary and historical developments during various periods (see Figure 79.2).
79. Periodization in the history of the English language CHRONOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE Divisions.
Subdivisions.
LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF THE LEADING DIALECTS. Dates.
Southern English.
Cædmon, 660. Cynewulf? Bæda, 734.
Durham Glosses, 950–975. 1000
? Old Mercian.
900
(Laws of Ethelbert, 600.)
(Laws of Ine, 700.) Epinal Glossary?
Rushworth Gloss, ? 975–1000.
Literary West-Saxon or Anglo-Saxon.
Old Northumbrian.
OLD ENGLISH (Full Inflexions.)
700
800
Midland English.
Old Saxon and Kentish.
600
Northern English.
Old Anglian.
500
OLD ENGLISH or ANGLO-SAXON.
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Alfred, 885.
Rhymes in Saxon Chron., 937–979. Ælfric, 1000. Wulfstan, 1016. Worcester Chronicle, 1043–79.
1100 Chronicle, 1123–31.
1400 MIDDLE ENGLISH TRANSITION. 1485
MODERN ENGLISH (Lost Inflexions.)
Robt. of Brunne, 1303. Mandeville, 1356.
Cotton Homilies, 1150.
Wycliffe, Chaucer.
Hatton Gospels, 1170. Layamon, 1203. Ancren Riwle, 1220? Procl. of Henry III., 1258. Robt. Gloucester. 1300. Ayenbite, 1340. Trevisa, 1387.
Lydgate, 1425.
Wyntoun, 1420.
Caxton, 1477–90. Dunbar, 1500. Lyndesay.
James VI., 1590.
Standard English.
1611
Middle Scotch.
1500 EARLY MODERN ENGLISH. TUDOR ENGLISH.
Cursor Mundi.
Hampole, 1350. Barbour, 1375.
Ormulum, 1200. Genesis and Exodus, 1230–50. Harrowing of Hell, 1280.
English.
LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH.
English. Early Scotch.
MIDDLE ENGLISH (Levelled Inflexions.)
1300
Chronicle, 1154.
Early Southern English.
Northern
EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH, (EARLY ENGLISH.)
Early
1200
Early
OLD ENGLISH TRANSITION (SEMI-SAXON.)
Tyndal, 1525.
Shakespeare, 1590–1613.
(Edgar in Lear.)
Milton, 1626–71.
MODERN ENGLISH. 1800
Modern Scotch.
1700
Dryden, 1663–1700. Allan Ramsay, 1717.
Addison, 1717. Exmoor Scolding, 1746. Johnson, 1750.
Burns, 1790. Scott.
Coleridge, 1805. Macaulay. Tennyson.
Barnes, 1844.
Figure 79.1: A visual representation of the English language’s periodization, from James A. H. Murray’s original entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Murray 1879: 402).
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400 ENGLISH CONQUEST 500
OE Chronicle ni
s
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ha
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L AT I N
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Wyclif & Chaucer, Gower
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Lydgate LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH (M.E. Transition) Caxton THE RENASCENCE
EARLY MODERN OR
Tindale
TUDOR ENGLISH
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P
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A
D
H
Shakespeare
1900
K
Primary Words of Life
Abstract & General Terms
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FR
MODERN ENGLISH
FRE
Johnson 1800
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Words of Common Life
Poetic & Rhetorical
Scientific
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Beowulf
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Technical, Scientific, Commercial
Figure 79.2: An additional visual representation of the English language’s periodization, showing the influence of other languages, in James A. H. Murray’s revised entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Murray 1910: 597).
Henry Sweet’s final representation of the historical periods in the history of English, published in A New Grammar of English (1892), looks strikingly close to Murray’s in terms of dates: For the sake of convenience we distinguish three main stages in the history of the language, namely Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Modern English (MnE). OE may be defined as the period of full endings (mo¯na, sunne, sunu, sta¯nas), ME as the period of levelled endings (mo¯ne, sunne, sune, sto¯nes), MnE as the period of lost endings (moon, sun, son, stones = stounz). We further distinguish periods of transition between these main
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stages, each of which latter is further divided into an early and a late period. The dates of these periods are, roughly, as follows: Early Old English (E. of Alfred) Late Old English (E. of Aelfric) Transition Old English (E. of Layamon) Early Middle English (E. of the Ancren Riwle) Late Middle English (E. of Chaucer) Transition Middle English (Caxton E.) Early Modern English (Tudor E.; E. of Shakespere) Late Modern English
700–900 900–1100 1100–1200 1200–1300 1300–1400 1400–1500 1500–1650 1650–
(Sweet 1892: 211)
By 1910, however, when the eleventh edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was published, Murray had shifted the dates for the transition between Old and Middle English back, closer to Sweet’s (1888) version (he also adds the 17th century transition): Old English or Anglo-Saxon Transition Old English, or ‘Semi-Saxon’ Early Middle English
–1100 1100–1150 1150–1250
(Normal) Middle English Late & Transition Middle English Early Modern or Tudor English 17th century transition Modern or Current English
1250–1400 1400–1485 1485–1611 1611–1688 1689–
As captured by these detailed excerpts, the now canonical historical periods have been, since their inception, scholarly fictions. They are important and useful scholarly fictions, which is why they have continued to be the focus of academic discussion and debate. The dates have been and continue to be negotiable and negotiated, shifting fifty years one way or the other, and fundamental to that negotiation are the criteria for determining a period break. Murray’s foundational work in this scholarly conversation, however, remains unmentioned in Kemp Malone’s 1930 article “When did Middle English begin?”, which has been cited subsequently as the first piece of critical scholarship to address the question of periodization. Malone focuses on revising Sweet’s model, primarily in terms of the dating of Middle English but also in terms of criteria. Malone accepts Sweet’s central focus on the leveling of inflections for periodization, although he argues that while Sweet frames his model as based on morphosyntactic criteria (i.e., the leveling of inflections), he is actually describing a phonetic change: the leveling and ensuing loss of vowels in final unstressed syllables. The question then becomes when that leveling began. By examining four Southern manuscripts from the 10th century (the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, the Junius Codex, and the Beowulf Codex), Malone establishes the existence of many clear cases of leveling of the vowel (and some deletion of the final nasal) in the 10th century. He concludes: “The transition period from Old to Middle
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English is not the twelfth century, as the grammarians used to think, nor even the eleventh, as most of them think today, but rather the tenth” (117). Lass (2000), more than 60 years later, provides evidence that Sweet’s criteria are an idealization as there is already leveling in Old English. He writes: The main point is that there is a lot of messiness in weak vowel spellings, and the typically ‘Middle’ accounts for more than half the unhistorical spellings [in OE]. […] Sweet’s criteria are a little out of line with what the texts show: his ‘transition’ period here may be a little late (on his own criteria): if Middle English is the period of levelled inflections, then Peterborough Chronicle is not really ‘transitional’ at all, but as much Middle English as Sweet’s choice of texts for ‘Early Middle English’. (Lass 2000: 23–24)
Malone sets the terms of the debate on Sweet’s ground, with Sweet’s early work alone as the foil rather than in conjunction with Murray’s broader vision of the factors involved in periodization. Malone hypothesizes that Sweet’s model met with such success due to the “neatness and simplicity of this scheme” (110), and his revision of the model adjusts dates and the description of the criteria but not the overall simplicity of the scheme. Critical scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century, however, has created more complex models, adding more internal criteria as well as in many cases external criteria.
5 Debates over criteria for periodization The greatest bone of contention about the criteria for periodization has been the use of “external” versus “internal” criteria – a debate that could be reframed at a more general level as what counts as “linguistic” criteria. At one extreme are the scholars who define “linguistic criteria” as purely intralinguistic criteria: phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical developments in the language (although lexical criteria typically receive scant attention – see Lutz (2002) for an exception). For example, Fisiak (1994) explicitly equates “linguistic” and “structural”; Lass (2000: 20), in justifying his test for the concept of “middle” in Germanic languages, describes a language-internal point of view as “surely what we ought to be primarily interested in”, in which case “only the typological characters count […]”. At the other extreme are scholars adopting a more sociolinguistic perspective that acknowledges the role that social factors play in language change, in addition to internal factors. For example, Go¨rlach (1989: 98) challenges the narrower typological definition of “purely linguistic” in his explanation of proper periodization. He begins with this assertion: “It will therefore be useful to look for purely linguistic criteria for a linguistic definition of English language history, and only then determine whether a boundary based on linguistic criteria squares with what other disciplines have to suggest”. He then describes three levels of linguistic criteria: (1) structural (important developments in phonology, morphology, syntax, and orthography and lexis which, taken together, result in a markedly different language before and after the watershed), (2) societal (language planning, standardization, ranges of functions and domains), (3) attitudinal (evaluation by speakers of earlier forms of their language, or of their vernacular as compared with French or Latin). (Go¨rlach 1989: 99)
In other words, the “purely linguistic” includes the highly sociolinguistic.
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Periodization based exclusively or primarily on intralinguistic considerations is often framed as the more traditional, if not canonical, approach. The many advocates of this approach trace it back to Sweet, although they often expand the scope of relevant criteria far beyond Sweet’s (and subsequently Malone’s) focus on the loss of inflectional endings, stressing the persuasiveness of cumulative internal evidence. The descriptions of historical periods should capture, they argue, a set of internal features that distinguish the period from those on either side; or as Nicolaisen (1997: 167) describes the goal: “[…] the establishment of essentially linguistic periods, isolated and connected on the basis of cumulative linguistic data”. Not all these scholars dismiss extralinguistic factors, but they emphasize the internal. In fact, Nicolaisen goes on to note: Such a procedure in no way compels us […] to take into account only intra-systemic developments within English itself but would also reckon with extra-systemic influences from outside as a result of contact […]. Initially all data involved in the process of ‘periodization’ should, however, be intra-linguistic while extra-linguistic evidence should be accorded secondary status without having its importance diminished. (Nicolaisen 1997: 167–168)
Lass (2000) has proposed one of the most detailed schemes for categorizing intralinguistic developments in Germanic languages in order to test the concept of “middle,” which he concludes is an identifiable entity. His “archaism matrix” charts the loss versus retention of ten features, including phonological features (e.g., root-initial accent, at least three distinct vowel qualities in weak inflectional syllables) and morphosyntactic features (e.g., adjective inflection, person/number marking on the verb, distinct dative in at least some nouns, grammatical gender). Kitson (1997), however, in an extended argument for a later boundary between Old and Middle English, returns to a single phonological feature: the retention of the front/back unstressed vowel distinction, which he posits as a cornerstone for the maintenance of inflections (or to put it differently, the critical obstacle to the full leveling of inflections). This approach is most obviously reminiscent of Malone’s work. As these descriptions capture, many models based on intralinguistic features focus primarily on the retention versus loss of archaic features, a weakness in the eyes of some scholars, who advocate equal attention to the development of new features. Nicolaisen (1997: 167) summarizes: “proper periodization should take into account both the old and the new, both continuity and change, both inertia and innovation”. Along these lines, Fife (1992: 7) argues for a prototype-based model: “Given some nucleus of cohesive grammatical behavior which serves as the prototype for a historical period, further examples of the language can be judged as either central or peripheral examples of this schematic grammar”. The description of the nucleus of each period is not necessarily dependent on preceding or subsequent ones – in other words, the description may be independent of concepts such as retention and loss. One of the complications of relying primarily or solely on internal criteria is that different levels of structure can suggest different chronological divisions. Whereas the leveling of unstressed vowels and the leveling of inflectional endings are intertwined, later developments such as the Great Vowel Shift, the simplification of many initial consonant clusters, the rise of periphrastic do, and the demise of third-singular present tense -(e)th do not work together to suggest clear chronological boundaries. And scholars can and have made persuasive arguments for privileging different categories of evidence,
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from the phonological to the syntactic. For example, although Malone and Kitson focus on phonological evidence, Fife (1992) argues that phonology is too subject to dialect variation to be reliable as a signal of structure change and privileges instead morphology, followed by syntax, lexicon, and phonology. Internal criteria sometimes also fail to account comprehensively or consistently for period distinctions. For example, while inflectional criteria can arguably help distinguish Old, Middle, and Modern English, they fail to distinguish Early Modern from Modern English – a boundary that has, at this point, become canonical yet difficult to account for purely on internal grounds. In addition, if the loss of inflections is the sole criterion for periodization in the history of English, then Modern English has the potential to stretch on for many more centuries – until, if this were to happen, English completes the cycle that some historical linguists posit and undergoes dramatic cliticization to become more synthetic. As noted above, most recent arguments for the inclusion of external factors advocate using them in conjunction with internal factors, sometimes noting their convenience as boundary markers but usually emphasizing that periods should demonstrate structural coherence based on internal criteria. Fisiak (1994) counters that the internal and external are intertwined, and Go¨rlach’s definition of “linguistic” criteria encompasses both the internal and external. By sharp contrast, Wright (1999: 33) is one of the few scholars to argue for using solely external criteria – although these must be more than “mere chronological accidents” – because internal changes are too slow to make meaningful periods. He concludes with this strong assertion: “If […] historical linguists wish to base successive periodizations on internal considerations alone, there seems to be no reason to have any periodizations at all. Maybe that would be for the best. It is easy to be mesmerized by the differences and fail to see the great continuities” (Wright 1999: 37). If one of the central concerns about responsible periodization is highlighting the artificial nature of the boundary, there is something to be said for external criteria. If presented correctly, external events are clearly not a linguistic line in the sand, dividing a period of the language with specific internal features from a period without those specific internal features. Historical events as period boundaries suggest that these external forces had significant implications for the development of the language (i.e., they are not randomly selected or simply imported from other disciplines) but do not have to imply cataclysmic change. Depending on the criteria scholars employ, the boundary dates for the major periods in the history of English shift, although not all that dramatically except in the rare case when a scholar attempts to fully reconceptualize the enterprise.
6 Debates over boundary dates for historical periods To tell the history of English, one has to start somewhere, which raises the thorny question of whether English, or any other language (creoles perhaps being the exception), really has a beginning. Strang (1970) avoids the issue in her history of English by moving backwards through time, but most histories of English settle on CE 449 (the date provided in historical chronicles for the first invasions by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes), the rounded-up date CE 450, or the vaguer “5th century”. The traditional rationale is that once these Germanic tribes were isolated on the British Isles, their dialect(s) of
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English began to change in ways different from Germanic dialects on the continent – although, of course, for several centuries the dialects were probably mutually comprehensible. To say that English “starts” in CE 449, however, is as problematic, Nicolaisen (1997) points out, as saying that American English began in 1607 with the settlement of Jamestown. The boundary dates for the period called “Middle English” have been the most hotly contested. As a dividing line between Old and Middle English, the year 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, stands as a given in literary history (Georgianna 2003) and has been used by some in linguistics as a boundary since Alexander Ellis and Henry Sweet (Penzl 1994). For historians of English who entertain external factors as potential boundary dates, the Norman Conquest is an obvious candidate. To make it a boundary is not to say that this historical event had immediate or cataclysmic effects on the language (although the wording in some histories of English does seem to suggest this); it is to say that it was a historical event with great import for the history of the language and its speakers. While many of the structural changes between Old and Middle English were not caused by the Norman Conquest, some were probably accelerated by it. The lexicon was clearly dramatically affected over time by the rule of the Norman French, and English prosody, phonology, etc. also show its influence. Sociolinguistically, the Norman Conquest radically altered the status of English in the British Isles, the written and literary tradition, and much more. The impact of Old Norse and the Scandinavian raids from the 9th century on tends to get minimized by this focus on the Norman Conquest. Nicolaisen (1997: 169) notes: It has always surprised me that the extensive Scandinavian influence on English from the tenth to the twelfth centuries has never been regarded as ‘period-making,’ as something straddling Later Old English and Early Middle English, whereas it has usually been taken for granted that the equivalent Norman French influence stands on the threshold of Middle English…
Some of the recent scholarship on the “Middle English creole question” (see also Trotter, Chapter 114) has tried to highlight Scandinavian influence on Old English, and while none of this scholarship proposes specifically moving the dates for Middle English, they do attempt to disrupt the sense that the history of English is a straightforward, linear progression of “one language” from one stage to the next; instead, they argue, contact with other languages can have such a strong impact that the resulting form of the language cannot be categorized as simply as a genetic descendant (in the historical linguistic sense) of the earlier variety (cf. Poussa 1982; Go¨rlach 1986; DaltonPuffer 1995; Danchev 1997). Historians of English focused primarily on internal factors have proposed different boundaries for Middle English, rarely 1066, depending on the factors under investigation. As mentioned above, Malone proposes a date as early as the 10th century. Nicolaisen (1997: 170–171) comes up with the limits of 1000 and 1400 based on his intralinguistic criteria: leveled vowels in unstressed final syllables, concomitant loss of inflectional differentiation, influx of large number of French loanwords and several loan-sounds, a vowel system not yet affected by Great Vowel Shift. Kitson (1997), through a detailed analysis of linguistic evidence in texts from the area between Wiltshire and Herefordshire, argues for 1200 as the earliest boundary date for Middle English, echoing Sweet (1888) and Murray (1910). Up until that point, scribes show
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evidence of maintaining a front/back unstressed vowel distinction; as long as this distinction is maintained, Kitson argues, the shift to a language with fully leveled inflections was not irrevocable (see, however, Lass’s note in Section 4 about the second continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle, dated 1132–1154). As to when Middle English ends, external evidence can be used to point to 1476, when the printing press was introduced into England – an event that allowed the mass production of texts, with a significant impact on language standardization, the form of the book, conceptions of authorship, literacy rates, popular education, and more. Henry VII’s ascension to the English throne in 1485, marking the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, provides another possible boundary date. Some histories round up to 1500 and others use “the (late) 15th century”. Go¨rlach (1989: 103), using his fairly expansive definition of linguistic criteria, argues for an earlier date: “It seems to me that the phonological evidence in combination with the expanded functions of English (with all the consequences in orthography and spelling) and the growing standardization of the English language in England from 1430 onwards leave no better choice for a boundary than at 1430–1450”. One of the fundamental challenges for all the proposed dates above that rely to any extent on internal criteria is how much linguists can know about the spoken language from the remaining written evidence (cf. Schaefer, Chapter 81). For linguists, the history of “English” implies a focus on the spoken language, as the spoken is taken to be the most basic form of any language. Yet the evidence is entirely written – and often literary. And literary figures tend to be invoked often in linguistic descriptions of the early history of English. In a move not picked up by subsequent scholars, perhaps because the schema is not simple and does not allow one coherent narrative, Hockett (1957: 65) tries to separate the history of spoken from written English, giving weight to both; and he offers a significantly different chart to capture the development and periodization of the language. The diagram, adapted from Ernst Pulgram’s adaptation of Kurt Sethe’s work, shows diverging timelines for the written and spoken language (see Figure 79.3). Hockett’s explanation of the period breaks, which draws on criteria quite different from most previous or subsequent scholarship, merits quoting at length: This line begins just before 700 A.D., because that date, so far as we know, is the earliest at which anyone wrote English. Down to the time of Alfred, the “writing” line slants approximately as does the “speech” line, since no very firm orthographic habits had become fixed, so that habits of writing tended to be modified to fit changing habits of speech. Yet the two lines are somewhat separated: even at this very early period, English writing did not reflect speech with complete accuracy. With Alfred, the “writing” line begins to slope downwards more gently, becoming further and further removed from the “speech” line. This is because Alfred’s highly prestigious writings set an orthographic and stylistic habit, which tended to persist in the face of changing habits of speech. The Norman Conquest leads rather quickly to an end of this older orthographic practice; the new “writing” line which begins approximately at this time represents the rather drastically altered orthographic habits developed under the influence of the French-trained scribes. I have begun this line somewhat closer to the “speech” line at the time, on the assumption – of which I am not certain – that the rather radical change in writing habits led, at least at first, to a somewhat closer matching of contemporary speech. From this time until Caxton and printing, the “writing” line follows more or less inadequately the changing pattern of speech, never getting very close to it, yet constantly being modified in the direction of it. But with Caxton, and the
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introduction of printing, there soon comes about the real deep-freeze on English spellinghabits which has persisted to our own day. (Hockett 1957: 65–66)
Hockett also offers a way to think about the place of central literary figures as part of his very strong critique of debates over the boundaries of historical periods: We should never be caught arguing, with each other or with ourselves, whether Layamon is “really” Old English or “really” Middle English – and certainly we should never call his writing “transition” Old English, for the word “transition” is extremely dangerous. We should not even make any such compromise statement as that “Layamon shows certain surviving traces of Old English, but begins to foreshadow what later is to emerge as Middle English”. This statement is all right except for the use, in this particular context, of the terms “Old English” and “Middle English”. Replace “Old English” by “the English of Alfred” or “the English of Ælfric”, and replace “Middle English” by “Chaucerian English”, the statement is valid enough. Alfredian English and Chaucerian English are non-contiguous and non-overlapping time slices in the history of the language. (Hockett 1957: 66)
This proposal acknowledges the ways in which literature like Chaucer’s and Layamon’s provides prototypes for different historical forms of English – and the terminology Hockett suggests highlights linguists’ dependence on the written, as well as the literary, as the source of information about the early development of English. 650
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Alfred AElfric Norman conquest Layamon Ancren Riwle Chaucer Caxton
Figure 79.3: A visual representation of the diverging development of spoken English (bottom sloping line) and written English (top line, sloping at a gentler angle due to the implementation of written standards), with a break from older orthographic practices at the time of the Norman Conquest (Hockett 1957: 65)
Blake (1994) asks for perhaps an even more radical rethinking of how historical linguists tell the history of English: he argues that histories of English should explicitly be arranged around the history of the standard(s). He criticizes histories of English that assume the standard as “English” without acknowledgement, and he urges all
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historians of the language to clarify what they mean by English, which can be viewed as much as an abstract concept as an identifiable collection of linguistic data. The power of the standard to set an example for writers, Blake argues, makes it central to the history of the language, and attention to the standard usefully allows a junction of external and internal factors “in so far as the spread of a standard arises from external factors, but the standard itself is a matter of linguistic features” (Blake 1994: 39). This perspective redraws some of the period boundaries. As Blake explains, “[…] then English can have started only when the first standard was used outside its geographical area even if standardised languages were in use before then” (Blake 1994: 39), and King Alfred’s rule in the 9th century provides the first real standard for English as well as the sense that English is a national language. The start date for Middle English is pushed forward: “So a historical division of the language ought to extend ‘Old English’ until this ideal [the West Saxon standard] ceases to be a force, something which we can probably date to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century” (Blake 1994: 41). The Middle English period, characterized by the lack of a national standard, ends around 1400 with the rise of attempts to create a new national standard. Blake then raises the critical question of how one breaks Modern English, once a standard language has been established. He argues for 1660, the date of Restoration (vs. Go¨rlach’s 1700, which marks the “end of remaining syntactic redundancies and of the use of Latin for expository prose”): “What characterises the earliest part of Early Modern English is the establishment of a standard spelling system in printed material” (Blake 1994: 42). Before then, for example, in Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623, standardized spelling may be an ideal but not a fact (Blake 1994: 42). Blake creates three subsequent periods based on developments with the standard, including intellectual attitudes: 1660–1798, characterized by attempts to codify the language and to establish the principles for having and promoting a standard language; 1798–World War I, notable for the attempt to impose these norms through the educational system; and World War I–present, a period during which the standard has been under attack and is no longer accepted unquestioningly (cf. Crystal 2004, 2006). These later periods have received much less attention in the published scholarship, perhaps in part because many scholars have assumed a three-part division, with Modern English extending from the end of Middle English onwards. The break between the Early and Late periods has, it seems, been treated less as a linguistic question – i.e., as a boundary to be determined on purely linguistic grounds, however one defines linguistic. The date is often put near the end of the 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution, if not precisely at 1776 with the Declaration of Independence and subsequent attempts to establish a distinctly American English. This assumption of a three-part division, however, may no longer be appropriate if we examine recent reference works on the history of English. And, of course, reference works can have as great an impact on general understandings of the history of English as any piece of critical scholarship.
7 Reference work perspectives on periodization Perhaps the most authoritative resource published on the History of English over the past two decades is the six-volume Cambridge History of the English Language (CHEL), the first four volumes of which provide comprehensive treatments of the four major historical periods, with the last two volumes organized around geography. The first four volumes use cultural, political, and economic factors to delineate four major periods: to 1066,
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1066–1476, 1476–1776, 1776–Present. The project editor Richard Hogg explains these divisions in the preface and notes that linguistic changes, of course, often run across volumes but are typically treated in only one. This editorial decision, however, does not go unchallenged: the Middle English volume editor Norman Blake (1992: 1) states that the political and historical events delimiting his volume, while perhaps significant in the long term, “are hardly appropriate as guides to the dating of periods in it”. History of English textbooks from the past few decades can be either criticized or celebrated for the hodge-podge of criteria from which they typically draw to explain the stages in the history of English. The criteria can include: phonological changes, morphosyntactic changes, lexical developments, major historical events, literary developments and/or specific literary figures, cultural shifts, and sociolinguistic factors. Many standard history of English textbooks – as well as introductory linguistics textbooks that address the history of English – rely on a four-part periodization of English similar to CHEL (cf. Millward 1996; Fennell 2001; Curzan and Adams 2012; van Gelderen 2006), and some employ period names that no longer suggest a subdivided Modern period: Old English, Middle English, early Modern English, Present Day English (Millward 1996; Fennell 2001). A few standard textbooks maintain the three-period model (cf. Finegan 1999; Baugh and Cable 2002), but the table of contents of Baugh and Cable’s text does not suggest a straightforward three-part model: not only do the Norman Conquest and the re-establishment of English after 1200 receive separate chapters from “Middle English”, the history of English after 1500 is broken into the Renaissance (1500–1650), the Appeal to Authority (1650–1800), and the Nineteenth Century and After. The division of the language since the Renaissance is more variable than the now highly standardized use of Old English and Middle English. Mugglestone’s (2006) collection of essays on the history of English, for example, has chapters based on chronological periods, including both Renaissance English and Tudor English as well as 19th century English, and chapters delimited by language-related traditions, such as “English at the Onset of the Normative Tradition”. These five hundred years, much closer to the present moment with a language that is structurally and lexically more familiar, seem to encourage more experimentation with its divisions as well as more specificity, often based on extralinguistic criteria. Mugglestone’s volume also echoes Sweet’s and Murray’s emphasis on transitions. Mugglestone explains in the Introduction: “[…] it is the working-out of change in progress – of transitions in usage – which preoccupies other chapters. The history of English is, in this sense, not a series of static states but, at each and every point in time, patterns of variation reveal the cross-currents of change, whether in the gradual marginalization or loss of older forms, alongside the rise of newer and incoming ones” (Mugglestone 2006: 4). Other recent histories of English suggest this fuzziness of transitions by studiously avoiding dates whenever possible – and in the process offer a creative solution to a vexing problem. Crystal (2004) and Lerer (2007), both written for a wider audience, mix chapters that employ traditional names such Old and Middle English (but without dates) and those that do not (e.g., Crystal’s “A trilingual nation”), and Crystal includes chapters explicitly on transitions. Crystal does, however, tackle the question of boundary dates for Middle English directly: When was Middle English? The question is as difficult to answer as “When were the Middle Ages?” Some people define it with reference to historical events, usually selecting the
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X. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography Norman invasion of 1066 as its starting-point and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, the accession of Henry VII in 1485, as its close. Some use a mixture of literary, linguistic, and cultural criteria, starting with the earliest texts that show significant differences from Old English towards the end of the twelfth century, and finishing with Caxton’s introduction of printing towards the end of the fifteenth (1476). Some take 1100 as the starting-point; some leave it as late as 1200. But no one feels really comfortable with an identification in terms of boundary-points. As the name “Middle” suggests, we are dealing with a period of transition between two eras that each has stronger definition: Old English and Modern English. Before this period we encounter a language which is chiefly Old Germanic in its character – in its sounds, spellings, grammar, and vocabulary. After this period we have a language which displays a very different kind of structure […], with major changes having taken place in each of these areas, many deriving from the influence of French. From a modern perspective, we can sum up the effects of the Middle English period in a single word: it made the English language “familiar”. (Crystal 2004: 105)
Through this detailed explanation of the problem, Crystal skillfully succeeds in not providing boundary dates himself – in other words, he acknowledges the problem but does not pretend to settle it or even suggest that the problem requires a solution. Lerer (2007: 54) focuses on prototypically Middle English without trying to specify when the period began; he opens the Middle English chapter with: “By the middle of the thirteenth century, the English language of both script and street was palpably different from the English at the time of the Conquest”. Of particular note, almost all these recent texts treat the question of the periodization of English directly, often with notable nuance even if the treatment is, of necessity, brief. For example, in her 2006 textbook, van Gelderen outlines the various possibilities for the end boundary date at the beginning of the Middle English chapter, mentioning both external and internal criteria: Several different points can be considered as the end of Middle English: 1400, when the Great Vowel Shift starts; 1476, when printing is introduced; or 1485, when Henry VII comes to the throne. Here, we will consider the year 1500, when the most radical morphological and syntactic changes are complete, as the end of Middle English. (van Gelderen 2006: 111)
Others carefully explain the use of historical events for boundary dates, as Burnley (1992) does in the following two excerpts about the use of 1066 as a boundary date: The beginnings of Middle English might plausibly be associated with the invasion of 1066, after which England found itself host to a second language, Norman French, alongside the English used by the majority. But to date the beginning of Middle English with Norman Conquest would be only partly true, and to understand why this is the case it is necessary to outline some of the major differences between the stages of the language which modern scholars have called Old and Middle English. (Burnley 1992: 63) It is evident from this brief discussion […] that the emergence of the language changes associated with the beginning of Middle English were only loosely connected with the Norman Conquest. In many cases, the dialect writing that the Conquest initiated simply revealed changes which had been in progress for more than two centuries, or diversity which had already been part of pre-Conquest Old English. (Burnley 1992: 65–66)
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Although these modern textbooks do not agree on the dates or the criteria for periodization, most of them do seem to agree on a now arguably established tradition of foregrounding the question of periodization even as they rely on it to tell their linguistic and cultural narratives.
8 Final reflections: the need for one solution? When historians of English talk explicitly about the process of periodization, they often include the importance of recognizing that periodization and the boundaries that it creates are “arbitrary”. But “arbitrary” is the wrong word. The boundaries are artificial but not arbitrary. As this chapter has detailed, scholars have paid meticulous attention to the criteria for creating boundaries, even if they have not always come to consensus. Histories of English have not traditionally imposed “arbitrary” boundaries: even if the criteria have not been discussed explicitly in the text, histories of English have generally relied on identifiable internal and external criteria, as well as an established historiographic tradition, for their periodization. One could argue that we do not all have to agree on the one “correct” periodization for the history of English. The benefit of doing so is the consistency of the historiographic tradition. But over a century’s worth of historians of English have yet to achieve full consensus on periodization, and the historiographic tradition has not suffered greatly. The greatest debates involve little more than a century on either side of canonical dates for the boundaries of Middle English. There is much less consistency about the periodization of English after the 15th century, but as these centuries fade into the past, periodization of them will probably stabilize. Over the past few decades, scholars have offered almost as many solutions as they have critiques when it comes to periodization, and each solution has merits. Fisiak (1994) emphasizes the need to distinguish between “Middle English period” and “Middle English language”, rather than collapse them into “Middle English”. As mentioned in Section 6, Hockett (1957) highlights the benefits of naming periods by authors (e.g., “the language of Chaucer”) as this implies non-contiguous periods. Some textbook writers have provided models for describing prototypical features of canonical stages such as Old and Middle English without providing boundary dates. Wright (1999) advocates avoiding language names altogether, using temporal and locative phrases instead – for example, “in England in the 12th century” rather than “in Middle English” – which would “thereby eliminate the hypostatization implicit in the use of language labels” (Wright 1999: 39). But all these various solutions should not be taken to say that all textbooks need to be rewritten. The critical lesson is that historians of English, particularly those writing reference works, need to be explicit about how they are establishing periods in the history of the language – the internal and/or external criteria they are employing and the implications. Historians of English should take responsibility for explicating all the fundamental terms on which periodization relies, from “English” to each subperiod thereof – “Old English”, “Middle English”, “Early Modern English”, “Present Day English”, and whatever other terms they employ – as well as the criteria they have selected for creating boundaries. Based on the criteria that linguists establish as central, there is no reason that the periodization of the history of the English language would correspond exactly to English literary
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history, but it is equally possible that literary history could be a factor in telling the history of English. In the end, many of the fundamental questions about periodization in the history of English boil down to what counts as “linguistic” history. Historical sociolinguistics encourages us to take the broadest view, which allows the weighting of the external and internal as both important to the speakers who have lived the history of the English language and recognizes the centrality of language variation as part of language change. The English language changes through its use by real speakers in real time, and ideally any periodization of English will capture the history of the structure and of the speakers of the English language in all its many varieties, both spoken and written.
9 References Baugh, Albert and Thomas Cable. 2002. A History of the English Language. 5th edn. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Blake, Norman. 1992. Introduction. In: Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 2, 1066–1476, 1–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blake, Norman. 1994. Premisses and periods in a history of English. In: Francisco Ferna´ndez, Miguel Fuster, and Juan Jose´ Calvo (eds.), English Historical Linguistics 1992: Papers from the 7th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Valencia, 22–26 September 1992, 37–46. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Burnley, David. 1992. The History of the English Language: A Sourcebook. London/New York: Longman. Crystal, David. 2004. The Stories of English. New York: Overlook. Crystal, David. 2006. Into the Twenty-first Century. In: Lynda Mugglestone (ed.), The Oxford History of English, 394–413. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curzan, Anne. 2000. The End of Modern English? American Speech 75(3): 299–301. Curzan, Anne and Michael Adams. 2012. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. 3rd edn. Boston: Pearson Longman. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane. 1995. Middle English is a Creole and Its Opposite: On the Value of Plausible Speculation. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Linguistic Change under Contact Conditions, 35–50. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Danchev, Andrei. 1997. The Middle English Creolization Hypothesis Revisited. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Studies in Middle English Linguistics, 79–108. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fennell, Barbara A. 2001. A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach. Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell. Fife, James. 1992. On defining linguistics periods: gradients and nuclei. Word 43(1): 1–14. Finegan, Edward. 1999. Language: Its Structure and Use. 3rd edn. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Fisiak, Jacek. 1994. Linguistic reality of Middle English. In: Francisco Ferna´ndez, Miguel Fuster, and Juan Jose´ Calvo (eds.), English Historical Linguistics 1992: Papers from the 7th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Valencia, 22–26 September 1992, 47–61. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. van Gelderen, Elly. 2006. History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Georgianna, Linda. 2003. Periodization and politics: The case of the missing twelfth century in English literary history. Modern Language Quarterly 64(2): 153–168. Go¨rlach, Manfred. 1986. Middle English – A Creole? In: Dieter Kastovsky and Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), Linguistics Across Historical and Geographical Boundaries, Vol. 1, 329–344. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Go¨rlach, Manfred. 1989. Fifteenth-century English – Middle English or Early Modern English? In: J. Lachlan Mackenize and Richard Todd (eds.), In Other Words: Transcultural Studies in Philology, Translation, and Lexicology presented to Hans Heirich Meier on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, 97–106. Dordrecht, Holland/Providence, RI: Foris. Hockett, Charles F. 1957. The terminology of historical linguistics. Studies in Linguistics 12(3–4): 57–73. Jones, Charles. 1972. Introduction to Middle English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Kitson, Peter R. 1997. When did Middle English begin? Later than you think! In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Studies in Middle English Linguistics, 221–269. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lass, Roger. 1994. Phonology and Morphology. In: Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 2, 1066–1476, 56–186. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lass, Roger. 2000. Language periodization and the concept of ‘middle’. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Pa¨ivi Pahta, and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 7–41. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lerer, Seth. 2007. Inventing English: A portable history of the language. New York: Columbia University Press. Lutz, Angelika. 2002. When did English begin? In: Teresa Fanego, Bele´n Me´ndez-Naya, and Elena Seoane (eds.), Sounds, Words, Texts and Change: Selected Papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000, 145–170. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Malone, Kemp. 1930. When did Middle English begin? In: James Taft Hatfield, Werner Leopold, and A. J. Friedrich Zieglschmid (eds.), Curme Volume of Linguistic Studies, 110–117. Baltimore: Waverly. Matthews, David. 2000. The Invention of Middle English: An Anthology of Primary Sources. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Millward, Celia M. 1996 [1989]. A Biography of the English Language. 2nd edn. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic Variation and Change: On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Milroy, James. 1999. The consequences of standardisation in descriptive linguistics. In: Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (eds.), Standard English: The widening debate, 16–39. New York: Routledge. Mugglestone, Lynda. 2006. The Oxford History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murray, James A. H. 1879. English Language. In: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. VIII. 9th edn. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. Murray, James A. H. 1910. English Language. In: Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. IX. 11th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murray, K. M. Elizabeth. 1977. Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nicolaisen, Wilhelm F. H. 1997. Periodization in the History of English. General Linguistics 35 (1–4): 157–176. Oliphant, T. L. Kington. 1886. The New English. London/New York: Macmillan. Penzl, Herbert. 1994. Periodization in language history: Early Modern English and the other periods. In: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English, 261–268. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Poussa, Patricia. 1982. The Evolution of Early Standard English: The Creolization Hypothesis. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia XIV: 69–85. Strang, Barbara M. H. 1970. A History of English. London: Methuen. Sweet, Henry. 1874. A History of English Sounds from the earliest period. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sweet, Henry. 1888. A History of English Sounds from the earliest period with Full Word-Lists. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Sweet, Henry. 1892. A New Grammar of English, Logical and Historical. Vol. 1: Introduction, Phonology, and Accidence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wright, Roger. 1999. Periodization and how to avoid it. In: Robert J. Blake, Diana L. Ranson, and Roger Wright (eds.), Essays in Hispanic Linguistics Dedicated to Paul M. Lloyd, 25–41. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta.
Anne Curzan, Michigan (USA)
80. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography: Myths of the English language; or, alternative histories of “English” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Introduction Mythical underpinnings of the expression “a language” Defining the temporal limits of “English” Locating other myths and suggesting alternative archives Summary References
Abstract This chapter focuses on some of the myths revolving around the history of the English language in order to hint at which areas alternative histories might fruitfully be suggested (cf. Trudgill and Watts 2002). A concept of “myth” is presented within the framework of Foucault’s term “archive”, and four myths are selected for commentary: the myth of the longevity of English; the myth of a homogeneous language; the myth of language contact leading to “degeneration”; and the myth of the inferiority of northern English when compared to southern English, which is still used discursively to discriminate northerners and is thus a typically English myth. One of the important texts revealing the presence of such myths as early as the 14th century is Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon (see Babington 1865), and a discourse analysis is given of the relevant portions of Higden’s text. The language contact myth and the myth of the inferiority of northern varieties of English are then selected to provide brief alternative histories that not only give suggestions as to how those myths might be deconstructed, but also help in the deconstruction of the wider myths of longevity and homogeneity.
1 Introduction In a handbook dealing with the historical linguistics of English as compendious as the present work, it might appear out of place to suggest that perhaps the way in which we think of the term “English” itself is the first problem to which we should direct our critical attention. In considering what the term “alternative histories of English” might mean, I thus find myself confronted with this problem. It is not my aim in this chapter to review different accounts of different varieties of English, although they will without Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1256–1273
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doubt be referred to in passing, but rather to provide a theoretical platform from which we might think a little more carefully about what we are doing as historical linguists, and in particular as historical linguists of “English”. Trudgill and Watts (2002) have suggested that there are alternatives to the orthodox accounts of the “history of English” that have routinely been taught to undergraduates of English since the 19th century (e.g. Baugh 1951; Baugh and Cable 1978; Bloomfield and Newmark 1963; Bradley 1904; Brook 1958; Burchfield 1985; Emerson 1894). The “standard” views of representing the history of English lead to what I now wish to call the funnel view of linguistic history (Watts 2011: Chapter 12), one in which a wider open area at the top of the funnel encompassing a large range of varieties of English in the past narrows considerably at the neck of the funnel with room for only one variety of English, Standard English, as the output. The result of the funnel view is that the standard variety is automatically equated with the “language”. Obviously this is to the detriment of the multitude of other varieties of English that also have a history. But my thoughts on this issue can be taken still further. To begin with, they indirectly challenge the idea that there can ever be such a “thing” as “a language”. Second, even if this hypostasization is allowed to stand, as I shall argue it must, how do we define what counts as Language A and Language B? James Milroy (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006) has written a series of articles both challenging the fixation on so-called “Standard English” in English historical linguistics and the claim that we can call the Germanic language varieties in use in England and southern Scotland from the 5th century on varieties of “English”. Added to these problems, there is yet another. Assume that we do decide to focus on the historical development of “Standard English English”, a term used by Trudgill (1999), regardless of criticisms raised by the Milroys and others (Milroy and Milroy 1991; Milroy 1999, 2002; Bex and Watts 1999; Watts and Trudgill 2002). It should still be obvious that there are many ways of telling that story (cf. Crystal 2002), i.e. that there are still alternative histories without even moving beyond the orthodox framework. The present chapter will thus focus on these problem areas and will first introduce the notion of myth in Section 2 as the basic component in understanding how we conceptualize the expression “a language” in contradistinction to the expression “language” (or “human language”). It is not my purpose in any way to disavow our common understanding of “a language”, but rather to show that if we do not recognize its mythical grounding, we are liable to take any of the possible “stories of English” as representing a rational, and thereby incontrovertible truth. The danger inherent in taking this step is to believe in, and hence not to question, a dominant ideology of language. Section 3 will deal with the problems entailed in trying to define the historical and ontological borders between periods of “English” while still retaining a healthy skepticism towards dominant ideologies of language. Section 4 will then tackle some of the myths underlying more orthodox accounts of the history of the language and will look in some detail at the history of Northern English and at ways in which a new look at Standard English from this perspective offers an alternative account of the former. Section 5 will summarize the moves that have been made in this chapter and briefly mention other important alternative histories for other varieties of English that have been proposed in the literature.
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2 Mythical underpinnings of the expression “a language” The etymological origin of the term “myth” lies in the Greek word μύθος, which simply means ‘story’, and the fundamental narrative aspect of the term has remained at the core of the nexus of meanings prompted by the lexeme ever since. However, that nexus has been extended considerably to include the perception that a myth is not a personal story or an individual act of narration, but is transferred to the individual socially, in the course of social interaction with others, and culturally, through a history of transference that has made it the “cultural property” of a group. A myth therefore provides a narrative cognitive embedding of a belief, or set of beliefs, about some aspect of a socio-cultural group and helps to set up a foundation for performing acts of identity in emergent social practice. Thus, questioning whether a myth is in any sense objectively true is ultimately irrelevant. If even part of the story is believed by the group, it is at least individually and communally true, and for this reason myths “fulfil a vital function in explaining, justifying and ratifying present behavior by the narrated events of the past” (Watts 2000: 33). Stories can only be constructed by human agents, which entails that agency will be transferred to whatever creatures are involved in the stories. Human language functions as a mediator between the physical, the social, and the mental worlds in enlarging and expanding one’s individual mental world in potentially infinite ways. It is an abstract system of symbolic signs that are uniquely designed to allow human beings to “think” and understand rather than simply perceive the world they inhabit, and the thinking and understanding is done in terms of mental blends that allow the projection of abstract concepts that are otherwise not fully comprehensible onto mentally stored physical concepts. By their very nature mental blends are thus metaphorical and metonymic, and language is the major means by which we are able to create those blends. If we now assume that, in order to function as a “ratified” member of a social group, we are constrained to acquiring the linguistic constructions that others use, the step towards projecting a blend in which those constructions are mapped onto a system independent of our own selves is logical and relatively simple. The system is metaphorically projected as “the property” of the group and acquires a nomenclature of its own, which is most frequently closely related to what the group calls itself, but may also simply be referred to as “the language”. The hypostasization is thus nothing more than the construction of a metaphorical blend that becomes embedded through repeated socialization in the minds of the members participating in the group’s activities. It is thus hardly surprising that we accept the “truth” of the existence of languages rather than simply the existence of human language. It is also hardly surprising if the group or groups that perceive themselves to be using “a language” construct communal stories (myths) to explain, justify, and ratify its existence. At one and the same time such “myths” should have a historical underpinning and also provide a present means of distinguishing the group from other groups. It is at this point that linguists encounter a set of apparent paradoxes. I shall call the first of these the homogeneity/heterogeneity paradox. Contrary to common belief, “a language” is hardly a totally homogeneous system (cf. Weinreich et al. 1968). Those using it need flexibility at all times to adapt it to the purposes of the current social practice, and there seems to be an in-built heterogeneity in all human language in any case. However,
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many of the language myths constructed cognitively in explaining, justifying, and ratifying the concept “Language A” are based on notions of perfection, purity, and homogeneity. The second apparent paradox, the unique distinguishability paradox, is derived from the first, and it concerns the conceptualization of a language as a uniquely distinguishable system. Although “Language A” may share a large number of constructions and/or construction types with “Language B”, it nevertheless has a certain number of constructions which allow the researcher to proclaim it as a unique language. The paradox here is that this does not prevent speakers of A or B from communicating freely and easily with one another, and it may also mean that those same speakers may not perceive A or B to be uniquely distinguishable from each other at all. Associated with these two apparent paradoxes is a third, the language-as-a-property paradox, which assumes that the language system is the property of its speakers. Speakers who are not ratified members of the group may still pass as such if they have an equal command of the language variety and if the language variety shared by the group is taken as one of the group’s fundamental defining properties. Each of these three apparent paradoxes is created by a set of language myths and lies at the heart of the unholy alliance between the history of Language A, the standardized variety of Language A, and Language A as a “national language”, i.e. the official language of a nation-state. Groundbreaking work on precisely these paradoxes (Crowley 2003 [1989]; Milroy and Milroy 1991 [1986]; Joseph 1987; Grillo 1989; Bonfiglio 2002; Bex and Watts 1999) has shown convincingly that we are faced here with powerful, ideologically-based hegemonic discourses of language which are historically tied up with the socio-cultural and socio-political discourses of colonialism, imperialism, and nationalism. Section 3 will demonstrate how these paradoxes lead to gamut of dilemmas which are ultimately unsolvable in any attempt to describe a history of English, and they will provide a rationale for assuming the natural need for a potentially infinite set of alternative histories.
3 Defining the temporal limits of “English” In Section 2 I presented a cognitive rationale for thinking in terms of “a language”, in this case “English”, but with the implicit warning that, as linguists, we are obliged to hold the apparent homogeneity/heterogeneity paradox in our minds at all times. A failure to do so ultimately leads to the funnel view of English, regardless of whether it is consciously or unconsciously believed in, and this view sets Standard English as the teleological goal of research by focusing on Standard English data as its endpoint. In this section I will first consider the three apparent paradoxes to a modern historical view of languages (rather than simply language) presented in Section 2 as being related to the mythical imagination of nation-state communities and argue that they are all linked by the linguistic myth of a “perfect language”. Secondly, I will argue in a more focused manner not only that the orthodox breakdown of “English” into periods is part of the myth of English but also that the validity of using the term “English” at all to refer to those periods, although it might be convenient for researchers, has its distinct pitfalls. On this basis, as I shall argue in Section 4, there are alternative approaches that one might take.
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3.1 Speaking for the dead In setting up a history of any phenomenon, we have to assume firstly that we can recognize it and define it adequately (i.e. we have to tackle the question of what constitutes the phenomenon) and secondly that we can determine at what time-point the history of the phenomenon began. If, for example, we were writing a history of the French Revolution, we would need to define what we understood as the events constituting the Revolution, and then interpret – and I stress the word “interpret” here – the complex series of events prior to it which we took to be in some sense responsible for its occurrence. In other words we would be interested in providing a coherent explanation of both why and how the French Revolution “occurred”. Obviously, alternative interpretations both of what the French Revolution “was” and of what caused it (since causation is what historians set out to explain) can be rather different. It is even more difficult to know where a particular history begins. So even though historians aim at giving an account of causation, no single set of explanations can ever provide an objectively “correct” and definitive account. Part of the study of language has been literally formed in a historical mould since the late 18th and early 19th centuries, one reason being the close interconnection between the concept of a language (rather than merely human language as such) and the development of the modern academic discipline of history. As Anderson (2006 [1983]) clarifies, both are intimately connected with the development of the concept of the nation-state: […] once one starts thinking about nationality in terms of continuity, few things seem as historically deep-rooted as languages, for which no dated origins can ever be given. (Anderson 2006 [1983]: 196)
For Anderson, the orthodox understanding of history is that it serves the purpose of overcoming typical human amnesias; it takes upon itself the onerous duty of “speaking for the dead”. It is worth quoting Anderson at length on this point: All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivion, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives. After experiencing the physiological and emotional changes produced by puberty, it is impossible to “remember” the consciousness of childhood. How many thousands of days passed between infancy and early adulthood vanish beyond direct recall! How strange it is to need another’s help to learn that this naked baby in the yellowed photograph, sprawled happily on rug or cot, is you. […] Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity (yes, you and that naked baby are identical) which, because it can not be “remembered”, must be narrated. Against biology’s demonstration that every single cell in a human body is replaced over seven years, the narratives of autobiography and biography flood print-capitalism’s markets year by year. (Anderson 2006 [1983]: 204)
The truth of the matter is that modern man needs those narratives, those myths, both to overcome the unalterable human fact that each of us is mortal and to situate the individual within an apparently coherent sociocultural group, and in this way to take the sting out of the reality of mortality. Part of this mythical projection of the individual into a timeless socio-cultural entity is the projection of language into a language. The projection of an imagined community into a “nation” offers the illusion of a nation-state existing beyond our own time and striving for an imaginary perfection and of a language also
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moving towards achieving that perfection (cf. Eco 1993). The narrative illusion is thus the equivalent of a very powerful myth of perfection in which the forgotten dead are given a voice as being instruments in the trajectory towards a homogeneous state. A little reflection, however, should be enough to convince us that this is an illusion. Accepting the “truth” of the existence of languages rather than simply the existence of human language disregards the evidence that any language system that emerges through repeated instantiations of social interaction is by nature heterogeneous and subject to change through the conscious or unconscious agency of its speakers. It also leads to the conscious or unconscious effort to highlight the distinguishability of that system from others, and to claim some form of membership in a group that retrospectively asserts that the language is part of what characterizes the group. This is a common phenomenon used to stress in-group membership and out-group status. In The Archaeology of Knowledge Foucault (1972 [1969]) presents a view of discourse in which the characteristic of every discursive statement is its discontinuity and the unity of the discourse itself is a dispersion of its discontinuity. The appearance of objects, themes, and forms in the discourse is ultimately dependent on external conditions. We can, I think, consider the myth of the homogeneity or perfection of a language to be the main prototypical theme of a modern discourse around which we will find a linked but crucially discontinuous set of other language myths. Foucault also uses the term “discourse archive” to refer to this nexus of discursive statements, by which he understands not a library, but rather “the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events” (Foucault 1972 [1969]: 129). Those statements are constructed historically, i.e. through time, and I wish to argue, along with Blommaert (2005), that they are constructed narratively and communally (i.e. mythically) to determine what “can be said, expressed, heard, and understood in particular societies, particular milieux, particular historical periods” (Blommaert 2005: 102). The major problem with Foucault’s archive is that, so he believes, “[i]t is not possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak […]. The archive cannot be described in its totality; and in its presence it is unavoidable” (Foucault 1972 [1969]: 146−147). In other words, the archive is a collection of historical statements that we cannot interpret, and it is thus impossible for us ever to be “within” another archive. However, in order to open up alternative histories of English, none of which will be objectively “true”, we first need to find a way of questioning the discursive archive from within which we speak and to break open other archives. This is what we shall do in Section 4. For the moment, however, it is instructive to question the orthodox breakdown of English into different historical periods in an effort to break open a dominant sub-myth of our own archive, i.e. that English has a long history which is somehow connected to the development of the English (British?) nation. I call it a “sub-myth” because it depends crucially on the myth of the ultimate perfection of a language.
3.2 The myth of the longevity of English: breaking English down into historical periods The constitutive myth in the discursive archive of the nation-state reads as follows: what is imagined as the “nation” is engaged in a teleological development towards some state of perfection. For at least the last 150 years, one of the major defining features of the
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nation-state has been the standardized language, the “legitimate” linguistic representation of that state. However, as Anderson (2006 [1983]) rightly argues, in the late 18th century the first nationalist movements were located in the Americas, and had little to do with language since they were focused on revolution against control from the metropolitan powers, in particular Great Britain, Spain and Portugal. If the nation-state was striving for perfection, then so was the language closely associated with it. In addition, if it could be shown that the language had a long history, it could also be argued that the process of linguistic standardization was nothing more than an awakening of national consciousness, i.e. that it gave a voice to the dead. Hence the principal sub-myth in this archive became that of the longevity of the “national language”, with a further sub-myth arising from it which attempted to justify the idea of a continuous, uninterrupted, relentless development towards the ultimate homogeneous linguistic state of a standard language. The first important challenge to this sub-myth was made by Bailey and Maroldt (1977), and it sparked off a vigorous discussion of whether or not Middle English, and, in some later accounts supporting Bailey and Maroldt, Old English after the Danish settlement, was a creole. The dust has not yet settled in this dispute (cf. Trotter, Chapter 114). James Milroy (2002) locates the following five components in these two sub-myths: 1. English is a very ancient language; 2. English is directly descended from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages; 3. English dates from the fifth century settlement of Germanic tribes in the island of Britain; 4. English has an unbroken and continuous history since that time and is the same language now as it was then; 5. English is not a mixed language: changes in its structure have come about for mainly language-internal reasons. (J. Milroy 2002: 16–17, emphasis in the original)
He goes on to dismantle each of these propositions, arguing that they are “ideological”, or, as I would put it, part of the discursive myth of the development towards perfection and homogeneity which is a very deeply embedded part of one of the dominant discursive formations in our present-day archive. He argues, for example, that it is illogical to talk of Old English, if we have to learn it as if it were a foreign language. Nevertheless, there are several points in the written documents prior to the Conquest in which the language is referred to as Englisc or Ænglisc, and although we come across Norðanhymbre (Northumbrian, Northumbrians), Mierce/Miercan (Mercian, Mercians), Angle (Anglian, Angles, often in opposition to Danes), Seaxan/Seaxe (Saxon, Saxons), none of these terms is used to refer to a language. We are faced with a dilemma at this point. If we call Old English “Anglo-Saxon”, as Milroy suggests, how do we account for the fact that the concept of a language, English, used in all its variations was already embedded as a metaphorical blend in the minds of the inhabitants of pre-Conquest England, and possibly also southeast Scotland? As Anderson (2006 [1983]: 196) points out, “no dated origins can ever be given” for languages, and there are no linguistic principles according to which such datings could be made. If we look at these facts through the prism of our dominant archive, however, it is certainly possible to construct a generally acceptable “history of English”, but such a history is a mythically informed history, and it completely ignores any account of how people who felt they were using English actually went about the everyday job of communicating with others. Milroy is right to reject the contention that development in the English language can be carried out merely by looking at the internal constructions in the language. The
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contention is false on the grounds that it assumes development from one homogeneous state of language to the next, by implicitly believing that we can actually state what those constructions were. This is again the ideological view of a language rejected by Milroy. At all events, contrary to what Foucault believes, it should by now be clear that we can indeed make the effort to stand outside our own archive, and to try tentatively to construct earlier archives informed by different myths. In Section 4 I shall attempt to do just this by dealing with evidence for the existence of three other language myths, two from the early 14th century and one from the late 16th century. I shall then discuss an alternative way of looking at two situations in which little or no linguistic evidence is at hand, but where it is possible to make judicious use of socio-historical facts to help us piece together a speculative account of what may have happened, not so much to the language, but to those who felt they were using the language.
4 Locating other myths and suggesting alternative archives Hypostasizing a language from repeated situations of socio-communicative verbal interaction inevitably leads to mythically grounded narrative accounts of the language or the users of the language. Linguistic myths of English go back at least as far as the early 14th century and could probably be traced back even further were it not for the relatively restricted number of textual sources that have come down to us. Many of those myths are still evident in present-day discourse on English, and they form part of an amalgamation of myths that have collected around the myth of the perfect language. In the first part of this section I shall take a look at three such myths, two of which ultimately contributed to a narrowing focus on the history of standard English whereas the third might have led to an alternative focus on the history of regional varieties of English. I shall argue in Section 5 that the first of the myths that I shall consider has, perhaps indirectly, led to a cultural revival in varieties of Northern English. The third myth, as a reaction to the dominant discourse of standard English, gave rise to a heightened interest in preserving, or at least recording what were thought to be dying regional dialects of English at the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century. However, it might also be said to lie at the basis of a renewed interest in tracing out not only the historical but also the continued development of new varieties of English across the world. In the second part of the section I shall adopt the possibly controversial view that the fundamental reasons for virtually all change are to be found in various forms of language contact rather than in the functioning of language-internal mechanisms. In the spirit of the principle that language contact inevitably leads to language change, I shall briefly reconsider contact between speakers of Old English and speakers of the Danish variety of Old Norse in the Danelaw area of England, and then turn my attention to a grossly neglected area of study, viz. the effects of the Black Death on language contact after 1349.
4.1 Three further myths of English In Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon (see Babington 1865), compiled during the first half of the 14th century, we find evidence of at least two language myths that are closely associated with the dominant myth of the language as a perfect, homogeneous system – the myth of wild, barbaric people without a homogeneous language (Myth A), and the
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myth of the corruption of a language through contact with other languages (Myth B). There is even, or so it seems, the hint of a myth that gives rise to alternative accounts of a language as a heterogeneous system, which we could call the myth of language variety (Myth C). Myths B and C are evident in the following quotation from chapter lix of the second book of the Polychronicon, which I have quoted in the original Latin, followed by my own translation. I have also highlighted the statement that there are three types of English, Southern, Midland, and Northern, since, in the chronicle tradition, it was taken from Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and forms the basis of a conceptual split between the North and the South in which it is debatable whether or not the Midlands belong to the North or the South (cf. Wales 2006): Angli quoque, quamquam ab initio tripartitam sortirentur linguam, austrinam scilicet, mediterraneam, et borealem, veluti ex tribus Germaniæ populis precedentes, ex commixtione tamen primo cum Danis, deinde cum Normannis, corrupta in multis patria lingua peregrinos jam captant boatus et garritus [Myth B]. Hæc quidem nativæ linguæ corruptio provenit hodie multum ex duobus; quid videlicet pueri in scholis contra morem cæterum nationum a primo Normannorum adventu, derelicto proprio vulgari, construere Gallice compelluntur; item quod filii nobilium ab ipsis cunabulorum crepundiis ad Gallicum idioma informantu […] Ubi nempe mirandem videtur, quomodo nativa et propria Anglorum lingua, in unica insula coartata, pronunciatione ipsa sit tam diversa [Myth C]; cum tamen Normannica lingua, quæ adventitia est, univoca maneat penes cunctos. (Book II, ch. lix) ‘And the English, although from the beginning they were given three types of speech, that is southern, midland and northern as preceding from three peoples of Germany but mainly from a mixture with the Danes, afterwards with the Normans, they now produce foreign-sounding chatterings and bellowings as the native language has been corrupted in so many ways. [Myth B] Indeed this corruption of the native tongue today comes largely from two things; i.e. boys in schools against the custom of other nations, from the first arrival of the Normans, their own common [tongue] being left aside, are compelled to construe [their lessons] in French; on the other hand, the sons of the nobles are taught the language of the French from the very rocking of their cradles […] When surely it is seen as a wonder how the true and native language of the English, compressed within one island, is so diverse in its very pronunciation; [Myth C] the Norman language, however, which has been brought here, retains the one sound with all.’
In Higden’s eyes, both the “mixture” between the Angles (rather than the Saxons and the Jutes) and the Danes, and the subsequent “mixture” with Anglo-Norman French has resulted in the corruption of the language, and one of the principal reasons for this corruption in Higden’s day is attributed to the lack of English mother tongue instruction in the schools. On the other hand, Higden also considers it a “wonder” that English should be “so diverse in its pronunciation” throughout England, which sits rather uneasily with his attribution of corruption to the language. Further on Higden states the following, which he has taken from William of Malmesbury’s De gestis Pontificum Anglorum (c.1125). It constitutes evidence that the North/ South divide goes back at least another 250 years and is deeply entrenched in the mythical discourses on English: Tota lingua Northimbrorum, maxime in Eboraco, ita stridet incondita, quod nos australes eam vix intelligere possumus [Myth A]. ‘All the language of the Northumbrians, above all in York, shrieks in such an undisciplined way that we Southerners can hardly understand it.’ [Myth A]
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The statement itself, whether Higden’s or William’s, is an outright condemnation of the language used in the North (which in this section of the text excludes the Midlands), and it is interesting to note how Higden discursively aligns the reader together with himself as a Southerner in the NP nos australes (‘we Southerners’). This is later followed by the statement: […] praedicta quoque lingua Saxonica tripartita que in paucis adhuc agrestibus vix remansit [Myth A]. ‘[…] also the aforementioned, tripartite Saxon language scarcely exists but among a few rustics.’ [Myth A]
How are we to interpret this statement? The central word here is agrestibus (the ablative plural of agrestis). It can be translated simply by ‘farmer’ or ‘peasant’, but there is a negative ring to the word, and it is often glossed as ‘boorish’, ‘uncouth’, ‘uncivilized’. Its original meaning was ‘one who drives animals out into the fields’, and significantly, John de Trevisa translates it with the Middle English word ‘uplondissh’, i.e. ‘hill folk’ or pastoralists. If we now return to the other quotations from Higden, the expression mirandem videtur could also be translated as ‘it is seen as something strange/abnormal’, which indicates a negative attitude towards the wide variation in English pronunciation, a theme picked up by Caxton towards the end of the 15th century. And if we return to the first quotation, the second reason for the corruption of English can only be its heterogeneity. In a nutshell, we have the following elements of a set of negative myths of English: 1. 2. 3. 4.
There are too many varieties of English. English does not have a unified pronunciation. Those in the North are the worst users of English. Those in the North are uncivilized pastoralists.
This constitutes the myth of the North/South divide, which has persisted, in certain people’s minds at least, right down to the present day. A genuinely positive example of the myth of language variety can be found at the end of the 16th century in Richard Carew’s “The excellency of the English tongue”, which was first printed in 1605 together with Carew’s “A survey of Cornwall” and then as a contribution to William Camden’s Description of England: Moreover the copiousness of our Language appeareth in the diversity of our Dialects, for we have Court and we have Countrey English, we have Northern and Southern, gross and ordinary, which differ from each other, not only in the terminations, but also in many words, terms, and phrases, and express the same thing in divers sorts, yet all write English alike. (1605 [1595], cited in Go¨rlach 1991: 2433)
Carew’s text is repeated almost verbatim in Guy Mie`ge’s The English grammar in 1688. So it seems that what Carew calls the “copiousness” of English was favored by some and frowned upon by others. There is a hitch in the argument here, however, in that Carew seems to be referring to oral varieties of language. His final comment – “yet all write English alike” – even though it can be shown to be demonstrably false at the time when Camden was collecting his materials for his Description of England, is an indication that the move towards a homogeneous form of standard written English was already in progress.
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4.2 Two alternative histories of migration and language contact in England One alternative history of Northern English has recently appeared (Wales 2006), and, significantly, it styles itself in the subtitle as a “social and cultural history”. Wales stresses that her purpose is to produce a history which will offer an alternative to the ideological discourse which uses the myth of the North/South divide to justify a focus on the history of Standard English. She is not primarily concerned to delineate the historical development of Northern English, for the simple reason that there are a large number of rural and urban dialectal varieties that lay claim to being classified as “Northern”. A considerable amount of linguistic material is presented, but her main concerns are to defuse the power of the myth of the North/South divide by locating the origins of negative stereotypes still propagated in the South about Northerners and by making her readership aware of the high level of cultural and social solidarity in the North. So far this has managed to prevent too much erosion through the diffusing influences of standard English and, within the last 30 years, of so-called “estuary” English (cf. Altendorf, Chapter 122). The aims of setting up alternative histories should be precisely this, viz. to challenge a funnel-like focus on Standard English in dealing with the history of English, and I shall refer to Wales’s book in this section. Before re-examining two histories of migration and contact in England, I wish to turn my attention briefly to the radical position that all language change is ultimately triggered by language contact situations. In order to uphold this thesis, it is first necessary to see every situation in which two or more interactants engage in social practice as being per definitionem a language contact situation. Language contact in this case concerns each individual interactant’s linguistic system (see Watts, Chapter 95). In every instantiation of social practice we are involved with the construction and negotiation of conceptual meanings through which we make sense of our world. If the addressees use the same constructions as we do, there is not much difficulty in constructing and negotiating meaning. But even in this case there are still situations in which we need to find some way of prompting for meaning, which may lead us to introduce constructions which have never been used before. In fact, this happens more often than we imagine. If there are differences between sets of constructions, the interlocutors need to find ways of negotiating meaning, which can lead to one or the other of the participants “simplifying” some of the constructions used (see my discussion of the introduction and diffusion of þe as a nondeclinable definite article and þon as a nondeclinable singular demonstrative determiner in Watts, Chapter 95). The first language contact situation is one for which we have little or no documentary evidence from the time during which contacts began but evidence from the late 10th century on for some of the consequences of contact. In 865 the Danes, who had been raiding the Eastern coast of England in their longships on an almost annual basis from the sacking of Lindisfarne in 793, decided to send a “Great Army” bent on the conquest of England rather than simply looting. In the wake of this army settlers from Denmark migrated to England and settled on land in relatively close proximity to the native English. In 866 York was captured and made the administrative center for the Danish occupation of England, and in the successive years Nottingham and Thetford also succumbed, followed by the rest of the five boroughs, Leicester, Stamford, Lincoln, and Derby. From 871 till the first treaty with the Danish ruler Guthrum in 886,
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Alfred’s Wessex waged a defensive war against the Danes. The treaty accepted the overlordship of the Wessex king in England but allowed the Danes to practice their law and customs to the east of the line of Watling Street as far as the River Ouse in Bedfordshire and from there across to the River Lea to its confluence with the Thames. A great deal of work has been carried out on locating place-name evidence for Danish settlements in the Danelaw. The results are only an indirect form of evidence for the possible cohabitation of an Old English speaking population with Old Danish speaking settlers throughout the Danelaw, but they do show a preponderance of settlements in the East Midland county of Leicestershire as well as the counties of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Above the River Tees there is hardly any toponymic evidence of Norse settlement, while in South Yorkshire there is again evidence of relatively intensive settlement and in Lincolnshire of very intensive settlement. There is almost no toponymic evidence to the west of Watling Street and very little evidence of settlement to the South of the Fenlands in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. To the East of the Fenlands there is a moderately high occurrence of Norse placenames in Norfolk and Suffolk (although nowhere near as high as the concentration in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire), and virtually none in Essex. Two central questions need to be addressed in an alternative history of Northern English, and they are both mentioned by Wales (2006: Chapter 2). On the one hand, we need to know not only the extent of Old Danish influence on the development of English in the Danelaw but also the kind of influence exerted by one variety over the other. On the other hand, we need to have a plausible explanation for the extensive Old Norse vocabulary that has come down into Standard English and also for significant morpho-syntactic changes in what is essentially “the language of the South” from the language of the North (e.g. the third person plural pronoun they and its forms them, their and theirs, the use of the third person plural morpheme -s in the present singular paradigm of the verb, the third person singular feminine personal pronoun she, etc.). I will tackle the second question in the second part of this subsection. Three different solutions to the first question have been proposed by researchers. For example, Poussa (1982) considers that the local forms of Old English resulting from the language contact situation were the result of a process of creolization, which indicates wholesale simplification of the inflectional system of the language, and also implies Danish dominance in the Danelaw. However, her proposal has been severely criticised by Go¨rlach (1986) and by Dawson (2003). A second solution is to postulate that a form of hybrid language between Old Danish and Old English arose through forms of codeswitching and extensive borrowing (Bjorkmann 1969). The third solution, which is much more plausible, is that we have a canonical situation of dialect mixing in which “a supralocal koı¨ne´” developed (Wales 2006: 61; J. Milroy 1992: 181; Millar 2000: 60; Dawson 2003). Siegel (1985: 372) defines koı¨neisation as “a gradual process which occurs only after prolonged contact between speakers who can most often understand each other to some extent”, and a koı¨ne´ would therefore be “the stabilized result of mixing of linguistic subsystems such as regional or literary dialects” (Siegel 1985: 363). Three factors are of importance for koı¨neisation: a) speakers of both varieties must be able to interpret each other’s speech to such an extent that they can also infer one another’s intended or unintended implications; b) the interlocutors must communicate with one another on a regular basis; c) the interlocutors must have more or less the same social status with respect to each other.
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I shall illustrate this with a purely, but not entirely implausible fictional situation. The Danish settlers in the Danelaw may have had the benefit of Danish military strength to back up their search for good arable land, but the population must have been relatively sparse in those areas in which good farming land was to be had (notably in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, and, above all, Lincolnshire). The overall population of England is estimated at roughly 1,200,000 in the late 9th century, and even this may be very optimistic. There was, in other words, no shortage of land, and there was unlikely to have been serious disputes between the indigenous population and the migrants over land possession. In the towns (e.g. York, the five boroughs, Thetford, Gainsborough, etc.) the incoming migrant population may have been more numerous and have focused on trade with the European North Sea coast. Imagine two farming families living on two sides of a valley, one English-speaking, the other Danish-speaking, both with a herd of cows. Imagine that the housewife of the English family needs to drive the cows in for milking but her husband has been taken sick. And imagine that she decides to go over to the Danish farmstead and ask for help. She greets the Danish farmer and states her problem in her local dialect of Old English (the Northern dialects, from all the evidence of Northumbrian texts going back to the 8th century, had lengthened vowels in place of the diphthongs common in the South and West. The reader must allow for some licence in my use of Old English here. There is after all absolutely no way of knowing how this would have been expressed in any part of the Danelaw. But the situation is, after all, fictional, although plausible): Min bonda is sec. Canst þu me mid þam kinum helpan? my husband is-3PSG sick canst-2PSG thou me with the-DAT cows-DAT help [mi:nbondəɪsˈe:k\ kansθume:mɪdθəmˈki:nəmˈhɛlpən\] “My husband is sick. Can you help me with the cows?” In Old Norse/Old Danish ‘my husband’ would be min bondi, ‘sick’ would be sjuk, ‘canst thou’ would be kannt þu, the dative case of the first person singular pronoun would be mer, ‘with’ would be með, the dative plural of ‘cow’ would be kum, and the verb ‘help’ would be hjalpa. The only possible difficulty would be in expressing the dative case of the definite article, which by this time in Old English would have been þam, and in the Nordic languages, then as now, would have appeared as a post-positional clitic, possibly, in this case innum. So by no stretch of the imagination can we suggest that the Englishspeaking farmer’s wife did not get her message across to the Danish farmer. The two linguistic systems were to all intents and purposes mutually comprehensible. As generations went by Danish settlers were no longer Danish settlers, but inhabitants of the Danelaw. They might have lost their Danish by the third generation, but intensive local contact with English speakers would surely have led to borrowing from various areas of the vocabulary from Danish into English, to the integration of Norse morpho-syntactic elements into English, e.g. they, at (‘that’), til (‘to’), etc., and to extensive leveling in the inflectional system of the resulting koı¨ne´ (or even koı¨ne´s). Depending on the demographic balance between the English-speaking and the Danishspeaking population in the area focused on, Danish will have survived longer in urban than in rural districts. It is well known that Danish survived as an active language in York at least up to the end of the 11th century.
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It is also difficult to find hard empirical evidence to answer Wales’s second question. As we know, an extensive set of words, most of them in common and frequent use, have at some stage been borrowed from Old Norse (either the Danish varieties to the East of the Pennines or the Norwegian varieties to the West) into the Northern dialects of English and have found their way into the standard language. Significant parts of the pronoun system have come from Old Norse (they/their/them, she – the jury is still out on whether or not she derives from Old Norse sources, but the arguments are stacked in favor of this being the case) as well as prepositions/conjunctions like till and common verbs like get. In addition, common, though not uncontested, opinion has it that the third person singular -s inflection in the present tense of the verb has also spread from the Danelaw area. The principal question concerns how such features diffused from above the line of the Wash into southern forms of English. Wales (2006: 85–90) sets up a variant of wave theory that suggests diffusion through trading from market town to market town. The nexus for the spread of Northern forms is postulated as lying in the Humberside region between York and Lincoln. She also takes into consideration Keene’s (2000) analysis of so-called distance values in the exchange of goods and services from 1100 to 1700. Keene actually deals with a number of other significant economic factors involving the dependence on London of other towns and regions in England (e.g. poll-tax payers, debtors to creditors in London), the bynames of people living in London and the provenance of butchers’ apprentices, all of these figures, with the exception of the butchers’ apprentices, applying to the 14th century. If we compare the byname evidence for London, Norwich, and Winchester, it becomes clear that London exerted a vastly greater pull on migrants to the capital than any other town, and although migration from all areas of the compass occurred, the statistics show a preponderance of migrants from the East and Central Midland areas of England. No one, however, at least to my knowledge, has considered the catastrophic effects of the Black Death from 1348 to 1349 on internal migration. This is a serious lacuna in efforts to show how Northern features might have diffused to London. As Wales suggests, trade was undoubtedly important, but trading was carried out along waterways and, apart from coastal shipping to London (e.g. of coal from Newcastle since the 12th century), there are virtually no navigable waterways running North to South in the country apart from a stretch of the River Trent. Heavy goods, particularly if they were perishable, could hardly have been transported by road to London. But men and women could walk there; they could, in other words, transport themselves. The plague pandemic that swept through Europe from 1347 to 1350 spread from the south and southwest of England in 1348, wiping out an estimated 50% of the overall population. Where England was a thriving feudal society of roughly 4,000,000 in 1347, its population had been halved just two years later and the feudal system was in disarray. Survivors of families that had been bound for generations to a demesne found themselves without work, without food and with no other prospects of survival but to leave and look for a livelihood elsewhere. In the period after the Black Death, agricultural laborers must have found themselves in the enviable position of being able to sell their labor to the highest bidder. As always, London acted as a magnet pulling people towards it from humanly walkable distances, e.g. from the southernmost areas of Northern English influence where the linguistic features that later “diffused” had already been present for centuries.
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What the migrants could not have been aware of was that, at every fresh outbreak of the plague within England for the next 300 years, London was always hit most severely with a death rate of over 50%. It was constantly in need of demographic replenishment in the form of migrants and a large percentage of these came from the old Danelaw area. Without doubt they used their imported forms of speech in London, thus contributing directly to the diffusion of those selfsame elements. Many of those who were drawn to London became clerks in the royal chancery in Westminster. The very first document in English in the reign of Henry V contains variation between h- and th-forms of the third person plural pronoun, as the following extract demonstrates: By the Kyng Trusty and welbeloued. ffor asmuche as in cer tain matiers þat gretely touchen and concernen þe good / weele / and worship of vs our Landes lordships and subgittes We haue willed our Comissaries berers herof to comen with you: We woll / desire / and pray you þerfore hertely / þat in suche þinges as þat þei or eny of þeim woll shewe declare / and sey vnto you on our behalf: ye woll yeue vnto hem / and to eche of hem full feith and credence: And we pray you þat ye leue not þis as ye woll þe good weele / and worship abouesaid: Yeuen vndre our priue seel at westminstre þe .xx. day of Iuyll […] To our trusty and welbeloued þe thrifty men notable persones and Comin alte of our Citee of A. or of the Tovne of .B. and to eueriche of þeim. To þe Right Dere in god / and Dere in god eueriche of þees styles may serue for Abbottes / Prioures / Denes Archediacones. And for nede for thrifty Persons (Anonymous 1993)
The fact that London was a melting pot of migrants from all over the country is wellknown (cf. Klemola 1996; J. Milroy 1992), particularly for the 16th century, and the general explanation for the success of the innovations from the Northern varieties of English, particularly with respect to the pronouns they and she, has been functional, i.e. that they avoided possible ambiguities arising from the h-forms (Samuels 1989 [1963]). On the other hand, if Chancery English shows variation between both h- and th-forms, we should take the late 14th century migration from the North, Central and East Midlands more seriously than has hitherto been the case. Above all we need to access any kind of demographic data that would give us information on the provenance of the migrants. It is at least a strong possibility that migrants from the old Danelaw were the majority group in replenishing the 60% losses in the London population in the wake of the Black Death and that they continued to do so throughout the 15th century. At all events, my claim that language contact situations are the prime source of the innovation and diffusion of forms is consonant with the historical study of demographic patterns of internal migration and is an attempt to escape from the mythical constructions of a dominant language ideology favoring Standard English which spawn such sub-myths as the North/South divide. The full importance of Northern English now and in the past has not yet been completely revealed, although Wales’s alternative history of Northern English is a good start.
5 Summary I began this chapter by suggesting that historical linguists studying the English language need to avoid the pitfalls of taking a funnel view of the history of English. This can only be done by making oneself aware of the fact that human beings communicate with
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human language, but that it is a small step to the metaphorical extension of perceived similarities in the constructions used as a common language. Once this step is taken – and it is after all a perfectly natural step to take – it is hedged around with difficulties in that we enter a discursive world of myths about that language which we cannot easily escape in that they form part of a dominant archive in Foucault’s sense of the word. It should be our job, as historical linguists of English, to become aware of the archive – which is in fact historically determined – and to find ways not only of challenging it but also of trying to enter the mythically constructed archives of earlier stages of English. The example that I chose to focus on in this chapter was Katie Wales’s alternative history of Northern English, and with that history in mind, I focused on two periods in the history of both Standard English and Northern English which deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. Both are stories of migration and language contact, but of different kinds and in different circumstances. Other such stories of migration and language contact are offered for New Zealand English by Gordon et al. (2004), for South African Indian English by Raj Mesthrie (1992), for Tristan da Cunha English and for St. Helena English by Daniel Schreier (2003, 2008). Some of the myths that have gone into the construction of the supposed “inferiority” of Northern English are also evident in Crowley’s story of languages in Ireland, offered in the form of a set of source texts in English and Irish (Crowley 2000) and then as a critical commentary of some of those texts during the “colonial period” (Crowley 2005). We have the conscious Them vs Us divide in which the other side, i.e. the non-English, Irish side is constructed as barbaric, uncivilised, dangerous. This is correlated time and again with the position that the Irish are pastoralists (cf. Higden’s comments on Northerners in Section 3) positioning the Irish as the cultural and historical Them to the English Us. We also have the first constructions of a colonial discourse which was to dominate English politics from the 16th to the 20th century. Highlighting the language myths that have, for better or for worse, discursively constructed our view of the history of English is one way to make us conscious of the dominant discourse archive in which we still work. Trying to move beyond and outside that archive will force us to think differently, to consider alternative approaches to the history of language, and in our own particular area to the history of “English” – whatever we take “English” to mean.
6 References Anderson, Benedict. 2006 [1983]. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Anonymous. 1993. An anthology of Chancery English. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/AnoChan.html (last accessed 13 July 2011). Babington, Churchill. 1865. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis, Book 2, ch. lix. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green. Bailey, Charles J. and Karl Maroldt. 1977. The French lineage of English. In: Ju¨rgen M. Meisel (ed.), Langues en contact – Pidgins – Creoles, 21–53. Tu¨bingen: Narr. Baugh, Albert. 1951. A history of the English language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Baugh, Albert and Thomas Cable. 1978. A history of the English language. 2nd edn. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Bex, Tony and Richard J Watts (eds.). 1999. Standard English: The widening debate. London: Routledge. Bjorkmann, E. 1969. Scandinavian loan words in Middle English. New York: Haskell Home. Blake, Norman (ed.). 1992. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, Jan. 2005. Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloomfield, Morton W. and Leonard Newmark. 1963. A linguistic introduction to the history of English. New York: Knopf. Bonfiglio, Thomas Paul. 2002. Race and the rise of Standard American. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bradley, Henry. 1904. The making of English. New York: Macmillan. Brook, G. L. 1958. A history of the English language. London: Deutsch. Burchfield, R. 1985. The English language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carew, Richard. 1605. A survey of Cornwall, and The excellency of the English tongue. London. Cravens, Thomas D. (ed.). 2006. Variation and reconstruction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Crowley, Tony. 2000. The politics of language in Ireland: A sourcebook. London: Routledge. Crowley, Tony. 2003 [1989]. Standard English and the politics of language. 2nd edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Crowley, Tony. 2005. Wars of words: The politics of language in Ireland 1537–2004. New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crystal, David. 2002. Broadcasting the nonstandard message. In: Richard J. Watts and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Alternative histories of English, 233–244. London: Routledge. Dawson, Hope C. 2003. Defining the outcome of language contact: Old English and Old Norse. OSUWPL 57: 40–57. Eco, Umberto. 1993. In search of the perfect language. Translated by James Fentress. Oxford: Blackwell. Emerson, Oliver Farrar. 1894. The history of the English language. New York: Macmillan. Foucault, Michel. 1972 [1969]. The archaeology of knowledge. Translated by. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock. Gordon, Elizabeth, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury, and Peter Trudgill. 2004. New Zealand English: Its origins and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Go¨rlach, Manfred. 1986. Middle English – a creole? In: Dieter Kastovsky and Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries, 329–344. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Go¨rlach, Manfred. 1991. Studies in varieties of English 1984–1988. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grillo, Ralph. 1989. Dominant languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joseph, John E. 1987. Eloquence and power: The rise of language standards and standard languages. London: Frances Pinter. Kastovsky, Dieter and Aleksander Szwedek (eds.). 1986. Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Keene, Derek. 2000. Metropolitan values: Migration, mobility and cultural norms, London 1100– 1700. In: Laura Wright (ed.), The development of Standard English 1300–1800: Theories, descriptions, conflicts, 93–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klemola, Juhani. 1996. Nonstandard periphrastic “do”: A study in variation and change. Unpublished PhD. Thesis. University of Essex. Laing, M (ed.). 1989. Middle English dialectology. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Lehmann, Winfred and Yakov Malkiel (eds.). 1968. Directions for historical Linguistics: A symposium. Austin: University of Texas Press. Meisel, Ju¨rgen M (ed.). 1977. Langues en contact – Pidgins – Creoles. Tu¨bingen: Narr.
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Mesthrie, Rajend. 1992. English in language shift: The history, structure and sociolinguistics of South African Indian English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mie`ge, Guy. 1688. The English grammar. London. Millar, Robert McColl. 2000. System collapse, system rebirth: The demonstrative pronouns of English 900–1350 and the birth of the definite article. Bern: Peter Lang. Milroy, James. 1992. Middle English dialectology. In: Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II, 156–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, James. 1999. The consequences of standardisation in descriptive linguistics. In: Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (eds.), Standard English: The widening debate, 16–39. London: Routledge. Milroy, James. 2000. Historical description and the ideology of the standard language. In: Laura Wright (ed.), The development of Standard English 1300–1800: Theories, descriptions, conflicts, 11–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, James. 2001. Language ideologies and the consequences of standardization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(4): 530–555. Milroy, James. 2002. The legitimate language: Giving a history to English. In: Richard J. Watts and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Alternative histories of English, 7–25. London: Routledge. Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy. 1991. Authority in language: Investigating Standard English. 3rd edn. London & New York: Routledge. Milroy, James. 2006. Language change and the speaker: On the discourse of Historical Linguistics. In: Thomas D. Cravens (ed.), Variation and reconstruction, 145–164. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Poussa, Patricia. 1982. The evolution of Early Standard English: The creolization hypothesis. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 14: 69–85. Samuels, Michael L. 1989 [1963]. Some applications of Middle English dialectology. In: M. Laing (ed.), Middle English dialectology, 64–80. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Schreier, Daniel. 2003. Isolation and language change: Contemporary and sociohistorical evidence from Tristan da Cunha English. Houndmills/Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schreier, Daniel. 2008. St Helenian English: Origins, evolution and variation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Siegel, Jeff. 1985. Koı¨ne´s and koı¨neization. Language in Society 14(3): 357–378. Trudgill, Peter. 1999. Standard English: What it isn’t. In: Tony Bex and Richard J. Watts (eds.), Standard English: The widening debate, 117–128. London: Routledge. Trudgill, Peter and Richard J. Watts. 2002. Introduction: In the year 2525. In: Richard J. Watts and Peter Trudgill (eds.), Alternative histories of English, 1–3. London: Routledge. Wales, Katie. 2006. Northern English: A social and cultural history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, Richard J. 2000. Mythical strands in the ideology of prescriptivism. In: Laura Wright (ed.), The development of Standard English 1300–1800: Theories, descriptions, conflicts, 29–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, Richard J. 2011. Language myths and the history of English. New York: Oxford University Press. Watts, Richard J. and Peter Trudgill (eds.). 2002. Alternative histories of English. London: Routledge. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov, and Marvin Herzog. 1968. Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In: Winfred Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel (eds.), Directions for historical Linguistics: A symposium, 95–195. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wright, Laura (ed.). 2000. The development of Standard English 1300–1800: Theories, descriptions, conflicts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Richard J. Watts, Tegna (Switzerland)
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81. Interdisciplinarity and Historiography: Spoken and written English – orality and literacy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Orality and literacy – some general remarks Distinguishing spoken and written language Historical survey Summary References
Abstract Speaking and writing are alternative linguistic activities which differ in various ways. Although the difference has been seen for a long time, it is only relatively recent that linguists have turned their methodological attention to it. This attention has been much encouraged by studies in orality and literacy as different cultural states as well as simultaneously coexisting social practices. For historical linguistics the awareness of the difference between spoken and written language is even more recent and has resulted in acknowledging that historical linguistic data are invariably written. Moreover, efforts have been taken to assess the “writtenness” of the data and thus to find access to what may be inferred to be actual spoken language. The chapter discusses the consequences of this “bad data problem” from different angles. Section 1 will briefly outline the cultural distinction orality vs. literacy as it translates into the (long) transition from an oral to a literate culture. Section 2 shall sketch the nature of the bad data problem, look into the historicizing of the oral-literate continuum, and discuss an approach that accounts for the development of the vernacular in(to) writing. The concluding Section 3 shall finally give a summary overview of the transition of England from a prevalently oral culture in Anglo-Saxon times to a literate culture in the Early Modern English period, and of the shifting correlations of speaking and writing English.
1 Orality and literacy – some general remarks With the publication of Walter J. Ong’s (1982) Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, a larger public became aware of a cultural dichotomy based on whether or not a culture disposes of a writing system. This was, however, only the first peak of preceding research in various disciplines such as classical studies, medieval literary studies, (medieval) history, anthropology, (developmental) psychology, and also linguistics, which all had contributed to the awareness of two sets of differences: those between an oral and a literate culture on the one hand, and spoken and written language on the other. While the first is a heuristic construct which has since also been heavily criticized for its Eurocentricity, the latter has generated a new linguistic subdiscipline. To be sure, the cultural dichotomy oral vs. literate is a heuristic construct which only slowly spread in the arts and social sciences, skeptically put aside by some and fervently rejected by others, simply because it seems very difficult to abstract from our so deeply ingrained literacy. Historians have perhaps been the most reluctant to conceptualize, for instance, the period which we call the Middle Ages in terms of a long cultural transition Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1274–1288
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from orality to literacy (cf. Clanchy 1993: 7–11). Moreover, within this long transition, the role of the voice as mediator has long been underestimated, and so has the role of memorizing. Hence it seems appropriate to conceive at least of the Early and High Middle Ages as a period of vocality (Schaefer 1992: 5–43). Some of that vocality reaches well into the modern period: thus learning to read (and write) for a long time still went along with learning basic texts by rote, and early grammars were cast in the mode of a dialogue (for which reason the Corpus of English Dialogues 1570–1760 [Kyto¨ and Culpeper 2006] also comprises “didactic works”). The historians’ reluctance to distinguish medieval literacy from our modern one may have to do with a fact in which they have been united with language historians for a long time: both disciplines have to rely on written sources. In historical linguistics things have clearly changed over the last twenty years or so: having become aware of the writtenness of their sources, it has also become a rhetorical routine with language historians to regret this data flaw. As a consequence, historical linguists have endeavored to dismantle their (written) data of that writtenness. Yet one should take into account that writtenness is not merely a material condition. Both aspects will be in the center of the following chapter.
2 Distinguishing spoken and written language As a consequence of acknowledging the writtenness of historical linguistic evidence, more recent research has focused much on making up for this flaw, as the locus of most linguistic changes is obviously spoken language. I will subsequently argue that, although these efforts are unquestionably legitimate, they may have unduly bracketed the interest in the ways in which written language itself has developed. In that I follow the claim recently phrased by Margaret Laing and Roger Lass that written language “should be studied in its own right, not just as a representation of spoken language” and that it “should be regarded as an autonomous linguistic system” (Laing and Lass 2007: Introduction, I.1.5). Although Laing and Lass make this postulate with specific regard to spelling, it may well be extended to the “linguistic system” as a whole.
2.1 Solving the bad data problem The “bad data problem” which Labov first phrased in 1972 has become a commonplace in historical linguistics, namely that “historical linguistics can […] be thought of as the art of making the best use of bad data” (Labov 1994: 11). What makes historical evidence bad data is, for one thing, the survival “by chance, not by design”, and secondly the surmise that written evidence may be “riddled with the effects of hypercorrection, dialect mixture, and scribal error” (Labov 1994: 11). Indeed there seems to be no way of escaping this problem if it is our aim to analyze authentic data, and “authentic” here must mean language not tampered with by writing. In reverse, this implies the concession that writing affects language in one way or another, and certainly in ways that go much beyond Labov’s enumeration. For a long time linguists have generally been oblivious to the spoken-written distinction. This is not only true for historical linguistics: in spite of the claimed primacy of spoken language, until the late 1970s there had been little interest in identifying what makes written language different from spoken language (Schaefer 2008: 65–69; Lange
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2008). What is more, the ahistorical Chomskian linguistic model has implicitly made written grammatical language its sole object of analysis (cf. Givo´n 1979b: 103). In historical linguistics the fact that we only have written evidence at our disposal has been tacitly accepted or even been made a defining criterion. Thus, in his Old English grammar Mosse´ states that “le viel-anglais est la langue e´crite en Grande-Bretagne entre 700 et 1150” [“Old English is the language written in Great Britain between 700 and 1150”] (Mosse´ 1950: 19; emphasis added). Yet in a note Mosse´ already concedes, for instance, that “certains indices permettent de penser que de`s 1050 la langue parle´e e´tait de´ja` fort e´volue´e par rapport a` la langue e´crite” [“certain circumstantial evidence allows us to infer that since 1050 the spoken language had already very much developed [i.e. changed] in comparison to the written language”] (Mosse´ 1950: 20, n. II). At least for Old and Middle English the bad data problem proves irremovable, perhaps with the exception of phonology where it has been supposed, for instance, that the early (pre-West-Saxon) scribes’ spelling of the vernacular “in the absence of the pressure of a standard would be roughly phonetic ‘transcriptions’ of speech patterns” (Toon 1992: 429; by “vernacular” I here and subsequently mean the Volkssprache as opposed to Latin). James Milroy (1992: 156) has made similar inferences with regard to the dialectal variation in Middle English. More recently, efforts have been taken on a larger scale to come somewhat closer to spoken language particularly in the early Modern English period by designing, for instance, a corpus of “speech-related texts” (e.g. Culpeper and Kyto¨ 2000; Kyto¨ and Walker 2003) with the Corpus of English Dialogues 1570–1760 (Kyto¨ and Culpeper 2006). Moreover, Douglas Biber and his collaborators with their ARCHER corpus have provided a data compilation which is “designed to investigate the diachronic relations among oral and literate registers of English between 1650 and the present” (1994: 1) (cf. Kyto¨, Chapter 96). Among other things, the work with these corpora suggests that over time writers have become more and more versatile in mirroring spoken language in their texts (e.g. Biber and Finegan 1997). However, it stands to reason that if those writers learn to strip their language of the overload which is conditioned by the medium, we need to ask how that overload got into this form of language to begin with. “Standardization” may be the ready answer; however, this veils more than it reveals unless we conceive of standardization, in its turn, in terms of a potential epiphenomenon of literacy as “social practice” and of writing as “cultural technique” (Deumert and Vandenbussche 2003: 460). Standardization is a historical process in itself, yet one that is usually considered as “change from above” (cf. Lange, Volume 1, Chapter 62). More generally: historical linguists seek to “trace […] features either to the oral level of language as ‘changes from below’, or to the literate end of the scale, as ‘changes from above’ ”, as Matti Rissanen (1999a: 188) has put it. On this general level it may be acceptable to think of changes within written language as ‘changes from above’. There must, however, be an intermediate sphere in which certain linguistic phenomena become the norm (cf. Koch 1988) and join the “language standard” (Deumert and Vandenbussche 2003: 456) or the “protostandard” (Nevalainen 2003: 195). Established by way of “subconscious supralocalization” (Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2006: 288), and thus generated from below, such phenomena may subsequently feed the incipient standard. Nevertheless: as will be discussed in Section 2.2, we need to be aware that as little as today’s written language is simply spoken language in the garb of letters, as much speakers of English had to develop into writers of English.
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2.2 Spoken and written as historic parameters It is a commonplace that, ontogenetically as well as phylogenetically, speaking precedes writing. Moreover, once literacy has been established in a culture the two modes coexist and interact. In the present section I will summarize the scholarly historization of the spoken-written distinction and draw the attention to the heuristic profits of this historization.
2.2.1 Early linguistic assessments It was in the wake of the growing awareness of the spoken-written dichotomy that some scholars in the late 1970s took literacy into account as a factor of linguistic evolution. Thus Paul Kay in 1977 hypothesized that “the direction of linguistic evolution is from a nonautonomous to an autonomous system of communication” (Kay 1977: 24). He has connected this to the “evolutionary process of social differentiation” and has remarked that “it would be surprising indeed if writing were not to affect the direction of language change as well” (Kay 1977: 29). According to Kay the “autonomous speech style” has to develop in a society with increasing labor division and hence an “increasingly complex and diversified speech community whose members collectively control a body of knowledge beyond that which any one speaker can control” (Kay 1977: 30). His evidence mainly comes from onomasiological considerations (such as the field of color terms), but he implicitly also hints at syntactic developments. Talmy Givo´n, in his turn, makes syntax the core of linguistic evolution as he conceives of it as continuous “syntacticization” (Givo´n 1979a: 208). This synchronically translates into the contrast between the correlates pragmatic mode/informal discourse and syntactic mode/formal discourse (Givo´n 1979a: 229f.) and diachronically into the development from informal to formal, and therefore from pragmatic to syntactic. He sums up: “the extreme instance of the formal-planned pole is educated, book-written language” (Givo´n 1979a: 230). Similarly, Kay concludes: “The direction of linguistic evolution is toward the precise and explicit speech of the analytic philosopher, the scientist, and the bureaucrat” (Kay 1977: 30). In evolutionary terms, Pawley and Syder (1983: 551) have subsequently conceived of what they call the “vernacular (or conversational) idiom” as the “ancient system” and “literary (or formal written) style” as “the new” which both exist simultaneously. In the last 20 years or so, this literary, formal written style has been identified as indeed heavily veiling actual historical spoken language. And even where this writtenness itself has been of interest for linguists, more precisely for those who have looked into standardization, this mainly serves the purpose to overcome the medium-induced flaw. But how has this flaw been brought about? The historical answer is superficially simple: when languages enter the written medium, they inevitably, as it seems, undergo a process of Ausbau (Kloss 1978) or elaboration. Again, the latter is a term introduced by Einar Haugen within his model of standardization, where he states that standardization aims at the “elaboration in function” of the language variety that has been selected by the linguistic community (Haugen 1966: 633). But as we will see below, Ausbau or elaboration is the consequence of the medium while for standardization writing and literacy are the prerequisites. Historically we therefore may want to regard written language as being a dignified object of research after all.
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2.2.2 Medium-oriented historical heuristics In his 1986 article “Writing is a technology that restructures thought”, Walter J. Ong made the following statement: “One of the most generalizable effects of writing is separation”, and he continues: “Separation is also one of the most telling effects of writing […]” (Ong 1986: 36). This effect is generated by the possibility to communicate in writing over space and time. In terms of linguistic organization, this results in what Wallace Chafe has called “integrated language” and a stance of “detachment” on the written side and “fragmented language” on the spoken side as a result of speakers’ “involvement” (Chafe 1982; Chafe and Danielewicz 1987). These distinctions roughly correspond to Biber’s textual dimensions “1: Involved vs. Informational Production”, “3: Situation-dependent versus Elaborated Reference” and “5: Non-impersonal vs. Impersonal Style” (Biber and Finegan 1997: 259–260). These distinctions are not dichotomies but rather reflect continua. Projected onto linguistic history we may observe, for instance, that in Old English left dislocation (a “topic construction”, Givo´n 1979b: 84; cf. Los and van Kemenade, Chapter 94) is not unusual and still is not in present-day colloquial English. This suggests identifying the Old English construction as more involved, more oral, and thus less literate. From that we may conclude that if a language enters the written medium, this does not mean that it is immediately fit for the demands of distance. Therefore, in order better to grasp the historical development in a medium-oriented way, we need to have a model at hand which helps us to conceptualize the way in which linguistic means are developed to come up to these demands. Such a model has first been provided by Peter Koch and Wulf Oesterreicher in 1985 and has since been further made fruitful for historical considerations (see also Koch and Oesterreicher 1994). Koch and Oesterreicher have suggested speaking of the “language of distance” (Sprache der Distanz) on the one end of the medial continuum and of “language of immediacy” (Sprache der Na¨he) on the other (Koch and Oesterreicher 1985; 1994: 587–588). In that, they are very much in line with Biber, Chafe, and others. With regard to the spoken-written distinction, they underline this to be a dichotomic choice of the medium: either graphic or phonic (Koch and Oesterreicher 1994: 587). In contrast, the mode of linguistic organization may be more distanced or more immediate, and thus conceptually (more) oral or conceptually (more) literate. Both diachronically and synchronically the medium transfer from phonic to graphic has been called Verschriftung, “scripting”, while the conceptual transition has been called Verschriftlichung “textualization” (see Oesterreicher 1993 for the distinction; cf. also Koch and Oesterreicher 1994). Koch and Oesterreicher define Verschriftlichung as “das Eindringen von bisher auf den Na¨hebereich beschra¨nkten Sprachformen in den Distanzbereich” [“the entering of linguistic forms which have been restricted to the realm of immediacy into the realm of distance”] (Koch and Oesterreicher 1994: 567). More generally speaking, Verschriftlichung may also refer to the “ ‘Literalisierung’ von Gesellschaften” [“ ‘literalization’ of societies”] (Oesterreicher 1993: 280), that is, to a society’s simultaneously increasing production and use of written material. There is, of course, a strong interrelation between cultural and linguistic textualization as the latter is the prerequisite for the first, as much as the first demands the latter. In addition, the driving force for cultural textualization should very much be sought in the growing complexity of daily administrative affairs in the broadest sense, as Michael T. Clanchy (1993) has shown for medieval England.
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As a historical process, linguistic textualization, in its turn, has two sides which may be conceptualized in terms of intensive and extensive elaboration. As Koch and Oesterreicher observe, in the course of extensive elaboration a linguistic variety has successively to take over “ein Maximum an kommunikativen Funktionen und Diskurstraditionen im Distanzbereich” [“a maximum of communicative functions and discourse traditions in the area of distance”] (Koch and Oesterreicher 1994: 589; cf. Haugen’s [1966: 933] “elaboration of function” as a component in the development “from vernacular to standard”). On the other hand, in the course of intensive elaboration a specific linguistic variety has to develop and provide linguistic means of expression so that it may “den universalen Anforderungen konzeptioneller Schriftlichkeit genu¨gen” [“meet the universal demands of conceptual literacy”] (Koch and Oesterreicher 1994: 589). On a general level, these “universal demands” have been summarized by Koch and Oesterreicher as the possibility to communicate over long stretches of time and space on account of linguistic techniques which allow utterances to be released from the “Einmaligkeit der Sprechsituation” [“uniqueness of the situation of speaking”] (Koch and Oesterreicher 1994: 589). In this sense the distancing effect of writing that Ong has identified makes communication over time and space possible but at the same time demands that the form of communication be linguistically adapted to this separation. In recent years, as historical linguists have become aware of styles and/or genres as the specific locus for linguistic change (cf. Claridge, Volume 1, Chapter 16), research in the intensive elaboration of English has steadily increased, albeit under a different name. Once more it seems that here a notion adopted by Koch and Oesterreicher from Brigitte Schlieben-Lange (1983) may be even more helpful, as it allows us, for instance, to include the contact between written English and the other medieval literate languages on the island. I am referring here to the concept of discourse traditions, a term which is to cover “Textsorten, Gattungen, Stilrichtungen, Gespra¨chsformen” [“text types, genres, styles, forms of conversation”] (Koch and Oesterreicher 1994: 587; on discourse traditions see Koch 1997) and which is particularly helpful because discourse traditions are not necessarily tied to one language. For the medieval history of English the so-called curial style (Burnley 1986, 2001) is a case in point: this discourse tradition has traveled from Latin to French and eventually to English. More recent publications such as Matti Rissanen’s (1999b) on Late Middle English legal language and on the language of statutes (Rissanen 2000), and Irma Taavitsainen’s (2001) on the Late Middle English and Early Modern English scientific register show how profitably research focussing on specific discourse traditions may contribute to our better understanding of extensive as well as intensive elaboration of English (cf. also Lange 2008). Both are simultaneously immense linguistic and cultural achievements. A summary historical outline of these achievements from Old English to the Early Modern English period will therefore be given in Section 3.
3 Historical survey The aim of the present section is to highlight aspects which should contribute to our understanding of the history of English in terms of the slow vernacular transition from orality to literacy and the varying coexistence of spoken and written English. As the format of my contribution demands, I will only discuss exemplary points of
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this transition. Moreover, the nature of our evidence makes it necessary to focus more on literacy than on orality, and therefore also on written language. Finally, this overview cannot solely be restricted to English because in particular medieval literacy in England is inconceivable without Latin and (insular) French.
3.1 The Old English period Handbooks of the history of English provide two dates for the beginning of the linguistic period of Old English. One is 449 CE, the year in which, according to Bede, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes began settling Britain and hence brought Germanic varieties to this Celtic-speaking area. The second is 700 CE, the approximate date for the beginning of written evidence for English. If we disregard the Kentish Laws for the time being, it is, in a way, ironic that this written evidence has come down to us in runic form on the Ruthwell Cross (c.700) and the Franks Casket (first half of the 8th century). This is ironic because, on the one hand, the runes reach back to the pre-Christian era and even to the continental past of the Anglo-Saxons, while, on the other hand, the Ruthwell Cross is an epitome of Christianity and the Franks Casket clearly shows the intertwining of Germanic and Roman traditions (see the respective entries in Lapidge 1999: 194–195 and 403–404). Whereas it remains a matter of speculation whether runes were indeed used, on perishable wood, for more pragmatic purposes in pre-Christian England (cf. Page 1999: 101–102), we should nevertheless note that the English verb write itself refers us back into the runic past, as it originally meant ‘carving’ or ‘cutting’ (cf. OED s.v. write), a procedure which was technically conditioned by the material on which one put the signs. While this etymology links up the history of writing in English with the preChristian Germanic past, continental vernaculars draw their respective terminology from Latin scribere (as German schreiben; cf., however, the somewhat odd etymology of English shrive; OED s.v. shrive). The use of the Roman script in its insular form, in its turn, was brought to England by Irish missionaries (Lapidge 1999: 409–410) and thus goes hand in hand with Christianization. The resulting literacy, and this invariably means Latin literacy, was primarily a religious matter and remained so for a long time. However, Bede gives us an interesting account for what may be regarded as the first Roman scripting of the vernacular: “among other benefits [… King Æthelberht] established with the advice of his counsellors a code of laws after the Roman manner” (transl. Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 151). Unfortunately, these Kentish Laws, which may have been scripted around 603 (Lapidge 1999: 13), have only been preserved in the Textus Roffensis, a codex put together in the first quarter of the 12th century (Richards 1988: 44), so that we cannot really assess the achievement of these first scribes who allegedly were only transliterating. Although Bede’s account of this early scripting of the vernacular is outstanding, it should not surprise us that the (very early) medieval scripting of the European vernaculars started with the Germanic languages. As Herbert Grundmann stated some time ago, in the Romance cultures the litterati must have conceived of their vernacular as a “degenerierte Abart der unverdorbenen Schriftsprache [Latein]” [“a degenerated variation of the uncorrupted written language [Latin]”], whereas no such relation existed for a Germanic vernacular, in particular not for English (Grundmann 1958: 35). In fact, up to the end of the 9th century English evidence remains sparse. Around 890, however, vernacular annalistics is launched with the so-called Anglo-Saxon
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Chronicle. Moreover, with the translation of Gregory’s Pastoral Care and Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica under the auspices of Alfred the Great we witness another great linguistic achievement: the textualization of the vernacular with the help and on the model of the fully-fledged literate, textualized language Latin. As Blake (1995: 9) has regretfully observed: with regard to the general relation between “speech and writing”, the historical role of translation “has not been given sufficient attention in previous discussions”. Indeed, when English (re-)emerges massively in the 14th and 15th centuries, translations also played a great role (cf. Burnley 1989), and so they did in the 16th and 17th centuries. What Blake states mainly with regard to (lexical) loans is certainly also true on a more general level, namely that translation “involves the impact of one written language on another” (Blake 1992: 11). Whether the decline of Latin literacy in the 9th century automatically gave rise to the increasing use of the vernacular and whether King Alfred really pursued a “strategy […] to encourage writing and reading in English as well as, or instead of Latin”, as Nicholas Orme (2006: 35) has recently claimed, may remain a matter of debate. But there are several indications that, compared to the continent, the versatility in writing the vernacular in the 10th and 11th centuries was extraordinary. A prime example is Ælfric, whose Catholic Homilies with their different stages of redaction today fill two massive printed volumes. In contrast, the extent to which the vernacular was used in administration (e.g. in writs and charters) may have been overestimated in the literature as many of the c.2,000 Anglo-Saxon documents that have come down to us are likely to be post-Conquest forgeries (Clanchy 1993: 28). In fact, “forgeries” is a misleading term because those who produced such documents probably just abided by the new demands of growing textualization in that they “re-created the past in an acceptable literate form” (Clanchy 1993: 319). That written English undoubtedly gained a respectable status in its own right is also manifest in the development of the so-called ‘West-Saxon Standard’ (see Kornexl, Volume 1, Chapter 24), and from the fact that as of the second half of the 10th century texts in Latin were written in the Carolingean minuscule while English texts were written in the Insular minuscule (Gneuss 1992: 120). It would, of course, be moot to speculate how English vernacular literacy would have further developed if the Normans had not brought it to a halt. While the use of English in writing did not immediately cease after 1066, it petered out to such an extent that the indigenous vernacular became largely restricted to the oral realm (see Smith 1992: 49; Laing and Lass 2007: Introduction, I.1.3–4).
3.2 The Middle English period The so-called Peterborough Chronicle, the 12th century continuation of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, may be regarded as one of the first pieces of evidence for Middle English (Clark 1970: xxxvii–lxxiv; Laing and Lass 2007: Introduction, I.1.4). Especially in the so-called Final Continuation (completed around 1155) we can readily see the scribe’s or author’s efforts to script as well as to textualize his vernacular with the result that we are facing a variety of English much different from that of 11th century literary West-Saxon. Here we witness what Roy Liuzza (2000: 144) has captured in the observation that “the end of [scribal] training [in West-Saxon] is the beginning of ‘Middle English’ ”. As has been stated earlier, this scribal training may well have covered in particular the morphological state of Old English for some time. But not only has this
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graphic gloss-over ceased: as Cecily Clark (1970: lxviii) has remarked, in the Final Continuation (1132–1154), “[…] the use of Romance words is increasing, and words are adopted not only to express new concepts but also to replace native terms”. Within the 12th-century literary scenario, the Peterborough Chronicle is an exception as in this and the following century English in writing is rare and new English texts even rarer (Laing and Lass 2007: Introduction, I.1.3f). This scenario is illustrated by the history of the ‘Arthurian material’. At about 1135 Geoffrey of Monmouth finishes his Historia Regum Britanniae in Latin prose, around 1155 Wace reworks Geoffrey into his Roman de Brut in octosyllabic Norman French verse, and somewhere after 1200 Layamon puts together his Brut in traditional alliterating English long-lines (note that Chre´tien de Troyes’ Arthurian romans are dated from 1170 to 1190). Apart from this belated English rendering Layamon also allows us a glimpse at the growing ‘literalization’ of his time. In the prologue he proudly states that he took an English, a Latin and a French book, then seized his pen and “condensed the three books into one” (MS Cotton Caligula, Prologue ll. 16–27). This cultural textualization – or literalization – spread in 12th- and 13th-century Western Europe as a “wunderbare Schriftvermehrung und thematische Entgrenzung des Schreibbaren” [“miraculous multiplication of writing and the thematic unbounding of what is writable”] (von Moos 1997: 313). For England, some impressive early administrative evidence is the Domesday Book (in Latin), whose completion even dates to the year 1086. In the subsequent two centuries the language for – heavily increasing – administrative purposes remained Latin (cf. Clanchy 1993: 44–80). French, in its turn, was the language of written poetry (in the broadest sense) in the 12th century, so that from the sheer number of insular French manuscripts it has even been suggested that the thrust of the scripting and textualization of French (poetry) set out in England (Clanchy 1993: 215–217). In the 13th century, French was also slowly established as the language of law (Brand 2000: 66), while Latin generally remained the language of record well beyond the 14th century. When it comes to the later medieval relation between Latin, French, and English, handbooks are wont to adduce the 1362 Statute of Pleading in order to underline the re-strengthening of English in the 14th century. Although the immediate – and particularly the lasting – effects of this particular royal statute are not yet all clear (Ormrod 2003: 752), the document itself very well illustrates the mid 14th-century linguistic situation. It tries to regulate that the language spoken in court be English, but it does so in French (in heavy curial prose style), as at this time this was the appropriate language for this kind of text, and it commands that legal record keeping be in Latin, as this was the appropriate language for this purpose. However, there was yet another sphere where English was gaining ground in the second half of the 14th century: that of formal teaching. An often-cited piece of evidence is John Trevisa’s translation and updating of Higden’s Polychronicon where we are informed that formal schooling, and this still meant schooling in Latin, has changed from French as teaching language to English (see Kornexl 2003: 249–253). Another example is a translation exercise from the late 14th century in which the graphically dominant French text of the Ten Commandments is accompanied by the Latin and the English version (both above the French text), which indicates that the students were supposed to translate the French text into Latin and English (Kristol 2000: 42). Again it goes without saying that the English version shows heavy traces of lexical influence from
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both Latin and French. Since the late 13th century this formal schooling of the rising middle class took place in grammar schools (Smith 1992: 53), while for the aristocracy education was a matter of private tutoring (which lasted well into the 18th century, as the 19th century new notion of the ‘public school’ shows). That English poetry substantially (re-)entered the literary scenario in the later 13th and in the 14th centuries is well-known. Again we should heed to keep things in proportion. To take one representative example from the first half of the 14th century: MS Harley 2253, which has been compiled by one scribe, and in which, among other English pieces, the so-called “Harley Lyrics” and a version of the romance King Horn have come down to us, is trilingual, as are a number of other contemporaneous miscellanies (see Scahill 2003). In terms of proportion we have to be aware that, by a rough count, only about one third of the folios of MS Harley 2253 actually contain English material. Another witness for the trilingual situation is Chaucer’s prolific contemporary Gower who composed his works in Latin, French and English. I draw attention to these examples to emphasize once more that written English did not substitute French (or Latin) but joined the literate communicative space in England alongside and with the help of French and Latin (cf. also Baswell 2007). The beginning of the 15th century is generally regarded as the time of the ultimate break-through, that of the “triumph of English” (cf. Smith 1992: 51–53). Though the evaluation of Chancery English as the alleged basis for Modern Standard English will be discussed elsewhere (see Schaefer, Volume 1, Chapter 33), it should be noted here that we are only slowly beginning to understand the ways in which written (prose) English generally was being elaborated in the 15th century (but see now Weber 2010). In any event, there can be little doubt that this extensive as well as intensive elaboration of written English has been very much fathered by Latin and by (insular) French, of which the latter, in its turn, only had developed a dignified prose form by the end of the 12th century (Clanchy 1993: 220). In the present context this also raises the question when insular French ceased to be a first language for the upper echelons in England. This question has been settled by now in that scholars agree on the approximate date of 1230 (at the latest) for the shift to English for the majority of that layer of society which originally had French as its first language (cf., e.g. Smith 1992: 51). This does, however, not overwrite the fact that the realm of literacy as a social practice remained very much dominated by French and Latin. What is more: although lay literacy and the use of writing steadily increased during the period under consideration and also extended to new, or modified, discourse traditions such as ‘letter writing’ (cf. Bergs 2004; Nevalainen 2004) in English, large areas of everyday life must have functioned perfectly well without recourse to writing. And this state of affairs very much reached into the Modern period beyond the point when William Caxton in 1476 brought the first printing press to Westminster.
3.3 The Early Modern English period The degree to which our perception of historical stages of writing and written language is informed by our own literate techniques is perhaps best illustrated by the assessment of the introduction of printing. The illusive fixedness of printed language has made modern interpreters attribute to this technical innovation a momentum which hardly stands scrutiny. For one thing Caxton’s first prints come in the guise of manuscript letters, which Strohm (2006: 471) has recently characterized as “protective mimicry of the
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old by the new”, a phenomenon, which is not uncommon when a new medial technology is first established. Moreover, there is the illusion that movable letters automatically create stable spelling. This is a projective fallacy as it was the task of the first printers faithfully to transfer manuscript texts into printed texts. All in all there remain to date opposing views as to the 16th-century role of the printers in the regularizing process of spelling (see Nevalainen and Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2006: 282, 290). Another misconception of early printing is the degree to which texts published in print were accessible, as accessibility is not just a matter of proliferation: it still is very much a question of – rather restricted – education. Although there may be no doubt that basic literacy increased considerably after 1550 (see Charlton and Spufford 2004), we need to take into account the actual reach of this literacy. Apart from those very few who attended grammar school (and ‘grammar’ still meant Latin) and perhaps university, for the large majority of the population learning to read (and write) was of a very rudimentary nature. It first comprised “the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Creed” (Charlton and Spufford 2004: 16) which the pupils initially memorized and subsequently had to decipher in writing. Only after that had been achieved the pupils learned to write, as “reading and writing were two very distinct and separate skills, taught about two years apart” (Charlton and Spufford 2004: 16). The split of reading and writing as “separate skills” has a long tradition, which goes back to the early medieval monastery schools and beyond. Moreover, counter to what may be expected from the new Christian denomination with its sola scriptura doctrine, the “Reformation, which laid so much emphasis upon the written word, did not provide for everyone to read it” (Orme 2006: 335). And in that respect there is yet another perception which has been recently corrected, namely that, in contrast to previous views, it was much less Protestantism that fostered literacy in England and elsewhere in (Northern) Europe. As Charlton and Spufford (2004: 19) state, “commercial needs for education overrode all others, both before and after the Protestant Reformation”, an observation which also accounts for the yet increasing literacy in the following centuries. Last but not least, in the present context the endeavors of the orthoepists should be taken into consideration. We usually see them as the first who, after Orm around 1200, explicitly contemplate about so-called correct spelling. Yet this is only one side of the coin. The other comes to the fore, for instance, with Hart’s phonetic principles (Scragg 1974: 60), which should result in the exact correspondence of one letter to one sound. The orthoepists’ striving for regular spelling is indeed apparent, but we should also see that the pedagogical goal of this regularization was to make what was understood as correct reading – and that meant reading aloud – possible. In our days of silent reading (and the simultaneous acquisition of reading and writing) this may seem odd. However: keeping that motivation of the orthoepists in mind, we become once more aware that Pre-Modern and even Early Modern literacy is a far cry from what we conceive of it today: it was still very much informed by vocality.
4 Summary As has been argued here, most of what has come down to us in writing should be considered as influenced by the very medium that allows us to look into these historical linguistic data. However, if we compare the poetic evidence from the early 8th century to
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the prose evidence from the 12th, it is probably the latter that brings us closest to what may be considered to mirror the spoken language of the respective period. Albeit that the former must have been heavily informed by the pre-Christian oral culture, its form most certainly does not reflect conceptually ‘spoken’ language. Moreover, English was only firmly reestablished in writing in the 14th and 15th centuries. In that period English in writing obviously profited very much from the literate languages Latin and French (see Weber 2010). The influence of Latin continued well into the Modern period and hence made the disparity between prose writing in the then establishing standard and the actual spoken language even wider.
5 References Baswell, Christopher. 2007. Multilingualism on the page. In: Paul Strohm (ed.), Middle English, 38–50. Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press. Bergs, Alexander. 2004. Letters. A new approach to text typology. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5: 207–227. Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan. 1997. Diachronic relations among speech-based and written registers in English. In: Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.), To Explain the Present. Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen, 253–275. Helsinki: Socie´te´ Ne´ophilologique. Biber, Douglas, Edward Finegan and Dwight Atkinson. 1994. ARCHER and its challenges: compiling and exploring a representative corpus of historical English registers. In: Udo Fries, Gunnel Tottie, and Peter Schneider (eds.), Creating and Using English Language Corpora. Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, Zu¨rich 1993, 1–13. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Blake, Norman F. 1992. Translation and the history of English. In: Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen, and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes. New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 3–24. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Blake, Norman F. 1995. Speech and writing: an historical overview. Yearbook of English Studies 25: 6–21. Brand, Paul. 2000. The languages of the law in later medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, 63–76. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Burnley, John David. 1986. Curial prose in England. Speculum 61: 593–614. Burnley, John David. 1989. Late medieval English translation: types and reflections. In: Roger Ellis, Jocelyn Price, Stephen Medcalf, and Peter Meredith (eds.), The Medieval Translator. The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages. Papers Read at a Conference Held 20–23 August 1987 at the University of Wales Conference Center, Gregynog Hall, 37–53. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Burnley, John David. 2001. French and Frenches in fourteenth-century London. In: Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger (eds.), Language Contact in the History of English, 17–34. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Chafe, Wallace L. 1982. Integration and involvement in speaking, writing, and oral literature. In: Deborah Tannen (ed.), Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy, 35–53. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. Chafe, Wallace L. and Jane Danielewicz. 1987. Properties of spoken and written language. In: Rosalind Horowitz and S. Jay Samuels (eds.), Comprehending Oral and Written Language, 83–113. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc. Charlton, Kenneth and Margaret Spufford. 2004. Literacy, society and education. In: David Lowenstein and Janel Mueller (eds.), The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature, 15–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Clanchy, Michael T. 1993. From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Clark, Cecily (ed.). 1970. The Peterborough Chronicle. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Colgrave, Bertram and Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors (eds. and transl.) 1969. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kyto¨. 2000. Data in historical pragmatics. Spoken interaction (re) cast as writing. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1: 175–199. Deumert, Ana and Wim Vandenbussche. 2003. Research directions in the study of language standardization. In: Ana Deumert and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic Standardizations. Past to Present, 455–469. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Givo´n, Talmy. 1979a. On Understanding Grammar. New York, NY: Academic Press. Givo´n, Talmy. 1979b. From discourse to syntax: grammar as a processing strategy. In: Talmy Givo´n (ed.), Discourse and Syntax, 81–112. New York, NY: Academic Press. Gneuss, Helmut. 1992. Bu¨cher und Leser in England im zehnten Jahrhundert. In: Hildegard L. C. Tristram (ed.), Medialita¨t und mittelalterliche insulare Literatur, 104–130. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr. Grundmann, Herbert. 1958. Litteratus – illiteratus. Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter. Archiv fu¨r Kulturgeschichte 40: 1–65. Haugen, Einar. 1966. Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist 68: 922–935. Kay, Paul. 1977. Language evolution and speech style. In: Ben G. Blount and Mary Sanches (eds.), Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, 21–33. New York, NY: Academic Press. Kloss, Heinz. 1978. Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800. 2nd edn. Du¨sseldorf: Pa¨dagogischer Verlag Schwann. Koch, Peter. 1988. Norm und Sprache. In: Jo¨rn Albrecht (gen. ed.), Energeia und Ergon: Sprachliche Variation – Sprachgeschichte – Sprachtypologie. Vol. 2: Harald Thun (ed.), Das sprachliche Denken Eugenio Coserius in der Diskussion (1), 327–354. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr. Koch, Peter. 1997. Diskurstraditionen: zu ihrem sprachtheoretischen Status und ihrer Dynamik. In: Barbara Frank, Thomas Haye, and Doris Tophinke (eds.), Gattungen mittelalterlicher Schriftlichkeit, 43–79. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Koch, Peter and Wulf Oesterreicher. 1985. Sprache der Na¨he – Sprache der Distanz. Mu¨ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 36: 15–43. Koch, Peter and Wulf Oesterreicher. 1994. Schriftlichkeit und Sprache. In: Hartmut Gu¨nther and Otto Ludwig (eds.), Schrift und Schriftlichkeit. Writing and Its Use, 587–604. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kornexl, Lucia. 2003. From Ælfric to John of Cornwall: Evidence for vernacular grammar teaching in pre- and post-conquest England. In: Lucia Kornexl and Ursula Lenker (eds.), Bookmarks from the Past. Studies in Early English Language and Literature in Honour of Helmut Gneuss, 229–259. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Kristol, Andres M. 2000. L’intellectuel ‘anglo-normand’ face a` la pluralite´ des langues: Le te´moignage implicite du MS Oxford, Magdalen Lat. 188. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, 37–52. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Kyto¨, Merja and Terry Walker. 2003. The linguistic study of Early Modern English speech-related texts: how “bad” can “bad” data be? Journal of English Linguistics 31: 221–248. Kyto¨, Merja and Jonathan Culpeper. 2006. A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. With the assistance of Terry Walker and Dawn Archer. Uppsala University and Lancaster University. http://www.engelska.uu.se/Research/English_Language/Research_Areas/Electronic_Resource_ Projects/A_Corpus_of_English_Dialogues/ (last accessed 7 February 2012). Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. I: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Laing, Margaret and Roger Lass. 2007. LAEME: A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325. University of Edinburgh. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html (last accessed 7 July 2011).
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Lange, Claudia. 2008. Grammatikalisierung und Diskurstraditionen: Text und Kontext. In: Ursula Schaefer (ed.), Der geteilte Gegenstand. Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Zukunft der Philologie(n), 91–103. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lapidge, Michael (ed.). 1999. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell. Liuzza, Roy. 2000. Scribal habit: the evidence of the Old English Gospels. In: Mary Swan and Elaine M. Treharne (ed.), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, 143–165. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Milroy, James. 1992. Middle English dialectology. In: Norman F. Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 2: 1066–1476, 156–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ¨ ber pragmatische Mu¨ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. In: Barbara Frank, von Moos, Peter. 1997. U Thomas Haye, and Doris Tophinke (eds.), Gattungen mittelalterlicher Schriftlichkeit, 313–321. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr. ˆ ge des origines au XIVe sie`cle. I: Viel-anglais. Mosse´, Fernand. 1950. Manuel de l’anglais du Moyen A Paris: Aubier. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2003. English. In: Ana Deumert and Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic Standardizations. Past to Present, 127–156. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Nevalainen, Terttu. 2004. Letter writing. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 5: 181–191. Nevalainen, Terttu and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade. 2006. Standardisation. In: Richard Hogg and David Denison (eds.), A History of the English Language, 271–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oesterreicher, Wulf. 1993. Verschriftung und Verschriftlichung im Kontext medialer und konzeptioneller Schriftichkeit. In: Ursula Schaefer (ed.), Schriftlichkeit im fru¨hen Mittelalter, 267–292. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Ong, Walter Jackson, SJ. 1982. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen. Ong, Walter Jackson, SJ. 1986. Writing is a technology that restructures thought. In: Gerd Baumann (ed.), The Written Word. Literacy in Transition. Wolfson College Lectures 1985, 23–50. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Orme, Nicholas. 2006. Medieval Schools: from Roman Britain to Renaissance England. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Ormrod, William Mark. 2003. The use of English: Language, law, and political culture in fourteenth-century England. Speculum 78: 750–787. Page, Raymond I. 1999. An Introduction to English Runes. 2nd edn. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Pawley, Andrew and Frances Hodgetts Syder. 1983. Natural selection in syntax: notes on adaptive variation and change in vernacular and literary grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 7: 551–579. Richards, Mary P. 1988. Texts and their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society. Rissanen, Matti. 1999a. Syntax. In: Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 3: 1476–1776. 187–331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rissanen, Matti. 1999b. Language of law and the development of Standard English. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers, and Pa¨ivi Pahta (eds.), Writing in Non-Standard English, 189–203. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Rissanen, Matti. 2000. Standardisation and the language of early statutes. In: Laura Wright (ed.), The Development of Standard English 1300–1800. Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts, 117–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scahill, John. 2003. Trilingualism in Early Middle English miscellanies: Languages and literature. The Yearbook of English Studies 33: 18–32. Schaefer, Ursula. 1992. Vokalita¨t – Altenglische Dichtung zwischen Mu¨ndlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr. Schaefer, Ursula. 2008. Mediengeschichte als Geschichte der europa¨ischen Sprachen, Literaturen und Kulturen. In: Ursula Schaefer (ed.), Der geteilte Gegenstand. Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte, Gegenwart und Zukunft der Philologie(n), 61–78. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
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Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte. 1983. Traditionen des Sprechens: Elemente einer pragmatischen Sprachgeschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Scragg, Donald G. 1974. A History of English Spelling. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Smith, Jeremy J. 1992. The use of English. Language contact, dialect variation, and written standardisation during the Middle English Period. In: Tim William Machan and Charles T. Scott (eds.), English in Its Social Contexts. Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics, 47–68. New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strohm, Paul. 2006. Writing and reading. In: Rosemary Horrox and William Mark Ormrod (eds.), A Social History of England, 1200–1500, 454–472. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taavitsainen, Irma. 2001. Language history in the scientific register. In: Hans-Ju¨rgen Diller and Manfred Go¨rlach (eds.), Toward a History of English as a History of Genres, 185–202. Heidelberg: Universita¨tsverlag Winter. Toon, Thomas E. 1992. Old English dialects. In: Richard M. Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 1, The Beginnings to 1066, 409–451. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Beatrix. 2010. Sprachlicher Ausbau. Konzeptionelle Studien zur spa¨tmittelenglischen Schriftsprache. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.
Ursula Schaefer, Dresden (Germany)
XI. History of English Historical Linguistics 82. History of English Historical Linguistics: Overview 1. 2. 3. 4.
Origins and early developments The 20th century Current developments References
Abstract This brief paper gives an overview and summary of the discipline of English historical linguistics as a whole, based on the articles of this section. It sketches its beginnings of and early developments in the field and tries to identify some main currents and themes that can be found in contemporary studies. Moreover, a few additional comments regarding the status of the field in present-day university education and research will be made.
1 Origins and early developments The institutional academic field of English historical linguistics originated in the late 19th century in Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Wischer (Chapter 85) points out that the movement as a whole seems to have been a European one and that we witness parallel developments across several different countries. She identifies the universities of Breslau, Go¨ttingen, Kiel, Marburg, Mu¨nster, and Strasbourg as the early centers in the German-speaking part of Europe. An important aspect of the early history is the fact that the field grew out of the two neighboring disciplines of English philology (which mostly dealt with older stages of English literature and had a strong focus on the edition of manuscripts) and historical-comparative linguistics. Thus, the first scholars focusing on the history of the English language came with different backgrounds, and often pursued their other research interests (such as English literature or Indo-Germanic studies) well into their career as historical linguists of English. Petre´ (Chapter 86) goes back even further and traces the origins into the 17th century Dutch-speaking region, but again, quite obviously, the first scholars did not come from English historical linguistics: e.g., Franciscus Junius the Younger was professor of Hebrew at Leiden University. Moreover, in the early days, scholars did not exclusively focus on purely linguistic aspects, but rather concentrated on questions of reconstruction and the edition of manuscripts. As in the German-speaking area, the major boost in the field came in the late 19th century with the foundation of the chairs at Leiden and Groningen in the Netherlands. Other universities followed in the first half of the 20th century. This is also the time when Belgium reformed its educational system and established chairs of English linguistics in Ghent and Lie`ge. One of the most remarkable facts of this foundation phase and these early developments, however, seems to be that the scholars who worked in these environments are still admired, read, and quoted today. The list is long and can never be comprehensive, Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.2), de Gruyter, 1289–1295
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but some names that probably should be mentioned here are Hendrik Poutsma, Willem van der Gaaf, Fredericus Theodorus Visser, and Karl Bu¨lbring in the Dutch-speaking region, and Lorenz Morsbach, Ferdinand Holthausen, Eugen Einenkel, Karl Brunner, and Eduard Sievers in the German-speaking region (not to mention the numerous scholars in the neogrammarian tradition who also investigated the early history of English). Similar developments can also be traced in Northern Europe (see Hiltunen, Chapter 87), though the roots do not reach as deep. The first foundations of English historical linguistics in the Northern countries lie in the late 19th century with chairs in Oslo and Copenhagen, the exception being Iceland with its first chair only in 1967 (but even here we should not forget that Grı´mur Jo´nsson Thorkelin was a strong factor in Beowulf scholarship with his 1815 edition). Again, scholars in the field come from different backgrounds, with work being carried out in linguistics and philology. It probably cannot be disputed that the research environment fostered two of the most influential scholars in the field, who lived and worked mostly in the first part of the 20th century: the Dane Otto Jespersen (best known for his monumental A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles [1909–49]) and the Finn Tauno F. Mustanoja (whose A Middle English Syntax [1960] is in many ways unsurpassed even today). That the discipline originated mostly in the German- and Dutch-speaking areas and the Northern countries of Europe should not distract from the fact that the other countries and areas around the world also witnessed important developments. Fanego (Chapter 89), for example, shows that while France has always been more focused on the literary, it also gave rise to the works of Fernand Mosse´, who is still regarded with great respect and whose work is still frequently cited (e.g. his important study of early English [Mosse´ 1945–49]). In Spain and Italy, important chairs in English historical linguistics were appointed after the Second World War in the second half of the 20th century. Both countries now have important research centers (such as Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Vigo, Bari, Bergamo, Naples), produce significant output, and are key international players in the field. In Eastern Europe, similar developments can be discerned. In Poland, for example, the first chairs in English studies were established early in the 20th century and we see a noteworthy increase in numbers after World War Two. Here, too, a number of important scholars developed. Among them are Jerzy Kuryłowicz, Alfred Reszkiewicz, and Margaret Schlauch, who was born in the US but decided to move to Poland for personal and political reasons in 1951. Schlauch’s student Jacek Fisiak established one of the most important centers for research in the history of English at the University of Poznan´. In the Czech Republic, Vile´m Mathesius was one of the first professors of English language and literature (at Charles University, Prague, in 1912). At Masaryk University in Brno (established 1919) Josef Vachek, whose work is still being read today, played a key role in the development of the discipline. Other countries in Eastern Europe seem to have followed suit (see Hegedu˝s, Chapter 88). Apparently, the history of English is now a subject that is taught – sometimes as a core element – in many universities in Eastern Europe, with the exception of some of the newer universities which rather cater for practical courses and teacher training. Research in Asia – Japan and South Korea especially – as Akimoto (Chapter 90) shows, can be regarded as fairly well established now. Most chairs are based on traditions that go back into the 1950s, and the Societies that in one way or another play an important role in education and research have impressive numbers of members.
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Interestingly, Asia sees the same “split” as the other regions just discussed: English historical linguistics as bordering on philology and literary studies. Let us end this tour with the homeland of the two major varieties of English: North America and Great Britain. Unsurprisingly, as Smith (Chapter 83) convincingly shows, interest in the roots of the language has a long history in Great Britain. For example, we find scholars as early as the 16th century (e.g. Sir John Cheke and Matthew Parker) as precursors of the modern academic discipline. Similarly, scholars in the 17th (Alexander Gil, John Wallis, John Wilkins) and 18th (Samuel Johnson, Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, Robert Lowth, Sir William Jones to name but a few) centuries also produced important and insightful works in synchronic and diachronic perspectives. These scholars were not trained in English historical linguistics per se, but rather came from a large variety of backgrounds: religion, diplomacy, nobility, literature, the law, and so on. The historical linguistic scholarship that originated in mainland Europe during the 19th century (most notably neogrammarian thought) was brought to England mostly by two scholars at the time: John Mitchell Kemble and Benjamin Thorpe. Thorpe seems to have been an independent scholar; Kemble was at least affiliated with the University of Cambridge, where he lectured on English literature. The development of the Oxford English Dictionary by Sir James Murray in the 19th century must be regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements in the history of the discipline and seems to have given rise to a multitude of scholars and projects, ranging from Alexander John Ellis’s (1869–89) On Early English Pronunciation, through Henry Sweet’s (1900–03) A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, to Joseph Wright’s (1898–1905) The English Dialect Dictionary, Henry Cecil Wyld’s (1921) A History of Modern Colloquial English, Eric Dobson’s (1957) English Pronunciation 1500–1700, and Alistair Campbell’s (1959) Old English Grammar, to name but a few. Note, however, that much of that scholarship had no institutional rigging. Chairs for English Language, let alone diachronic studies, were rare, and many scholars were either independent or had professorships in phonetics or philology (of English but also of the classical languages). Nevertheless, it seems clear that much of the foundation of the discipline was laid at that time in Great Britain. In North America, Cable (Chapter 84) shows there is a stronger focus on general (historical) linguistics, e.g. in the vein of William Dwight Whitney. But at the same time we also find important figures such as Oliver F. Emerson (Cornell) and Thomas R. Lounsbury (Yale) who came from a philological and literature oriented background, but nevertheless made some interesting contributions to the study of the history of English as a language. Albert Baugh’s (1935) A History of the English Language, written in the philological tradition, marked a heyday phase, and it is telling that this remains one of the most widely read textbooks in the history of English. Following the rise of Bloomfieldian structuralism, we see some decrease in interest in English historical linguistics in North America and it is only with Stockwell and Barritt’s work in the 1950s that this research area again gains momentum. In sum, we can say that the origin and early development of research in English historical linguistics seems to have run in parallel in many different regions and countries, despite the fact that we see some time gaps between the different regions. This, undoubtedly, has to do with different educational policies, the socio-economic situation of scholars, and, of course, the historical and philological background against which these studies developed. Another interesting point that seems to emerge here is the impression that some of the “tensions” that marked the emergence of the field have
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either subsisted into the present-day, or maybe are beginning to resurface. But this will be the topic of Section 3. First, we will briefly sketch the developments in the second half of the twentieth century.
2 The 20th century After about 1950 the individual histories of single geographic and cultural regions or countries begin to blur when it comes to the study of English historical linguistics (cf. Cable, Chapter 84). We see an ever growing tendency to collaborate across boundaries and to share ideas – and also, of course, a willingness to move from one context to another. Hence, in the following, we will move away from summarizing the individual histories, and rather take a quick look at the general picture. One of the main things we notice is that the growth and development of more or less ahistorical frameworks such as de Saussurean structuralism and Chomskian generativism has shifted the focus from individual languages and their particular histories to complex synchronic descriptions and the investigation of more “abstract” principles underlying language as such. Naturally, these approaches have been taken up in different regions in different degrees. But it is also simplifying matters too much to focus purely on the ahistorical aspects of these theories: while much of Chomskian generativism is indeed focused on synchrony, we also witness the development of some groundbreaking studies on language change and the history of English, such as King (1969) who developed a generative model of change, or the seminal book by Traugott (1972) investigating the history of English syntax in a generative framework. Other important, though sometimes controversial works in this framework have also come from Lightfoot (1979) on diachronic syntax and a group of Dutch scholars, who have begun very early to adopt the generative framework and can now be counted to the world leading authorities in that respect (see Petre´, Chapter 86; some names are Olga Fischer and Willem Koopman, Ans van Kemenade, Bettelou Los, Elly van Gelderen, to name but a few). The annual international Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) conference is being held for the fourteenth time in 2012. Because generativism was felt to have little to offer historical linguistics in North America, where it had a very strong hold (see Cable, Chapter 84), Europe was the place where we primarily saw the growth of modern English historical linguistics from the 1950s onward. This is characterized and driven by philological approaches, interdisciplinarity, and an interest in the general principles underlying language change. The Northern countries must be credited for developing large-scale corpora of historical Englishes, without which many studies would not have been possible; other regions, such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, Poland, the UK, and Germany, have developed (functional) accounts of syntactic, morphological, phonological, and lexical change and detailed descriptions of earlier languages stages. Similarly, we see the growth of new fields and new perspectives, including historical dialectology (embodied par excellence in the groundbreaking 1986 Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, put together by team of Scottish scholars around Angus McIntosh [McIntosh et al. 1986]), historical sociolinguistics, such as Suzanne Romaine’s (1982) or James Milroy’s (1992) studies, historical pragmatics as introduced by a group of scholars comprising, inter alia Andreas Jucker from Zurich (Jucker 1995), and Irma Taavitsainen from Helsinki, and also Laurel Brinton from Vancouver. Nevertheless, this vibrant research life could not be
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matched in North America (with the exception of a few important centers such as Stanford, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, or Pennsylvania), where English historical linguistics often assumed much diminished roles in English Departments more focused on literary theory than the language of texts (see Section 3). The growing importance and acceptance of research in English historical linguistics is also documented by the foundation of research centers such as the Variation, Contacts and Change group in Helsinki, founded in 2006 and headed by Nevalainen (cf. Hiltunen, Chapter 87) or the Variation, Linguistic Change and Grammaticalization (VLCG) research group in Santiago de Compostela, founded in 1990, and headed by Teresa Fanego (cf. Fanego, Chapter 89), to name but two out of a large number. The important biannual International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL) will be held in 2012 in Zurich for the seventeenth time. The North American counterpart is the (bi-) annual Studies in the History of the English Language (SHEL) conference, which was started in 2000 by Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell and which will see its seventh anniversary in Bloomington in 2012. All this taken together leaves no doubt that English historical linguistics on the whole is (still) a very lively, vibrant and active research field. However, the current situation is also not without problems, as the last section will show.
3 Current developments While English historical linguistics generally may be considered alive and thriving, the papers in this section, along with some more in Section IX, also point to certain problems in the field. These seem to arise from two factors. The first factor is the still present conflict between philology, literature, and linguistics, which has not been bridged since the institutionalization of English and linguistics as academic fields in the late 19th and early 20th century. We have shown that most scholars in the beginnings were brought up academically as philologists, with a profound interest in and knowledge of literature, textual scholarship, history, and culture. The growing specialization in the field of English has made this breadth of knowledge difficult to attain. Many scholars in literature find it hard to keep up with linguistic theories (and often don’t see why they should), just as scholars in linguistics usually ignore literature as it is seen as epiphenomenal language use that does not provide interesting, reliable data of natural language use. The high degree of technicality in some linguistic frameworks such as generativism has widened this apparent gap, just as the rather opaque thinking in postmodern literary theory. Therefore, philologists, broadly defined as experts in both language and literature, have mostly disappeared. This has led to a situation where Chairs in English Medieval Studies or Anglo-Saxon are in imminent danger. On the one hand, university administrations often (incorrectly) argue that there is hardly any call for this kind of field. On the other hand, the few chairs that remain see a vicious battle between linguistics and literature over who gets appointed. Wischer (Chapter 85) claims that at least in Germany many of those chairs are lost altogether for English or are filled with scholars from literature or cultural studies, maybe in the hope that this will be more compatible and attractive for students. Thus, a lot of research in English historical linguistics is now being done by scholars who are not affiliated with historical chairs or research groups; this can mean the potential long-term endangerment of this line of research. The second factor that is mentioned here in this section and in some papers in Section IX of this volume is not about research, but about teaching. While the number of
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textbooks and handbooks in English historical linguistics is growing, we see a steady decline in student enrollment. Knowledge of the historical stages of the language (sometimes in great detail) was a basic requirement for students and teachers of English in the middle of the 20th century, but fewer and fewer study programs are now including historical components in their curricula. The reasons for this seem to be manifold. Sometimes their applicability and usefulness for future work in- and outside academia are in doubt, sometimes they are considered “too difficult” and “off-putting”, sometimes the proper teaching of Old and/or Middle English would simply take up too much time in an already too crammed curriculum. As a result students may get only a quick rollercoaster ride to familiarize them with the basics and in the hopes that the best of them will stick with this field of study. But when students do not have solid foundations in reading and understanding Old and Middle English they will find most studies that look at sound change etc. very opaque and abstract. On a positive note, we end by pointing to recent trends, such as historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics (see Nevalainen, Chapter 92; Taavitsainen, Chapter 93), which focus very intensely on the language of texts as well as social and cultural aspects of language use; such approaches to the language of the past will undoubtedly lead to continued and renewed interest in research in English historical linguistics. New theoretical approaches, such as Construction Grammar (see Bergs, Chapter 103) also have the potential for opening up new avenues of research in English historical linguistics. The opportunities for exciting historical research facilitated by electronic corpora – ranging from the 20-year old Helsinki Corpus (Rissanen et al. 1991; currently being updated in XML format) to the recently launched Old Bailey Corpus (Huber and Maiwald 2003–2010) and a wealth of other new corpora – must also be acknowledged (see Kyto¨, Chapter 96). All these developments seem to indicate that historical and synchronic linguistics may be growing closer again, which can only be good for both. In respect to the teaching of English historical linguistics, we note that there are still a number of departments (around the world!) where knowledge of earlier Englishes is treasured and required (and where high enrollment numbers show that there is still strong interest among students for this line of study). This, undoubtedly, will continue to form the basis of scholarship in English historical linguistics. The teaching of the history of English takes on special import as we acknowledge English as a global language and appreciate its place on the internet, in electronic means of communication, and in the social media (see Grzega, Chapter 136; Heyd, Volume 1, Chapter 70). Moreover, we have also come to a fuller recognition of the importance of varieties of English, which involves knowledge of both their forms and histories (see Sections XIII, XIV, and XV).
4 References Baugh, Albert C. 1935. A History of the English Language. 1st edn. New York: D. AppletonCentury Company. Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon. Dobson, Eric John. 1957. English Pronunciation 1500–1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ellis, Alexander John. 1869–89. On Early English Pronunciation, with especial reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer. London: Tru¨bner & Co. Huber, Magnus and Patrick Maiwald. 2003–2010. The Old Bailey Corpus: Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. http://www.uni-giessen.de/oldbaileycorpus/index.php (last accessed 26 October 2010).
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Jespersen, Otto. 1909–49. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. 7 vols. Copenhagen: E. Munksgaard; London: Allen & Unwin. Jucker, Andreas H. 1995. Historical Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. King, Robert D. 1969. Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lightfoot, David W. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McIntosh, Angus, M. L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 1350–1450. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press / Edinburgh: Mercat Press. Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Mosse´, Fernand. 1945–49. Manuel de l’anglais du moyen-aˆge, des origines au XIve sie`cle. 2 vols. ´ ditions Montaigne. Paris: Aubier, E Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English Syntax. Part 1: Parts of Speech. Helsinki: Socie´te´ Neophilologique. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpio¨, Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevanlinna, and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1991. The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. In: ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora (CD-ROM), 2nd edn., Knut Hofland, Anne Lindebjerg, Jørn Thunestvedt (eds.), The HIT Center, University of Bergen, Norway. For manual, see http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/hc/index.htm (last accessed 7 February 2012). Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-historical Linguistics: Its Status and Methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stockwell, Robert P. and C. Westbrook Barritt. 1955. The Old English short digraphs: Some considerations. Language 31: 373–389. Sweet, Henry. 1900–1903. A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1972. A History of English Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Wright, Joseph. 1889–1905. The English Dialect Dictionary. London: H. Froude. Wyld, Henry Cecil. 1921. A History of Modern Colloquial English. London: T. F. Unwin.
Alexander Bergs, Osnabru¨ck (Germany) and Laurel J. Brinton, Vancouver (Canada)
83. History of English Historical Linguistics: The historiography of the English language 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Paradigm shifts? The Early Modern period to 1800 The 19th century The 20th century Summary References
Abstract This article presents the history of English historical linguistics in Great Britain and argues that the history of English, as a discipline, is – like other kinds of historiography – accretive, i.e. it builds on scholars of the past, rather than paradigm-shifting. The article’s core is a historical survey, beginning in the renaissance – when the study of the history of Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1295–1312
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English became respectable – and proceeding from there to the present-day. Particular attention is given to John Cheke and Matthew Parker in the 16th century, John Wallis in the 17th, Samuel Johnson and William Jones in the 18th, and Benjamin Thorpe, John Kemble, Dean Trench, Henry Sweet and Joseph Wright in the 19th. The essay then offers a survey of trends in the 20th century, and concludes with an assessment of likely ways forward for the subject in the 21st.
1 Paradigm shifts? Thomas Kuhn (1962), in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, famously argued that science has progressed by means of a series of “paradigm shifts”. The notion of the paradigm shift is now a scholarly cliche´: paradigm shifts take place when the contradictions of a particular view of reality slowly accrue until, overwhelmed by these contradictions, a particular major thinker makes an imaginative leap and sees the subject from a completely new – and contradiction-resolving – perspective. Good examples of such paradigm-shifters include Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein.
1.1 Paradigm shifts in different academic subjects Are all subjects liable to such paradigm-shifts? It seems fairly certain that astronomy, evolutionary biology, and physics – the domains studied by the three thinkers just listed – are; it is simply impossible, for instance, for a modern scientist to hold seriously that the sun goes round the earth, and it is extremely unlikely that a paradigm-shifting reversion to pre-Galilean astronomy will ever take place. Terracentric astronomy is simply no longer intellectually credible, however interesting it may be for historians of science.
1.2 Paradigm shifts in the humanities Are paradigm shifts possible in the humanities? Here the notion seems more contestable. The discipline of history is a good case in point. Although (say) a modern scholar such as Simon Schama may see the French Revolution from a different perspective to (say) Alexis de Tocqueville, members of whose family were either executed or imprisoned during the Terror, it is still possible for Schama to engage profitably with – and indeed to some extent recuperate – de Tocqueville, and to value his “luminous”, albeit “Olympian”, insights (Schama 1989: xiii, xv). Schama feels no need to dismiss de Tocqueville’s views out of hand as having no validity; as an historiographer, de Tocqueville still has something to say to subsequent generations. This disciplinary generosity, combined with a humility about one’s own perspective, is a rather attractive characteristic of best historiographical practice; Gibbon or Tacitus or Thucydides are regularly cited as offering insights on the past which are still to be valued, even if their views are now perceived as expressed in ways modern scholars would not adopt or as necessarily partial because conditioned by the intellectual setting of their own time. History, it seems, has developed as an accretive discipline. Shifts in approach undoubtedly happen, but they seem not to take place in quite the radical way in which they have occurred in, say, physics. We build on de Tocqueville or Tacitus; we do not knock them down.
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1.3 Paradigm shifts in linguistics The notion of “paradigm-shifting” has on some occasions attracted linguists, who have regularly cited, e.g., the publication of Noam Chomsky’s (1957) Syntactic Structures as an event comparable in scientific terms with the appearance of Darwin’s The Origin of Species a century before. Thus one distinguished Chomskyan scholar, Morris Halle, notoriously complained, in 1973, that morphology “has been studied only to a very limited extent” (cited in Sampson 1980: 160), setting aside a tradition of linguistic description at least a century old (the term morphology with reference to grammar was coined by August Schleicher in 1859, the year when Darwin’s Origins was published; see Szemere´nyi 1999: 195). However, Chomsky himself, though frequently highly dismissive of views differing from his own, has been somewhat more modest, claiming (albeit as precursors of his own approach) a connexion with, e.g., the universalist philosophers of the Port-Royal school of the 17th century, and, despite some of the more extravagant claims made for his views, it seems unlikely that Chomsky is a paradigm-shifter in the way that Darwin or Galileo were.
1.4 Paradigm shifts in English historical linguistics The notion of the paradigm-shift is similarly limited in its application to English historical linguistics, the subject of this article. The question of disciplinary status is relevant here, since historical linguistics has a dual disciplinary loyalty: to history and to linguistics. In a recent important collection of conference papers, Anne Curzan and Kimberly Emmons make the following point: Throughout this volume, we see an ongoing conversation at the heart of historical English linguistics: the question of evidence and historical reconstruction. Robert Fulk puts it eloquently in his discussion of the oral nature of early English vernacular texts and the possibility, if not the necessity, of creating linguistic arguments based on unavailable evidence; ‘it raises’, he concludes, ‘profound questions about explanation in linguistics, most particularly whether the aim of historical linguistics should be to explain the data available or to analyze texts of earlier periods from a realistic historical perspective – that is, whether the primary allegiance of historical linguistics should be to linguistics or to history’. (Curzan and Emmons 2004: x; Fulk’s article appears in Curzan and Emmons 2004: 305–312)
The passage echoes views which have a long pedigree in western thought; they underpin, for instance, Sir William Jones’s distinction between the philosophical study of language, engaging with e.g. “the curious and important science of universal grammar”, and the historical, concerned with “the observation and remembrance of mere facts” (Aarsleff 1983: 127; for Jones, see Sections 3 and 3.1 below). Fulk’s argument would suggest that the allegiance is a dual one, but for the purposes of the current essay the link with history is especially important. Although it is undeniable that there have been shifts in approach in historical linguistics, as with the discipline of history these shifts are gradual, and, it will be argued here, they have been most successful when building upon rather than trampling down the views of predecessors. The notion of the paradigm shift, whereby older views can simply be set aside as no longer tenable, is, it is argued here, not appropriate for the study of the historiography of the English language. As we will see from this necessarily selective study of a vast field, many ideas
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current in (say) the 17th or 18th centuries may still be studied profitably by linguists working in the first decades of the 21st. Although the focus of discussion (reflecting the present author’s expertise) is on the British scene, it is hoped that the insights offered have a more general currency.
2 The Early Modern period to 1800 The historiography of the English language really begins in the Early Modern period, for obvious reasons: it was only then that the vernacular truly became dignified enough to attract scholarly attention. Dante, in the 14th century, had claimed that it was possible to be eloquent in the vernacular (in his case, Italian), and the appearance of major writers in English at the end of the 14th century – Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland – is clearly connected to the rise of English as a language in which it was possible to address serious philosophical and literary concerns.
2.1 Sir John Cheke The academic study of the English language correlates with its rise as a medium for intellectual rather than literary enquiry, notably in the expression of religious belief. For instance, in c.1550 Sir John Cheke translated the Bible for Archbishop Cranmer, using a specially-devised spelling-system and a “purified” vocabulary based on Germanicrather than French-derived words; thus centurions become, in Cheke’s usage, hundreders, and parables are biwordes. Cheke was a “new man”, a prominent evangelical who was keenly involved in the controversies which led to the English Reformation; as Cheke’s interest in Germanic roots indicates – something shared by later “purist” and “archaising” writers, such as the poet Edmund Spenser at the end of the 16th century – many evangelicals approached the English language from a historical perspective.
2.2 Matthew Parker Matthew Parker, for instance, who became Elizabeth I’s Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, spent a great deal of time and money looking for evidence of “reformed” religion in the Anglo-Saxon past, and this search inspired him to collect what is still the most important single collection of surviving manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon, now in Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, UK. Parker taught himself to read Anglo-Saxon, and even to grasp the rudiments of what we would now call AngloSaxon paleography. The study of Anglo-Saxon continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries part of a distinctively Anglican culture, expressed by such diverse figures as William Somner (baptised 1598, d. 1669), who dedicated his first publication on the antiquities of Canterbury to Archbishop Laud, and the nonjuring yet anti-Catholic bishop George Hickes (1642–1715) (for an important discussion, with full references and historical contextualization, see Kidd 1999, especially 106–109.)
2.3 John Wallis As part of this development, it became conventional for contemporaries writing on the usage of their own time to preface their remarks with historical surveys, e.g. Alexander
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Gil (1621), John Wilkins (1668), or Christopher Cooper (1685). Perhaps the most influential such discussion – in Latin, thus catering for a learned and international audience – was in John Wallis’s A Grammar of the English Language, the first edition of which appeared in 1653. Wallis (1616–1703) was a controversial figure, politically supple enough to negotiate his way through the English Civil Wars and receive rewards from both sides. He was appointed to the Savilian professorship of geometry at Oxford in 1649 and was awarded a doctorate in divinity in 1654 under Cromwell, but his place and honours were confirmed in 1660 by Charles II, who made him a royal chaplain; he was appointed in 1661 as one of the revisers of the Anglican prayer book. Wallis’s Grammar appeared in five distinct editions in the author’s lifetime, and was published not only in England but also in Hamburg, Leiden and (in an abbreviated form) in Ko¨nigsberg. A handsome octavo edition was published simultaneously in London and Leipzig in 1765 (see further Kemp 1972, whose translation is quoted below; for extended biographical sketches of all figures just mentioned, see also Dobson 1968: passim and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [Matthew et al. (eds.) 2004–08]). Wallis’s discussion of the history of English begins with a survey of “the old British language spoken by the earliest Britons”, although Wallis points out that English “is entirely different and has come from a different place” (Kemp 1972: 77); the view – derived from Bede – that the Gauls, Germans, Britons, and Saxons were the same people, however, persisted amongst many scholars into the 18th century, only laid to rest by Bishop Thomas Percy in his translation of Paul Mallet’s (1770) Northern Antiquities. The old British language, Wallis points out, was shared with that of ancient Gaul, and Wallis notes that “it is very common for the letters g and w to be interchanged; the French name for Wallia (which we call Wales) is Gales…” (Kemp 1972: 79); he goes on to exemplify this practice by comparing French guerre, garant, gard etc. with English warre, warrant, ward etc. (Kemp 1972: 79), although he does not explain how warre etc. have survived into English. British is compared with oriental languages; Wallis draws attention to certain features of vocabulary and grammar which, he holds, are to be found in both Welsh and in “Arabic or Punic” and Hebrew; these similarities, Wallis suggests, may date “back to the confusion of Babel” (Kemp 1972: 81), “like other mother tongues”; the term “mother tongues” (matrices linguae) is not – as he acknowledges – original to Wallis, being taken by him from Josephus Justus Scaliger’s (1610) Diatriba de Europaeorum Linguis. Wallis offers suggestions for further reading on this topic, and then moves on to discuss the origins and development of English. With the withdrawal of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons “got control of what had been the demesne of the Britons and called the part of Britain that they occupied England, and the language which they brought with them English”. (Kemp 1972: 95); Wallis states that he and his contemporaries “generally call it Saxon or Anglo-Saxon now, to distinguish it from modern English” (Kemp 1972: 95). Anglo-Saxon is, we are told, “descended from Old Teutonic, like the Frankish language which was introduced into Gaul, and also like modern German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Prussian and other related languages” (Kemp 1972: 96–97); Wallis clearly believes Prussian to be a Germanic language and not (as modern scholars hold) one of the Balto-Slavic group. Wallis believes that Anglo-Saxon survived “pure and unadulterated” until Norman times; “although the Danes invaded the country during this period, there was no change in the language, because Danish, though not exactly the same as Anglo-Saxon, was very closely related to it” (Kemp 1972: 97).
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The arrival of the Normans, however, says Wallis, meant changes; William of Normandy, “called the Conqueror”, commanded that “all official documents and public proclamations, and all judicial transactions, should be in Neustrian [i.e. Norman French], or French” (Kemp 1972: 97). However, William failed, according to Wallis, because the number of English people was so much larger than the number of Normans: “So the English language, which had become established here, persisted, though many French words, mostly of Latin origin, gradually became current in English, and many English words in due course dropped out of use” (Kemp 1972: 99). Wallis goes on to illustrate the relationship between the two languages by contrasting how “we call living animals by names of German origin, whereas we use French names for their meat when prepared as food. For instance we say: an ox, a cow, a calf, a sheep, a hog, a boar, a deer etc., but beef, veal, mutton, pork, brawn, venison etc. I think this arose from the fact that the Norman soldiers had little to do with pastures…” (Kemp 1972: 99–100). This observation is perhaps Wallis’s most influential statement; it frequently appears still in undergraduate survey-courses on the history of English, possibly given wide currency by Sir Walter Scott’s discussion in the first chapter of Ivanhoe. Wallis sees the impulse to borrow words as not deriving from any deficiency in English – he cites with approval the example of Spenser’s poetry, “unadulterated by foreign ornamentation” – but because we have come to regard it as impossible to say something “elegantly or emphatically unless it has an unusual or foreign flavour about it” (Kemp 1972: 102–103).
2.4 Samuel Johnson Wallis’s outline history (and others like it) underpins most 18th-century accounts of the history of English. For instance, Samuel Johnson (1755) in the preface to his Dictionary, notoriously sought to “recall” the English language to its “original Teutonick character”, to the “pure sources of genuine diction”, and away from the “Gallick structure and phraseology” towards which it seemed to be tending (cited in Bolton 1966: 145). Although there is no explicit historical outline in the Dictionary, it is clear that Johnson derives his discussion from narratives such as that provided by Wallis, and there are even echoes of the purist tradition of Cheke and Spenser. However, Johnson has some interesting things to say about language change in general which are not to be found in Wallis’s book. He notes that “[t]otal and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen […] there are other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superiour to human resistance, as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide” (Bolton 1966: 152). Johnson identifies as such external causes of change not just “conquests and migrations […] now very rare”, whose effects are sudden, but also “commerce […] not always […] confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but […] communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and […] at last incorporated with the current speech” (Bolton 1966: 152). He also identifies “internal causes equally forcible”: The language most likely to continue without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life […] men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words
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as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labours of the other. […] Copiousness of speech will give opportunities to capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the signification of known terms. (Bolton 1966: 152–153)
Johnson is here engaging with issues of language contact, social class and stylistic variation; although somewhat unspecific and couched in the distinctive terminology of 18th century linguistics (e.g. “copiousness of speech”), his ideas prefigure quite closely many present-day debates on language variation and change (see e.g. Milroy 1992; Samuels 1972; Smith 1996).
3 The 19th century Towards the end of the 18th century an event took place which has sometimes been claimed as a paradigm shift in Kuhn’s terms: Sir William Jones’s Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, delivered in 1786. Sir William’s speech on that occasion included the following famous passage: The Sanskrit language, whatever may be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that no philologer could examine all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia. (Jones 1807: 34–35; see, e.g. Renfrew 1987: 9 for a characteristic discussion).
This statement is traditionally taken as the first attempt to classify a group of languages on comparative and diachronic principles; and it remains a concise outline of the comparative method, whereby languages are compared in order to reconstruct the nature of their common ancestor. However, its novelty might be questioned. The notion of “mother tongues” was already known to Wallis, as we have seen. Roger Lass has also drawn attention to the work of Conrad Gestner (Mithridates, 1555); Gestner noted the existence of “mother” languages and used the term cognatae (cf. Latin co + gnatus ‘born together’) to refer to groups of related languages (see Lass 1997: 107–108). However, although Jones knew Wallis’s work, he went on to bring empirical philosophy to bear on the historical study of language, in a structured way; and, as has been pointed out, his initial statement was supported by systematic analysis of data (see Aarsleff 1983: 134–135). We might also note Lyle Campbell’s unpacking of Jones’s discussion (Campbell 2006). However, despite the title of his article (Why Sir William Jones got it all wrong), Campbell offers a balanced conclusion: Jones was far from being the initial discoverer of Indo-European relationships or the founder of methods for linguistic comparison. Rather, Jones’ thinking was on the whole
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XI. History of English Historical Linguistics consistent with trends up to and including his day, weaker than some, better than others. His several errors make it necessary to be extremely cautious concerning the methods which led him to these conclusions. Nevertheless, the successful cases – Jones’ and others’ – relied on three sources of evidence, basic vocabulary, grammatical evidence (especially morphological), and some notion of sound correspondences. Definitively, superficial lexical comparisons led to no successful cases and indeed in some instances led Jones astray. These three criteria are still today the foundation of methods for investigating possible distant genetic relationships among languages. (Campbell 2006: 264)
3.1 New philology This was the “new philology”, but its roots lay in the 18th-century British Enlightenment. Jones himself was a polymath who dined regularly with Johnson in Oxford (Holmes 1974: 38) and elsewhere. He was also a radical in contemporary debate, becoming a major figure not only in orientalist studies but also in British jurisprudence, and his advanced views on cultural reciprocity and sexual equality – many pointing forward to those now widely held in liberal circles – meant that, as a political writer, he was for “many establishment figures […] lingering under the liberty tree” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [Matthews et al (eds.) 2004–08]). Jones was a philosophical empiricist, interested – as befitted a lawyer – in evidence. He would have agreed thoroughly with the views expressed by, e.g., Dugald Stewart, the near-contemporary Scottish common-sense philosopher; it was, for Stewart, “a very mistaken idea, that the formation of a hypothetical system is a stronger proof of inventive genius, than the patient investigation of nature in the way of induction” (cited in Aarsleff 1983: 112).
3.2 Continental influences Such ways of thinking were also commonplace on the continent of Europe, most notably in Germany and Denmark, and Jones received there a ready audience. He undoubtedly influenced the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel, for instance, who in turn influenced the great comparative philologists Franz Bopp, Rasmus Rask and Jacob Grimm. Bopp’s work ranged widely over Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Germanic; in the preface to the English edition of his Comparative Grammar the translator stated that it had “created a new epoch in the science of Comparative Philology […] corresponding to that of Newton’s Principia in Mathematics…” (cited in Aarsleff 1983: 160). Bopp visited London in 1818 to work on the manuscripts held in the East India Company’s archives. Rask’s major contribution to philology, Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse, was published in 1818, but it derived from a great tradition of Danish philology, including G.J.Thorkelin’s edition of the Old English epic poem Beowulf (1815). Thorkelin had himself visited England and Scotland between 1786 and 1790, looking for historical material, and had used his visit not only to transcribe the text of Beowulf but also to suggest to John Jamieson that he should work on the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808), “the first independent lexicographical effort in Britain after Johnson’s Dictionary” (Aarsleff 1983: 164). Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik appeared in 1819, with an important second edition in 1822; “the first large-scale historical examination of the old vernacular and its cognates” (Aarsleff
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1983: 161), it contained the great statement of what has become known to history as Grimm’s Law (for the relationship between Rask’s and Grimm’s presentation of this law, see Collinge 1985: 63–64).
3.3 Benjamin Thorpe and John Mitchell Kemble It was through Rask and Grimm that the new philology was transmitted back to Britain, most notably by Benjamin Thorpe and John Mitchell Kemble. Thorpe visited Rask in Copenhagen, and married a Dane; Kemble visited Grimm in Go¨ttingen, and married (unhappily) a German. Both Thorpe and Kemble were assiduous editors of Old English texts, but they were also active linguistic historians. One of Kemble’s most famous statements encapsulates the notion of the “laws” of language, a notion first discussed by Bopp (Sampson 1980: 16) and does so in a way which continues to influence the study of historical linguistics: “[…] the laws of a language, ascertained by wide and careful examination of all cognate tongues, of the hidden springs and ground-principles upon which they rest in common, are like the laws of the Medes and Persians and alter not” (cited in Aarsleff 1983: 201). Kemble himself exemplified this approach in a factual exposition on vowel-length, derived from Grimm, published in 1835. In this article Kemble shows that he has thoroughly grasped the comparative method: “In order to ascertain the length of the vowel in an A.S. word it is […] necessary to ascertain what vowel corresponds to it in the other principal Teutonic tongues, and by this process alone can we correct the MSS. themselves” (Kemble 1835: 29). Kemble in particular was an influential figure in contemporary culture. The son of the famous actor Charles Kemble, he was a key member of the Cambridge “Apostles” in the 1820s, and a close friend of (among others) Alfred Tennyson the poet, Edward Fitzgerald the translator, Richard Monkton Milnes the biographer, and Frederick Maurice the social reformer. He was also friendly with Richard Chevenix Trench, with whom in 1830 he went to Spain to take part in an unsuccessful uprising against Ferdinand VII. Kemble never managed to secure a university position, largely it seems because of the aggressive tone he adopted towards his opponents; his article on vowellength ended with the statement that “against all quackery, and all quacks, I hold the old motto – ‘War to the knife!’ ” (Kemble 1835: 30). Nevertheless he published widely on antiquities until his death in 1857.
3.4 The Philological Society The new philology quickly dominated 19th-century discussion of the history of language. As early as 1835 it was being harnessed to a religious purpose by Nicholas (later Cardinal) Wiseman; and the term “Grimm’s Law” was first used by another cleric, W.B. Winning, in his Manual of Comparative Philology, in which the Affinity of the Indo-European Languages is Illustrated, and Applied to the Primeval History of Europe, Italy and Rome (1838) (see Aarsleff 1983: 208–209). However, Kemble himself came to focus more on Anglo-Saxon history and archaeology in his later life, and it was not until the foundation of the Philological Society of London in 1842 that the new philology developed an institutional basis in Britain. The Society throughout its history focused on the empirical rather than the philosophical, and thus showed itself to have its origins in the Enlightenment. As its then president, Alexander Ellis, stated in 1873,
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comments on the origin of language – always a concern in the philosophical tradition – were “out of the field of philology proper”: We have to investigate what is, we have to discover, if possible, the invariable unconditional relations under which language, as we observe it, forms, develops, changes, or at least to construct an empirical statement of definite linguistic relations, and ascertain how far that statement obtains in individual cases. Real language, the go-between of man and man, is a totally different organism from philosophical language, the misty illunderstood exponent of sharp metaphysical distinctions. Our work is with the former. We shall do more by tracing the historical growth of one single work-a-day tongue, than by filling wastepaper baskets with reams of paper covered with speculation on the origin of all tongues. (cited in Aarsleff 1983: 230)
3.5 The Oxford English Dictionary Amongst the earlier members of the Society was Richard Chenevix Trench, by now a respectable clergyman; he was Dean of Westminster in 1856, joined the Philological Society in 1857, and in 1863 became the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. In the year he joined the Society, Trench gave his address “On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries”, which is generally acknowledged as the first step in the creation of the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, a work to be driven forward most notably by Sir James Murray, who was elected to the presidency of the Philological Society in 1878. According to Trench, this dictionary was to be “an historical monument, the history of a nation contemplated from one point of view” (cited in Aarsleff 1983: 261). The Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson [ed.] 2000–), as it was eventually called, is arguably the greatest single triumph of English historical linguistics; it is also, as we have seen, the outcome of an empirical philological tradition focusing on etymology, with its roots in the Enlightenment.
3.6 Henry Sweet However, the OED was not of course the only outcome of the philological tradition in Britain in the 19th century. Ellis himself was deeply interested in issues of pronunciation, both contemporary and historical; and one of the earliest editors for the Early English Text Society (EETS), founded in 1864 explicitly for the purpose of establishing texts from which the OED could quote, was a young Oxford undergraduate, Henry Sweet. Sweet was to become the leading philologist of his time while, simultaneously, founding what has become the modern discipline of phonetic science. Sweet was a controversial figure who only secured a university position at the age of 56, when, in 1901, he was appointed to a readership in phonetics at Oxford. He received very few honours in his own country, other than an honorary degree of LLD from Glasgow in 1892. But foreigners saw him differently; he received an honorary PhD from Heidelberg in 1875 (only two years after he graduated from Oxford with a fourthclass degree in “greats”, i.e. Classics), and was elected to various learned academies in Germany and Scandinavia. Until the mid-1880s, when he began to focus his energies on modern grammar and phonetics, Sweet was known as an historian of English with a special interest in the production of textbooks, notably his Anglo-Saxon Reader, first
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published in 1876, and his Anglo-Saxon Primer of 1882 (Sweet 1876, 1882); the former replaced Thorpe’s 1834 Analecta Anglo-Saxonica as the standard undergraduate anthology. Both works are, in later editions, still in print. Sweet’s History of English Sounds (1888) was, however, his last major work dealing with earlier periods in the history of English. Something of Sweet’s complex relationship with foreign scholarship can be gathered from the introduction to an edition he published for EETS in 1885: The Oldest English Texts, an important collection containing archaic and dialectal (i.e. non-West Saxon) texts from the Anglo-Saxon period, some of which he later reworked in another textbook, his Second Anglo-Saxon Reader (Sweet 1887). The Oldest English Texts is still regarded as a major scholarly achievement, but the introduction includes the following interesting personal passage: When I first began [this edition], I had some hopes of myself being able to found an independent school of English philology in this country. But as time went on it became too evident that the historical study of English was being rapidly annexed by the Germans, and that English editors would have to abandon all hopes of working up their materials themselves, and resign themselves to the more humble role of purveyors to the swarms of young program-mongers turned out every year by the German universities, so thoroughly trained in all the mechanical details of what may be called ‘parasite philology’ that no English dilettante can hope to compete with them – except by Germanizing himself [sic] and losing all his nationality. All this is of course inevitable – the result of our own neglect, and of the unhealthy over-production of the German universities – but it is not encouraging for those who, like myself, have had the mortification of seeing their favorite investigations forestalled one after another, while they are laboriously collecting their materials. (Sweet 1885: v–vi)
Sweet (1885: vi) went on to state that his “only regret was that I did not abandon the historical study of English five years ago” to carry on with other work. However, as a reference in the preface “to my friend [Eduard] Sievers” suggests, he had already done something very important for English historical linguistics: he had brought British scholarship back into close contact with German developments, most notably the work of the Neogrammarians, that group of scholars particularly (though not exclusively) associated with the University of Leipzig, where Sievers held the chair of Germanic Philology. The year after Sweet published The Oldest English Texts, the second edition appeared of Hermann Paul’s Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, translated into English in 1891. Paul’s Prinzipien, the so-called “Neogrammarian Bible”, was the summation of a whole program of scholarship.
3.7 The Neogrammarians The Neogrammarian movement, like all movements, produced a number of manifestos. Representative is the following, from Georg von der Gabelentz’s Die Sprachwissenschaft, published in Leipzig in 1901: […] our science should strive to delve even more deeply. Why, in this one out of many related dialects or languages, did a sound change proceed in this particular way, why in a different direction somewhere else, and why in yet a third direction in another language?
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XI. History of English Historical Linguistics We need think only of the Indo-European languages and the developments of their vowels, their velars, palatals, aspirates, and s-sounds: what accounts for the various tendencies among the Aryans, Greeks, Slavs, and the Italic peoples? Climate, life style, contact with neighboring tribes, perhaps temperament and occasionally a certain aesthetic feeling (fashion) – all of these may have played a role, but to what degree and in which direction? It would seem that only with an enormous amount of inductive scholarship will the objective be reached, proceeding microscopically at one time, investigating the nearest, smallest dialects, then again looking far afield at all the language families in all parts of the world. For a science, which aims to probe the laws of events, those common denominators, not matter how neatly they have been worked out, are still merely first steps; they are simplified descriptions, not explanations. (quoted in Baldi and Werth [eds.] 1978: 30)
Two points are perhaps worth noticing in von der Gabelentz’s statement. First, we might note the emphasis on “laws”, a notion first applied to philology by Bopp and Kemble (see Section 3.3 above) but subsequently adopted enthusiastically by the Neogrammarians, as placing their discipline on a par with the natural sciences. The natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry, formed the German paradigm for all disciplines, including the historical study of language, although it is important to note that Hermann Paul was careful to distinguish “historical” and “exact sciences” in this respect: “The idea of sound-law is not to be understood in the sense in which we speak of ‘laws’ in Physics or Chemistry […] Sound-law does not pretend to state what must always under certain general conditions regularly recur, but merely expresses the reign of uniformity within a group of historical phenomena” (cited Baldi and Werth 1978: 17). The explosion of German science in the 19th and early 20th centuries seems to have been due in part to a focus on an “understanding of the mechanistic whole by scrutiny of the smallest parts” (Cornwell 2003: 45), something possible only through a massive collective effort. The Neogrammarian enterprise, with its “program-mongers”, was exactly such an effort, and von der Gabelentz’s statement is clearly engaged with “scrutiny of the smallest parts”. Although well outside the compass of this essay, it is interesting, in the light of studies by John Cornwell and others, that Sweet regarded this development as in some sense “unhealthy”. Secondly, however, there is von der Gabelentz’s focus on “inductive scholarship”, pointing directly back to the views on empirical “induction” expressed by Enlightenment scholars such as Dugald Stewart. Neogrammarians – Junggrammatiker – saw themselves as modern, but they were drawing upon a clear philosophical inheritance.
3.8 Joseph Wright Sweet may have been about to abandon historical study, but in 1882 British scholarship came once more into direct contact with the Neogrammarians. Joseph Wright, a Yorkshireman from an impoverished weaving background who had taught himself to read at the age of 15, had arrived in Heidelberg to study mathematics. However, Wright – encouraged by the prominent Neogrammarian Hermann Osthoff – transferred to comparative philology, and became one of Sweet’s “program-mongers”, submitting a doctoral thesis to Heidelberg University in 1885 on qualitative and quantitative changes in the Greek vowel-system. In 1886 Wright moved to Leipzig where, encouraged by
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another distinguished Neogrammarian, Karl Brugmann, he produced a translation of Brugmann’s Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (Brugmann 1888–91). The translation appeared in 1894, by which time Wright was in Oxford, teaching Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Germanic to the Association for the Higher Education of Women. In 1901 he became professor of comparative philology at Oxford University, in succession to Max Mu¨ller, the Sanskritist and scholar of comparative religion. Whereas Sweet, like Kemble before him, had alienated his peers by his aggression, it seems that everyone liked Joseph Wright (see E. Wright 1932 for his wife’s full, and rather moving, biographical account). He was a dedicated teacher, who saw lecturing and the writing of textbooks as a crucial part of an academic career, and took a deep personal interest in his students’ development; he was a committed administrator, who worked hard to develop his university’s schools of modern languages and English; and he never lost touch with his roots, publishing his pioneering Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1892. But he was also a dedicated researcher, elected soon after his arrival in Oxford to “the Club”, “the small group of dons who wanted more prominence for research and the professoriate by comparison with college-based undergraduate teaching” (Matthew et al [eds.] 2004–08). His interest in dialects, expressed in print through his monumental English Dialect Dictionary (Wright 1896–1905) and its accompanying English Dialect Grammar (Wright 1905), stemmed from a clear sense that the varieties of English had their own histories. The Grammar, which has never really been surpassed for its scope, is a thoroughly historical work in orientation, with constant references back to Old English, Old Norse, and Old French. The historical approach to study, represented by Wright, continued to dominate much teaching and research amongst Anglicists and, though sometimes unfashionable, has persisted to the present day. In the German-speaking world, the great historical grammars of Karl Luick (1964) and Richard Jordan (1968), which appeared first in 1914 and 1924 respectively and, neither ever completed, represent the apogee of Neogrammarian approaches to the history of English. In the English-speaking world, Wright’s historical approach underpins major surveys such as, e.g., H.C. Wyld’s (1936) A History of Modern Colloquial English, Eric Dobson’s (1968, second edition) English Pronunciation 1500–1700 or Alistair Campbell’s (1959) Old English Grammar. And despite some use of terminology derived from the generative tradition, more recent surveys, such as Richard Hogg’s (1992) authoritative A Grammar of Old English: Phonology, continue to cite Neogrammarian scholarship with approval. The work of Wright and his contemporaries remains an indispensable foundation.
4 The 20th century In 1906, a year after Wright published his English Dialect Grammar, Ferdinand de Saussure began to deliver, at the University of Geneva, the series of lectures known as the Course in General Linguistics. Saussure’s Course, as reconstructed after his death from his students’ lecture-notes, has often been taken as a paradigm-shifting event (e.g. in Culler 1976). But in many ways the continuities in Saussure’s work are as important as the new insights. Saussure began his career as a Neogrammarian: he studied under Osthoff, and his thesis, on the Proto-Indo-European vocalic system, was published
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while he was a student at Leipzig; it remains a key text for Indo-Europeanists. Saussure’s more general importance for the history of linguistic ideas seems to lie in the development of methodological explicitness. His Course made important distinctions which are still crucial, most notably in its development of the “science of signs” and the distinction between synchronic and diachronic approaches to language-study: “Everything that relates to the static side of our science is synchronic; everything that has to do with evolution is diachronic” (Saussure 1974: 81). The Course is also often taken as a founding text for structuralism, an approach to the study of phenomena which is sometimes encapsulated by the axiom tout se tient: “everything is connected to everything else” – an axiom often associated with Saussure and his school but whose precise origins are somewhat obscure (see Koerner 1999, chapter 10). Structuralism became a dominant approach not only to linguistic study but also in social sciences such as politics and sociology; the notion of the interconnectedness of things attracted figures contemporary to Saussure as diverse as the social scientist Emile Durkheim and the revolutionary politician V.I. Lenin. Yet it is important to note that the synchronic approach to language was clearly evident in some of Sweet’s writings, both on contemporary and on older usages; thus, for instance, even Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer could be described as a synchronic survey of Old English contrasting with, say, Wright’s Old English Grammar, which is couched in Neogrammarian, diachronic terms. And aspects of structuralism are prefigured in many Neogrammarian writings (see e.g. Baldi and Werth 1978: 1). The notion that synchronic variation results from diachronic process, clearly stated in (say) Karl Verner’s Neogrammarian study of the exceptions to Grimm’s Law, is still a current issue in English historical linguistics (see Collinge 1985: 203–216). Saussure’s great contribution – not to be dismissed in any way – seems to have been to engage with the issues current in contemporary linguistics and to define and disentangle them, allowing for new trends in research. One such trend, undoubtedly valuable, was to develop the description of languages along synchronic lines. This approach to linguistic study dominated, for instance, American linguistics during the first half of the 20th century, involving in particular the gathering of material on a wide range of languages for which there were no historical records (see further the valuable discussion in Andresen 1990). It also underpinned the development of dialectology and sociolinguistics as descriptive approaches to language, a development which continues still. In these approaches the empirical, data-focused traditions which had evolved since the Enlightenment were linked to a systematic approach to data which did not necessarily involve a diachronic orientation. Various notational devices have been developed to allow for more precise descriptions of language-states, e.g. Pikean tagmemics, developed for the analysis of languages without a written tradition, or even the transfer of the terminology and notational practices of generative linguistics – although not necessarily some of their theoretical assumptions – for the analysis of earlier states of much-studied languages (an excellent example is the descriptive account of Old English phonology offered by Lass and Anderson 1975). But valuable descriptive accounts using traditional terminology, along the lines adopted by Henry Sweet, have continued to appear, e.g. Mitchell’s (1985) account of Old English syntax. The appearance of the Cambridge History of the English Language (Hogg 1992–2001) offers a series of authoritative descriptive accounts, arranged in synchronic time-slices.
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Descriptive study of the kind just outlined revealed the existence of certain universal features of language, e.g. that all languages are made up of constituent grammars. This universal characteristic of human language was famously distinguished by Noam Chomsky (1957) in Syntactic Structures, and does seem to be confirmed by empirical observation. However, thorough-going Chomskyan linguistics has never been particularly concerned with historical data; indeed, it has been argued, the approach represents a departure from the data-focused, empirical methodologies adopted since the early modern period in favor of a rationalist approach proceeding from the acceptance of a set of a priori assumptions about the nature of the human mind. For that reason, Chomskyan linguistics is not further discussed here. See further Sampson (1980, especially chapter 6), for an important critique.
4.1 New trends In recent years, the descriptive approach to earlier states of the English language has become increasingly sophisticated, aided amongst other things by the enhancements to empirical methodologies allowed by developments in information technology (cf. Traxel, Chapter 72). Dialectological methods for the collection and typological classification of present-day varieties have been applied to earlier periods of English for which the evidence of linguistic variation is fullest; the most significant, and certainly the most sophisticated, outcome to date has been the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (McIntosh et al. 1986, currently being revised for online presentation) and its online successor-projects. “Synchronic” dictionaries of earlier states of the English language, first called for by W.A. Craigie in 1919 (see Craigie 1931), have appeared, e.g. Michigan’s Middle English Dictionary, now online, the ongoing Toronto Dictionary of Old English, and major regional dictionaries, e.g. the Scottish National Dictionary and the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, which together replace Jamieson’s dictionary of 1808 (see Section 3.2 above); these two dictionaries of Scots have also been placed online, linked as the Dictionary of the Scots Language (http://www.dsl.ac.uk/). And the appearance of machine-readable historical corpora, most notably those collected by scholars on the VARIENG project at the University of Helsinki, have made it possible to envisage much more comprehensive descriptions than any yet accomplished. (For an exciting statement of the theoretical implications of these developments, see Kretzschmar 2009).
4.2 Online resources Furthermore, the greatest product of the new philology as applied to the English language, the OED (Simpson [ed.] 2000–), is now itself online, massively enhancing its functionality. The recent appearance, both online and in print, of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED (Kay et al. 2009), a notional classification of the complete historical lexicon, enables the reconstruction of complete semantic fields at different points of time in the history of English; the Thesaurus allows for the lexicological structure of an entire language (insofar, of course, as written records permit) to be reconstructed at various points in time. A synchronic mapping, the Thesaurus of Old English, has already demonstrated (both in its original print form, Roberts and Kay 2000, and online) the usefulness of this approach.
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It could be argued, though, that these descriptive accounts, of whatever theoretical orientation, are primarily synchronic rather than diachronic, in Saussure’s formulation; diachronic linguistics deals with historical explanations for synchronic patterns. In the 20th century, many scholars wrestled with the notion of explanation – some have even doubted whether “explanation” is possible – but a consensus is beginning to emerge.
4.3 Linguistic variation Undoubtedly, the most important explanatory insights into diachronic linguistics in recent years have come from the study of present-day linguistic variation: in the formulation of William Labov, one of the most distinguished modern sociolinguists, “using the present to explain the past” (see his article reprinted in Baldi and Werth 1978: 275–312). Labov and others, notably James Milroy (see Milroy 1992), have shown that language change cannot be explained without reference to the social setting of language; languages comprised systems, but these systems are themselves disturbed through social contact, and it is in the interaction between systems and the competition between variant usages that change seems to come about (see further Samuels 1972). The precise mechanisms involved in such contacts are also increasingly coming under scrutiny, most notably from those scholars interested in the subdiscipline known as historical pragmatics (see e.g. Jucker and Taavitsainen 2008). What is interesting, however, is that all these approaches engage with the kind of social interaction which attracted scholars such as Joseph Wright a century before – something which comes across very strongly in (say) Wright’s (1896–1905) delightful preface to the English Dialect Grammar.
5 Summary Such insights, combined with the new synchronic resources just described, mean that English historical linguistics is, at the beginning of the 21st century, on the verge of making very considerable progress: a new “computational philology”, as Anneli MeurmannSolin (p.c.) has termed it, has arisen. The discipline is in rude health internationally, both within and outside the Anglophone world, as the list of authors in the alreadycited multi-volume Cambridge History of the English Language demonstrates; and the Cambridge History, which appeared between 1992 and 2001 under the general editorship of the late Richard Hogg, himself one of the most significant scholars of his generation, is a summative enterprise that flags the maturity of the discipline. However (of course) such enterprises raise as many questions as they answer. It seems clear that – like all empirical disciplines – English historical linguistics will make progress most quickly if it acknowledges its status as an accretive subject, aware of the value of its methodological and theoretical inheritance from traditions of study extending over several centuries.
6 References Aarsleff, Hans. 1983. The Study of Language in England 1780–1860. London: Athlone Press. Andresen, Julie Tetel. 1990. Linguistics in America 1769–1924: A Critical History. London: Routledge.
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Baldi, Philip and Ronald Werth (eds.). 1978. Readings in Historical Phonology. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press. Bolton, Whitney F. (ed.). 1966. The English Language: Essays by English and American Men of Letters 1490–1839. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brugmann, Karl. 1888–91. Elements of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages: A Concise Exposition of the History of Sanskrit, Old Iranian (Avestic and Old Persian), Old Armenian, Old Greek, Latin, Umbrian-Samnitic, Old Irish, Gothic, Old High German, Lithuanian and Old Bulgarian. (Translated by J. Wright) London: Tru¨bner. Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Campbell, Lyle. 2006. Why Sir William Jones got it all wrong. International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology 40, 1–2: 245–264. www.hum.utah.edu/linguistics/Faculty/oldFacultyPages/ campbell/Campbell_Jones_for_Trask.doc (last accessed 10 October 2011). Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Collinge, N.E. 1985. The Laws of Indo-European. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cooper, Christopher. 1685. Grammatica lingua anglicanae. London. Cornwell, John. 2003. Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil’s Pact. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Craigie, Sir William A. 1931. New Dictionary Schemes Presented to the Philological Society, 4th April 1919. Transactions of the Philological Society 1925–1930: 6–11. Culler, Jonathan. 1976. Ferdinand de Saussure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Curzan, Anne and Kimberly Emmons (eds.). 2004. Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dobson, Eric. 1968. English Pronunciation 1500–1700. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. von der Gabelentz, Georg. 1901. Die Sprachwissenschaft. Leipzig: Weigel. Gil, Alexander. 1621. Logonomia anglica. London: Johannes Beale. Grimm, Jacob. 1819. Deutsche Grammatik. Go¨ttingen: Dieterich’sche Buchhandlung. Hogg, Richard. 1992. A Grammar of Old English I: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell. Hogg, Richard (ed.). 1991–2001. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holmes, Richard. 1974. Shelley: The Pursuit. London: Harper-Collins. Jamieson, John. 1808. An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Johnson, Samuel. 1755. A Dictionary of the English Language. London: Knapton et al. Jones, Sir William. 1807. Works, Vol. III. London: Stockdale and Walker. Jordan, Richard. 1968 [1924]. Handbuch der Mittelenglischen Grammatik. (Revised by H. Matthes). Heidelberg: Winter. Jucker, Andreas and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.). 2008. Speech Acts in the History of English. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kay, Christian, Michael L. Samuels, Jane Roberts, and Irene Wotherspoon. 2009. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kemble, John Mitchel. 1835. Mr. Kemble on Anglo-Saxon Accents. The Gentleman’s Magazine 4: 26–30. Kemp, J.A (ed.). 1972. John Wallis’s Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Kidd, Colin. 1999. British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World 1600–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koerner, E. F. Konrad. 1999. Linguistic Historiography: Projects and Prospects. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kretzschmar, William A. 2009. The Linguistics of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lass, Roger and John Anderson. 1975. Old English Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Luick, Karl. 1964. Historische Grammatik der Englischen Sprache. Oxford: Blackwell. McIntosh, Angus, Michael L. Samuels and Michael Benskin. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Mallet, Paul Henri. 1770. Northern Antiquities. (Translated by Thomas Percy) London: Carnan. Matthew, Colin, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman (eds.). 2004–2008. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/ index.jsp (last accessed 6 October 2010). Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell. Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Paul, Hermann. 1891. Principles of the History of Language. (Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, translated by H. Strong) London: Longman, Green. Rask, Rasmus. 1818. Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandlings Forlag. Renfrew, Colin. 1987. Archaeology and Language. London: Cape. Roberts, Jane and Christian Kay. 2000. A Thesaurus of Old English. 2nd edn. Amsterdam: Rodopi. http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus/ (last accessed 10 October 2011). Sampson, Geoffrey. 1980. Schools of Linguistics. London: Hutchinson. Samuels, Michael L. 1972. Linguistic Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1974. A Course in General Linguistics. (Translated by W. Baskin) London: Collins. Scaliger, Josephus Justus. 1610. Diatriba de Europaeorum Linguis. In: Josephus Justus Scaliger, Opuscula varia antehac non edita. Paris: Drouart. Schama, Simon. 1989. Citizens. New York: Knopf. Simpson, John (ed.). 2000– The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd edn. online. Oxford University Press. www.oed.com/ Smith, Jeremy. 1996. An Historical Study of English. London: Routledge. Sweet, Henry. 1876. Anglo-Saxon Reader. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, Henry. 1882. Anglo-Saxon Primer. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, Henry. 1885. The Oldest English Texts. London: Early English Text Society. Sweet, Henry. 1887. A Second Anglo-Saxon Reader: Archaic and Dialectal. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, Henry. 1888. A History of English Sounds. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Szemere´nyi, Oswald. 1999. Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thorkelin, Grimus Johannis. 1815. De Danorum rebus gestis secul. III & IV. Poema danicum dialect anglo-saxonica. Ex bibliotheca Cottoniana Musaei britannici. Copenhagen: J.E. Rangel. Thorpe, Benjamin. 1834. Analecta Anglo-Saxonica. London: J.R. Smith. Wallis, John. 1653. Grammatica lingua anglicanae. London. Wilkins, John. 1668. Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language. London. Winning, William B. 1838. Manual of Comparative Philology, in which the Affinity of the IndoEuropean Languages is Illustrated, and Applied to the Primeval History of Europe, Italy and Rome. London: Rivington. Wright, Elizabeth Mary. 1932. The Life of Joseph Wright. London: Oxford University Press. Wright, Joseph. 1892. Grammar of the Dialect of Windhill. London: English Dialect Society. Wright, Joseph. 1896–1905. English Dialect Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press. Wright, Joseph. 1905. English Dialect Grammar. Oxford: Frowde. Wyld, Henry Cecil. 1936. A History of Modern Colloquial English. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jeremy J. Smith, Glasgow (UK)
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84. History of English Historical Linguistics: North America 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
The 19th century Literary scholars, philologists, and theoretical linguists North America and the world Sociolinguistics Lexicography and lexicology The future References
Abstract The study of the history of the English language in North America, beginning in the 19th century, was a natural extension of the interests of professors of medieval literature. In teaching, this is still largely the case. In research, however, professors of linguistics have added their areas of expertise to our collective knowledge of the subject. Because of institutional structures, most courses in English language history in North America are offered in English departments, and within those departments faculty knowledgeable about the earlier stages of the language do the teaching. Even so, an adequate course now requires attention not only to the traditional topics of phonological and morphological change, the pronunciation of Chaucer and Shakespeare, the lexicographical tradition, Renaissance debates on language, and dialectology, but also at least an awareness of advances in phonological and syntactic theory, grammaticalization, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and English as a global language.
1 The 19th century Serious scholarship on the history of the English language came late to North America. In many ways the lexicographical labors of Noah Webster (1758–1843) during the first three decades of the 19th century were less informed than those of Samuel Johnson half a century earlier, especially in light of European linguistic work that was then in progress. In his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language Webster remained oblivious to the discoveries of Rasmus Rask, Jacob Grimm, and Franz Bopp. He accepted the scriptural account of the dispersion and the origin of languages, and his etymologizing has been described by Sledd and Kolb (1955: 197) as “simple fantasy”. North American scholars in comparative philology such as William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) looked to European scholarship for guidance. Whitney was Professor of Sanskrit and Instructor in Modern Languages in Yale College, and his book on the study of language was dedicated to James Hadley, Professor of Greek in Yale College (Whitney 1889). For the history of the English language, however, scholars in the United States as in England usually came to the subject from an interest in British literature, especially of the medieval period. A younger contemporary of Whitney’s at Yale, Thomas R. Lounsbury (1838–1915) published a one-volume history of the English language (Lounsbury 1879) that set the shape for the next hundred years, though with Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1313–1325
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adjustments to the definition of periods. Lounsbury was a professor in the English Department, and his scholarship included Chaucer, Shakespeare, James Fenimore Cooper, and Robert Browning. He edited the Yale Book of American Verse. Similarly, Oliver F. Emerson (1860–1927), a professor at Cornell University, produced studies of Chaucer and the Pearl poet as well as a book on the dialect of Ithaca, New York, in addition to his one-volume history of the English language (Emerson 1894). The histories by Lounsbury and Emerson make an interesting contrast in their approach to periodization in the history of the English language, for they reflect the debates that were in the air in Victorian times (see Curzan, Chapter 79). In the first place, there was the question of when the earliest stages of the language could actually be considered “English”. Many philologists, including Lounsbury, saw the English language as beginning with what we now call “Middle English”. The terms “Anglo-Saxon” (from the middle of the 5th century to 1150, by Lounsbury’s division) and “SemiSaxon” (1150–1250) emphasized Continental origins. By contrast, Emerson 1894 followed Henry Sweet in calling the earliest stage by the name now used, “Old English”, emphasizing continuity. At the time, “Old English” and “Anglo-Saxon” were rather charged terms that connected to one’s opinion of the effects of the Norman Conquest, especially as elaborated by the British historian, E. A. Freeman, who saw the French influence as an aberration in the development of English culture. It is ironic that the Anglo-Saxons themselves called their language Englisc.
2 Literary scholars, philologists, and theoretical linguists Kemp Malone’s critique of periodization in his essay “When did Middle English begin?” four decades later (see Curzan, Chapter 79) is an example of the continuing work on the history of the English language by distinguished literary scholars. Malone’s co-editor on a mammoth and at the time authoritative Literary History of England (1946) was Albert C. Baugh, who wrote the first edition of A History of the English Language (Baugh and Cable 2012) during the late 1920s and early 1930s. For much of the scholarship on the history of the English language over the past century, it has mattered little whether the investigator was working in North America, Britain, Continental Europe, or Asia. There has been a sense of a common enterprise with generally agreed on aims and methodologies, often with two co-authors making their contributions from different continents – as in the present volume. The extensive collaboration for the Cambridge History of the English Language is another example with contributors from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Canada, and the United States, as well as the UK. As might be expected, approaches influenced by synchronic linguistics diverged from some of the assumptions of traditional philological approaches. With the proliferation of linguistic theories following Bloomfieldian structuralism of the 1930s through the 1950s (Bloomfield 1933; also Sapir 1921), a corresponding multiplicity of histories of the language was unsurprising. The various versions of Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar as well as the work of linguists who refined, extended, and opposed it – in generative semantics, lexical functional grammar, and so on (developments described in Newmeyer 1986; cf. Los, Chapter 102; Bergs, Chapter 103; Allen, Chapter 104) – have brought useful insights to the story but have never supplanted traditional philological approaches.
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Several reasons are obvious. The rapidity with which synchronic theories have changed during the past half century following Chomsky (1957) have made full-scale application to the much slower-paced philology impractical. A cautionary example is McLaughlin (1970), based on the Standard Model of Chomsky (1965). Even the adaptation of theoretical advances to contemporary English grammar has its hazards. James Sledd’s wry comment on his experience (writing in the third person) applied to many textbooks of the time: “The spectacular losses of gambling popularizers of American structuralism are now gruesomely familiar: in 1959 James Sledd published an English grammar (drafted between 1952 and 1954), which was accurately described as out of date at the meeting where its publication was announced” (Hungerford et al. 1970: 10). Current linguistic theory has usually contributed to an understanding of the history of the language on specific slices of the story more than on the overarching narrative – for example Robert P. Stockwell’s work in collaboration with others on the Old English diphthongs and on the Great Vowel Shift. Stockwell and C. Westbrook Barritt (1951) argued that the orthographic alternation of the digraphs ea ~ æ in Old English represented allophones of a single phoneme: healf ‘half ’, hægl ‘hail’. Charles F. Hockett (1959) responded that scribes write representations only at the phonemic level, but they do not systematically show all phonemic contrasts: different spellings can refer regularly to the same phoneme with exactly the same phonetic realization in different morphemes. By this view, then, different spellings cannot refer systematically to allophonic differences. A flurry of articles during the 1950s and 1960s, including Kuhn and Quirk (1953) – another example of trans-Atlantic co-authorship – provided views on an analysis that had its theoretical underpinnings in the phonology of George L. Trager and Henry Lee Smith (1951). By the time James Sledd (1966) published an essay with the title, “Breaking, umlaut, and the Southern drawl”, Chomsky and Halle’s generative phonology had already dispatched Trager-Smith phonology (Chomsky and Halle [1968] being well known in pre-publication circulation), and Sledd’s glancing references to the apparently similar phenomena in Old English were mainly to state the need for such an investigation of the history. Morris Halle is arguably the most important phonologist of the second half of the twentieth century, although his ventures into historical linguistics and literary prosody have been both stimulating and controversial. Chomsky and Halle (1968) contains a chapter on “The Evolution of the Modern English Vowel System” that has met with skepticism, as has Halle’s theory of poetic meter and history of English stress in Halle and Keyser (1971). A more productive use of verse form for insights into linguistic history was Fulk (1992), which resulted in the revival of Kaluza’s Law. By Fulk’s interpretation of Max Kaluza’s insights of 1896 and 1909, patterns of vowel length in the earliest Old English texts is more systematic than has been realized, and these patterns in turn can be used as a key to dating the texts. Still, there can be no doubt that advances in theoretical linguistics, especially phonology, have stimulated a re-examination of traditional explanations of language change. Just as phonemic theory prompted Stockwell and others to offer and debate alternative analyses of Old English digraph spellings, so a decade later generative phonology was the setting for fructifying work within the theory of “lexical diffusion”: “a theory of the implementation of change by its gradual spread through the lexicon” (see Phillips, Chapter 98). The seminal study, Wang (1969), responded to the Neogrammarian program of the 19th century from a heady context of insights, hypotheses, and debates
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by Morris Halle, Paul Postal, Robert D. King, Paul Kiparsky, and others. Whereas Karl Verner had proclaimed, “There must be a rule for irregularity; the problem is to find it”, Postal (1968: 283) memorably asserted: “there is no more reason for languages to change than there is for automobiles to add fins one year and remove them the next, for jackets to have three buttons one year and two the next, etc.” Although Postal’s extreme position gained no adherents, it derived from advances in linguistic theory of the time, now generally assumed, of understanding “sound change” as “grammar change”. Subsequent work in lexical diffusion from Toon (1976) to the present, including Phillips (2006), have long since moved beyond the polemics of the 1960s. Other studies based on theoretical advances in linguistics include work in grammaticalization and lexicalization, notably Hopper and Traugott (1993) and Brinton and Traugott (2005).
3 North America and the world The lack of a national flavor in studies of historical linguistics is especially true of the earlier periods of the language. For Old English, a book like Moore and Knott (1955) in its many editions has no special American bias, and the same is true for the survey of Old, Middle, and Early Modern English in Moore and Marckwardt (1957). Mitchell and Robinson (2011) is co-authored by Bruce Mitchell, an Australian whose academic career was at Oxford University, and Fred C. Robinson, an American. Peter Baker is an American who was a student of Robinson’s at Yale, and his Introduction to Old English (Baker 2012) is “for students whose interests are primarily literary or historical rather than linguistic”. Cassidy and Ringler (1971) amply confirms that Frederic G. Cassidy, one of the most distinguished dialectologists of the 20th century, had scholarly roots in the oldest period of the language. Naturally, for the later states of the language, when national varieties and global spread become the topics of focus, proximity is a factor, and most studies of American English have unsurprisingly been done by American scholars. In 1919 H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) published The American Language (Mencken 1919), which went through four editions and two supplements. It is interesting that the first comprehensive and scholarly treatment of American English was by George P. Krapp (1925), who became the co-editor of the six-volume Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (Krapp and Dobbie 1931– 42). John S. Kenyon in addition to his work on Chaucer’s syntax published on American pronunciation (Kenyon 1924, also Kenyon and Knott 1949), and he wrote a classic essay on “Cultural Levels and Functional Varieties of English” (Kenyon 1948) that would be taken up in more detail and with better methodologies by dialectologists and sociolinguists. The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, published a journal called Dialect Notes between 1896 and 1939. Since 1925 the main journal of the society and a valuable record of the English language has been American Speech. The Society also publishes a monograph series, Publications of the American Dialect Society. Many of the members of ADS and contributors to American Speech also appear in the more recent Journal of English Linguistics. The largest project to involve American historical linguists is the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada. Taking as its model the linguistic atlases of European speech areas, especially French, German, and Italian, the proposal for an American atlas was made in 1928 at a meeting of the Modern Language Association. Work began in 1931 under the direction of Hans Kurath, a native of Austria
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who maintained his contact with the great tradition of Germanic linguistics after his immigration to the United States through mentors and colleagues that included Eduard Prokosch and Leonard Bloomfield. The New England area was the first to be studied, and the results were published in Kurath et al. (1939–43). During the next half century, fieldwork in other areas was carried on at varying rates, and the results of the independent but closely associated investigations appeared in Kurath (1949), Kurath and McDavid (1961), Allen (1973–76), Pederson et al. (1986–92), Carver (1987), Kretzschmar et al. (1993), and numerous articles and handbooks. Atwood (1966) was firmly in the Linguistic Atlas tradition, though a separate project. Good overviews of American dialectology are by McDavid (1983) and Preston (1993). Although “Canada” is in the name of the Linguistic Atlas project, little work on Canadian English was done under its auspices. Brinton and Fee (2001) describe the historical context that sets Canadian English apart from the two major influences upon it, British English and American English: the settlement of Newfoundland by English speakers since the beginning of the seventeenth century; the establishment of two official languages, English and French; and government settlement policy that contributed to the homogeneity of Canadian English over a huge distance, from Ontario west to Vancouver. A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles was compiled and edited between 1957 and 1967, originally under the directorship of C.J. Lovell, and upon his death in 1960 by Walter S. Avis, Matthew H. Scargill, and others (Avis et al. 1967; cf. Dollinger, Chapter 119). The distinctiveness of the English of Newfoundland and Labrador is attested by a separate dictionary, Story et al. (1990), and by Clarke (2010). Among the regions of English as a world language that have been investigated by American linguists the Caribbean is especially prominent, relative proximity again a seeming determinant – for example, Le Page and DeCamp (1960), Cassidy (1961), Cassidy and Le Page (1980), and Hinrichs and Farquharson (2011). Bailey and Go¨rlach (1982) is a good consolidation of much that went before and a precursor of much to come beyond the Western Hemisphere. The most prolific and distinguished scholar of South Asian English is Braj B. Kachru, whose scholarly career has been mainly at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, thus giving a North American university a claim to leadership in the study of the Indian subcontinent. Among Kachru’s many indispensable writings is the recent Asian Englishes beyond the Canon (Kachru 2005).
4 Sociolinguistics Beginning with William A. Labov’s (1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City, the field of sociolinguistics has given a different emphasis to dialects than that of linguistic geography. Especially in urban settings, where the variation is vertical rather horizontal across a map, this approach has been one of the most productive of the past half-century. Among many studies, some of the most prominent are Labov (1972), Mufwene et al. (1998), Eckert and Rickford (2001), Finegan and Rickford (2004), Labov et al. (2006), Rickford (1999), Penfield and Ornstein-Galicia (1985), Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (2006). Turner (1949) is often cited as the classic precursor of the study of African American English, the variety that has received by far the most attention from the 1960s to the present (cf. Lanehart, Chapter 117). Lanehart (2001) and Green (2002) are excellent overviews.
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To give a list of individual features that have been investigated in African American English runs the risk of obscuring the system, regularity, and logic that have been a major theme of investigators from the earliest studies in the 1960s to the present. Many of the features are interrelated – for example, the simplification of consonant clusters in words like list (lis’) and the regular plural formation that follows: lisses, as in kiss/kisses. The aspectual system of verbs has been extensively studied, and the regularities and distinctions are well known; for example the absence of be in sentences like, “She a nurse”, compared with invariant be that marks the grammatical category of habitual or durative action: “He usually be ‘round”. Other verbal patterns include stressed been to indicate action or state in the remote past (“She been married”) and the use of done to emphasize the completed nature of an action (“He done did it”). Accounts of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features such as these in African American English have formed a vast bibliography over several decades. Interest continues both in technical linguistic analyses and in educational implications in scholarship and the popular press. Shortly after scholarly research on African American English began, the question of its origins and early development stimulated sustained debate. Over the past 40 years the discussion has been intense, and different hypotheses have gained ascendancy at different times. Until the middle of the 20th century, the “traditional dialectologist” or “Anglicist” explanation was the only one available: features of African American English were to be found in the regional dialects of Britain and Ireland (e.g., Kurath 1949). During the 1960s and 1970s, an alternative was offered, and much was written in favor of a “creole hypothesis”: current African American English results from a creole language with features of West African languages that was widely spread across the plantations of the South (e.g., Dillard 1972). More recent arguments based on newly examined sources have caused some scholars to return to a “New Dialectologist”, or “neo-Anglicist” position – e.g., Winford (1997, 1998), Poplack and Tagliamonte (2001), and McWhorter (2007). Studies in gender and language have flourished since Robin Tolmach Lakoff ’s 1975 groundbreaking work, Language and Woman’s Place. Early responses to the book often took issue with its methodology, assumptions, and implications, while finding stimulation for further research in its assertions and hypotheses. The identification of specific phonological, syntactic, and lexical features grew out of the dominant linguistic theory of the time, Chomsky’s generative grammar, as Lakoff (2004) acknowledges in her own retrospective. So too did her binary judgments that were offered by analogy with grammatical and ungrammatical patterns, the latter marked by asterisks. As a result of these methods from “core linguistics” (a term that sociolinguists have challenged), along with misreadings of what Lakoff actually said, criticism was leveled at what was seen as an oversimplification: “woman’s language” as an ensemble of tag questions and rising intonations suggesting uncertainty, a rich repertoire of color terms (mauve, magenta, etc.) suggesting trivial concerns, “empty adjectives” like divine, charming, cute, hedges of various kinds (well, kinda, I guess, etc.), the use of the intensive so, “speaking in italics” (frequent tonal accents), superpolite forms, and hypercorrect grammar. This last feature was the source of a paradox in William Labov’s somewhat later findings on language change: women seem to be both at once more conservative in upholding correct forms and more innovative in adopting new forms. As with studies of African American Vernacular English, scholarship on women’s language began with synchronic descriptions to determine the facts and then undertook to consider the
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diachronic implications for the history of the language. Although the impetus for studies of gender and language began in North America during the 1970s, at present more historical work is being done in Europe, using databases, for example, of Early English correspondence. Meanwhile, analyses of present-day usage have become more nuanced. For example, Tannen (1993) shows the relativity of forms and traces how a single pattern, such as those catalogued as woman’s language, can have quite different meanings. Along the way, of course, empirical studies in conversational analysis that were not available to Lakoff in the early 1970s have increased our understanding immensely – and have expanded the methods of data collection from judgment by introspection only that was the practice of the time.
5 Lexicography and lexicology To return to the topic with which this survey began, Noah Webster and dictionaries. The publication in 1961 of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Gove 1961) was a lexicographical triumph and a marketing disaster. What would now be called a “database” of 10,000,000 citation slips was twice the number used to compile the original Oxford English Dictionary. Yet a misunderstanding of “structural linguistics” among reviewers in newspapers and magazines, not helped by the representation of Philip B. Gove, the editor, caused many to see a weakening of the moral fabric of the nation in the failure of the dictionary to legislate usage. The journalistic response to Webster’s Third is collected in Sledd and Ebbitt (1962), along with instructive guidance by the editors on the history and intent of English lexicography. Headlines for the reviews indicate the dictionary’s reception, ranging from giddy wit – “Dig Those Words” (New York Times), “Good English Ain’t What We Thought” (Chicago Daily News) – to the apocalyptic – “The Death of Meaning” (Toronto Globe & Mail), “New Dictionary Cheap, Corrupt”, a review that managed to link the dictionary to “bolsheviks … firing squads, mass trials, progaganda, etc. (Castro)” (Detroit News). Finally, among the large-scale projects that will continue to contribute to our understanding of the history of the English language are three lexicographical undertakings that have involved many contributors over time, and several in-depth studies of words and lexicology. The Middle English Dictionary was a half-century in the making at the University of Michigan, whose press has published many studies in English historical linguistics over the years. At the University of Toronto, the Dictionary of Old English is still in progress under the editorship of Antonette diPaolo Healey (1986–). And Fred G. Cassidy, who was a scholar of great distinction in areas already noted in this survey, was the mover behind A Dictionary of American Regional English (Cassidy and Hall 1985–2012), completed after his death. The study of English language lexicography and lexicology has been advanced in the United States by the scholarship of John Algeo (for example, Algeo 2010; Algeo and Algeo 1991), whose expertise on vocabulary enhanced the textbook that was originally written by Thomas Pyles and published in 1964. That book went through several editions under the co-authorship of Pyles and Algeo, and now continues under Algeo’s name. Textbooks for use in history of the English language courses often serve this dual function of summarizing the work of a wide range of specialists and also contributing insights from the particular point of view of the authors – for example, Baugh and Cable (2002), Millward (1996), Gelderen (2006), Brinton and Arnovick (2011), and Lerer (2007).
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6 The future The mention of lexicographical databases at the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan is a reminder that the history of the English language thrives in settings that have archives of primary material. Similarly, the University of Georgia with its holdings of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada is a center of research. Although electronic access to databases around the world is becoming easier, proximity always offers encouragement. Proximity to a distinguished department of linguistics has been a boon to English department philologists, who are often down the hall from theoretical linguists at places like the University of California at Los Angeles and at Berkeley, Indiana University, Stanford University, and the Universities of Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and British Columbia. The institutional relationship is sometimes an uneasy one, in part because departments of Linguistics in North America were carved out of the traditional language departments after which the interests of the separate entities diverged. A succinct example is the schedule for the annual convention of the Modern Language Association of America and the Linguistic Society of America. For decades the two organizations met in the same city at the same time, but in recent years commuting between sessions of the simultaneous conventions has not been possible. A more encouraging development for history of the English language scholars is the biennial conference SHEL (Studies in the History of the English Language), founded at UCLA in 2000 on the model of the well-established biennial conference in Europe, the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL). Since its inception, SHEL has drawn wide participation by English and Linguistics scholars alike in conferences at the Universities of Washington, Michigan, Northern Arizona, and Georgia, and at Banff, Alberta, Canada. Laments and exhortations concerning the rift between traditional philology and newer linguistics go back to the rise of structuralism in the mid-20th century. Now the rift is so fixed that laments are seldom heard; the situation is accepted as given. Publications in phonology, syntax, semantics, stylistics, and pragmatics pour from Linguistics departments in the United States at an increasing rate, though it is often difficult to fit these into a general history of the English language. A perusal of the MLA International Bibliography confirms the activity in technical studies. Those pages also suggest that even in traditional philology, little work is coming out of English departments in North America, the bulk of activity now flowing from Europe and Asia. Some of this scholarship continues distinguished traditions in the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Japan, and other countries. Meanwhile, in the United States the focus of departments of English often gives little encouragement to either traditional philology or technical linguistics. Still, the history of the English language is an intrinsically interesting subject, and its anecdotal aspects are appealing to a wide general audience. Even English departments in the United States have the ability to adapt to demand, and the best courses, one is led to think from observation and experience, are undergirded by research and expertise at a specialized level. The kind of re-integration of “philology” and “linguistics” that Minkova (2004) urges is a hopeful vision for the future.
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7 References Algeo, John [1964] 2010. The Origins and Development of the English Language. 6th edn. Boston: Wadsworth. Algeo, John and Adele S. Algeo. 1991. Fifty Years “Among the New Words”: A Dictionary of Neologisms, 1941–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allen, Harold B. 1973–76. The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest. 3 vols. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Amos, Ashley Crandell. 1980. Linguistic Means of Determining the Dates of Old English Literary Texts. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Medieval Academy of America. Atwood, Elmer Bagby. 1966. The Regional Vocabulary of Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press. Avis, Walter S., Matthew H. Scargill, and Charles J. Lovell (eds.). 1967. A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Toronto: Gage. Bailey, Richard W. 1996. Nineteenth-Century English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bailey, Richard W. and Manfred Go¨rlach (eds.). 1982. English as a World Language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Baker, Peter S. [2003] 2012. Introduction to Old English. 3rd edn. Norton, Massachusetts: WileyBlackwell. Baron, Dennis. 1986. Grammar and Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press. Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable [1935] 2012. A History of the English Language. 6th edn. Newyork: Pearson. Blockley, Mary. 2001. Aspects of Old English Syntax: Where Clauses Begin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt. Brinton, Laurel J. 2008. The Comment Clause in English: Syntactic Origins and Pragmatic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinton, Laurel J. and Margery Fee. 2001. Canadian English. In: John Algeo (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 6, English in North America, 422–440. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinton, Laurel J. and Leslie K. Arnovick. 2011. The English Language: A Linguistic History. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brinton, Laurel J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cannon, Christopher. 1998. The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carver, Craig M. 1987. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Cassidy, Frederic G. and Joan Houston Hall (ed.). 1985–2012. Dictionary of American Regional English. 6 Vols. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Cassidy, Frederic G. 1961. Jamaica Talk: Three Hundred Years of the English Language in Jamaica. London: Macmillan. Cassidy, Frederic G. and Robert Brock Le Page (eds.) [1967] 1980. Dictionary of Jamaican English. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cassidy, Frederic G. and Richard N. Ringler [1891] 1971. Bright’s Old English Grammar & Reader. 3rd edn. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. Clarke, Sandra. 2010. Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Curzan, Anne. 2003. Gender Shifts in the History of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Dillard, J. L. 1972. Black English: Its History and Usage in the United States. New York: Random House. Donoghue, Daniel. 1987. Style in Old English Poetry: The Test of the Auxiliary. New Haven: Yale University Press. Eble, Connie. 1996. Slang & Sociability: In-Group Language among College Students. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Eckert, Penelope and John R. Rickford (eds.). 2001. Style and Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eliason, Norman E. 1956. Tarheel Talk: An Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Emerson, Oliver Farrar. 1894. The History of the English Language. New York: Macmillan. Finegan, Edward and John R. Rickford (eds.). 2004. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twentyfirst Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, John H. 1996. The Emergence of Standard English. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. Friend, Joseph H. 1967. The Development of American Lexicography, 1798–1864. The Hague: Mouton. Fulk, Robert D. 1992. A History of Old English Meter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. van Gelderen, Elly. 2006. A History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gove, Philip B. (ed.). 1961. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language. Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam. Green, Lisa J. 2002. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halle, Morris and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1971. English Stress: Its Form, Its Growth, and Its Role in Verse. New York: Harper & Row. Healey, Antonette diPaolo. 1986– Dictionary of Old English. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Hinrichs, Lars and Joseph T. Farquharson (eds.). 2011. Variation in the Caribbean: From Creole Continua to Individual Agency. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hockett, Charles F. 1959. The stressed syllabics of Old English. Language 35: 575–597. Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott [1993] 2003. Grammaticalization. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hungerford, Harold, Jay Robinson, and James Sledd (eds.). 1970. English Linguistics: An Introductory Reader. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman. Kachru, Braj B. 2005. Asian Englishes beyond the Canon. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kennedy, Arthur G. 1927. Bibliography of Writings on the English Language. Cambridge and New Haven: Harvard University Press and Yale University Press. Kenyon, John S. [1924] 1997. American Pronunciation. 12th edn. by Donald M Lance and Stewart A Kingsbury. Ann Arbor: Wahr. Kenyon, John S. 1948. Cultural levels and functional varieties of English. College English 10: 1–6. Kenyon, John S. and Thomas A. Knott. 1949. A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam. King, Robert D. 1969. Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Krapp, George P. 1925. The English Language in America. 2 vols. New York: Century. Krapp, George P. [1909] 1969. Modern English, Its Growth and Present Use. Revised by A. H. Marckwardt. New York: Ungar.
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Krapp, George P. and Eliot van Kirk Dobbie (eds.). 1931–42. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. 6 vols. New York: Columbia University Press. Kretzschmar, William A., Virginia G. McDavid, Theodore K. Lerud, and Ellen Johnson. 1993. Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, Sherman M. and Randolph Quirk. 1953. Some recent interpretations of Old English digraph spellings. Language 29: 143–156. Kurath, Hans, Miles L. Hanley, Bernard Bloch, Marcus L. Hansen, and Julia Bloch. 1939–43. Linguistic Atlas of New England. 3 vols. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University. Kurath, Hans. 1949. A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kurath, Hans and Raven McDavid, Jr. 1961. The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kurath, Hans, Sherman M. Kuhn, John Reidy, and Robert E. Lewis (eds.). 1952–2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (eds.). 2006. Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lakoff, Robin Tolmach [1975] 2004. Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries. Revised and expanded edition by Mary Bucholtz. New York: Oxford University Press. Lanehart, Sonja L. (ed.). 2001. Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Le Page, Robert Brock and David DeCamp. 1960. Jamaican Creole. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Lerer, Seth. 2007. Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language. New York: Columbia University Press. Lighter, Jonathan E., J. Ball, and J. O’Connor. 1994–2002. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House. Lounsbury, Thomas R. [1879] 1894. A History of the English Language. 2nd edn. New York: Holt. Machan, Tim William. 2003. English in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 2004. Positioning ideas and gendered subjects: “Women’s Language” revisited. In: Lakoff, 136–142. McDavid, Raven I, Jr. 1983. American English: a bibliographical essay. In: Jefferson B. Kellogg and Robert H. Walker (eds.), Sources for American Studies, 229–272. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. McLaughlin, John C. 1970. Aspects of the History of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. McWhorter, John H. 2007. Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malone, Kemp. 1930. When did Middle English begin? In: J. T. Hatfield et al. (eds.), Curme Volume of Linguistic Studies, 110–117. Philadelphia: Waverly. Marckwardt, Albert H. 1958. American English. New York: Oxford University Press. Mencken, H. L. [1919] 1936. The American Language. 4th edn. New York: Knopf. Millward, Celia M. [1989] 1996. A Biography of the English Language. 2nd edn. Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace. Minkova, Donka. 1982. The environment for Middle English open syllable lengthening. Folia Linguistica Historica 3(1): 29–58. Minkova, Donka. 1991. The History of Final Vowels in English: The Sound of Muting. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Minkova, Donka. 2003. Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Minkova, Donka. 2004. Philology, linguistics, and the history of [hw] ~ [w]. In: Anne Curzan and Kimberly Emmons (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language II: Unfolding Conversations, 7–46. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mitchell, Bruce and Fred C. Robinson [1965] 2011. A Guide to Old English. 8th edn. Norton, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell. Momma, Haruko and Michael Matto (eds.). 2008. A Companion to the History of the English Language. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Moore, Samuel [1919] 1957. Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections. Revised by Albert H Marckwardt. Ann Arbor: Wahr. Moore, Samuel Sanford B. Meech, and Harold Whitehall. 1935. Middle English dialect characteristics and dialect boundaries. University of Michigan Publications in Language and Literature 13: 1–60. Moore, Samuel and Thomas A. Knott [1919] 1955. The Elements of Old English. 10th edn. Ann Arbor: Wahr. Mufwene, Salikoko S., John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh (eds.). 1998. AfricanAmerican English: Structure, History and Use. London: Routledge. Newmeyer, Frederick J. [1980] 1986. Linguistic Theory in America. 2nd edn. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Pederson, Lee, Susan Leas McDaniel, Guy Bailey, and Marvin Bassett (eds.). 1986–92. Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States. 7 vols. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Penfield, Joyce and Jacob L. Ornstein-Galicia. 1985. Chicano English: An Ethnic Contact Dialect. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Phillips, Betty S. 2006. Word Frequency and Lexical Diffusion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Poplack, Shana and Sali Tagliamonte. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora. Oxford: Blackwell. Postal, Paul M. 1968. Aspects of Phonological Theory. New York: Harper & Row. Preston, Dennis R. 1993. American Dialect Research. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pyles, Thomas. 1952. Words and Ways of American English. New York: Random House. Rickford, John R. 1999. African American Vernacular English. Oxford: Blackwell. Robinson, Orrin W. 1992. Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Sledd, James. 1966. Breaking, umlaut, and the Southern drawl. Language 42: 18–41. Sledd, James and Gwin J. Kolb. 1955. Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary: Essays in the Biography of a Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sledd, James and Wilma R. Ebbitt. 1962. Dictionaries and That Dictionary: A Casebook on the Aims of Lexicographers and the Targets of Reviewers. Chicago: Scott, Foresman. Starnes, DeWitt Talmage and Gertrude Noyes. 1946. The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Stockwell, Robert P. and C. Westbrook Barritt. 1951. Some Old English Graphic-Phonemic Correspondences. Norman, Oklahoma: Battenburg. Stockwell, Robert P. and C. Westbrook Barritt. 1961. Scribal practice: some assumptions. Language 37: 75–82. Stockwell, Robert P. and Donka Minkova. 1988. The English Vowel Shift: problems of coherence and explanation. In: Dieter Kastovsky and Gero Bauer (eds.), Luick Revisited, 355–394. Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr. Stockwell, Robert P. and Donka Minkova. 1999. Explanations of sound change: contradictions between dialect data and theories of chain shifting. Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 30: 83–102. Story, George M., W. J. Kirwin, and John David Allison Widdowson (eds.) [1982] 1990. Dictionary of Newfoundland English. 2nd edn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You Just Don’t Understand. New York: Morrow.
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Tannen, Deborah (ed.). 1993. Gender and Conversational Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press. Tannen, Deborah. 1994. The relativity of linguistic strategies: Rethinking power and solidarity in gender and dominance. In: Deborah Tannen (ed.), Gender and Discourse, 165–188. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toon, Thomas. 1976. The actuation and implementation of an Old English sound change. Proceedings of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States 3: 614–622. Trager, George L. and Henry Lee Smith. 1951. An Outline of English Structure. Norman, Oklahoma: Battenburg. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1972. A History of English Syntax: A Transformational Approach to the History of English Sentence Structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. Syntax. In: Richard M. Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 1, The Beginnings to 1066, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Lorenzo Dow. 1949. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wang, William S-Y. 1969. Competing changes as a cause of residue. Language 45: 9–25. Webster, Noah. 1828. An American Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. New York: Converse. Whitney, William D. [1867] 1889. Language and the Study of Language. New York: Scribner. Winford, Donald. 1997. On the origins of African American Vernacular English – a creolist perspective (Part I: the sociohistorical background). Diachronica 14: 305–344. Winford, Donald. 1998. On the origins of African American Vernacular English – a creolist perspective (Part II: the linguistic features). Diachronica 15: 99–154. Wolfram, Walt and Natalie Schilling-Estes [1998] 2006. American English: Dialects and Variation. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Wolfram, Walt and Erik R. Thomas. 2002. The Development of African American English. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thomas Cable, Austin, TX (USA)
85. History of English Historical Linguistics: Germany and the German-speaking countries 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Introduction The 19th and early 20th century: the rise of English historical linguistics in Germany The 20th century Summary References
Abstract This essay gives a description of the rise of English historical linguistics in Germany and the German-speaking cultural area in the late 19th- and early 20th century, presenting information on important scholars at several German universities and their works in English philology and medieval studies. It is shown how historical comparative linguists Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1325–1340
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and the Neogrammarians contributed significantly to the advance of studies in English historical linguistics, particularly to new developments in historical phonology but also in morphology and syntax. The essay further deals with the influence of structuralism and generative grammar on English historical linguistics in Germany in the 20th century. Finally, recent developments within the framework of corpus-based sociolinguistic research are described, although, on the other hand, for the last decades we have been facing a growing trend towards modern language studies and a constant decline in the study of earlier stages in the history of English.
1 Introduction English historical linguistics enjoys a rich and fascinating history in Germany and the German speaking cultural area. Especially for the 19th and early 20th centuries it is difficult to confine this scholarly discipline to Germany alone since borders were much more flexible and amenable to change than today. Furthermore, professors and students were very mobile. For example, the first ordinarius (full professor) for English Language and Literature at Humboldt University Berlin, Julius Zupitza (1844–1895), had studied in Breslau and Berlin. After his habilitation (the German postdoctoral lecturer qualification) in Breslau he taught for several years at Vienna University before he was appointed ordinarius in Berlin. Such a career was no exception at all at that time. Another example is Alois Pogatscher (1852–1935). He had studied Classical Philology and German Studies in Graz, and German Studies, Anglistics and Romanistics in Vienna. In 1889, he received his PhD from the University of Strasbourg. In the same year he was appointed to a professorship for English Studies at the German University in Prague. Later he became Karl Luick’s (1865–1935) successor in Graz (for biographical references cf. Haenicke and Finkenstaedt 1992; for the first professorial positions in the New Philologies at German-speaking universities cf. Auroux et al. 2000–01: 1244–1247). German university teachers also taught courses in the Netherlands, and Dutch scholars were trained in Germany. Thus the German scholar Karl Daniel Bu¨lbring (1863– 1917) was appointed professor of English Language and Literature in Groningen before he changed to the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universita¨t Bonn. On the other hand, the first professor of Comparative Philology in Groningen, Barend Sijmons (1853– 1935), had been trained in Leipzig (Supheert 1996: 11–12). German universities generally attracted students from abroad, and so it happened that American or English graduate authors published their dissertations or articles in German journals, often written in the German language. These aspects of mobility and internationalization have to be kept in mind when talking about the “German” tradition in English historical linguistics. In my chapter I will first be discussing the beginning of English historical linguistics in Germany. It will be shown how philological studies and historical comparative linguistics grew together, and which universities became important centers for the study of English historical linguistics. I will then turn to 20th century pre- and post-war and look at the role that this topic played as a university subject up to the 1980s in East and West Germany. During that period we also notice the change of English historical linguistics as part of English philology, which in the 19th century was basically concerned with the history of language and literature, or medieval studies (cf. “Das
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eigentliche Gebiet der englischen wie jeder modernen Philologie ist ohne Zweifel […] die Literaturgeschichte und die Geschichte der Sprache” (Vie¨tor 1910 [1887]: 5) [‘The real area of English philology, as well as of any other modern philology, is without doubt […] the history of literature and the history of language’]), to a subdiscipline of linguistics with its various theoretical approaches. Finally, with an examination of the current status of English historical linguistics at German universities we find that, together with English medieval studies, it appears to be constantly marginalized (cf. also Johnston 2007).
2 The 19th and early 20th century: the rise of English historical linguistics in Germany English historical linguistics in Germany has its origin in two different but nevertheless interrelated fields of study, English philology and historical-comparative linguistics, which, in the last quarter of the 19th century, were both flourishing disciplines at particular German universities. English philology, as mentioned above, was a historical discipline focussing on the history of English language and literature, while historicalcomparative linguistics was chiefly concerned with the comparison of ancient IndoEuropean languages with the aim of verifying family relationships and reconstructing the proto-language.
2.1 English philology The first chairs for English philology at German universities were established in the 1870s (cf. Christmann 1985a, 1985b). Up to that time professors or lecturers had usually taught several modern Western languages and their literatures. Now they could concentrate on English alone. However, they were still equally familiar with medieval English literature as well as with the history of the English language, since philology was concerned with the study of the history of language and literature. Chairs for English Philology were founded at almost all universities in Germany, although it can be argued that they contributed to a different extent to the progress of this new academic discipline in the German-speaking countries. The most important centers for research and teaching in the field of English Philology were Berlin, Bonn, Breslau, Go¨ttingen, Halle-Wittenberg, Heidelberg, Jena, Kiel, Leipzig, Marburg, Mu¨nchen, Mu¨nster, and Strasbourg. Research was largely dominated by textual studies and editorial practice and concentrated on the earliest stages of the language. Early publications were primarily critical editions of previously unpublished manuscripts and contained introductions, prefaces, glosses, commentaries, annotations, afterwords, etc., and as such provided invaluable material for further studies. Other works dealt with phonological and grammatical features of individual texts, addressing questions of authenticity, chronology or textual transmission, such as the dissertations by H. Noelle (1870) on Die Sprache Des Altenglischen Gedichts. Von der Eule und Nachtigall, by Wilhelm Heuser (1887) on Die Mittelenglischen Legenden von St. Editha und St. Etheldreda: Eine Untersuchung u¨ber Sprache und Autorschaft, or by Friedrich Mohr (1888) on Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu den mittelenglischen Legenden
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aus Gloucestershire. There are also metrical studies of Old or Middle English poetry, investigations of syntactic or morphological phenomena in English historical texts, etymological analyses, and treatises on foreign influence on the English vocabulary.
2.1.1 Main centers of study and important scholars At the Prussian University of Breslau Eugen K. Ko¨lbing (1846–1899) had been professor of English Philology from 1880 to 1899. Under his direction, English philology in Breslau gained a high reputation and appreciation among scholars and students nationwide. Ko¨lbing has not only been acknowledged for his brilliant critical editions of medieval texts, but also for his contribution to a productive exchange of ideas among English philologists by founding the journal Englische Studien. Furthermore, he encouraged numerous doctoral students to produce critical editions and analyses of predominantly Middle English texts in which problems were discussed concerning the authorship or sources of a text, its authenticity, and questions about its transmission, major lexicographic or grammatical features, the influence of Latin or Old French originals, meter and rhyme, the motifs of a text, or dialect traits. Another stronghold in English philology at that time was the University of Go¨ttingen. Here Arthur Napier (1853–1916) had taught from 1881 to 1883 before he went to Oxford University. Later on, the famous Lorenz Morsbach (1850–1945) held the chair of English Philology from 1902 to 1921. He belonged to the early German Anglicists who changed from classical philology to English language and literature. Morsbach taught everything from linguistics to literature and from Old English to Modern English. He also supervised PhD theses on English literature, but in his research he concentrated on English historical linguistics. His Mittelenglische Grammatik (1896) and his editions of Old and Middle English texts have become classics (cf. Schabram 2001: 304). At the University of Heidelberg Johannes Hoops (1865–1949) taught from 1896 until his death in 1949. His Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (1911–1940), to which he contributed almost 100 articles himself, was used by two generations of scholars as a reliable reference book. Though his main interests lay in the field of etymology, he also published a Beowulf commentary (1932), and he edited 49 volumes of Englische Studien, 21 volumes of Englische Textbibliothek, and 88 volumes of Anglistische Forschungen. 75 doctoral dissertations were written under his supervision, quite a number of them by American students (cf. Hausmann 2003: 238). At Kiel University Ferdinand Holthausen (1860–1956) was professor of English Philology from 1900 to 1925. He has become famous for his lexicographical research. His Altenglisches etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch (1934) appeared in its third edition (a reprint of the second edition) in 1974. Under Holthausen’s guidance numerous dissertations were written mainly on lexicological or lexicographical topics, such as Old English prefixes, changes in the English lexicon, the Old English names for ships, buildings, vessels, kinship terms, body parts, jewelry, and others. In Marburg it was Wilhelm Vie¨tor (1850–1918), who made the English chair of Marburg University one of the most respected in Germany. Vie¨tor, who taught at Marburg from 1884 till his death in 1918, is mainly known for his engagement in the reform movement in modern language teaching, and for his phonetic and orthoepic works, which he applied to practical language classes. Nevertheless, he also published on related topics in the history of English, including Anglo-Saxon runes. His main interest,
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however, lay in aspects of the more recent history of English. He examined contemporary grammars of the 16th and 17th century in order to derive information about the pronunciation of that time, and he edited Early Modern English texts with phonetic transcription, as for instance A Shakespeare reader in the old spelling and with a phonetic transcription (1906). It is thus not surprising that several of the dissertations that he supervised also dealt with problems of orthography and phonological features in historical texts. The most prominent scholar in English philology at Mu¨nster University was probably Eugen Einenkel (1853–1930). He had been head of the English department since 1886 and in 1892 he was appointed the first extraordinary professor of English Philology there. His teaching subjects comprised the history of English literature up to the present, English historical linguistics as well as practical language classes. For more than 30 years he was in charge of editing the journal Anglia, to which he himself regularly contributed articles. His merits, especially in the field of English historical syntax, are still appreciated today. The Kaiser-Wilhelm-University Strasbourg was the first German-speaking university that established a special chair for English Studies. Its holder was Bernhard ten Brink (1841–1892) from 1872 to 1892. He is thus an important founding father at the beginning of English philology in Germany. During his early years at Strasbourg he also taught Romance literatures and Dutch language and literature, but then he concentrated more and more on English philology. His extensive publications particularly on the history of English literature and on Chaucer also appeared as translations in England.
2.1.2 The first female scholars There were only male university teachers of English philology in Germany in those early times, and even among the students women were very rare. It is interesting to note that the first female scholars who received their PhDs in English philology at a German university included American students at the University of Heidelberg: Erla Hittle, from Richmond, Indiana, graduated in 1900 with a work on the Old English preposition mid. One year later Louise Pound (1872–1958) finished her doctoral dissertation on Comparison of Adjectives in English in the XV and XVI Century. Both dissertations were supervised by Johannes Hoops and published in the series Anglistische Forschungen. Louise Pound had first applied to Leipzig, where she was rigorously rejected. Heidelberg was obviously more tolerant in this respect. After she had finished her PhD in Heidelberg Pound returned to the United States and enjoyed a lifelong career as professor of English at the University of Nebraska. She even became the first woman president of the Modern Language Association (Krohn 2007: 87–98). Among Hoops’s other female doctoral students were Ida Baumann (1875–?) and Lilian Luise Stroebe (1875–?). Ida Baumann took her doctorate in 1902 with a dissertation on Die Sprache der Urkunden aus Yorkshire im 15. Jahrhundert and Lilian Luise Stroebe finished her PhD in 1904 on Die altenglischen Kleidernamen. Since at that time German universities admitted only those female students that wanted to become teachers, Stroebe emigrated to the United States, where she started an excellent career as an American Germanist.
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2.2 Historical comparative linguistics and the Neogrammarians The 19th century saw the rise of Indo-European studies in Europe and particularly in Germany. Apart from Sanskrit and the classical languages, the older Germanic “dialects” became the central objects of comparative philology practiced by Franz Bopp, Jacob Grimm, and Eduard Sievers. Franz Bopp (1791–1867) can be regarded as the founding father of historical-comparative Indo-European linguistics. In his principal work Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Zend, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Gotischen und Deutschen (1833–1852) he laid the foundation for a consolidated interest in the older stages of the Germanic languages as well. Bopp was professor of Oriental Literature and General Linguistics at Berlin from 1821 to his death in 1867. From 1841 Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) also gave lectures in Berlin, and in 1876 Johannes Schmidt (1843–1901) was appointed chair of Comparative Linguistics and founded the “Berlin School” of philological Indo-European studies, in contrast to the Leipzig Neogrammarian school. This situation also had an impact on the philologies of the modern languages. In 1876 Julius Zupitza (1844–1895) was called from Vienna, where he had been extraordinarius for North Germanic languages, to become the first chair (ordinarius) for English Philology in Berlin. He had studied classical and German philology, in addition to Sanskrit and “Neuere Sprachen” (‘Modern Languages’). In Berlin he taught Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old and Middle High German, Old French, Old Provencal, as well as Old and Middle English. By teaching English as a medieval language he managed to enhance its scientific prestige and contributed to the recognition of English philology as a university subject. With his publications covering the whole area of English studies he gained a high reputation on a national and international scale (Ko¨nig 2003: 2118; cf. also Wu¨lker 1896). After Zupitza’s death in 1895, Alois Brandl (1855–1940), who had been ordinarius of English Philology at Strasbourg, succeeded him in Berlin. Although he published in all fields of English historical linguistics, his primary interest was in the area of Shakespeare studies. From 1901 to 1921 he was president of the German Shakespeare Society. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Leipzig became the center of the Neogrammarian school in linguistics. Philologists were no longer satisfied with the collection and descriptive comparison of historical language data. They were now searching for explanations of language change comparable to explanations in the natural sciences. Scholars like Georg Curtius (1820–1885), August Leskien (1840–1916), and later Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) and Eduard Sievers (1871–1922) attracted many ambitious young people, not only from Germany, to study historical linguistics there. Windisch (1887: 31) claims that “Over the years, about 340 students attended Curtius’s seminars on grammar; approximately 60 of them were foreigners, of whom U.S. citizens made up the largest percentage.” Marie Krohn (2007: 87) points out that “[d]uring the 19th century, German universities set the standard for scholarship in the Western world and attracted at least 10,000 American students”. Thus, at the end of the 19th century Leipzig University had indeed turned into a world center of linguistics. During that time, in 1875 the first chair of English Philology was also established at Leipzig. Its holder was Richard Paul Wu¨lcker (from 1884: Wu¨lker) (1845–1910), the founder of the journal Anglia. With the foundation of the “Englisches Seminar” in 1891 he established English as an academic subject in its own right at Leipzig. Wu¨lker was primarily a historical linguist in the Neogrammarian tradition, but he also published
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a two-volume history of English literature. Furthermore, he was a diligent editor of Old and Middle English texts. Students at universities like the one in Leipzig had the advantage of being able to attend courses not only in their chosen philology, but also courses in general or comparative linguistics offered by the representatives of the Neogrammarian school. Hertel confirms that Die Vorlesung u¨ber Phonetik [bei Sievers] insbesondere wurde nicht nur von Studierenden der Sprachwissenschaft und der Germanistik, sondern auch von solchen der neueren Sprachen besucht, die hier fanden, was sie in den Vorlesungen u¨ber ihr eigentliches Studiengebiet vergeblich suchten. (Hertel 1923: 21) [Not only students of linguistics and German studies went to hear the lectures about phonetics [by Sievers], but also those who studied modern languages as they found here what they were missing in the lectures on their actual area of study.]
One of the most famous graduates of the Leipzig School and representatives of the Neogrammarian movement was certainly Hermann Paul (1846–1921). He had finished his PhD and his habilitation in Leipzig before he was appointed professor of German Language and Literature in Freiburg and later in Munich. Together with Wilhelm Braune (1850–1926), professor of German Language and Literature in Gießen, who had also obtained his habilitation from the University of Leipzig, he founded the journal Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur in 1874. In Munich Hermann Paul led the “Seminar fu¨r Deutsche Philologie” from 1893 to 1916. Besides, there had already existed a “Seminar fu¨r neuere Sprachen und Literaturen” since 1876 at Munich University, whose two chairs, one in Romance and one in English, were separated in 1896 with Joseph Schick (1859–1944), a distinguished medievalist and text editor, becoming professor of English Philology. He was a member of the council of the Early English Text Society, and had been holder of the Kaiser Wilhelm chair at Columbia University in New York in 1911/12. Halle, Jena, and Bonn are also universities with a great tradition in historical comparative linguistics. In Halle it was August Friedrich Pott (1802–1887), known as the founder of modern etymology, and later his student Berthold Delbru¨ck (1842–1922), one of the Neogrammarians, from whom the philologies received valuable impulses. With the foundation of the English Seminar in 1876 Karl Elze (1821–1889) was appointed ordinarius of English Philology, succeeded by one of his students, Albrecht Wagner (1850–1909), in 1887. In 1870 Delbru¨ck moved to Jena, where he was appointed as chair in Sanskrit and Comparative Linguistics. A year later Eduard Sievers was also called to Jena as professor for German Philology, but he also lectured in Romanistics and Anglistics. Delbru¨ck and Sievers became close friends there. They taught several courses together, Delbru¨ck concentrating on the historical part and Sievers focusing on phonetics (Lu¨hr 2008). When Sievers left Jena in 1883, he was succeeded by Friedrich Kluge (1856–1925), who became ordinarius for German and English Philology. The great philologist and Shakespearean scholar Nikolaus Delius (1813–1888) was lector and later ordinarius for Indian, English and Romance Philology at the University of Bonn. One of his pupils, Jakob Schipper (1842–1915), who was to become professor of English Philology in Vienna, even called him the “founding father of English
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Philology in Germany” (Haenicke and Finkenstaedt 1992: 65). Delius’s tradition was later continued in Bonn by Moritz Trautmann (1842–1920), who had been called from Leipzig in 1880. He held the first independent chair for English Philology in Bonn till his retirement in 1912. Thus the first scholars who had shown a profound interest in the Anglo-Saxon language (as one of the old Germanic dialects) and its literature came from the field of historical-comparative Indo-European linguistics and in particular from Germanic studies, like the Vienna professor of German Karl Tomaschek (1828–1878), who also offered courses on Old English; and Ludwig Ettmu¨ller (1802–1877), who, during his time as a schoolmaster for German language and literature at the Zurich gymnasium, provided the first alliterative translation of Beowulf and a well-known Lexicon Anglo-Saxonicum; and Christian W. M. Grein (1825–1877), who obtained his doctorate for a critical edition of the Hildebrandslied and later edited a Bibliothek der Angelsa¨chsischen Poesie in kritisch bearbeiteten Texten und mit vollsta¨ndigem Glossare herausgegeben (1857–64). Henry Morley (1897: 116) pays tribute to these authors in the following way: “Let it be gratefully remembered that in work of this kind they have done far more than we. Mu¨llenhoff, Ettmu¨ller, Leo, Bouterwek, Grein, Heyne, Wu¨lcker, Sievers, Ten Brink, Ebert, and a dozen more, are names honoured in England wherever English is well studied”. One can say that it was the mutual inspiration between historical comparative and Neogrammarian studies on the one hand, and the increasing academic specialization in the philologies on the other, that led to the flourishing of English historical linguistics in the late 19th and early 20th century in Germany. Inspired by new insights into the mechanisms of sound change and language change in general and by an increasing availability of text editions, the early 20th century witnessed a flood of phonological, morphological and syntactic analyses of Old and Middle English texts.
2.2.1 Studies in phonology The question of sound laws and the regularity of sound change was widely discussed in the Neogrammarian era. New ideas about mechanisms and principles of sound change also gave inspiration to scholars in English philology, and as a consequence there appeared a large number of publications dealing with particular sounds in Old and Middle English texts, often referring to specific dialects. Handbooks and “Grammars” of Old English are mainly concerned with the sound structure. Of special interest for English historical philologists of that time were the sound changes that took place in Middle English and later in Early Modern English. This trend was still accelerating in the early 20th century. Henry Cecil Wyld in his History of English in 1914 tells his readership that his book is just a short primer for students and that for detailed studies they should consult any of the German works: No one will expect to find in each of the three chapters devoted respectively to Old, Middle, and Modern English Phonology the degree of minuteness which would belong, properly, to special grammars of these phases of our language. The student who is particularly interested in any of these will naturally turn to the pages of Sievers and Bu¨lbring, to Morsbach’s Mittelenglische Grammatik, still unfortunately incomplete, to the works of Horn and Jespersen, all of which are first-hand and first-rate books. (Wyld 1914: 5–6)
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In his preface Wyld also expresses his obligation to mainly German scholars from whom he has drawn information: “[…] to Sievers and Bu¨lbring in Old English, to Morsbach, Kluge, ten Brink, and Frieshammer in Middle English, to Luick, Horn, Jespersen, Vie¨tor, and Zachrisson in the Modern period” (Wyld 1914: 6). When Sievers in 1876 published his Grundzu¨ge der Lautphysiologie (later to be retitled Grundzu¨ge der Phonetik), he laid the theoretical groundwork for a flood of systematic and detailed phonetic analyses of earlier stages of the English language. His own study of Old English sounds is included in his great classical Angelsa¨chsische Grammatik, which appeared in 1898 in Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte, edited by Wilhelm Braune and which has passed through numerous editions since then. Its final version, revised by Karl Brunner (1887–1965), was published in 1963. Bu¨lbring’s Altenglisches Elementarbuch, 1. Teil: Lautlehre (1902) is still being cited today especially with regard to Old English dialectal sound features. Likewise, Morsbach’s Mittelenglische Grammatik (1896) has gained a similar international reputation and is repeatedly quoted in modern studies (Minkova 1991: 16). Karl Luick’s publications have become classics in English Historical Phonology, and especially his Historische Grammatik der Englischen Sprache (1914) has been a standard reference book for every student of English historical linguistics up to the present time. Luick was professor of English and German philology at the universities of Graz and Vienna. He edited the Wiener Beitra¨ge zur Englischen Philologie and published on a variety of topics in English historical linguistics, mainly focusing on metrical and sound features. Wilhelm Horn (1876–1952), another outstanding expert in historical phonology, was the author of Untersuchungen zur neuenglischen Lautgeschichte (1905) and Historische neuenglische Grammatik, Teil I, Lautlehre (1908). Later, his monumental work Laut und Leben, a history of the phonological system of English from 1400 to 1950, was posthumously edited by Martin Lehnert (1910–1992) in 1954. Wilhelm Vie¨tor had also contributed to the growing literature on phonetics in the late 19th century with his Elemente der Phonetik und Orthoepie des Deutschen, Englischen und Franzo¨sischen (1884).
2.2.2 Studies in morphology and syntax Inflectional morphology is an essential part of Old English grammars or historical grammars of the English language in the 19th and early 20th century. Such grammars were written for students and teachers of English as a help to understand Old or Middle English texts, to see the changes of English and to understand modern forms, especially deviation of modern pronunciation from the written form, cf. for example Ko¨rner and Socin’s Angelsa¨chsische Laut- und Formenlehre (1886) or Sievers’s Angelsa¨chsische Grammatik (1898). Max Kaluza’s Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache (1890/ 1906) may serve as a typical example of a historical grammar of the English language of that time. It concentrates on West Saxon and modern standard forms. In many aspects Kaluza’s grammar resembles a modern traditional handbook on the history of English: it contains a chapter on historical events in the development of English beginning with Indo-European languages, Germanic languages and the settlement of the British Isles, including various language contact situations and their impact on the English language. Another chapter provides basic knowledge of phonetics, including some general statements on sound change based on Neogrammarian positions. Each of the following
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major chapters on the three periods in the development of English includes phonological and morphological descriptions. The book is based on many other previous texts, especially English works, such as Henry Sweet’s A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, I. (1892); Walter W. Skeat’s Principles of English Etymology, I. The Native Element (1887); Walter Low’s The English Language. Its History and Structure (1897); J. C. Nesfield’s English Grammar Past and Present (1898); T. Northcote Toller’s Outlines of the History of the English Language (1900); John Lees’s An English Grammar on Historical Principles (1902); Henry Bradley’s The Making of English (1904); and Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury’s History of the English Language. Revised and Enlarged Edition (1900). As with the Old English Grammars (or Anglo-Saxon Grammars, as they are usually called), which concentrate on phonology and inflectional morphology, we can find a number of dissertations that describe particular Middle English dialects in terms of their phonological and morphological characteristics, such as Otto Danker’s Lautund Flexionslehre der mittelkentischen Denkma¨ler (1879), a dissertation that appeared in Strasbourg, and Arnold Hoffmann’s Laut- und Formenlehre in Reginald Pecock’s Repressor (1900), a doctoral thesis from Greifswald. Apart from such broad studies of sounds and structures, there are numerous more specific investigations of individual morphological or syntactic phenomena, often based on a meticulous analysis of examples in particular historical texts. Most of these works focus on the Old English period, but there are also Middle English and Early Modern English studies, and even investigations of general historical changes covering the whole development of English, like Bu¨lbring’s (1888) dissertation on the Geschichte der Ablaute der starken Zeitwo¨rter innerhalb des Su¨denglischen. Other topics are the use of the subjunctive; the function of the verbal prefix ge-; the syntax of prepositions, pronouns and numerals; the use of articles; forms of clause combining; sentence negation; the use of tenses; verbal aspect and aktionsart. Syntactic works often occur together at the same time under the guidance of a particular professor. In 1908, for example, at least three dissertations on relative clauses appeared under Brandl’s guidance in Berlin; around 1907/08 Ferdinand Holthausen supervised several dissertations on the syntax of prepositions in Kiel; and in the late 19th century under Wu¨lker’s direction in Leipzig there appeared a whole flood of works related to the syntax of the verb in various Old English poems. Old English syntax also dominated the dissertations supervised by Felix Lindner (1849–1917) in Rostock in the early 20th century. For an extensive bibliography on early works on English historical syntax cf. Visser (1963–1973).
3 The 20th century 3.1 The influence of Structuralism and Generative Linguistics Lass (1969: V) claims that after structuralism was born, a dichotomy arose between “philologists” and “linguists”. This might be true if one presupposes that linguists are only interested in the language system (Saussure’s langue), its elements and their functions, while philologists also include literary, cultural, and psychological aspects. In English historical linguistics, however, at least in Germany, this dichotomy developed only very slowly. Up to the middle of the 20th century, the new historical “linguists”
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were practically non-existent in Germany. There is a general opinion that German scholars were not directly and immediately influenced by structuralist ideas. In this context Coseriu even coined the term “country without structuralism” (Coseriu [1988] 1992: 165, Fn. 43). The reason for this is often seen in the historical tradition of German universities that made it difficult for a descriptive approach like structuralism to gain a foothold (cf. Robins 1973: 84). Helbig (1986: 34) relates it to the fact that on the one hand German scholars were too proud of their Neogrammarian tradition and, on the other hand, that they were largely isolated in the time of fascism and especially during World War II, so that Saussure’s work was not widely known in Germany. A German translation of the Cours de Linguistique Ge´ne´rale did not appear until 1931 and even then no more than 500 copies were sold. Nevertheless, Ehlers (2005) provides sufficient evidence that German scholars were indeed familiar with structuralist ideas about language, at least with those of the Prague School. Wilhelm Horn was such a scholar who, at the beginning of his career, can still be considered a philologist who studied the history of English sounds in a rather traditional way, though influenced by Neogrammarian ideas, cf. his dissertation Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der englischen Gutturallaute (1901) or his Untersuchungen zur neuenglischen Lautgeschichte (1905). His later publications, like Sprachko¨rper und Sprachfunktion (1921) or his most famous work Laut und Leben, which was edited by Martin Lehnert in 1954, clearly display the structuralist influence of the Prague School. Thus, besides relying on psychological arguments in the Neogrammarian tradition, Horn assigns the relationship between form and function an important role in language change. As Ehlers (2005: 208) points out, there had been regular personal correspondence between Horn and several members of the Prague Linguistic Circle, which also included an exchange of articles and books. Functional explanations of sound change, however, were not completely new in English historical linguistics. Horn himself when talking about the modern “phonological method” maintains that it has well been known in historical linguistics that sounds do not change without an interrelation to one another, and he mentions Karl Luick, who had emphasized this idea repeatedly (Ehlers 2005: 205). According to scholars of the Prague School, Luick had already come to the conclusion that language change is teleological and that sounds depend on each other – which reflects a beginning of a phonological way of thinking. This means that Luick had obviously already suspected that the interrelation between sounds and their functions in the language system plays an important role in sound change. However, he was bound by his Neogrammarian heritage of psycho-physiology, so that he could not develop a consistent conception of the system (Ehlers 2005: 220). Scholars of the next generation, in particular those focussing on sound changes in English, increasingly applied structural and functional principles to their studies of linguistic changes or their descriptions of historical stages of the language, cf. e.g. Horn’s former assistant Martin Lehnert, who published on Sprachform und Sprachfunktion im “Orrmulum” (1953) and The Interrelation between Form and Function in the Development of the English Language (1957), and Rolf Berndt (1927–1996), one of Lehnert’s doctoral students, who, inspired by Horn’s ideas about the interrelation between form and function in linguistic change, wrote his dissertation on Form und Funktion des Verbums im no¨rdlichen Spa¨taltenglischen: eine Untersuchung der grammatischen Formen und ihrer syntaktischen Beziehungsbedeutungen in der grossen sprachlichen Umbruchsperiode (1954).
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The Austrian linguist Hans Ernst Pinsker (1908–1987), a former student of Luick’s, on the one hand clearly continued Luick’s tradition, while on the other he also brought in structuralist ideas. In his Historical English Grammar (1959), which was to become a standard handbook for generations of German-speaking students, he combined the Neogrammarian view of regular sound change with new concepts from structural linguistics. The first structuralist analysis of the tense system in medieval English can also be found in the works of an Austrian linguist, namely in Gero Bauer’s (1938–1988) habilitation thesis, supervised by Herbert Koziol (1903–1986), another former student of Luick’s, in Vienna, Studien zum System und Gebrauch der ‘Tempora’ in der Sprache Chaucers und Gowers (1968). Bauer was also interested in historical phonology and the relationship between graphemic and phonemic systems. Furthermore, he was the first to offer courses on structural and generative linguistics at an Austrian university. The extent of the influence of generative grammar (cf. Los, Chapter 102) on English historical linguistics in Germany has been even lower than that of structuralism, which must have been due to the fact that the new theoretical approach aimed at an understanding of language competence and was not primarily meant to explain language change. Only recently has there evolved a particular research tradition with a focus on English historical syntax in a generative framework at Dutch universities and sporadically in Germany as well. However, most of the current studies in English historical linguistics in the German speaking countries follow the general trend of corpus linguistics (cf. Kyto¨, Chapter 96) and are empirical, relying on large electronic text corpora.
3.2 English historical linguistics in a divided Germany Up to the 1950s the original concept of philology whereby language and literary studies were closely interconnected was for the most part maintained. However, as early as during and after World War I we saw a drastic decline in publications in the field of English historical linguistics in Germany. This decline continued well after World War II with an additional shift, on the one hand, towards literary studies, and on the other towards Modern English descriptive and applied linguistics. Thus we now witness a change from English philology, including medieval studies and historical linguistics, to a more specialized orientation to literature or linguistics, with the latter more and more focussing on the modern varieties of English. Although a few chairs of English historical linguistics and medieval studies still existed in the second half of the 20th century, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany (e.g. in Aachen, Munich, Go¨ttingen, Berlin, Eichsta¨tt, or Freiburg), and English historical linguistics and medieval studies are still pursued regularly in several other universities, albeit on a more limited scale (Augsburg, Bochum, Bonn, Du¨sseldorf, Erlangen, Gießen, Heidelberg, Mu¨nster, Osnabru¨ck, Regensburg, Trier, Tu¨bingen, Wu¨rzburg), most of the junior staff have not had enough training in the older language and literature to keep the tradition alive. Helmut Gneuss (2005: 39) points out that as early as the 1920s German philologists, who had still been trained in the medievalist tradition, directed the attention of their audience to the living English language of the 20th century and its varieties, including those outside the British Isles. He refers to Heinrich Spies’s (1873–1962) Kultur und Sprache im neuen England (1925) and mentions Spies’s Go¨ttingen colleague Karl
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Wildhagen (1873–1945), who used to be an expert in Anglo-Saxon culture and medieval manuscripts, but became famous only through his Englisch-deutsches, deutsch-englisches Wo¨rterbuch/English-German, German-English Dictionary (1938). And it was Karl Luick, of all people, who in a programmatic speech at a meeting of Neophilologists in Breslau in 1930 demanded that future linguistics should especially deal with the modern language. At East German universities English historical linguistics lost its importance much more drastically and sooner than in the Federal Republic. English studies were reduced to teacher training or translation studies. In the early 1950s, the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Martin Luther University at Halle were the only places remaining in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that kept some continuity with regard to the prewar tradition in English historical linguistics. In Berlin, Martin Lehnert managed to continue Horn’s tradition despite the new academic policy that forced university teachers to concentrate on the study of Present-day English. In Halle, Hans Weyhe (1879–1955) continued to teach English historical linguistics, even after his retirement, till 1953. His successor was Gerhard Dietrich (1900–1978), who held the chair of English Linguistics in Halle till 1968. Although the history of English was one of the subjects that he taught, his major research interests were in the areas of Modern English phonetics and syntax. Among the next generation of English linguists the glorious historical tradition is only marginally visible. Former students of Martin Lehnert, for instance, retained a special interest in English historical linguistics, but were forced by university curricula and academic policy to direct their capacities to Modern English. The only scholar who can be seen as an exception in that respect is Rolf Berndt, who was appointed professor of English linguistics at Rostock University. He is the only East German English historical linguist who kept publishing on topics in the field of English historical linguistics and gained a high reputation even outside the former GDR.
3.3 Recent developments Based on previous research conducted by Deppe and Seidel (1989), it can be argued that Old and Middle English were still taught in the late 1980s in many departments of German universities; however, they were no longer, as a rule, compulsory for students of English. Today, 20 years later, the situation is even worse. Only a few universities in Germany still have an ordinary chair of English historical linguistics or medieval studies, and these chairs often do not even focus on linguistics, but rather concentrate on medieval literature, or exclude linguistics completely; or they are only partly historical and also cover Modern English linguistics or language variation in their denomination. Several of the chairs are currently vacant and at best temporarily replaced. There are some universities that have at least an extraordinary professor or a lecturer who teaches courses in English historical linguistics, or a professor of English linguistics who also has some research interest in the history of English. What has happened to English historical linguistics at those universities that had such a glorious past in the late 19th and early 20th century? The former German universities of Breslau (Wroclaw) and Strasbourg are now Polish and French. Both universities still have English studies, but English historical linguistics is not a central topic.
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In Halle, Leipzig and Jena, English historical linguistics was marginalized after the foundation of the German Democratic Republic. In Halle, the historical English tradition survived till 1965 with Gerhard Dietrich (cf. Section 3.2.). However, his pupils and successors, like his other East German colleagues, concentrated their research and teaching on Modern English. Only after the reunification of Germany was English historical linguistics revived at least to a certain extent in the eastern part of the country, and thus since 2001 there has again been a chair for English linguistics at Halle which also covers a diachronic perspective. But generally, as in many places, scholars tend to concentrate on Early Modern English, in particular on Shakespeare’s language, as well as on language variation and change. These topics are mainly studied from a corpus linguistics perspective, and with a pragmatic, sociolinguistic focus, which is currently the major trend in English historical linguistics in Germany (on current trends in English historical linguistics cf. also Lenker and Sauer 2007). In Leipzig, which was once a world center of studies in English historical linguistics, Levin Ludwig Schu¨cking (1878–1964) was the last Anglicist to achieve important results in all fields of English philology. When he left Leipzig in 1944, the focus of English studies shifted completely to Modern English and American studies. Today, particular attention is given to varieties of English and to applied linguistics. The English department at Jena also had a famous chair from 1925 to 1943, Hermann Flasdieck (1900–1962), a pupil of Morsbach’s. He was editor of the journal Anglia for many years and also one of its most prolific contributors. Altogether he published more than 270 scholarly texts. Nevertheless, after 1945 and the division of Germany, English philology in Jena experienced the same fate as the other East German English departments. Only today, in contrast to many other German universities, a chair for older English language and literature has been re-established, even though with a strong focus on medieval literature. The English departments in West German universities generally retained their tradition in English historical linguistics longer than those in the former GDR, for instance at the Free University of Berlin and at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Munich. At Kiel, Mu¨nster and Marburg, English linguistic research focuses rather on Modern English, dialectology, multilingualism, and corpus linguistics. This situation makes it hard to share Lenker and Sauer’s (2007: 42) rather optimistic view of the future of English historical linguistics in the German-speaking countries.
4 Summary English historical linguistics had a glorious past in Germany and the German-speaking world. Although it is always difficult to say anything about the future, one thing is clear: the versatile philologist of the 19th and early 20th century no longer exists. With an increasing specialization in all sciences, English Studies, too, has become more diversified. Today there are literary scholars, cultural scholars, and there are linguists. The number of linguists in English departments of German universities is comparatively small in relation to scholars in the fields of literature and cultural studies. And again, the proportion of historical linguists ranges extremely low among this small group of English linguists. The 20th century also witnessed a growing separation between general linguistics and the individual philologies. Linguists are organized according to their major research
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approaches and methodologies rather than with regard to the languages that they study. There are applied linguists, generative linguists, sociolinguists, corpus linguists, etc., so that English (historical) linguists are often more closely related to general linguistics departments or to linguists in other philologies than to their literary colleagues in the English departments. Unfortunately, chairs of medieval literature are also largely missing from German universities. This development brings with it a danger of different theories of language change becoming the dominant research aim in historical linguistics, while the original authentic textual sources are increasingly neglected (see also Lowe, Chapter 71). Although one could argue that with the advance of corpus linguistics and the compilation of large electronic corpora, (historical) linguists are provided with sufficient authentic text material to enable them to base their findings on empirical evidence, the problem is that in such cases one has to rely on the choice of texts, on their classification and tagging. What is missing is the scholar who is able to read an authentic manuscript and who has enough contextual knowledge to derive information about its authorship and regional and temporal background. What is even more important is that at the moment, the last generation of English historical linguists in the traditional sense in Germany has already retired, or is about to do so, and successors are either simply not there, or with the introduction of the new bachelor and master studies, the chairs are being re-functionalized into chairs of language variation, applied linguistics, or computational linguistics. One can only hope that many of the young staff who have received their doctorate in English historical linguistics will be inspired by what is going on in this field in other countries, like in Poland, Finland, Spain, or Japan, and, remembering the glorious period of English historical linguistics in Germany, will manage to revive a discipline that is on the verge of being wiped out.
5 References Auroux, Sylvain, E.F. Konrad Ko¨rner, and Hans-Josef Niederehe (eds.). 2000–01. History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present = Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaften. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Christmann, Hans Helmut. 1985a. Romanistik und Anglistik an der deutschen Universita¨t im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Christmann, Hans Helmut. 1985b. Klassische, germanische, englische und romanische Philologie der ersten Ha¨lfte des 19. Jahrhunderts im Spannungsfeld von Universita¨t, Schule und Ministerium. Zeitschrift fu¨r Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 38: 551–558. Coseriu, Eugenio [1988] 1992. Einfu¨hrung in die Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Tu¨bingen: Francke. Deppe, Ulrike and Kurt Otto Seidel. 1989. Die historischen Sprachstufen in den Studienordnungen der Fa¨cher Deutsch, Englisch, Franzo¨sisch und Russisch. Fremdsprachenlehren und Lernen 18: 130–158. Ehlers, Klaas-Hinrich. 2005. Strukturalismus in der deutschen Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gneuss, Helmut. 2005. Englische Spachwissenschaft und Media¨vistik: Vom Blick zuru¨ck zu den Aufgaben fu¨r Gegenwart und Zukunft. In: Gabriele Knappe (ed.), Englische Sprachwissenschaft und Media¨vistik: Standpunkte – Perspektiven – Neue Wege, 37–50. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
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Haenicke, Gunta and Thomas Finkenstaedt. 1992. Anglistenlexikon: 1825–1990; Biographische und bibliographische Angaben zu 318 Anglisten. Augsburg: University of Augsburg. Hausmann, Frank-Rutger. 2003. Anglistik und Amerikanistik im ‘Dritten Reich’. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Helbig, Gerhard. 1986. Geschichte der neueren Sprachwissenschaft. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut. Hertel, Johannes. 1923. Als Eduard Sievers nach Leipzig kam. In: Lachmann, Fritz R., Niels Hansen, and Hans von Maltzahn (eds.), Zum Fu¨nfzigja¨hrigen Jubila¨um des Germanistischen Instituts Leipzig 1873–1923, 13–31. Leipzig: Insel. Johnston, Andrew James. 2007. The Crisis of Medieval English Studies in Germany: Problems and Perspectives. In: Ansgar Nu¨nning and Ju¨rgen Schlaeger (eds.), English Studies Today: Recent Developments and New Directions, 67–94. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Ko¨nig, Christoph (ed.). 2003. Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Krohn, Marie. 2007. Louise Pound: The 19th Century Iconoclast Who Forever Changed America’s Views about Women, Academics and Sports. Clearfiel, UT: American Legacy Historical Press. Lass, Roger. 1969. Approaches to English Historical Linguistics: An anthology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Lenker, Ursula and Hans Sauer. 2007. English Historical Linguistics in the German-Speaking Countries: Continuations and New Departures. In: Ansgar Nu¨nning and Ju¨rgen Schlaeger (eds.), English studies today: recent developments and new directions, 41–65. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Lu¨hr, Rosemarie. 2008. Von Berthold Delbru¨ck bis Ferdinand Sommer: Die Herausbildung der Indogermanistik in Jena. Paper presented in a series of lectures on The History of the Sciences of Antiquity, 9th January 2008, Jena. http://www.indogermanistik.uni-jena.de/dokumente/Weitere/ delbrueck.pdf (last accessed 31 January 2012). Minkova, Donka. 1991. The History of Final Vowels in English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Morley, Henry. 1897. English Writers. An attempt towards a history of English literature. London/ Paris/New York/Melbourne: Cassell and Company. Mu¨ller-Schwefe, Gerhard. 1990. Zur Erinnerung an Tu¨bingens erste Professorin Hildegard Gauger (geb. 1890). Tu¨binger Universita¨tszeitung 43: 19–20. Robins, Robert H. 1973. Ideen- und Problemgeschichte der Sprachwissenschaft. Mit besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt: Athena¨um. Schabram, Hans. 2001. Lorenz Morsbach (1850–1945). In: Arndt Karl, Gerhard Gottschalk, Rudolf Smend, and Ruth Slenczka (eds.), Go¨ttinger Gelehrte: die Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Go¨ttingen in Bildnissen und Wu¨rdigungen 1751–2001. Vol. 1. Go¨ttingen: Wallstein Verlag. Supheert, Roselinde. 1996. Dutch Anglicists from 1880 to 1960. Meesterwerk: Berichten van het Peeter Heynsgenootschap5: 9–21. http://www.peeterheynsgenootschap.nl/Mpdf/M5-jan1996.pdf (last accessed 3 February 2011). Vie¨tor, Wilhelm [1887] 1910. Einfu¨hrung in das Studium der Englischen Philologie. 4th edn. Marburg: Elwert. Visser, Fredericus Theodorius. 1963–1973. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill. Windisch, Ernst. 1887. Georg Curtius: Eine Charakteristik. Berlin: S. Calvary. Wu¨lker, Richard. 1896. Julius Zupitza. Anglia 18: 129–131. Wyld, Henry Cecil. 1914. A Short History of English. London: John Murray.
Ilse Wischer, Potsdam (Germany)
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86. History of English Historical Linguistics: The Netherlands and Belgium 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Introduction The Netherlands Belgium The future References
Abstract The Dutch-speaking area can boast a philological tradition in historical English linguistics that goes back to the 17th century. This tradition is continued in the Netherlands to the present day, now focusing on the history of English linguistics. At the same time, this chapter shows that in the last 30 years new research traditions to historical English linguistics have been developed, stemming mainly from a generative framework in the Netherlands, and from a functional, cognitive one in Belgium. These new research traditions have produced innovative research in areas like diachronic syntax, grammaticalization, mechanisms of change, historical pragmatics, historical sociolinguistics, lexicology, and corpus linguistics.
1 Introduction Interest in historical English linguistics goes back all the way to the 17th century in the Dutch-speaking area, with Franciscus Junius the Younger as its best-known pioneer. For a long time this interest was embedded in the philological tradition, which started to bloom in particular in the second half of the 19th century. In this tradition many scholarly editions were produced as well as studies in etymology, historical lexicography, historical phonology, historical syntax, and runology. Over the last three decades this situation has changed drastically, with many Belgian and Dutch universities having downsized or altogether abandoned English philology as a separate subject of research. Simultaneously, however, more theoretically informed approaches on historical linguistics of English have been growing, both generative and functional. Recently, these approaches have also been increasingly combined with corpus-based research. This new vein of research led to numerous studies in the field of grammaticalization studies, the study of mechanisms of change, historical pragmatics, and recent changes in English. The following outline describes the various research traditions, first in the Netherlands (Section 2), and then in Belgium, including an account on the Frenchspeaking part of Belgium (Section 3). It concludes with a preview on what the future brings (Section 4).
2 The Netherlands The study of historical linguistics of English has a long history in the Netherlands (see Kooper 1990; Supheert 1996; Loonen 2000), extending all the way back to the 17th Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1341–1354
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century. The first to study Old English in the Netherlands was probably Johannes de Laet (1581–1649), who is credited with having been the first to see that the Old English Genesis consisted of two different poems. Though not the first, the real founding father of Old English studies was Franciscus Junius the Younger, professor (of Hebrew!) at the University of Leiden. Junius was the first Dutchman to publish important Old English texts like the poems of the Cædmon manuscript – now commonly referred to as the Junius Codex – (Junius 1655) and the four gospels in Anglo-Saxon and Gothic (Junius 1665). When he fell ill in 1673, he left for his favorite town, Oxford, taking with him all his manuscripts and all his unpublished writings. When he died in 1677, he bequeathed his entire collection to the Bodleian Library, where it still is. Among the manuscripts he took was also his etymological dictionary (Etymologicum Anglicanum), which was not published before 1743. After Junius, interest in the history of the English language cropped up in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the grammarian Lambert ten Kate, the Groningen professor of Theology Annaeus Ypey, the Frisian Albert ten Broecke Hoekstra (who called himself a born Anglo-Saxon), the Frisian scholar and collector Joast Halbertsma, and Johannes Pieter Arend (1842), who wrote a book on the history of Old English literature. Reviving the interest of Junius, the University of Leiden established the first chair of Old Germanic languages (including Old English) in 1877. The chair was first occupied by Cosijn, a very active scholar of Old English philology. Besides a widely used grammar of Old English (Cosijn 1888) he also produced several papers on Old English poetry, dealing with grammatical and lexical problems (1896, 1898). Initially though, the tradition of studying the history of English remained to a large extent outside the universities. Famous examples are Poutsma, teacher of English at an Amsterdam grammar school (Stuurman 1987: 191) and author of the monumental A grammar of late Modern English (Poutsma 1914–29), or the popular introduction to Old English by Girvan and Deuschle (1931). Other historical grammarians who for a considerable time mainly worked outside the university were van der Gaaf – appointed in Amsterdam in 1930 – and Fijn van Draat – appointed in Utrecht in 1924. Both are known for their pioneering studies in diachronic syntax, van der Gaaf especially for his The transition from the impersonal to the personal construction in Middle English (van der Gaaf 1904; other influential studies are e.g. van der Gaaf 1917, 1931), and Fijn van Draat (1902) for The loss of the prefix ge- in the modern English verb and some of its consequences. The Dutch scholarly tradition outside the university culminated in the publication of the classic An historical syntax of the English language in three parts by Visser (1963–73), 86 years old when the final volume was published, and former professor of English at the University of Nijmegen (Bronzwaer 1976). Only gradually did the study of English enter the curricula of the Dutch universities. The first university to establish a chair in English language was Groningen, in 1885. In 1912 followed the University of Amsterdam (UvA), in 1923 Nijmegen (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen), Leiden in 1950, the Free University of Amsterdam (VU) in 1954, and finally Utrecht in 1957. Yet until the 1970s, these English departments were largely one-man shows, and this meant that the area of study varied between linguistics and literature, depending on who was professor at the time. The main areas of historical linguistics covered in the universities until about 1970 were historical phonology, lexicography, and general philology. Historical phonology saw the publication of two widely cited monographs, an early one by Bu¨lbring (1902, Groningen), and one at the end
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of the philological period, by Prins (1972, Leiden), who also did some early work in the domain of lexicography (Prins 1941). More noteworthy in this second domain was the influential Groningen historical lexicographer Osselton (1958, 1998), who divided his academic career equally between universities in Holland (Groningen, Leiden) and England (Southampton, Newcastle). He was also a founder member of the European Association for Lexicography. Another lexicographer originating in Groningen was Swaen (see e.g. Swaen 1943), who was the first to fill the new chair in English language at the UvA (Amsterdam) in 1912. Related to this lexicographical work is the novel study on semantic change by Schreuder (1929). More general philological work includes several editions and studies on the syntax and style of particular Old and Middle English texts or authors (van der Meer 1929; Harting 1937; Vleeskruyer 1953; Kerkhof 1966). From the sixties onwards, the situation changed considerably. The Netherlands were one of the countries that picked up very quickly and thoroughly the novel framework of generative grammar. As is still the case today, practitioners of generative grammar mostly focus on synchronic analyses of contemporary language. So traditional philology went out of fashion. For a while historical linguistics of English stayed at a low level. However, in the eighties the discipline revived in two different ways. First a new tradition of English historical sociolinguistics emerged. This tradition includes the history of English linguistics, with scholars from Nijmegen (e.g. Birrell 1966) and Groningen (Dekker 1999). The center of this tradition is Leiden, with Bremmer’s studies on the early modern interest in the Low Countries for the Old Germanic languages, particularly Old Frisian and its relation to Old English (Bremmer 1988, 1989, 1998), and Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s research on 18th-century grammarians (2000, 2003). Related to her work on the history of linguistics, Tieken-Boon van Ostade is also a research expert in historical sociolinguistics, concentrating on the development of varieties of English between 1500 and 1800, focusing on gender and standard versus non-standard language (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1982, 1987, on the use of do; see also Bax 2000). In 2000, she set up the electronic journal called Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics. She is also the co-ordinator of the current project The codifiers and the English language, which aims to trace different aspects of the process of linguistic influence: between individuals, within social networks, from grammars and grammarians on other grammars as well as on speakers and writers of English (TiekenBoon van Ostade 2011; Henstra 2008; Tieken-Boon van Ostade and van der Wurff 2009; Navest 2011). Also coming from this Leiden tradition is Auer, who is currently assistant professor at Utrecht (Auer 2005 on the use of the subjunctive). The second area is that of more theoretically informed approaches to historical linguistics. The Netherlands were quite early in applying the generative framework to diachronic studies. Unlike the first, this area of research does not have a clear center, with influential scholars affiliated at one point to all Dutch universities: Koopman and Fischer at UvA (Amsterdam), van Kemenade (Utrecht, Leiden, VU, since 2000 RU Nijmegen) and Los (UvA, VU, now also at RU Nijmegen), and, for some years, van der Wurff in Leiden (now at Newcastle University), and van Gelderen in Groningen (now at Arizona State University). In the eighties and nineties these scholars did much innovative work on the diachronic syntax of Old and Middle English. Special attention has been paid to word order phenomena and its relation to case, clitics, and information structure, starting with van Kemenade’s seminal work (1987), and continued in numerous papers and edited books (Koopman 1990; Hulk and van Kemenade 1995;
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Koopman 1996, 1997; van Kemenade and Vincent 1997; van Kemenade 1997; van der Wurff 1997, 1999; Los 2002; van Kemenade and Los 2006; de Haas’s current project on the morphosyntax of Northern English, e.g. de Haas 2008). This tradition also included work on mechanisms of change and grammaticalization (van Kemenade 1992, 1999, 2000). The interaction between word order and discourse structure continues to be researched in the on-going project Word order and information structure: Discourse options after the loss of verb second (van Kemenade and Los 2008; Los 2009; Dreschler 2010; see van Kemenade and Los, Chapter 94). Recently, this research theme has also been linked to typological distinctions such as that between bounded and unbounded language use (Los 2012). Other studies include research on impersonal constructions (Fischer and van der Leek 1983, 1987), on particle verbs (Los 2003; Elenbaas 2003, 2007), and current research on the history of light verbs in the West Germanic languages (Elenbaas 2011). In particular van Gelderen continues to publish on the history of English within newer versions of generative grammar such as the minimalist framework (van Gelderen 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004a, 2004b). The handbook on early English syntax (Fischer et al. 2000), co-written by Fischer, van Kemenade, Koopman and van der Wurff, can be seen as a culmination point of this tradition. Unlike van Gelderen, other Dutch historical linguists did not generally endorse the newest transformations of the generative framework, and their publications often show that they are mainly interested in the interaction between function and form, an interest they share with more functional approaches to language. In this vein, Fischer criticized from the beginning Lightfoot’s (1979) generative view on reanalysis as radical grammar change between generations as being too simplistic (Fischer and van der Leek 1981). In searching for a more complete model of syntactic change, she has published widely on the infinitive (Fischer 1989, 1991, 1995), a subject she shares with Los (1998, 2005); on syntactic change related to changes in word order (Fischer 1994; 2000b); on grammaticalization (Fischer 2000a; Fischer et al. 2000); on iconicity (especially analogy) (Fischer 2007), and the interaction between grammaticalization and iconization in language change (Fischer 1999). And, together with Ljungberg, Fischer is the driving force behind the on-going international Iconicity Research Project (Fischer and Ljungberg 2011). The Netherlands have also been generally very active in providing international platforms for presenting research in the field of English historical linguistics. From the beginning, the two Dutch international academic journals Neophilologus (founded 1916) and English Studies, A Journal of English Language and Literature (founded 1919) featured many papers on the history of English. Organizations like the Vereniging voor Oudgermanisten (‘Association for scholars of Old-Germanic languages’) and the Netherlands Society for English Studies keep their members informed on matters touching historical English linguistics. Also, Dutch universities have organized some major international conferences on historical English linguistics, like the Fourth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 4, Amsterdam 1985; see Eaton et al. 1985) and the Third International Conference on the English Language in the Late Modern Period 1700–1900 (LMEC 3, Leiden 2007). Finally, long-term international exchange of expertise has crystallized in a series of symposia on the history of English syntax, alternating between a UK and a Netherlands location, called the York-Newcastle-Holland Symposia on the History of English Syntax, whose latest edition (SHES 9) was held in Leiden.
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3 Belgium The historical study of the English language started in Belgium with the educational reform of 1890 (Lambrechts 1952; Dor 1990). Previously the arts department only existed as a preparatory curriculum for law school, and focused, as far as language studies go, almost exclusively on the classic languages (Latin and Greek). With the reform came the first real arts departments at the four universities of the time, which included a section on English. Yet the degree to which historical linguistics was practiced varied greatly from university to university, and was largely dependent on the individual scholars who were hired at the time. The strongest tradition of historical linguistics of English was established in Ghent, with the coming of Logeman, a Dutchman who studied in Oxford, London and Utrecht (Blancquaert 1936). Much in the spirit of 19th century philology, Logeman is mainly to be remembered for the considerable number of editions of Old English manuscripts and fragments he produced. Most of these have only ever been edited by him (e.g. 1888, Logeman 1889). He was also the first to bring to attention the 11th century inscription known as the Brussels cross, which was re-examined some 50 years later by another famous Belgian scholar (D’Ardenne 1939). Logeman’s successor, Van Langenhove, was a knowledgeable historical phonologist (e.g. Van Langenhove 1925), but was perhaps more important for being one of the first to defend the viability and necessity of a linguistics department of its own, that should be concerned with the link between language, culture and psychology (Meir 1944). Van Langenhove also published some thought-provoking studies on runology (e.g. Van Langenhove 1938), which may have been the source of inspiration for Derolez (1954), whose Runica Manuscripta: The English Tradition remains required reading for runologists to this day. A second university to establish a strong philological tradition was the University of Lie`ge, starting with Hame´lius in 1904. His edition of Mandeville’s travels (Hame´lius 1919–23) remains invaluable. His successor D’Ardenne is famous for her editions of various early Middle English texts in the so-called AB-dialect (D’Ardenne 1961, 1977; D’Ardenne and Dobson 1981). After D’Ardenne, the chair of medieval English was held by scholars whose primary interest was literature, but who also made occasional contributions to historical lexicography, either glossography (Mertens-Fonck 1960) or lexical borrowing (De Caluwe´-Dor 1979; Dor 1992). From the 1970s onwards, the study of historical linguistics of English shifted away from Ghent and Lie`ge. The university of Brussels – which split in 1969 into a Flemish (VUB) and a Walloon (ULB) part – had only produced little philological work so far (an exception is de Reul 1901). Between 1970 and 2010, Peeters taught various OldGermanic languages as well as comparative Germanic grammar both at ULB and VUB, and published mainly on etymology, usually against the background of general Old Germanic etymology (e.g. Peeters 1989). After his retirement in 2010, historical linguistics of English has been abandoned as a separate subject by ULB and VUB. Other universities gradually moved away from philology towards theoretically informed approaches to historical linguistics. This renewed interest in historical linguistics is not entirely absent in Ghent, with some work in the field of historical pragmatics (Defour 2008; Van Bogaert 2011). However, the two research centers in this domain have been, in that order, Antwerp and Leuven. In 1971, Louis Goossens, pupil of Derolez, became professor of the newly founded Antwerp University UIA. Initially he
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continued the philological tradition of edition-making (Goossens 1974). Soon however, he turned to newer, theoretical approaches to linguistics, and started publishing on English modals from a functional perspective (Goossens 1982), also making use of new theoretical frameworks such as Dik’s functional grammar (Goossens 1987). Working at the other Antwerp university, UFSIA (as of 2003 the two are merged, together with RUCA, a third one, into University of Antwerp) was Dekeyser, who published numerous articles on historical morphology (e.g. Dekeyser 1975 on number and case; Dekeyser 1980 on gender), syntax (Dekeyser 1984 on relativizers, Dekeyser 1990 on preposition stranding), and lexicology (Dekeyser 1986). From 1971 onwards, he also taught courses related to the history of English at the University of Leuven (K.U. Leuven). Currently, van der Auwera mainly focuses on typological research, but also intermittently continues the Antwerp tradition with some diachronic work on diachronic syntax (van der Auwera 1984), and on the history of non-central modals (Noe¨l and van der Auwera 2009), including supervision of Taeymans’s (2006) diachronic study on need. Currently, the main center of diachronic research and teaching on English is the University of Leuven. While history of English has been a subject at Leuven since 1893, it was not until recently that diachronic linguistics of English has really become the core research field of the English linguistics research group. Before, historical linguistics was practiced only occasionally. The first to do so was also the first professor of English, Bang-Kaup. Originally an orientalist, his background made him into a skilled philologist. In 1902 Bang-Kaup set up the series Materialien zur Kunde des a¨lteren Englischen Dramas, in which he introduced diplomatic editing principles for 16th- and 17th-century English dramatic works (De Smedt 1994), and to which he also contributed himself (Bang-Kaup and Brotanek 1903). Between Bang-Kaup and Dekeyser hardly any diachronic research was done in Leuven. The turnaround occurred in 1997 with the coming of Cuyckens. Research projects by Cuyckens and his collaborators concentrate in particular on grammaticalization in the domain of complementation (Cuyckens and Verspoor 1998; De Smet and Cuyckens 2005, 2007; De Smet forthc.), including related work on mechanisms of change (De Smet 2009; Petre´ 2012). Other work includes research on lexical and morphosyntactic change from a construction grammar perspective (Petre´ 2010 on change in the copular paradigm, Petre´ and Cuyckens 2008 on prefixes), and the interaction between language-external and language-internal change (Van De Pol 2012). Work within this domain also shows strong affinities with current work on diachronic syntax in the Netherlands by people like Fischer, Los and van Kemenade (see Section 2). Research projects on synchronic linguistics of English also increasingly introduced a historical dimension, focusing in particular on grammaticalization in the domain of the noun phrase, with numerous publications on grammaticalized uses of adjectives (Breban and Davidse 2003; Davidse and Vandewinkel 2008; Davidse et al. 2008; Breban 2010a, 2010b; Ghesquie`re and Van De Velde 2011; Ghesquie`re and Davidse 2011), on complex noun phrases (Brems 2003) and on modal adjectives (Van linden 2012), as well as some edited volumes on grammaticalization and related issues such as subjectification (Davidse et al. 2010; Breban et al. forthc.). In addition, Leuven has also acquired expertise in the compilation of historical corpora and databases, with the text collection Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (Extended Version) (CLMET(EV) see De Smet 2005), the on-going corpus project Leuven English Old to New (LEON, see Petre´ 2011), and the Diachronex project (Cuyckens 2011),
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which has developed a learning tool that allows students to gradually advance from the analysis of artificial material – textbook exercises – to natural corpus data, preparing them for doing independent research. Finally, the strong emphasis on diachrony has also led to a strong diachronic teaching program, with three specialist courses devoted to English diachrony besides the general history of English course.
4 The future The preceding account has shown that the Netherlands and Belgium have developed a number of strong traditions in historical linguistics. In Leiden, interesting research is done on historical sociolinguistics, charting prescriptive factors that have shaped language use. Other Dutch universities have contributed considerably to theoretically informed research in the domain of diachronic morphosyntax. In Belgium, the research carried out in Leuven shows many similarities with this syntactic research in the Netherlands. It is therefore to be expected that international collaboration between the two countries will grow in the future. Concrete plans for structural collaboration already exist between Nijmegen and Leuven. While historical linguistics is thriving in both the Netherlands and Belgium, at the same time higher education policies force universities to rationalize their programs, in order to make them more competitive. The effect of this is that in some universities historical linguistics of English has been abandoned. In Antwerp it has been put on a low level for a number of years now, and in Brussels it has disappeared altogether as of 2010. Interestingly, the University of Lie`ge has chosen to revive its tradition in historical English linguistics by remodeling the philological program into a more theoretically informed historical linguistics program (for which they have hired Brems from Leuven). As a consequence, it will be the only French-speaking university to offer a systematic program in historical English linguistics. Also in hosting international conferences, the Dutch-speaking area promises to remain very active, with Leuven hosting ICAME 33 in 2012, and the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics 18 in 2014. Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Balz Engler, Hubert Cuyckens, Eric Kooper, Olga Fischer, and Lieselotte Brems for providing me with some necessary information to write this chapter.
5 References Arend, Johannes Pieter. 1842. Proeve eener Geschiedenis der Dichtkunst en Fraaije Letteren onder de Angel-Saksen. Amsterdam: Schleijer. Auer, Anita. 2005. Eighteenth-century prescriptivism in English: A re-evaluation of its effects on actual language usage. Multilingua 24(4): 317–341. van der Auwera, Johan. 1984. More on the history of subject contact clauses in English. Folia Linguistica Historica 5: 171–184. Bang-Kaup, Willi and Rudolf Brotanek. 1903. The King and Qveenes Entertainement at Richmond: nach der Q 1636 in Neudruck. Leuven: Uystpruyst. Bax, Randy C. 2000. A network strength scale for the study of eighteenth-century English. European Journal of English Studies 4: 277–290. Birrell, Tom. 1966. The society of antiquaries and the taste for old English 1705–1840. Neophilologus 50: 107–117.
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Blancquaert, Edgard. 1936. Dr Henri Logeman. Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te Leiden, 1935–1936. Leiden: E.J. Brill. (Online source: DBNL2005, http://www. dbnl.org/tekst/_jaa003193601_01/_jaa003193601_01_0011.php (last accessed 19 September 2011). Breban, Tine and Kristin Davidse. 2003. Adjectives of comparison: the grammaticalization of their attribute uses into postdeterminer and classifier uses. Folia Linguistica 37: 269–317. Breban, Tine. 2010a. English Adjectives of Comparison: Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Breban, Tine. 2010b. Reconstructing paths of secondary grammaticalization of same from emphasizing to phoric and nominal-aspectual postdeterminer uses. Transactions of the Philological Society 108: 68–87. Breban, Tine, Lieselotte Brems Kristin Davidse, and Tanja Mortelmans. forthc. Grammaticalization and language change: origins, criteria and outcomes. Studies in Language Companion series. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bremmer, Rolf H. 1988. The Old Frisian component in Holthausen’s altenglisches etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch. Anglo-Saxon England 17: 5–13. Bremmer, Rolf H. 1989. Late medieval and early modern opinions on the affinity between English and Frisian: the growth of a commonplace. Folia Linguistica Historica 9: 167–192. Bremmer, Rolf H. (ed.). 1998. Franciscus Junius F.F. and his Circle. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Brems, Lieselotte. 2003. Measure Noun constructions: an instance of semantically-driven grammaticalization. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2): 283–312. Bronzwaer, Wilhelmus. 1976. In memoriam F. Th. Visser. English Studies 57(3): 280–282. Bu¨lbring, Karl D. 1902. Altenglisches Elementarbuch: 1. Teil Lautlehre. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Cosijn, Peter J. 1888. Altwestsa¨chsische Grammatik. Den Haag: Nijhoff. Cosijn, Peter J. 1896. Anglosaxonica III. Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 21: 8–26. Cosijn, Peter J. 1898. Anglosaxonica IV. Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 23: 109–130. Cuyckens, Hubert. 2011. Diachronex. http://www.kuleuven.be/research/researchdatabase/project/ 3H10/3H100511.htm (last accessed 4 October 2011). Cuyckens, Hubert and Marjolijn Verspoor. 1998. On the road to ‘to’. In: Johan van der Auwera, Frank Durieux and Ludo Lejeune (eds.), English as a Human Language: To honour Louis Goossens, 57–72. Mu¨nchen: Lincom. D’Ardenne, Simonne T.R.O. 1939. The Old English inscription on the Brussels Cross. English Studies 21: 145–164. D’Ardenne, Simonne T.R.O. 1961. Þe liflade ant te passiun of Seinte Juliene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. D’Ardenne, Simonne T.R.O. 1977. The Katherine Group: edited from MS. Bodley 34 Bodleian Library. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. D’Ardenne, Simonne T.R.O and Eric J. Dobson. 1981. Seinte Katerine: re-edited from MS Bodley 34 and other manuscripts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidse, Kristin and Sigi Vandewinkel. 2008. The interlocking paths of development to emphasizer adjective pure. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 9: 255–287. Davidse, Kristin, Lieven Vandelanotte, and Hubert Cuyckens (eds.). 2010. Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Davidse, Kristin, Tine Breban, and An Van linden. 2008. Deictification: the development of secondary deictic meanings by adjectives in the English NP. English Language and Linguistics 12: 475–503. De Caluwe´-Dor, Juliette. 1979. The chronology of the Scandinavian loan-verbs in the Katherine Group. English Studies 60: 680–685. de Haas, Nynke. 2008. The origins of the Northern Subject Rule. In: Gotti Maurizio, Marina Dossena and Richard Dury (eds.), English Historical Linguistics 2006, Vol. 3: Geo-Historical
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Ghesquie`re, Lobke and Kristin Davidse. 2011. The development of intensification scales in nounintensifying uses of adjectives: sources, paths and mechanisms of change. English Language and Linguistics 15: 251–277. Girvan, Ritchie and E. L. Deuschle. 1931. Angelsaksisch Handboek. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink and Zoon. Goossens, Louis. 1974. The old English Glosses of Ms. Brussels, Royal Library, 1650 (Aldhelm’s De laudibus virginitatis). Brussel: Paleis der Academien. Goossens, Louis. 1982. On the development of the modals and of the epistemic function in English. In: Anders Ahlqvist (ed.), Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Galway, April 6–10, 1981, 74–97. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Goossens, Louis. 1987. The auxiliarization of the English modals. A functional grammar view. In: Martin Harris and Paolo Ramat (eds.), Historical Development of Auxiliaries, 111–143. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hame´lius, Paul (ed.). 1919–23. Mandeville’s Travels, Tr. from the French of Jean D’outremeuse. Ed. from Ms. Cotton Titus C. Xvi, in the British Museum. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner. Harting, Pieter N.U. 1937. The text of the Old English translation of Gregory’s “Dialogues”. Neophilologus 22: 281–302. Henstra, Froukje. 2008. Social network analysis and the eighteenth-century family network: a case study of the Walpole family. Transactions of the Philological Society 106: 29–70. Hulk, Aafke and Ans van Kemenade. 1995. Verb second, pro-drop, functional projections and language change. In: Adrian Battye and Ian Roberts (eds.), Clause structure and language change, 227–256. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Junius, Franciscus. 1655. Caedmonis monachi paraphrasis poetica genesios ac praecipuarum sacrae paginae historiarum. Amsterdam: Christophorus Cunradus. Junius, Franciscus. 1665. Quator d.n. Jesu Christi euangeliorum versiones perantique duae, Gothica scil. et Anglo-saxonica. Dordrecht: Junianis. Junius, Franciscus, ed. by Edward Lye. 1743. Etymologicum Anglicanum: ex autographo descripsit & accessionibus permultis auctum edidit. Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre. van Kemenade, Ans. 1987. Syntactic case and morphological case in the history of English. Dordrecht: Foris. van Kemenade, Ans. 1992. The history of English modals; a reanalysis. Folia Linguistica Historica 13: 143–166. van Kemenade, Ans. 1997. V2 and embedded topicalization in Old and Middle English. In: Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent (eds.), Parameters of morphosyntactic change, 326– 352. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Kemenade, Ans. 1999. Sentential negation and clause structure in Old English. In: Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie, and Wim van der Wurff (eds.), Negation in the History of English, 147–166. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. van Kemenade, Ans. 2000. Jespersen’s cycle revisited: formal properties of grammaticalization. In: Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas, and Anthony Warner (eds.), Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms, 51–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Kemenade, Ans and Nigel Vincent (eds.). 1997. Parameters of morphosyntactic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Kemenade, Ans and Bettelou Los. 2006. Discourse adverbs and clausal syntax in Old and Middle English. In Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the History of English, 224–248. Oxford: Blackwell. van Kemenade, Ans and Bettelou Los. 2008. Word Order and Information Structure: Discourse options after the loss of Verb Second. http://www.ru.nl/publish/pages/523996/programma_losavkfinal.doc (last accessed 30 September 2011). Kerkhof, Jelle. 1966. Studies in the Language of Geoffrey Chaucer. Leiden: Leiden University Press.
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Peter Petre´, Leuven (Belgium)
87. History of English Historical Linguistics: Northern Europe 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Introduction Resources Approaches to HLE Summary References
Abstract This chapter, surveying historical linguistics of English in Northern Europe – here defined as referring to the Nordic countries – has two objectives: (a) to pay attention to the contribution of Nordic scholars to the foundation of modern linguistic approaches to the history of English in the Nordic countries, and (b) to provide an account of the field in the present-day Nordic context, with an emphasis on the latter. The Nordic contribution is seen as forming a continuum, where the present scene owes a great deal to earlier scholarship on the history of the language, on the one hand, and to the proliferation of linguistic theories during the past few decades, on the other. At present, the impact of linguistic theories on historical linguistics of English in the Nordic countries is most strongly reflected in studies inspired by various functionally oriented approaches, such as corpus linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse linguistics, and genre studies.
1 Introduction Any historical study of language change involves reconstruction of lost information on the basis of available evidence. To make sense of the past, the process must necessarily begin with the latter, i.e. locating the available evidence and making it available for research. Interaction of data and theory thus constitutes a continuing process of dialogue. Advances in the availability of research materials will, in time, result in reassessments of the validity of earlier findings. An attempt to sketch the above development in historical linguistics of English (HLE) in Northern Europe will also involve a process of reconstruction. Due to the extensive nature of the subject, only an outline will be aimed at in this presentation. The specifics will be left to be pursued in the studies mentioned in the bibliography and the further readings mentioned therein. The emphasis will be bibliographical rather than content-based. Due to limitations of space, representativeness rather than Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1354–1375
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exhaustiveness will be aimed at. The chapter will begin with a brief account of the history of English studies in the Northern European area, with special reference to the role played by language history in academic education and research. This will be followed by an account of research on the sources of data and the fields of HLE where Northern European scholars have been actively involved.
1.1 Preliminaries For the present purposes, Northern Europe will be understood to refer to the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. In the Nordic countries, the institutional establishment of the English language as an academic subject in the form of a professorship takes place between 1873 (Oslo) and 1909 (Lund) (Sandved 2000: 104; Lindblad 2008: 104). In-between these two come Copenhagen (1893) and Helsinki (1907) (Nielsen 2000: 128; Pahta 2008: 22; see also Enkvist 1999: 17–18). At the University of Iceland, founded in 1911, the first chair in English was appointed in 1967 ( Julian Meldon D’Arcy, p.c.). Like elsewhere in Europe, the history of the Nordic English departments reflects the emergence of English as a world language, apparent both in the growth of English language teaching programs and the research carried out in the departments, and like elsewhere in the non-English speaking countries in Europe, the English departments in the Nordic countries train teachers of English for the needs of educational institutions. Yet another shared characteristic is the breadth of English as an academic subject, traditionally comprising both language and literature “according to the broad sense of philology” (Hovdhaugen et al. 2000: 265). Thus, an undergraduate curriculum typically combines elements of contemporary English, linguistics, language history, literary studies and relevant cultural, historical, and social background material. Over the years, research and research-based education in English language studies have also undergone changes as a result of theoretical advances in linguistics. With the emergence of English as a world language the emphasis shifted to Present-day English at the expense of a more philologically oriented approach to language. At the same time, it has to be remembered that some of the most important landmarks of English historical linguistics, such as Jespersen (1909–49) and Mustanoja (1960), have sprung up from this approach. The life’s work of Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), the greatest of Nordic English scholars, is especially significant with regard to the philology/linguistics interface in combining an interest in linguistic theory with an understanding of the specifics of the English language in the description of both its past and present. In spite of the fact that contemporary English has taken over in the academic curriculum long since, the development has also proved beneficial for the study of language history. New theoretical models and insights introduced to gain a better understanding of the present-day language, i.e. the latest phase of linguistic evolution that we have access to, have stimulated attempts at testing their application in the analysis of the linguistic records of earlier ages, thereby providing a starting point for comparisons of different diachronic stages in the language. New ways of looking at how the linguistic system might have worked in the past have arisen as a result, such as historical sociolinguistics and historical pragmatics. The analogy between past and present also applies to the cause-effect relationships in spite of differences in the communicative contexts.
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Due to the limitations of the surviving written evidence, they are often not fully recoverable. The discussion below contains two partly overlapping chronological strands, with the 1980s as an approximate dividing line marking the arrival of the computer in linguistics. This new resource has had a tremendous impact on how HLE has since developed, especially since computerized linguistic corpora have become available on a larger scale. Although it is true that also in the past linguistic studies could be based on extensive sets of data, and could on those grounds be regarded as instances of corpus studies, the collections of manually compiled data, however large, can hardly match the resources of computerized electronic corpora. The fact that findings based on manually collected data have frequently been called into question by those based on largescale electronic corpora is an indication of the superiority of the new technology of data processing.
2 Resources 2.1 Text editions The construction of historical corpora is today’s parallel to the edition of printed volumes and collections in the past. The two are interdependent, however, for reliable corpora presuppose reliable editions. As far as editing manuscripts into printed editions is concerned, there is a long tradition in such philological basic research in the Nordic countries. A pioneering instance is the work of the Icelandic scholar Grı´mur Jo´nsson Thorkelin, who made two transcriptions of the Beowulf manuscript in the late 18th century and prepared the first publication of the poem in 1815 (Bjork and Niles 1997). Textediting has remained a cornerstone of historical language studies for all periods of English, and most notably for Middle English, due to the regional and generic richness of Middle English manuscripts (see e.g. Sajavaara [1967], Sandred [1971], Nevanlinna [1973], Zettersten [1976], Svinhufvud [1978], Nevanlinna and Taavitsainen [1993], Lindberg [1994, 1997], and Pahta [1998]). A recent example of editorial work of a different kind is the publication of the records of the 1692 Salem witch-hunt in Massachusetts (Rosenthal et al. 2009), produced in collaboration by American and Nordic scholars. It is to be expected that along with printed editions, the number of electronic editions will be increasing in the future (an example of an editorial project which aims at an electronic edition is The Ormulum Project by Johannesson (1993–).
2.2 Historical corpora 2.2.1 Introduction The compilation of electronic computerized corpora of historical texts started in the 1980s. In a couple of decades historical corpus linguistics came to dominate the field of HLE in the Nordic countries. The yield of the new technology is reflected in a burgeoning flow of publications. At the same time, another development has taken place. While earlier the study of English in the various historical periods was more evenly distributed in the Nordic universities, the scene today appears much more concentrated. The strongest investment in the field has been made at the University of Helsinki,
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where a research unit called VARIENG (Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English, Nevalainen et al. 1998–) was established in the mid-1990s. The unit is largely devoted to research in HLE and its contribution to the field has been significant worldwide. Initially the unit consisted of five research teams, subsequently reorganized in terms of three research domains, (1) Language in Society, covering social dialectology, language and dialect contacts, and meaning and changing culture; (2) Language as Discourse, comprising genre and register variation, discourse patterns, and sociopragmatic processes; and (3) Linguistic Processes and Typology, comprising semantic change, grammaticalization, and variationist typology (Rissanen et al. 2007).
2.2.2 Historical corpus linguistics The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal, initiated by Matti Rissanen and Ossi Ihalainen and compiled in collaboration with their research associates (Rissanen et al. 1991), is the first and probably the most important of the electronic corpora of historical English texts to date (cf. Kyto¨, Chapter 96). The corpus covers the period from the earliest English written records to 1720 and contains samples of representative “text types” (Kyto¨ 1991a). The Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE) subcorpora have subsequently been syntactically annotated in collaboration with the universities of York and of Pennsylvania (see van Kemenade and Los 2006: 609–619). The members of the research teams working at Helsinki University have published several volumes of papers reporting their findings from the Helsinki Corpus (HC). An introduction to the data in Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English with a selection of pilot studies by the compilers of the corpus appeared in Rissanen et al. (1993). It was followed by another collection of corpus-based studies in linguistic variation and genre styles across the diachronic range of periods covered by the material (Rissanen et al. 1997a). This volume addresses, among other things, multidimensional diachronic variation, as attested in the be/have plus past participle variation since Late Modern English (Kyto¨ 1997), the verbs be and have since Old English (Kilpio¨ 1997), the uses of expository apposition in Middle English and Early Modern English (Pahta and Nevanlinna 1997), the expression of personal affect in Early Modern English (Taavitsainen 1997b), and the textual roles of adjectives and open-class adverbs in Early Modern English (Meurman-Solin 1997). Since the publication of the HC, Nevalainen and her team have produced the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC, Nevalainen et al. 1998), which comprises a “family of corpora” of personal letters written in England, c.2.6 million words between c.1410 and 1681. The corpus aims at being representative in terms of a variety of social and content features. The work for the CEEC corpus started in 1993 and is still continuing. A parsed version of the corpus appeared in 2007. This corpus has stimulated several research projects on the linguistic manifestations of social interaction through the medium of letters, including Nevalainen (2001) on conventional formulae in early English correspondence, and Nevala (2004, 2007) on address forms. The most recent collection of studies by the team (Nurmi et al. 2009) contains several essays on the interface of linguistic and social variation, utilizing the CEEC corpus. The compilation of new corpora continues to form an important dimension of the work done in Helsinki. The corpora constructed after the HC include the Helsinki
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Corpus of Older Scots (1450–1700) (HCOS) and the Corpus of Scottish Correspondence (CSC), both edited by Meurman-Solin. The HCOS is based on printed editions and comprises approximately 850,000 words of running text representing 15 different genres (Meurman-Solin 1993), while the CSC comprises approximately 500,000 words of running text representing royal, official, and family letters, based on original manuscripts dating from the period 1500–1730 and originating from various areas of Scotland (Meurman-Solin 2007). Yet another recent corpus emanating from the VARIENG scholars is the Corpus of Middle English Medical Texts, compiled by Taavitsainen et al. (2005), a 500,000 word corpus including texts from three traditions of medical writing, from c.1375–1500. The other Nordic institution that has played an active role in the compilation of electronic historical corpora is Uppsala University, where Merja Kyto¨ has, in collaboration with Jonathan Culpeper, brought out A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 (CED, Kyto¨ and Culpeper 2006) (cf. Culpeper and Kyto¨ 1997; Kyto¨ and Walker 2006). The CED corpus consists of 1.2 million-word of computerized Early Modern English speech related texts representing five text types. According to the compilers, Kyto¨ and Culpeper, The CED was compiled as a tool for the study of the language of the Early Modern period; the focus was placed on dialogues because interactive face-to-face communication is known to be an important factor in language change. The corpus was designed to offer easy access to a substantial quantity of data for variationist studies and research into historical pragmatics, as well as the study of speech presentation: it was compiled with particular variables in mind, such as text type, time, gender, and social rank. As the CED focuses on spoken interaction in the past, it facilitates the study of topics such as politeness phenomena, and conversational structure. The CED also includes various modes of speech presentation, e.g. direct and indirect speech, making the material of especial value to those investigating how speech is presented in writing. (Kyto¨ and Culpeper 2006)
Kyto¨ and her co-workers in Uppsala are currently working towards an electronic text edition of English witness depositions from 1560 to 1760 (see Kyto¨ et al. [2006], cf. http://www.engelska.uu.se/research, last accessed 31 January 2012).
3 Approaches to HLE This section provides an overview of the field in terms of areas of study that have featured importantly in the Nordic area in the last few decades. At the same time, it will also be relevant to refer to some earlier studies that either have directly contributed to the emergence of particular approaches or form otherwise important elements of the Nordic profile in the historical linguistics of English. Many of the studies make use of the historical corpora cited above and employ the methodology of corpus linguistics.
3.1 Dialects One of the parameters of grouping historical texts in the HC database is dialect. Historical dialectology of early English is also connected with text editing, providing a frame for analyzing the language of the documents in detail, especially in terms of their phonology, morphology, and spelling. From there it is but a short step to
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considering texts as specimens of the language of a given place or region at a given time. For example, Lindelo¨f (1902) is concerned with an Old English variety of Northumbrian, while Sundby (1950, 1963), Zettersten (1965), and Kristensson (1967, 1987) focus on specific dialects of Middle English. Another strand of historical dialect work is concerned with the background and development of Standard English. Thus, for example, Sandved (1968) provides a detailed comparison of verbal morphology in two versions of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, viz. the late ME Winchester manuscript and the version printed by Caxton, with special reference to Caxton’s role in the development of Standard English. Nielsen (1998, 2009), on the other hand, provides a survey of the evolution of English from its continental backgrounds to the emergence of the standard language. The process of standardization in the Early Modern English period is re-examined in terms of various sets of data, including the language of the early statutes (Rissanen 2000), the standardization of spelling in scientific language (Taavitsainen 2000), and regional varieties (Kyto¨ and Romaine 2000; Meurman-Solin 2000). Ihalainen (1994) is concerned with the kind of descriptive evidence available for regional dialects up to the end of the 19th century. According to him, from about 1500 till the first systematic description towards the end of the 19th century, our knowledge of the dialects comes from occasional regional spellings, comments by the orthoepists, grammarians, and lexicographers, glossaries of “provincial words”, occasional references to local speech in travel literature, fictional texts written to illustrate regional speech, and the use of dialect in literary works (Ihalainen 1994: 197). At the University of Helsinki the dialect work initiated by Ihalainen is continued in a project on social dialectology, which concentrates on linguistic variation displayed by speakers and writers in their everyday contexts of language use, with emphasis on individual language users and their vernaculars.
3.2 Contact Historically, regional dialects frequently undergo changes as a result of influences from the speech of neighboring variants (cf. Trudgill, Chapter 130). The early history of London English is an illuminating example, containing features from several regional dialects. In some cases, such features have their origin in an earlier contact of the dialect with a foreign language. A case in point is the Anglo-Scandinavian contact in the medieval period (cf. Dance, Chapter 110), a topic where Scandinavian scholars have made important contributions, e.g. regarding the shared vocabulary and associated phonological developments (Bjo¨rkman 1900–02) and the rivalry of native and Norse words (Rynell 1948). A subfield of lexis where Scandinavian scholars have been active contributors is onomastics, including the study of names of persons, places and occupations (cf. Ekwall 1936a, 1936b; von Feilitzen 1937; Fellows-Jensen 1968, 1972, 1978, 1985; Selte´n 1972; Thuresson 1950). The close contact between English and Scandinavian in the Middle Ages has also given rise to a (controversial) suggestion of an Anglo-Norse creole underlying the development of Standard English (Poussa 1982). In a recent study, Skaffari (2009a) addresses the impact of the major foreign languages, Norse and French, on Early Middle English lexis in the light of evidence from the HC. One context of foreign language contact that has been particularly brought into focus in recent years is that between Celtic and English, examined in a series of publications by Filppula and his research associates in Joensuu (cf. Filppula and Klemola, Chapter 107; Filppula 1986; Filppula, et al. 2002; Filppula 2006; Filppula et al. 2008).
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Filppula (1986) started the work by comparing the thematic organization of information in a sentence in spoken present-day Hiberno-English and British English, and finds that the thematic organization of material in the former has been shaped by the “focus-first” tendency of Irish, a language with a different basic word order pattern (Verb-SubjectObject [VSO]) from that of English (Subject-Verb-Object [SVO]). In his subsequent research, Filppula expanded the enquiry into the historical contact phenomena between Celtic and English. He and his collaborators point out that even though it is widely accepted that the Celtic languages have played a significant role in the development of so-called Celtic Englishes, i.e. Hiberno-English and Welsh English, the question of a Celtic substratum influence on the English language in England is much more controversial (Filppula et al. 2002: 1). The writers challenge the “orthodox view” of a minimal significance of the “Celtic hypothesis” for the history of English by drawing attention to new perspectives on Celtic influence in syntax and phonology (Filppula et al. 2002: 12– 20) and new evidence for Celtic influence on Old English and Middle English vocabulary and place-names (Filppula et al. 2002: 20–22). The themes of early Celtic influences in English are followed up in more detail in Filppula (2006) and Filppula et al. (2008: 7–132).
3.3 Syntax Research in historical English syntax, as pursued in the Nordic countries, comprises not only studies of the syntactic arrangements of the principal elements of the sentence, but also the constituent-internal organization of the noun and verb phrases, as well as items belonging to individual parts of speech. Needless to say, syntactic descriptions are shaped by the theoretical models adopted. Thus, for example, word-order studies typically emphasize the importance of a network of contributing communicative-functional considerations. Methodologically, corpus-based approaches and quantitative analyses play an important role. Findings from different synchronic stages provide evidence for diachronic conclusions. In English, the establishment of the SVO order brings about a number of adjustments in more locally organized patterns. The perspectives also vary from synchronic studies modelled according to traditional grammar with a focus on the syntax of just one historical author (e.g. So¨derlind 1951–58) or occurrences of particular syntactic patterns in broader sets of historical data (e.g. Jacobson 1951) to diachronic investigations, where theoretical considerations of change play an important part (e.g. Kohonen 1978) – see further Ryde´n (1979).
3.3.1 Word-order Diachronically, syntax may be viewed in terms of how the organization of the nominal groups with regard to the finite verb evolves in different types of sentences. The syntactic arrangement of the principal constituents in the sentence became an important issue for HLE in the 1970s, inspired by research on word-order universals (Greenberg 1963) and word-order typology. In a study of Old English and Early Middle English data, Kohonen traced the developments in terms of factors affecting “the alleged shift SXV-SVX” (Kohonen 1978: 197) quantitatively, especially in terms of the syntactic and textual characteristics of clauses, subjects, objects, verbs, and adverbials, as well as possible reasons triggering the changes towards SVX syntax between c.1000 and 1200 CE. After 1200,
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inversion, which had been typical of main clauses after an initial adverb, together with the verb-final order, mostly occurring in the dependent clauses, are increasingly leveled out, as a result of the establishment of SV syntax (1978: 197–202). The changes are seen as taking place under the influence of factors such as those mentioned above. Twenty years later, Bækken (1998) extended the idea of corpus analysis of wordorder developments to cover the Early Modern English period. In her study, the surface order of the subject and finite verb are investigated in 19th-century English, with special reference to declarative main clauses starting with a non-subject element. The occurrences of the “verb-second” (V2) pattern were examined in a corpus from c.1480 to c.1730, comprising fiction, religious prose, letters and documents, history and geography, and “general” (Bækken 1998: 27). The results indicate that “V2 order was still quite frequent at the beginning of the Early Modern English period, but this changed quite radically in the course of the seventeenth century” (Bækken 1998: 413), with the language of religion being the most conservative genre in retaining the highest rate of occurrence for the V2 order throughout the period. In a sequel to the 1998 book, Bækken (2003) examines the order of the subject and finite verb in 17th-century English, with declarative clauses starting with a non-subject element in focus. The patterns under scrutiny are XSV (non-inverted order) and XVS (inverted order). The data comprise samples of four text categories: descriptive prose, religious prose, history, and letters. The possible influence of a number of features of syntactic and pragmatic nature that may play a role in the choice of the word order pattern is investigated statistically in the different subgroups of the data, but the results do not suggest a uniform development towards the stabilization of the XSV pattern and the corresponding decline of XVS. Rather, the findings suggest that the changes involved take place in a wave-like fashion “by leaps and bounds” (Bækken 2003: 201). In addition to the types of sentence and clauses discussed in the studies above, there are also investigations that focus on other types of sentences and clauses, but which nevertheless tie up with the broader issues of word order changes in English. Thus, Breivik (1983) is devoted to existential sentences introduced by there. The existential dummy subject [there1] is formally identical with the locative adverb [there2], from which it is derived. In line with what is predicted by models of word order typology, the development is assumed to have taken place through a process whereby [there1] is inserted in the pre-verbal position as an empty topic (TVX) and, concomitantly with the establishment of the SVX syntax, is reanalyzed syntactically as the subject of the sentence (see further Breivik 1983: 404–412).
3.3.2 Verb phrase studies: the auxiliaries Be/have. The history of the English auxiliary verbs has given rise to several monographs. The variation between the temporal/aspectual auxiliaries be/have with intransitive verbs in the period 1700–1900 is studied by Ryde´n and Brorstro¨m (1987). The authors examine the temporal/aspectual shift from the stative be-dominated paradigm around 1700 to an almost entirely have-dominated action paradigm around 1900 in a corpus covering both informal and formal registers (Ryde´n and Brorstro¨m 1987: 213– 214). A number of factors contributing to this development are distinguished, including the greater functional load of the auxiliary be and several syntactic, semantic, and lexical factors associated with the state vs. action opposition. The change took a long time
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to complete, for it was not until the end of the 19th century that have wins out as perfect marker at the expense of the state-oriented be. The distribution and uses of the antecedents of be/have in earlier English have recently been examined by Kilpio¨ (1997) and Kyto¨ (1997), based on the evidence of the HC. A number of variables are analyzed, several of them not accounted for in the earlier studies at the same degree of precision, including the chronology, dialect, possible foreign influence, genre, and level of formality of the texts, along with the important linguistic factors of action/process uses, durative, iterative and conditional contexts, main verb, tense, perfect infinitive, and the presence of an object complement. Modals. The modal auxiliaries are analyzed in the framework of socio-historical variation by Kyto¨ (1991b). The study aims at accounting for the development of can (could), may (might), shall (should) and will (would) in early American English by examining the interplay of various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors in the light of evidence drawn from various corpora. The study concentrates on the language spoken and written in the New England area between 1620 and 1720. The results indicate a gradual change in the system of English modals from early stages on. Cumulative evidence is found for the rise of the forms can and will; in early American English conservative, rather than innovative, tendencies characterize the development. Do. The vexed questions regarding the origin of the auxiliary do and its occurrence in various types of sentences in English has given rise to several studies in the Nordic countries. Ellega˚rd (1953) is a landmark in the study of this subject. The results of the study are based on the occurrence of do in different types of sentences in a corpus of 379 texts from 1390–1710. They indicate a progress in the use of the auxiliary in interrogative and negative sentences, as against a decline in affirmative ones, after the mid16th century (Ellega˚rd 1953: 162). Regarding the possible origin of periphrastic do, the author thinks that it was the causative use of the verb that paved way to its auxiliary usage, which would point to literary contexts as its likeliest source of origin. On the other hand, those who are in favor of a more colloquial origin prefer to think in terms of semantic weakening of the lexical verb do or the influence of language contact (Nevalainen 2006a: 200). Klemola (2002: 302) sees the latter alternative as the more plausible one, adducing evidence from present South-Western dialects in favor of medieval Celtic substratum influence as “a likely contributory factor” to the emergence of periphrastic do in English. Ellega˚rd’s study has provided a stimulus for further research on the subject (see Warner 2006), especially in the light of new corpus evidence. Thus, Nurmi (1999), adopting a sociolinguistic point of view and using the CEEC corpus as her data, is able to provide a more detailed picture of the developments towards the regularization of the modern usage of do, especially in terms of dating, social conditioning, importance of informal registers, and gender differentiation involved in the relevant changes. For discussion of factors involved in the rise and early development of the do-periphrasis, see also Raumolin-Brunberg and Nurmi (1997), Rissanen (1999), and Nevalainen (2006a, 2006b).
3.3.3 Noun phrase studies The historical dimension of English nominal constituents covers a multitude of topics from simplex nouns to complex noun phrases. As in the case of the basics of verb syntax, Mustanoja (1960) is a standard authority on the subject for Middle English.
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Similarly, Rissanen (1999) provides an exposition of the noun phrase in Early Modern English in terms of determiners, pronouns, adjectives, and the genitive case. Regarding the structure of noun phrase constructions, the study of Early Modern English by Raumolin-Brunberg (1991), based on Sir Thomas More’s writings, is the most comprehensive. The results of the quantitative analysis are discussed in terms of, e.g., headwords and determiners, the length of the phrases, and the structure of the complex noun phrase. Examples of more specialized studies include, in particular, the history of pronouns. Thus, Kivimaa (1966), addressing þe and þat as clause connectives, Rissanen (1967), the uses of one, and Kahlas-Tarkka (1987), the indefinite pronouns for every and each, deal with Old English and Early Middle English developments. Relative constructions in Early Modern English are examined by Ryde´n (1966). Variation in the Early Modern English paradigm of the second person personal pronouns is investigated by Walker (2007). The study focuses on the variation between thou and you in a set of trial, deposition, and dramatic comedy data from 1560–1760, tracing the progress of you in the three speech-related genres. Further studies dealing with noun phrase structures in Early Modern English include Altenberg (1982) addressing the syntactic variation between the -s genitive and the of-construction in a stylistically diversified corpus of 17th-century English. The results show that a great number of parameters may be involved in the choice of the genitival construction in different contexts. However, the conclusion is that their impact on the outcome is much the same as in Present-day English, and no diachronic change was observable within the period studied.
3.3.4 Adverbials The syntax of adverbials has been most extensively studied by Swan (1988) and Nevalainen (1991). Swan concentrates on the use of sentence adverbials realized by oneword adverbs ending in -ly (OE -lice; e.g. Surprisingly, …) and the shifts, syntactic and pragmatic, involved when a word is redefined as a sentence adverbial. The material consists of English prose texts from Old English to Late Modern English. The results present a picture of considerable variation from one period to another, but at the same time they also show how the multi-functionality of adverbial usage is significantly facilitated in English by the fact that adverbs need not change morphologically, but can freely change from one function to another, retaining the -ly form (Swan 1988: 536). Nevalainen, on the other hand, concentrates on the diachronic development of English focusing adverbs, based on only and its synonyms (Nevalainen 1991: 2). The diachronic corpus covers the period 1500–1900 and contains a variety of genres. The variation in the material is analyzed in terms of a number of external and internal parameters. The findings are discussed in relation to linguistic change in terms of stability and variation as well as the semantic shifts leading to the gradual establishment of only as the “single, most highly productive prototype of the exclusive adverbial category” (Nevalainen 1991: 260).
3.4 Historical sociolinguistics Socio-historical research has been carried out most notably by Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg and their research associates at the University of Helsinki within the domain
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of “Language and Society” (cf. Nevalainen, Chapter 92). The topics addressed focus on the social embedding of English vernacular universals across time; individuals and their vernaculars; user-based variation; the leaders of linguistic change; the role of migration in language change; socially embedded dialect grammar; social interaction, including social networks; and speaker attitudes. By drawing on the CEEC, the team has come up with new findings about the impact of the social context on the language use in the period covered by the material (1410–1681); these are reported in two monographs by Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1996, 2003). The 1996 publication is concerned with elucidating the theoretical and conceptual research apparatus of the project and with a selection of pilot studies on the various independent social variables, such as social stratification in Tudor and early Stuart England, and traits of gender differences in the corpus. In addition, the volume also contains papers on linguistic changes in progress at the time, including a study of the grammaticalization of methinks (PalanderCollin 1996), the use of address forms (Nevala 2004), the interconnectedness of periphrastic do and be+ing (Nurmi 2008), and the “pragmatization” in the use of address forms (Raumolin-Brunberg 1996). The most recent book-length publication emanating from the project is Nurmi et al. (2009), dealing with the language of daily life in England from 1400 to 1800. In a major publication of the project, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003) present a sociolinguistic perspective on the history of English, based on the CEEC, focusing on changes in both apparent and real time. An important chapter deals with gender differentiations in the corpus. The findings confirm the hypothesis of women usually leading the process of change. The study shows how the sociolinguistic model may be successfully applied to historical material, e.g. in the analysis of the distinctive features of standard English, including changes in pronouns, the emergence of the auxiliary do, the absence of multiple negation, etc. (see Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg 2003: 205). At the same time, they are careful in maintaining that the historical applications necessitate taking into account the special features of the historical material. A succinct overview of the field of historical sociolinguistics is found in Nevalainen (2006c). Another section of the Helsinki project deals with meaning and cultural change, with meaning “defined in its broadest sense, including the ways in which meaning is contextually constructed and negotiated on a social level” (Rissanen et al. 1991). Thus, Koivisto-Alanko (2000) is concerned with the issues of prototypicality, unidirectionality and subjectification in the light of semantic changes involved in the abstract vocabulary of cognition, while Tissari (2003) addresses the changes affecting the meaning of the word love from Early Modern English to the present day, together with associated cognitive metaphors.
3.5 Historical discourse and pragmatics Approaching English usage historically as a contextual and situated phenomenon has provided new avenues of investigation in the form of studies of historical discourse and historical pragmatics. Both micro and macro-level units of discourse in their linguistic realizations are investigated as a form of social action, constitutive of social reality. The materials studied have included both institutional and private communication, investigated in their lexical and grammatical realizations as well as the underlying
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discourse patterns. The theoretical and methodological starting points are, above all, derived from the insights of discourse analytic and pragmatic approaches to language use (see further http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/domains/domain_discourse.html, last accessed 9 December 2010). The smaller units of discourse, previously often left in the shadow of the more major ones, have become an object of renewed interest in terms of their communicative functions. These include a variety of expressions that have arisen as a result of grammaticalization, i.e. a process whereby autonomous lexical items and constructions gradually acquire grammatical functions (see Brems and Hoffmann, Chapter 99). One example of such a process is the development of discourse markers. In a pioneering article on OE þa ‘then’, Enkvist (1972) drew attention to the function of the word as an “action marker” constituting an interface between orality and literacy (on the latter, see Schaefer, Chapter 81). His observation resulted in a series of more detailed studies of OE þa from different discourse-pragmatic perspectives, including temporal chains and narrative structure (Enkvist and Wa˚rvik 1987), grounding (Wa˚rvik 1990a), and the ME reflexes of OE þa and þonne (Wa˚rvik 1990b). The use of interjections and exclamations is a parallel example. Their discourse functions are examined in Middle English by Taavitsainen (1995, 1997a) and in Old English by Hiltunen (2006). The research on grammaticalization shows that the process has played an important role in the history of English. As Rissanen (1997: 3) points out, its consequences are to be seen in developments such as the establishment of the SVO order, the auxiliary system, the prepositional system, as well as the emergence of new pronominal and adverbial forms, and links between the elements of a sentence, both at the clause and the phrase level. Several such developments have been traced in the different subsets of the HC, including indefinite pronouns, the pronominalization of one, adverb derivation, there-compounds, reflexive strategies and the history of methinks (see Rissanen et al. 1997a, 1997b). The latter topic is followed up by Palander-Collin (1996) in a monograph devoted to the expressions I think and methinks in Middle English and Early Modern English up to 1700, with reference to the changes undergone by the expressions in their syntax, meaning, and pragmatics, and special reference to their grammaticalization as first-person evidential markers signalling overtly the writer’s opinion or belief. In addition, the expressions also serve as politeness markers that can be analyzed in terms of social distance and solidarity. The study also pays attention to social ranks, registers in the language of men and women, as represented in the HC. In a series of publications Rissanen has dealt extensively with grammaticalization in the history of English, including expressions of exception, concessive prepositions, adverbial subordinators, and adverbial connectives (cf. Rissanen 2002a, 2002b, 2007, 2009). The application of speech act theory to historical texts has emerged as a new area of HLE (see Jucker and Taavitsainen 2008a: 1–23). The approach covers not only the realizations of speech acts per se, but also politeness and variation in the contextual set-up and related communication strategies. Jucker and Taavitsainen (2008a: 2) suggest that speech act analysis could serve as a ground-breaker towards a pragmatic history of the English language. Their anthology contains two co-authored papers by Taavitsainen and Jucker, one dealing with compliments (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2008b) and the other with apologies (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2008c). Another line of contextually focused research consists of studies addressing the emergence and development of written genres, i.e. communicative events characterized
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by a set of communicative purposes shared, identified, and mutually understood by the members of the relevant discourse community in which they regularly occur (Swales 1990: 58). Genres provide a source of variation in language and thereby also a source of language change (Taavitsainen 2001). The emphasis has been on the history of scientific genres (Taavitsainen and Pahta 2004). Taavitsainen and Pahta, in collaboration with their research team at the University of Helsinki, have investigated medical texts from the Middle Ages into the Early Modern period. In their project on scientific “thought styles” in medical English, they aim at “a long diachronic perspective in a multifaceted sociohistorical framework”, as a result of which they have published the electronic Corpus of Early English Medical Writing (Taavitsainen et al. 2005). The database comprises 86 texts (495,322 words) from three traditions of medical writing, surgical treatises, specialized texts, and remedy books from 1375 to 1500. The latest publication from the project is a combined volume of Early Modern medical texts and studies based on them (Taavitsainen and Pahta 2011). A different view into the history of genres is offered by terminological research. From this perspective, Norri (1992, 1998, 2004) examines early medical writings (1400–1550) with a reference to the names of sicknesses and body parts and their origins. At the University of Turku, the history and characteristics of genres have been investigated by several scholars. Peikola is concerned with the religious discourse of the Lollards, with reference to the impact of their specific sect vocabulary in their writings (Peikola 2000) and with the catalogue as a genre of the sect (Peikola 2003). How religious communication works in yet another medieval religious setting involving close ingroup ties among its members is studied by Hiltunen (2003) and Skaffari (2009b), with reference to the Ancrene Wisse. Carroll (2003, 2009) examines the discourse properties of medieval recipes in terms of the notions of “discourse colony” (Carroll 2003) and “vague language” (Carroll 2009). Valle (1999) is a longitudinal study of scientific discourse, as seen in the writings of the Royal Society of London (1665–1965). The material of her study covers both medicine and natural history. The approach involves a close scrutiny of the material as an output of a discourse community of scholars with a variety of internal and external ties, including the different voices involved in the communication of the Society in different periods. The data indicate a gradual change from private epistolary writing to completely public communication towards the end of the period examined. Tanskanen (2003, 2009) is concerned with the genre of letters, especially from the perspective of letter-writing manuals. In the domain of legal genres, the project on the edition of the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials (cf. Section 2.1 above) has given rise to several studies of courtroom discourse in the Salem records, including question-answer sequences, recording techniques and editing principles, transmission history, scribal profiling, and discourse strategies (cf. Hiltunen 1996; Grund et al. 2004; Grund 2007; Hiltunen and Peikola 2007; Kahlas-Tarkka and Rissanen 2007).
3.6 Surveys of language history Studies providing overviews of the history of English either in terms of periods or approaches are important works of reference for assessing the state of the art. Illustrative examples from the Nordic area include Ryde´n (1979), discussing approaches to historical English syntax up to the 1970s, Kisbye (1971–72), providing an account of the
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history of English syntax in terms of a part of speech analysis, and Kisbye (1992), offering a general history of English in a textbook format. More recently, two extensive studies of specific aspects of HLE have appeared in The Cambridge History of the English Language (Rissanen 1999; Nevalainen 1999), both addressing the Early Modern English period. Rissanen’s study is the first comprehensive account of syntactic developments in the 15th and 16th centuries, with special reference to the structural properties of the noun phrase, verb phrase, elements of the clause, simple sentence, and composite sentences. Nevalainen (1999) is concerned with Early Modern English lexis and semantics. The section on lexis examines the expansion of the vocabulary in the light of available dictionary evidence, with special reference to lexical processes and borrowing. The semantic section examines types of meaning shifts and their motivations in Early Modern English lexis. Nevalainen (2006b) has also published a textbook on Early Modern English. It provides an all-round discussion of the linguistic features of English in c.1500–1700, drawing on the Helsinki Corpora (HC and CEEC) for examples and paying special attention to the social context of language use. Finally, Nevalainen and Brunberg (2003) is a textbook on the methodology and major findings relevant to HLE of historical sociolinguistics (cf. Section 3.4).
4 Summary Historical linguistics of English has a long and distinguished history in the Nordic countries, and the field is thriving today. As shown by the discussion above, it is the University of Helsinki where most of the work is being conducted at the present time. But cutting-edge research is also done in several other universities in the Nordic countries. The interplay between present and past is the source of constant stimulation for research on HLE. At present, the most dynamic field of research, from a methodological perspective, is based on data-driven projects utilizing electronic corpora of historical materials. At the same time, the compilation of new corpora, generating new research, is an equally notable trend. In terms of approaches, the stimuli provided by socially and contextually oriented methods, as applied in the study of the language of the past, are among the most fruitful in offering new insights into HLE, and a large number of studies combine the two.
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Carroll, Ruth. 2003. Recipes for laces: An example of Middle English discourse colony. In: Risto Hiltunen and Janne Skaffari (eds.), Discourse Perspectives on English: medieval to modern, 137–165. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Carroll, Ruth. 2009. Vague language in the medieval recipes of the Forme of Cury. In: Matti Peikola, Janne Skaffari and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen (eds.), Instructional Writing in English, 55–82. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kyto¨. 1997. Towards a Corpus of Dialogues, 1550–1750. In: Heinrich Ramisch and Kenneth Wynne (eds.), Language in Time and Space. Studies in Honour of Wolfgang Viereck on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, 60–71. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Ekwall, Eilert. 1936a. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ekwall, Eilert. 1936b. Studies on English Place-Names. Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet. Ellega˚rd, Alvar. 1953. The Auxiliary Do: The Establishment and Regulation of its Use in English. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Enkvist, Nils Erik. 1972. Old English adverbial þa – an action marker? Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73: 90–96. Enkvist, Nils Erik. 1999. English studies in Finland: Past, present, and future. In: SannaKaisa Tanskanen and Brita Wa˚rvik (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on English Studies, 13–31. Turku: Department of English, University of Turku. Enkvist, Nils Erik and Brita Wa˚rvik. 1987. Old English þa, temporal chains, and narrative structure. In: Anna Giacalone Ramat, Onofrio Carruba, and Giuliano Bernini (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 221–237. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. von Feilitzen, Otto. 1937. The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Fellows-Jensen, Gillian. 1968. Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Fellows-Jensen, Gillian. 1972. Scandinavian Settlement Names in Yorkshire. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Fellows-Jensen, Gillian. 1978. Scandinavian Settlement Names in the East Midlands. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Fellows-Jensen, Gillian. 1985. Scandinavian Settlement Names in the North-West. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag. Filppula, Markku. 1986. Some Aspects of Hiberno-English in a Functional Sentence Perspective. Joensuu: University of Joensuu. Filppula, Markku. 2006. The Making of Hiberno-English and other “Celtic Englishes”. In: Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the History of English, 507–536. Singapore: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Filppula, Markku , Juhani Klemola, and Heli Pitka¨nen. 2002. Introduction. Early contacts between English and the Celtic languages. In: Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Pitka¨nen (eds.), The Celtic Roots of English, 1–26. Joensuu: Joensuun Yliopistopaino. Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola, and Heli Paulasto. 2008. English and Celtic in Contact. London: Routledge. Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. Some universals of grammar with special reference to the order of meaningful elements. In: Joseph Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Language, 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Grund, Peter, Merja Kyto¨, and Matti Rissanen. 2004. Editing the Salem Witchcraft Records: An Exploration of a Linguistic Treasury. American Speech 79: 146–167. Grund, Peter. 2007. From tongue to text: The transmission of the Salem Witchcraft Examination Records. American Speech 82: 119–150. Hiltunen, Risto. 1996. “Tell Me, Be You a Witch?”: Questions in the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692. International Journal for the Semiotics of the Law 9: 17–37.
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Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpio¨, Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1991. The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. In: ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora (CD-ROM), 2nd edn., Knut Hofland, Anne Lindebjerg, Jørn Thunestvedt (eds.), The HIT Center, University of Bergen, Norway. For manual, see http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/hc/index.htm (last accessed 9 December 2010). Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.). 1993. Early English in the Computer Age. Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, and Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.). 1997a. English in Transition: Corpusbased Studies in Linguistic Variation and Genre Styles. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kyto¨, and Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.). 1997b. Grammaticalization at Work: Studies of Long-term Developments in English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rissanen, Matti, Marianna Hintikka, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, and Rod McConchie (eds.). 2007 Change of Meaning and the Meaning of Change: Studies in Semantics and Grammar from Old to Present-Day English. Helsinki: Socie´te´ Ne´ophilologique. Rosenthal, Bernard, Richard Trask, Peter Grund, Risto Hiltunen, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Merja Kyto¨, Matti Peikola, Matti Rissanen, Margo Burns, Marilynne K. Roach, Gretchen Adams, Ben Ray. (eds.). 2009. Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryde´n, Mats. 1966. Relative Clauses in Early Sixteenth Century English: with Special Reference to Sir Thomas Elyot. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Ryde´n, Mats. 1979. An Introduction to the Historical Study of English Syntax. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Ryde´n, Mats and Sverker Brorstro¨m. 1987. The Be/Have Variation with Intransitives in English: With Special reference to the Late Modern Period. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Rynell, Alarik. 1948. The Rivalry of Scandinavian and Native Synonyms in Middle English, especially taken and nimen. With an Excursus on nema and taka in Old Scandinavian. Lund: Gleerup. Sajavaara, Kari. 1967. The Middle English Translations of Robert Grosseteste’s Chaˆteau d’Amour. Helsinki: Socie´te´ Ne´ophilologique. Sandred, Karl Inge. 1971. A Middle English Version of the Gesta Romanorum: MS Gloucester Cathedral 22. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Sandved, Arthur O. 1968. Studies in the Language of Caxton’s Malory and that of the Winchester Manuscript. Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Sandved, Arthur O. 2000. Norway. In: Balz Engler and Renate Haas (eds.), European English Studies: Contributions towards the History of a Discipline, 103–121. Leicester: The English Association. Selte´n, Bo. 1972. The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal Names. East Anglia 1100– 1399. Lund: Gleerup. Skaffari, Janne. 2009a. Studies in Early Middle English Loanwords: Norse and French Influences. Turku: University of Turku. Skaffari, Janne. 2009b. The WOMANual: Ancrene Wisse on instruction. In: Matti Peikola, Janne Skaffari, and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen (eds.), Instructional Writing in English, 35–53. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. So¨derlind, Johannes. 1951–58. Verb Syntax in John Dryden’s Prose, Vols. I–II. Uppsala: Lundequistska Bokhandeln (Vol. I); Go¨teborg: Elanders Boktryckeri (Vol. II). Sundby, Bertil. 1950. Dialect and Provenance of the Middle English Poem “The Owl and the Nightingale”: A Linguistic Study. Lund: Gleerup. Sundby, Bertil. 1963. Studies in the Middle English Dialect Material of the Worcestershire Records. Bergen/Oslo: Norwegian Universities Press. Svinhufvud, Anne Charlotte. 1978. A Late Middle English Treatise on Horses, edited from British Library MS. Sloane 2584, ff. 102–117b. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Swales, John M. 1990. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Swan, Toril. 1988. Sentence Adverbials in English: A Synchronic and Diachronic Investigation. Oslo: Novus Forlag. Taavitsainen, Irma. 1993. Genre/subgenre styles in Late Middle English. In: Merja Kyto¨, Matti Rissanen, and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), Early English in the Computer Age. Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus, 171–200. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Taavitsainen, Irma. 1995. Interjections in Early Modern English: from imitation of spoken to conventions of written language. In: Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, 439–465. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taavitsainen, Irma. 1997a. Exclamations in the history of English. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Studies in Middle English Linguistics, 573–607. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Taavitsainen, Irma. 1997b. Genre conventions: Personal affect in fiction and non-fiction in Early Modern English. In: Matti Rissanen, Merja Kyto¨, and Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.), English in Transition: Corpus-based Studies in Linguistic Variation and Genre Style, 185–266. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Taavitsainen, Irma. 2000. Scientific language and spelling standardisation 1375–1550. In: Laura Wright (ed.), The Development of Standard English 1300–1800, 131–154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taavitsainen, Irma. 2001. Language history and the scientific register. In: Hans Ju¨rgen Diller and Manfred Go¨rlach (eds.), Towards a History of English as a History of Genres, 185–202. Heidelberg: C. Winter Universita¨tsverlag. Taavitsainen, Irma and Pa¨ivi Pahta (eds.). 2004. Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taavitsainen, Irma, Pa¨ivi Pahta, and Martti Ma¨kinen (eds.). 2005. Middle English Medical Texts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Taavitsainen, Irma and Pa¨ivi Pahta (eds.). 2011. Early Modern Medical Texts: Corpus Description and Studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa. 2003. “Best patterns for your imitation”: Early modern letter-writing instruction and real correspondence. In: Risto Hiltunen and Janne Skaffari (eds.), Discourse Perspectives on English: Medieval to Modern, 167–195. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa. 2007. Intertextual networks in the correspondence of Lady Katherine Paston. In: Terttu Nevalainen and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen (eds.), Letter Writing, 73–87. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa. 2009. “Proper to their sex”: Letter-writing instruction and epistolary model dialogues in Henry Care’s The Female Secretary. In: Matti Peikola, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, and Janne Skaffari (eds.), Instructional Writing in English, 125–140. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tissari, Heli. 2003. Lovescapes: Changes in Prototypical Senses and Cognitive Metaphors since 1500. Helsinki: Socie´te´ Ne´ophilologique. Thuresson, Bertil. 1950. Middle English Occupational Names. Lund: Gleerup. Valle, Ellen. 1999. A Collective Intelligence: The Life Science, in the Royal Society as a Scientific Discourse Community, 1665–1965. Turku: University of Turku. Walker, Terry. 2007. Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Warner, Anthony. 2006. Variation and the interpretation of change in periphrastic DO. In: Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the History of English, 45–67. Singapore: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Wright, Laura (ed.). 2000. The Development of Standard English 1300–1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wa˚rvik, Brita. 1990a. On grounding in English narratives: a diachronic perspective. In: Sylvia M. Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent, and Susan Wright (eds.), Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, 531–542. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Wa˚rvik, Brita. 1990b. The ambiguous adverbial/conjunctions þa and þonne in Middle English: A discourse-pragmatic study of then and when in early English saints’ lives. In: Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, 345– 357. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zettersten, Arne. 1965. Studies on the Dialectal Vocabulary of the Ancrene Wisse. Lund: Gleerup. Zettersten, Arne. 1976. The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Edited from Magdalen College, Cambridge, MS Pepys 2498. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Risto Hiltunen, Turku (Finland)
88. History of English Historical Linguistics: East-Central and Eastern Europe 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Introduction East-Central Europe Eastern Europe South-Eastern Europe Conclusions and perspectives References
Abstract This chapter surveys the emergence of research in English historical linguistics and the state of the art of teaching this subject in almost two dozen countries which do not necessarily make up a precise geographical unit but could be labeled as the former Eastern Bloc countries. The presentation of data follows a historical rather than a geographical principle. In some cases the subsections discuss the present status of English historical linguistics in higher education rather than the emergence of research in this field, which is due to the limited availability of data. The importance of this overview derives from the circumstance that information and publications appear in so many lesser known languages and – from some of these countries – they are often difficult to obtain. The survey aims to reveal the historical intellectual ties in the sphere of English historical linguistics that may be(come) covert by the fact that most of countries discussed here emerged in a process of secession from earlier geopolitical unions.
1 Introduction The geographical scope of this chapter is far from simple to define because there are problems with geographical definitions caused by the historical changes in political borders (see Todorova 2005). In this region the major centers for the study of English historical linguistics (EHL), from where intellectual threads and connections reached out and created secondary centers of dispersal, form nets that may have been cut through by historical, political changes. At the same time it seems almost impossible to avoid using the popular mental map labeled as the “former Eastern Bloc countries” in the Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 1375–1396
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historical survey of EHL because this is what we arrive at when we look at the list of countries surveyed below. The turbulent history of East-Central and Eastern Europe is reflected in university annals, which often reveal a transnational administrative history, e.g. the University of Lviv (Ukraine) was founded by a Polish king in 1661, then re-established by the Austrian monarch to fall back under Polish control after the disintegration of the AustroHungarian Monarchy in 1918 and to be taken over by Soviet rule in 1939. Thus the language of education was either Polish, Latin, German, or Ukrainian, or all four. Due to shifting borders transnational biographies are also frequently found. An illustrative example could be the intriguing life story of Ernest Klein (1899–1983), author of an etymological dictionary of English (Klein 1966–67). He was born in Szatma´rne´meti, in the region called Partium, which then was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Klein obtained his PhD at the University of Vienna in 1925. In 1931 he became the rabbi of the Nove´ Za´mky community (already belonging to Czechoslovakia at that time). Having survived the deportation to Auschwitz he returned to his birth place, Szatma´rne´meti (by then renamed as Satu Mare in Romania). In 1950 he emigrated to France and in 1952 he settled in Canada. Klein is today mentioned as a Romanian-born Canadian linguist.
2 East-Central Europe 2.1 Poland Among the countries surveyed in this chapter Poland has the strongest tradition in English historical linguistics and in the fleet of Polish Universities Poznan´ is definitely the flagship in this area. The first half of the 20th century saw a slow but definite progress in the emergence of the field. The first chair of English studies was established in 1911 at the Jagellonian University in Cracow by Roman Dyboski (1883–1945), whose area of interest was English medieval language and literature. His Vienna habilitation dissertation was published in Oxford (Dyboski 1908). He is the author of the first handbook on medieval English literature and language (Dyboski 1910), which remained in use as a university textbook until the 1950s. His lifetime covered two world wars and his research activity was hindered by those turbulent times (he was taken a prisoner of war in 1914 and spent seven years in Russian prisons; for a posthumously published account of this period see Dyboski 2007). In 1935 he co-edited the Middle English manuscript Knyghthode and bataile with his Poznan´ colleague, Zygfryd M. Arend (Dyboski and Arend 1935). The post-war revival period is marked by the activity of three outstanding scholars. Jerzy Kuryłowicz arrived in Wrocław from Lviv (Ukraine) in an escape from the arrival of Soviet troops. Between 1946 and 1948 he taught at the Institute of English Philology in Wrocław, then he moved to Cracow, where he took the chair of General Linguistics at Jagellonian University. EHL was revived in Warsaw in the wake of the arrival of two other scholars, both from the USA: Alfred Reszkiewicz and Margaret Schlauch. Alfred Reszkiewicz (1920–1973), a student of Kuryłowicz, started his studies of classical and English philology in Cracow and also studied at Yale and the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (1949–1950, postgraduate studies under W. H. Bennett). On his return he started to teach in Warsaw and published essential textbooks on EHL,
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among them two handbooks of Old English grammar, which became classical textbooks still in use (Reszkiewicz 1973a, 1973b). He also wrote a monograph on word order in Late Old English (Reszkiewicz 1966) and another one on sentence elements in Late Middle English (Reszkiewicz 1962). The arrival of the American Margaret Schlauch (1898–1986) was also beneficial to the promotion of EHL in Warsaw. She obtained her PhD with a dissertation on Chaucer at Columbia (Schlauch 1927), then studied Celtic languages under the instruction of Julius Pokorny in Berlin in 1929–1930, and in 1940 she became a full professor at New York University. Being not only a feminist and a Marxist but also an active member of the communist party of the USA, she decided not to return to the USA in 1951 for fear of McCarthyism and joined her sister, who was married to a Polish physicist, living in Poland. Schlauch’s contribution to EHL is manifold: her main achievements in EHL are her books outlining the history of English (Schlauch 1952, 1959), but she also wrote about methodological aspects of teaching EHL (Schlauch 1957). For further details of Schlauch’s life and her relevance for EHL see Rogers 2001, Fis´iak 2004, for her bibliography see Brahmer et al. (1966: 9–20). The institutional birth of English studies in Poznan´ dates back to 1921, when a British scholar, W. A. Massey (1884–1960) was appointed professor, while the emergence of EHL in Poznan´ is associated with the activity of Zygfryd M. Arend (1895–1944), who obtained his BA at the University of London and wrote his doctoral dissertation “The Interverbal Phonetics in Cursor Mundi” in 1926 in Poznan´. Arend continued investigating linking consonants. Part of his dissertation was published (Arend 1930) and is still often cited. However, his research on suprasegmentals in the Ormulum was left unfinished due to the author’s premature death (he was shot in the Warsaw Uprising). After World War II the Poznan´ department was reopened only in 1965. The new foundations were laid by a former student of Margaret Schlauch, Jacek Fis´iak. Having completed his habilitation (Fis´iak 1965) he became the head of the department. Under his leadership in the four decades between 1966 and 2005 a large school of EHL emerged. Poznan´ has a strong institutional basis for study and research in the field of EHL, its School of English has 17 departments. The present structure of the School of English emerged in a period of reorganization between 1996 and 1998, which resulted in the establishment of an independent unit for EHL, the Department of the History of English. Research activity of the staff covers all areas of the history of English from its early beginnings till the 18th and 19th centuries. The Department of Old Germanic Languages was formed in 2004; its scope of research encompasses primarily the prehistory (the Germanic and Indo-European roots) of English. These two departments represent a major achievement for the promotion of EHL because a separate department specializing in EHL is hard to find elsewhere in Europe (except for some Russian and Ukrainian universities).
2.2 Czech Republic English historical linguistics was already represented to some extent in the early period of English studies at Charles University, Prague, where Josef Janko (1869–1947) lectured on Anglo-Saxon grammar (Hladky´ 2000: 184). But the real beginning and evolution of English historical linguistics is inevitably connected to the activity of the Prague Linguistic Circle as both the institutional establishment of English studies and the
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linguists specializing in and teaching English historical linguistics were related to this group of scholars. Vile´m Mathesius (1882–1945), one of the founders of the Prague Linguistic Circle, became the first Czech professor of English language and literature when the first English Department was founded at Charles University of Prague in 1912. The linguistic education of Mathesius – just like that of de Saussure – was linked to the Neogrammarian tradition: his professor was the Neogrammarian Jan Gebauer (1838–1907), specialist in the history of the Czech language. But Mathesius surpassed this tradition by viewing the synchronic system of language in a dynamic stability and promoting the necessity of integrating the comparative and the historical approach to linguistic analysis. This new, functionalist program was outlined as early as 1909 by Mathesius, and he demonstrated how this concept of integration worked on the basis of comparing English with Czech, German and French and on the evolution of Present-day English from Old English via Middle English. This principal work was circulated as a manuscript for decades before it was finally published in 1961 (English version: Mathesius 1975). The legacy and influence of Mathesius was maintained by his students and fellow scholars in the Prague School, such as Bohumil Trnka (1895–1984), who graduated from Charles University in 1919 and became a professor of English and older English literature in 1930. His research encompasses a vast area ranging from a four-volume history of English literature to studies in Germanic philology, primarily the phonology and syntax of English, among them articles on English and Germanic historical phonology. A cross-section of his oeuvre is in Trnka 1982, where chapter four discusses problems of English historical phonology and morphology. Trnka’s monograph on syntactic changes from Caxton to Dryden (Trnka 1930) proved to be seminal abroad as well, e.g. its translation into Japanese in 1956 has increased the popularity of English studies in Japan (cf. Irie 1989; cf. Akimoto, Chapter 90). The Prague department hosts the Oxford-Prague Medieval Workshop dealing with various topics in English medieval literature and English historical linguistics. The most recent, fifth meeting was held in 2010 (the earlier ones were held in 1994, 1995, 1997, and 2006). There are two major projects related to Old English run by the department: An Automatic Morphological Analyzer of Old English (coordinated by Ondrˇej Tichy´) and the digitalization of the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (coordinated by Jan Cˇerma´k, for details see http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/, last accessed 8 November 2011), which is now utilized as a tool both in research and in teaching. The second oldest Czech institution of English studies is the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, which started to operate in 1919. Its history is connected with the name of Josef Vachek (1909–1996), a representative member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, whose role in reviving the Department of English in Brno in the period after World War II was crucial. He was a most seminal figure for the historical study of English. His teaching gave motivation to several Czech scholars to follow the historical line of investigating the English language. His book on the history of English (Vachek 1951) saw several editions and reprints; its English version was published in Leiden (Vachek 1969) earlier than in Czechoslovakia (Vachek 1972, 1975). Among his smaller contributions to EHL, the investigation into the unresolved problem of the phonological evolution of the pronoun she may deserve interest (Vachek 1953). He was also the founder of the journal Brno Studies in English in 1959 (full-text version available online at http://www.phil.muni.cz/wkaa/home/ publikace/bse-plone-verze, last accessed 8 November 2011).
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Vachek’s legacy was continued in Brno by his students: Jan Firbas, Josef Hladky´ and Alesˇ Svoboda. Jan Firbas (1921–2000) concentrated his investigations on developing the Functional Sentence Perspective and in an early work he examined the function of word order in Old English and Modern English (Firbas 1957). Later, however, his focus shifted away from the history of English and his only contribution to this area was amending his professor’s textbook about the historical development of English (Vachek and Firbas 1962), which saw several later editions, most recently Vachek and Firbas (1994). Josef Hladky´ (1931–2008) was primarily interested in lexicology, e.g. he published a monograph on the names of mushrooms (Hladky´ 1996a). He also wrote several textbooks (Hladky´ 1996b, 2003) while teaching in Brno. He compiled the bibliography of Vachek’s works (Hladky´ 1997). Another student of Vachek, Alesˇ Svoboda (1941–2010), who taught not only in Brno but also in Ostrava and Presˇov, specialized in general, comparative, and English linguistics. He contributed to functionalist ideas by a monograph studying the diatheme, i.e. the context-independent pieces of information irretrievable from the immediately preceding context, based on an Old English text by Ælfric (Svoboda 1982). Brno professors A. Svoboda and J. Hladky´ participated in the foundation of another department of English, which operates at the Silesian University in Opava, where the Faculty of Arts originally started as a local branch of Masaryk University in Brno. A small but relevant study by a younger scholar affiliated both with Opava and Brno describes how Old English and Middle English scripts can be included in web pages and provides glyph-to-code reference tables for Old English and Middle English letters (Dra´pela 2004). English historical linguistics is also taught at Palacky´ University, Olomouc – the oldest Moravian university – where the Department of English and American Studies was for some time led by Jaroslav Macha´cˇek (1929–), author of a textbook on the history of English (Macha´cˇek 1963).
2.3 Slovakia The emergence of English studies in Slovakia is connected with the activity of Czech professors at Comenius University in Bratislava. It was the Czech Celtologist Jozef Baudisˇ (1883–1933) who inaugurated English studies in 1924. He was followed by a student of Mathesius, Otakar Vocˇadlo (1895–1974), whose multifarious expertise included Old English as well. Thus the foundations of English philology in Bratislava were similar to those in Prague and Brno, but the progress was not as successful as at Czech universities because in Slovakia “there were no conditions equal to those in Bohemia or Moravia” (Olexa 2000: 191). A promising first sign for English historical linguistics to unfold at the English Department in Bratislava appeared in 1945, when Ja´n Sˇimko (1920–) started to teach linguistics beside Old English literature. Although his primary focus was on literature, he published a book about Middle English syntax (Sˇimko 1957), in which he analyzed grammatical archaisms and concluded – on the basis of variations in subject-predicate order – that the syntax of the analyzed texts was Malorian rather than Caxtonian. Ja´n Sˇimko was appointed professor in 1968, but – having heard about the dramatic news of Soviet occupation while he was abroad on a study trip – he refused to return to Czechoslovakia. The vicissitudes and setbacks in the history of English philology are described by Olexa (2000: 192–198) and Sˇimko (2006).
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English historical linguistics appears in the curricula of Slovak higher educational institutions, but its role seems to be marginal because it is usually taught by linguists who specialize in other areas. Since training is directed at developing practical (mostly pedagogical) skills, it is not surprising that publications dealing with the history of English by Slovak authors are hard to find. The textbooks used are usually those by Czech authors (primarily Vachek 1972, 1975, 1977, 1978 and Hladky´ 1996b).
2.4 Hungary The first chair of English in Hungary was established in Budapest as early as 1886 by Arthur J. Patterson (1835–1899) at the Hungarian Royal University (renamed as Eo¨tvo¨s Lora´nd University in 1950). At that time linguistics was practically confined to the teaching of English grammar and the primary orientation of the department was for literature (Sarbu 2008: 110). This trend was basically preserved in the interwar period followed by “a gradual dissolution” of English studies in the decade after World War II (for details see Frank 2000). Revival came only after the 1956 revolution under the chairmanship of the eminent literary scholar, Miklo´s Szenczi (1904–1977). Although research and teaching focused on Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, the Romantics and modern English fiction, the curriculum changes brought about in the late 1960s finally led to the introduction of new subjects, such as the history of the English language (to some extent covering Old English as well) (Sarbu 2008: 112). The first courses in English historical linguistics taught by specialists started in the mid-1970s. Sa´ndor Rot (1921–1996) joined the department in 1974. He started his university career in 1949 in Ungva´r (Uzhgorod), Ukraine, where he laid the foundations for English studies (among others), and he was the head of the Department of English Philology between 1964 and 1974. He compiled the first handbooks on the history of English published in Hungary (Rot 1982, 1992). The subject acquired further prominence in the curriculum when Veronika Kniezsa joined the staff in 1975. Her research focuses on the Scandinavian influence on English especially as reflected in onomastics, as well as orthography and Scots. Studies dealing with EHL occasionally appearing in the ELTE SEAS Working Papers in Linguistics (Budapest) launched in 1994, since 2004 in electronic format: The Even Yearbook (http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even/index.html, last accessed 8 November 2011, with a further link to The Odd Yearbook). The second department of English in Hungary was established in Debrecen c.50 years after the first one. An English teacher training program started in the fall semester of the 1938–1939 academic year under the leadership of Sa´ndor Fest (1883– 1944), specialist in English-Hungarian literary and cultural relations. Following the tragic death of Fest (during the bombing of Budapest), English studies were revived by La´szlo´ Orsza´gh (1907–1984), whose professional profile was balanced between literature and linguistics (especially lexicography, e.g. Orsza´gh 1977). He re-launched the periodical Angol filolo´giai tanulma´nyok (‘Studies in English philology’), founded by Sa´ndor Fest in 1936 but discontinued after the founder’s death in 1944. The periodical appears now under a new name: Hungarian Studies in English. The majority of papers, however, are still in the area of literature and contributions discussing historical linguistic topics hardly ever crop up in the contents (note the two exceptions: Orsza´gh 1967 and Kniezsa 1981).
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The emergence of the first generation of experts in EHL followed the pattern that could be considered general: before specializing in EHL they were trained in other ´ da´m Na´dasdy teaching EHL at Eo¨tvo¨s University, Budapest linguistic areas, e.g. A attended courses in Germanic linguistics taught by Claus J. Hutterer (1930–1997), in general linguistics and Iranian studies taught by Zsigmond Telegdi (1909–1994). Others were motivated to specialize in EHL by lectures on Slavic and Indo-European historical comparative linguistics read by Jo´zsef Dombrovszky (1912–1996) at Debrecen University.
3 Eastern Europe One of the intellectual legacies of the former Soviet type of educational administration is visible in how EHL appears in the structure of the university study programs in Eastern Europe. The strong tradition for the historical comparative study of Germanic languages in the history of Russian linguistics provided a healthy soil for the growth of specialization in the history of the individual Germanic languages. This tradition, according to which EHL is taught in conjunction with Germanic historical comparative linguistics, survives not only at universities in the territory of the former Soviet Union but also in other places, e.g. Bulgaria. Thus the first specialists in EHL had by default a thorough background in the historical comparative study of Germanic languages. Another relevant trait of the Russian tradition in EHL is that – besides theoretical textbooks and readers – some publications were designed specifically to support seminar work with practical exercises (e.g. Linskij 1963), these are sometimes parts of an integrated series, e.g. Ivanova et al. (1976, 1985); Ivanova and Beljaeva (1980); Grishkun and Otroshko (2006, 2007); or Shaposhnikova (2008, 2009). The survival of the influence of the Russian schools of thought is supported partly by the fact that many linguists specializing in EHL at universities in the Baltic region, or in Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, and Georgia graduated from or continued postgraduate studies at the leading universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and partly by the circumstance that new editions of the classical Russian textbooks (e.g. Ilyish 1935; Smirnitsky 1955; Rastorgueva 1969) are still in use in the former Soviet republics. However, the training of specialists is shifting from the major Russian universities to the local centers of higher education, although scholars may still return to Russia for postgraduate training or to obtain higher academic degrees. One of the consequences of this shift of geographical focus is already visible in the local publications (especially textbooks), which are becoming available in an increasing number (most of them, however, are written in the local languages).
3.1 Russia 3.1.1 St. Petersburg The Faculty of Modern Languages at Herzen Institute, St. Petersburg/Leningrad was founded in 1919 and one of its 11 departments was called “History of English”. It was at the Herzen Institute that a group of linguists – primarily experts in Germanic linguistics (V. M. Zhirmunsky, S. D. Katsnel’son, M. I. Steblin-Kamensky, V. N. Yartseva, M. M. Gukhman) – developed a new school of thought that came to be known
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as the Leningrad school of grammar. This school was active mostly in the period of 1930–1980 and it played a relevant role in the development of research in the area of EHL. The basic tenets of the school differed from the Neogrammarian tradition by embracing the structuralist approach to language, but at the same time it rejected the structuralist separation of synchrony and diachrony. This attitude is well represented in the works of Viktoria N. Yartseva (1906–1999), who specialized in English historical morphology and syntax (Yartseva 1940, 1960, 1961, 1975). Steblin-Kamensky (1903–1981) studied English in St. Petersburg, and he wrote his candidate dissertation about substantive epithets in Old English poetry in 1943 (for an abridged version see Steblin-Kamensky 1946). Later his interest focused on Old Icelandic and comparative Scandinavian studies. A significant number of experts in EHL were trained by the Leningrad school, e.g. Boris A. Ilyish (1902–1971), a student of Zhirmunsky, wrote his dissertation on the distribution of French loanwords in Middle English literary texts, but later his focus shifted to syntax, thus his academic doctorate was obtained on the basis of a dissertation investigating Chaucer’s syntax in 1946, and later, in 1970 he wrote a monograph on Shakespere’s syntax (both remained unpublished). His textbook is one of the earliest published ones (Ilyish 1935) and it had several later editions. Anatoly Liberman (1937–), working in the USA since 1975, is also a graduate of the Faculty of English at the Herzen Institute, where he was a student of Steblin-Kamensky.
3.1.2 Moscow The primary center for English historical linguistics in Moscow is the Department of Germanic and Celtic Philology (called Department of Germanic and Romance Philology until 2005) founded in 1925 at the Lomonosov University (MGU). A separate Department of English Linguistics was established in 1941. Its basic parameters of education and the curriculum were formulated by Aleksandr I. Smirnitsky (1903–1954), who studied Germanic philology at MGU and graduated in 1924. Smirnitsky was a specialist in English historical linguistics; his reader in the history of English including a lexicographic supplement to illustrate the historical changes of words from Old English to Modern English (Smirnitsky 1938) has become a classical textbook. His Old English textbook (Smirnitsky 1955) was posthumously published. Both of these books became bestsellers reprinted several times. Another relevant headquarters for English historical linguistics is the Moscow State Linguistic University (previously “Maurice Thorez” Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages), where the Department of the Grammar and History of the English Language was founded in 1961. A student of Smirnitsky, Tatiana A. Rastorgueva (1922–1992) became a leading expert in EHL. She taught at the department between 1953 and 1992. Her first dissertation was on the historical development of impersonal sentences (Rastorgueva 1954) and her academic doctoral monograph on the historical changes in English morphology (Rastorgueva 1980). She published a textbook (Rastorgueva 1969), which is still popular outside Russia as well and has a later, English version (Rastorgueva 1983). Her students teach at universities in Russia and in the former Soviet republics. The present research activity of the department focuses on the cognitivecommunicative and discourse-pragmatic aspects of grammatical units belonging to
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different levels in synchrony and diachrony. A research team concentrates on the historical and sociolinguistic variation of functional norms in the English language (Reznik et al. 2001). The department coordinates the work of a scientific student society called “Historical etymology of some areas of English vocabulary”. The Department of English Lexicology at the Moscow State Pedagogical University was founded by Vladimir D. Arakin (1904–1983), who was primarily known as the leader of an influential school of historical semasiology. He is the author of a popular textbook, an outline of the history of English (Arakin 1955). Numerous further publications related to EHL were produced by another scholar at this department, Mark M. Makovsky (a former student of A. Smirnitsky and V. Zhirmunsky). His academic doctoral dissertation of 1969 is devoted to the historical comparative dialectography of the English lexicon. He also compiled an etymological dictionary of English (Makovsky 2005).
3.1.3 Novosibirsk A faculty of foreign languages including an English department was founded at the Novosibirsk State Pedagogical Institute in 1945 by Viktor E. Rauschenbach, a Volga German (distant relative of the rocket scientist Boris Rauschenbach [Dizendorf 2009: 15]). The Russian Academy of Sciences established its local branch in Novosibirsk, which led to the establishment of the Novosibirsk State University in 1958 (now called Novosibirsk National Research State University). The Department of English Philology opened in 1962, its profile is linguistics and intercultural communication, yet History of English is a course integrated in the study program both for those who intend to specialize in teaching EFL and for those who would become interpreters and specialists in intercultural communication. Along with historical sociolinguistics and diachronic typology, EHL is also taught at the Department of the History and Typology of Languages and Cultures. The field of EHL developed in the 1970s and 1980s by the activities and publications of Vulf Y. Plotkin (1972, 1976). He was born in 1927 in Belarus, graduated from St. Petersburg in 1953, taught also in Chis¸ina˘u (Moldova), and emigrated to Israel in 1993. His work is continued by one of his students, Irina V. Shaposhnikova, author of several publications related to the teaching and study of EHL (Shaposhnikova 1995, 1997, 2003, 2008, 2009).
3.2 Ukraine The first scholar relevant for the emergence of EHL in Ukraine was the Austrian Leon Kellner (1859–1928), born in Tarno´w (now in Poland). He obtained a doctorate in Vienna in 1883, and spent some time in England, where he met Frederick J. Furnivall (president of the Early English Text Society). This meeting fostered his interest in the language of Caxton and Shakespeare (see e.g. Kellner 1885). Kellner was appointed professor of English Philology at the University of Chernivtsi (Czernowitz) in 1904 but in 1915 he left for Vienna (for an account of that decade in his life see Pils 2008). In the 1920s and 1930s Indo-European linguistics became a catalytic factor in historical linguistics partly due to the activity of Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1895–1978), who was born in Stanisławo´w (Austria-Hungary at that time, now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). He became professor of comparative and Romance linguistics in Lviv (Lwo´w, Lemberg) in 1929. However, in 1946 he left for Poland escaping the Soviet regime. Shakespeare
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seminars, led by the Polish philologist, Władysław Tamawski (1885–1951) in the 1930s, were also relevant for the beginning of EHL. Teachers of English (as well as German) were trained in the framework of classical philology until the Faculty of Foreign Languages was set up in 1950, and the Department of English Philology opened. EHL today is represented by Mykhaylo Bilynskiy, whose research focuses on historical aspects of word-formation and lexicology. At Kyiv National Linguistic University (founded in 1948) a Faculty of English opened at the very beginning. In 1967 the faculty was divided into two departments: the Department of the Grammar and History of English and the Department of English lexicology and stylistics. The latter was headed by Olexandr Morokhovsky (1930–1994), who graduated from Leningrad with a dissertation on English historical syntax (Morokhovsky 1956). He taught courses in EHL and was interested primarily in lexicology, diachronic and synchronic stylistics, as well as text linguistics in its early beginnings (see Morokhovsky 1980). EHL is also taught at the Department of English Philology at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The textbooks used in instruction are partly Russian publications, however, locally published sources are becoming increasingly available, e.g. Kostyuchenko (1963), Shakhray (1971, 1976), and more recently Khaimovich (1998), Studenets (1998, 1999), Vasyuchenko (2001), Kolesnik (2004), Verba (2004), Potapenko (2010).
3.3 Belarus The Faculty of English at Minsk State Linguistic University was established in 1948. Among its six departments there is one called Department of the History and Grammar of the English Language, which was created as a separate unit in 1957, but specialists in EHL work also at other departments of the faculty. Valentina F. Rutskaya, a former student of Steblin-Kamensky wrote her dissertation on the vowel system of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English (Rutskaya 1969) and published some articles on this topic (Rutskaya 1971, 1972).
3.4 The Baltic region 3.4.1 Estonia Courses on the history of the English language in Estonia are usually offered in the institutional framework of Germanic studies. Several introductory textbooks were published in Tartu, all of them written by the English philologist and translator, Oleg Mutt (1920–1986). He was a lecturer at the English Department from 1961 until his death. He also acted as head of the department in the period 1961–1978. His publications provide the students with a full overview of the history of English from its Germanic background (Mutt 1973) to Old English (Mutt 1962 and several later editions), Middle English (Mutt 1966), the period of 1500–1700 (Mutt 1979) finishing with varieties of present-day English (Mutt 1977).
3.4.2 Lithuania The first Lithuanian scholars specializing in EHL started their activity in the period after WWII. Albertas Steponavicˇius (1934–) lectured and published extensively on
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the history of the English language. He defended his dissertation on the vocalism of the Kentish dialect in Leningrad in 1965 and has published a series of papers on Old and Middle English phonology in the main Lithuanian journal of linguistics, Kalbotyra (almost exclusively in Lithuanian), but his books (Steponavicˇius 1987, 2006) and some of his studies (Steponavicˇius 1970, 1997, 2000, 2005) are in English. In Lithuania EHL as a subject was part of the curriculum as early as 1924 when English studies were offered in the framework of Germanic studies at Kaunas University (Grigaliu¯niene˙ 2008: 46).
3.5 Romania The first English departments in Romania were established in Bucharest, Ias¸i and ClujNapoca. In Bucharest several important publications appeared written by Edith Iarovici: two textbooks on the history of English (Iarovici 1961, 1970) and articles on EHL (e.g. Iarovici 1965, 1969). Today History of English and Old English in Bucharest is taught by a young scholar, Ruxandra Vis¸an. She investigated Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary in an interdisciplinary approach emphasizing that the connection between language and culture contributes to the shaping of modern discourse (Vis¸an 2009). English studies in Cluj-Napoca at Babes¸-Bolyai University used to be a section within the Department of Germanic Languages until 1959, so the first chairpersons were professors of German. The English department has grown to become the second most important after the one in Bucharest. Adrian Papahagi’s research fields include palaeography, manuscript study focusing on cultural, literary and occasionally on linguistic aspects of Old, Middle and Early Modern English texts. Besides teaching BA courses, such as History of English, Old English Literature, Comparative grammar of the Germanic languages, he is also affiliated with the Center for Manuscript Studies (CODEX, University of Cluj). In Ias¸i, history of English is taught as a compulsory course on the BA level at the English Department of “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University (for a sample syllabus see http://www.uaic.ro/uaic/bin/download/Cooperation/BAcoursesLettersenglishlglit/ HistoryofEnglish.pdf, last accessed 8 November 2011). Following the introduction of the Bologna system the former two-semester course had to be reduced to one semester. At present Adrian Poruciuc teaches the subject. He has published textbooks (Poruciuc 1987 and later revised editions) and several monographs on EHL (Poruciuc 1995, 1998, 1999a, 1999b). His professor was Gheorghe Iva˘nescu (1912–1987), specialist ´ cole in Romance, Indo-European and general linguistics, who studied abroad as well (E ´ Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris in 1934–1935 and also in Rome between 1935–1937).
4 South-Eastern Europe In the process of the disintegration of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia the following new states emerged in 1991: Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, BosniaHerzegovina, and then the remaining Yugoslavia became a union of Serbia and Montenegro, but in 2006 Montenegro left the union and in 2008 Kosovo gained its independence. The higher educational system in the new states naturally shows the historical intellectual connections with the main university centers of the former Yugoslavia (Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana): it is often the case that a professor is active at
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universities in more than one of these new states. Since research in EHL is marginal in most of the newly established states, only