Handbook of the Middle English Grammar: Phonology [Reprint 2018 ed.] 9027933022, 9789027933027, 9783110879414

Table of contents :
Translator's Preface
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgment
Foreword to the first edition
Foreword to the second edition
List of dialectal maps
List of abbreviations
Introduction
PART ONE: The Development Up to the End of the Fourteenth Century: The Germanic Element
I. TONIC VOWELS
II. ATONIC VOWELS
III. CONSONANTS
PART TWO: The Development Up to the End of the Fourteenth Century: The Romance Element
IV. FRENCH VOWELS
V. FRENCH CONSONANTS
PART THREE: The Fifteenth Century
VI. SHORT VOWELS
VII. LONG VOWELS
VIII. MIDDLE ENGLISH DIPHTHONGS
IX. UNACCENTED VOWELS
X. CONSONANTS
Unclassified Sources
Bibliography
Appendix
Word Index

Citation preview

JANUA

LINGUARUM

STUDIA

MEMORIAE

N I C O L A I VAN WIJK

DEDICATA

edenda curai C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica, 218

HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE ENGLISH GRAMMAR: PHONOLOGY by

RICHARD JORDAN

translated and revised by

EUGENE JOSEPH CROOK Florida State

University

1974

MOUTON THE H A G U E • PARIS

© Copyright 1974 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 74-76776

Printed in The Netherlands

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Richard Jordan's Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik completed in 1925, revised in 1934 by H. Ch. Matthes, is in its third German edition with an updated bibliography by Klaus Dietz (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag, 1968). This translation, then, rests upon the contributions of all three men. Using symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, I have tried to provide where necessary phonemic and graphemic statements which conform to more modern practices. My revisions constitute an intercollation of the scholarly works on Middle English phonology and dialectology from 1934 to the present. These additions to the original text are enclosed in square brackets to set them off from the work of Jordan and Matthes. I have preserved the paragraph and remark numbering of the original to facilitate the use of the English translation in instances where previous and later citations refer to the German text alone. I have completed each citation in the body of the work according to currently acceptable bibliographic form and have collected these references and my own additions in a bibliographical list alphabetically arranged under author or editor at the end of the text. This fact allows the shortest possible citation in the text which can then be completed by reference to the bibliographical list. The method used is the one made acceptable by the journal Language and followed by many monographs on linguistics. In addition I have compiled an appendix of the primary sources cited, giving their edition, manuscript and shire localization where possible, which can then be compared with §§ 4-6, 15, 303 for further references. Each citation of a literary source will be abbreviated in the text in accordance with the table of abbreviations following the list of maps. References to geographical and linguistic areas are not always as precise as we would like and have come to expect. For Jordan, Mercian refers strictly to the OE dialect spoken in the West Midland. East Anglian generally means only the Southeast Midland. Anglian alone may mean Northumbria and the entire Midland. He divides Saxon into East Saxon (Essex and London) and West Saxon (the rest of the South except Kent).

VI

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE PHONOLOGY

The phoneme is the logical starting point for our overview of historical phonology and dialectology. Prominent in the history of the phoneme is Henry Sweet (see Jakobson 1966). Sweet acknowledges in his preface to A Handbook of Phonetics (1877) that 'it is to Germany that we owe the first attempt to construct a general system of sounds on a physiological basis'. He goes on to cite Eduard Sievers' Grundzüge der Lautphysiologie (Leipzig 1876) as the most comprehensive statement of German investigations. Henry Sweet's Broad Romic transcriptions are what we would today call phonemic analysis. The Polish philologist Baudouin de Courtenay proposed to distinguish between sound as purely physical and phoneme as mental. It was his student Mikolaj Kruszewski (tiber die Lautabwechslung 1881: 14-15) who first defined the word phoneme and used it in its modern form: With the name phoneme I propose to designate the phonetic unit (i.e. that which is phonetically indivisible) in distinction to the sound — the anthropophonetic unity. The advantage and the inevitableness of such an appellation (and such a conception) is already a priori evident. However, in order to convey a greater power of persuasion I call attention to the following. The combination ei becomes the correlative of the Greek T, (eXi-rcov || XEÍTCCO) ... Polish lo becomes the correspondent of the Russian olo (cf. gwltová | [ glova = roJiOBa, glowa 'head')... The phonetic unity can therefore be equal to several sounds or even to one sound and the

property of another. [My translation.]

What Kruszewski here calls sound (German Laut) we now call phone. What he calls phoneme we would today term archiphoneme. The most comprehensive description of the boundary between the two domains, phonemic and phonetic, came from Ferdinand de Saussure whose lecture notes were collected and edited by his students between 1906 and 1911. He laid the groundwork for structural linguistics which prevailed until the 1950's and concerned itself generally with matters other than syntax. De Saussure (1959: 18) made the differentiation between langue and parole: The study of speech is then twofold: its basic part — having as its object language [langue], which is purely social and independent of the individual — is exclusively psychological; its secondary part — which has as its object the individual side of speech, i.e. speaking [parole] including phonation — is psychophysical.

A sound (parole) is real or a fact — an immediately observable phenomenon. A phoneme (langue) is ideal or a standard — an abstraction resulting from analysis, a necessary means of scientific research. The abstract phoneme is absolutely necessary in order to define the limits and latitudes of given sounds, and their normative value in a given language. The phonetic shape of a phoneme is determined by its environment — word, sentence, or dialect. The variable phonetic shapes or sounds attributable to one phoneme are called allophones. Phonological change is based on the prevalence of

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

VII

one allophone over another until the newly predominant allophone becomes phonemic. In OE the phoneme /a:/ probably had the allophones [a:], [a:], [a A :], [o:]. In ME the prevailing allophone shifted from [a:] to [o:], and when OE /ae/ in open syllables became /a:/ with [a:] as its predominant allophone, the [o:] allophone of OE /a:/ became phonemic as ME /o:/ with a new set of allophones [o v :], [o:], Richard Jordan was born in 1877, the year Sweet published his Handbook of Phonetics. He was educated in philology at Heidelberg and Karlsruhe and taught at the University of Jena until his untimely death at the age of 48. That he was thoroughly learned in the phonemic theory we can understand through his frequent citations of and quotations from Sievers and Sweet. Although his distinctions between graphemics and phonemics were not always as clear as modern methods permit, there can be no doubt that his study of ME phonology and dialectology rests upon the principles of phonemic analysis. A more objective view of the worth of Richard Jordan's work can be determined by its use in subsequent grammars. Karl Luick's Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache (originally published 1914-1940) relies on Jordan to a great degree for his treatment of the consonants. E. E. Wardale's Introduction to Middle English (1937) likewise refers the reader to Jordan. Jacek Fisiak, Outlines of Middle English (1964), and Rolf Berndt, Einführung in das Studium des Mittelenglischen (1960), are two recent authors who still depend upon Jordan. Others, not so chary of a dead author's just due, use his work without quoting or citing him. Jordan's methodology is one of objectivity, inductive approach, citation of the data, formulation of observations, and reliance on the spoken form as recognized through rhyme pairs. This places him squarely in the structural approach to linguistics as it was formulated by the American, Leonard Bloomfield in Language (New York 1933), although writing out of a thoroughly European background. Bloomfield's influence — greater than that exerted by Sapir and others — was due primarily to the thorough organization of his book. Almost the whole of the Bloomfieldianstructuralist position follows from the statement that in language some things are the same, and some are different. The things which are different are the contrasts, set in a framework of things which are the same. In technique Bloomfieldian linguistics relied on finding contrasts to draw up the total structure. In point of view, it was severely positivist and anti-mentalist (see A. Hill 1966: 3). However, since Jordan does not pay sufficient attention to a balanced phonemic system he cannot be counted as a strict structuralist. Various attempts have been made by structuralists to reinterpret ME phonological processes. Stockwell (1961, 1962) attempts to interpret historical phonology according to the NE situation of vowel plus glide. His evidence is entirely subjective and he ignores MS graphemics in his analysis. Lehmann (1969) among others rejects Stockwell's analysis in favor of the traditional system of vowel plus length. In the 1950's there arose in opposition to structural linguistics a methodology that

VIII

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

was more subjective and deductive in approach, based on intuition and rationalism and concerned more with the written than the spoken language. The leader of this school, Noam Chomsky, has been a prolific publisher since his Syntactic Structures (The Hague 1957). The methodology has been unyieldingly defended in almost daily publications. For Chomsky and his followers the failure of structural linguistics was that it did not attempt to reveal the underlying core of generative processes in language — that is, the processes that determine the deeper levels of structure (see Chomsky 1968). With the rise of the transformational-generative approach to linguistics and the subsequent decline in the structural approach the study of syntax has given some different interpretations of phonology. In one of these recently the traditional phonemic level of analysis has been attacked by Chomsky and Halle (1968). For the phonemic level they have attempted to substitue that of the morphophoneme. In order to achieve simplicity of rule-ordered phonological description, transformationalists have sacrificed accuracy and completeness (cf. R. Hall 1969: 212, A. Hill 1966: 23-30). Whether their interpretation will stand, only time can tell, but it seems a mistake to look upon language as just one hierarchy, neglecting the two fundamental distinctions: content-expression, and form-substance (cf. Malmberg 1969). Nevertheless, some accommodation between the statements in this Handbook of Middle English Grammar and the theories of modern generative grammar must be reached. Our survey of the principles of generative grammar and their applications to historical linguistics begins with that of Robert D. King, Historical Linguistics and Generative Grammar (1969). Generative grammar makes a distinction between competence and performance which is comparable to de Saussure's langue and parole. The bases of generative phonology are distinctive features and rule ordering. Distinctive features in generative terminology are articulatory as well as acoustic parameters — as in the features high, back, low, anterior, coronal, tense, voice, nasal, etc. Change in an adult's grammar is confined to rule addition by the borrowing of rules among adults. Rule simplification originates in the child's learning of language. The consequence of this is that isoglosses formed by the spread of rules over a speech territory form large, coherent dialect areas, whereas those formed by simplification are characteristically discontinuous because of independent development of the same change in several speech communities. Historical study, therefore, must be based on the presence versus absence of rules, and not on differences in the form and order of shared rules (Kiparsky 1968: 195). Although Jordan has not stated his grammar in such terms, his statements are not inherently averse to these theories. Change as it is conceived of in generative grammar must be differentiated into what is called 'sound change' (phones) and 'phonological change' (phonemes). Sound change is not change in competence but change in performance brought about by external factors that affect and alter renditions of a particular sound type. To select a less prevalent allophone from the group of allophones of a given phoneme does nothing to change the value of that phoneme. This is the kind of change Jordan

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

IX

cautions against when he speaks of characteristics heterogeneous to a given dialect borrowed for needs of rhyme. Under circumstances of prose such changes would not be evidenced. Phonological change differs radically from simple sound change. In the former, change is change in competence reflected by alterations in the grammar. The performance level still causes the same kinds of fluctuations after the change in competence as before. However, phonological change is reflected in what Jordan speaks of as occasional spellings which testify to a given change. Occasional spellings originate in scribes who tend to devise symbols for the underlying systematic phonemic segments of the language. They tend to alter the existing orthography only when restructuring or innovations in the grammar have produced segments phonetically close to other surface-level segments which have a stable graphemic representation. For example the result of OE e in open syllables and the result of OE ce was /e:/ in ME which could be spelled by back-spelling after the monophthongization of the OE ea also became /e:/. In NE, steal < ME /sterlan/ < OE stelan is set off from its homonym steel < ME /ste:l/ < OE stele. The spelling tended to be used for the ME pronunciation of /e:/ as opposed to which gradually tended to be used for ME /e:/. However, in general the morphophonemic representation (e.g. 'regular' noun-plural-suffix /-z/, /-s/) wins out over the morphographemic representation due, to a large extent, to orthographic conservatism. Change by analogy is really the appearance of new underlying forms. The analogies for which Jordan was criticized in the reviews of his first edition are generally retained in this translation, since in general analogies are difficult to prove in particular cases. In generative terms phonological change is not a gradual process in the competence of any one speaker. Denying this does not deny the possibility that a phonological change spreads gradually throughout a speech community. An interim position that seems now to be valid indicates that the spread of a change is geographically and chronologically graduated. Prestigious pronunciations spread out from the centers and archaic pronunciations recede to the margins under pressure from increased communication and schools. Generally the rule of a phonological change is gradually acquired in the competence of an ever increasing number of contiguous speakers. The study of dialectology is concerned with just this process.

DIALECTOLOGY

Many of the rules of generative grammar reflect historical changes, and the order of applying the rules often reflects the relative chronology of equivalent changes between dialects. This statement is supported by Sigurd (1966) and Saporta (1965). But some of the methodology of Saporta is discussed at greater length by Thomas (1967). The dialectologist works on the premise of the following three principles: a certain definition of 'relatedness'; a selection of data to be considered; and a lin-

X

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

guistic model which both accounts for the data and distinguishes relatedness. In generative grammar dialectal comparison is stated in sets of ordered rules which show the differences in relatedness mainly in the reordering of rules within the grammar. This process generally assumes that the phonology of a language may be studied in a set of rules apart from the sentence-generating portion of the grammar. This is generally the principle of Jordan who only occasionally resorts to sentence phonetics to describe a phonological change, but more often he cites morphological influences. Thomas' study considers whether the comparative statement should be based on the comparison of the separately written grammars of different dialects and their conflation (the structural approach) or whether it can take the form of successive derivative stages from a selected basal grammar which is the grammar of one of the dialects being investigated (Saporta's method). The former method relying on comparison of sets of rules yields questionable results. The latter method for a study of ME might take the Southern dialect as its basal grammar and proceed to derive the other dialectal grammars from it. Occasionally for purposes of simplification it would be necessary to shift the basal grammar from one dialect to another which would yield heterogeneous results. Finally, Thomas states that "the generative device is clearly most powerful in comparative statement when it has an arsenal of abstract underlying forms, from which all dialectal forms are derived through a set of ordered rules" (1967: 196). For Jordan's study of the ME dialects most underlying forms are older historical forms attested in writing. This notion of homogeneous input is made very clear by O'Neil (1968: 630) who states very plainly that "at the phonological level the notion 'dialect' means 'differing in phonological rules but not in the input to the rules'". The future of dialectal studies may lie in the hands of the generative grammarians. But the structural approach is currently producing the more practical results. The linguistic rationale for these studies is outlined by Sundby (1963: 12-17, 'The Structural Approach to Historical Phonology and Dialectology'). Sundby here argues for flexibility in time. In dealing with linguistic data representing such an area as Worcestershire it seems legitimate to compare sections or 'chunks' of material measuring fifty or a hundred years. This method is second only to one of comparing texts reflecting the linguistic situation of discrete years a century or so apart and taking no account of the language of the intervening years. This latter method is made impossible by the scattered documentation of relevant forms. Sundby argues for a new terminology. Where no sharp divisions of speech are observed there may, however, be areas of overlapping which he calls bands rather than isoglosses. This is in spite of the fact that he seems to agree with Gleason that an isogloss in most cases is not a sharp line indicating an actual limit, but a representation of statistical probabilities. The problems which Sundby raises are legitimate and have been discussed at greater length by Marchand (1970). In describing the major types of linguistic endeavor we may say that descriptive linguistics is synchronic and synoptic, historical linguistics is synoptic but diachronic, geographical linguistics is synchronic but diatopic,

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

XI

comparative linguistics is diachronic and diatopic, and theoretical linguistics is pantopic and panchronic. A comparison is said to be genetic when it takes into consideration the relationship (kinship) of the things being compared; generic when it does not take such kinship into consideration. After these definitions we see that the work of Jordan is in the comprehensive field of comparative linguistics embracing both historical and geographical linguistics because it is both diachronic and diatopic. In addition his comparison is genetic in approach. Although Jordan has not so explicitly stated, we can surmise that his diachronic approach must be similar to that of Sundby's (i.e. c. 1066-1400 as compared to the 15th cent.). Jordan's diatopic approach is based on the assumption that it is possible to assign certain texts to certain geographically delimited areas. Here it is well to remember that a document is like an idiolect; it may be said to be the actualization of a dialect, be used as a witness to the dialect, or be used in setting up a dialect, but it is not a dialect. All we have are idiolects and the structure of each idiolect must be studied before we can arrive at a valid grouping and statement of the structure of the groups. Jordan's genetic approach is based on the WS literary language, but he also takes into account the Kentish and Anglian variations of OE as well as the later influences of Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman. Other tacks which Jordan uses are variations between allegro and lento forms causing external sandhi in the one and not in the other; references to the results of modern English dialect studies (e.g. J. Wright 1905); and differentiation of group dialects, i.e. the universality of epistolary or homiletic forms. The five major ME dialectal areas as stated in Jordan were roughly accepted by most scholars. However, the seminal article by J. R. R. Tolkien, 'Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad' (1929), established in the West Midlands, perhaps Herefordshire, a highly homogeneous literary dialect which he called AB. This may be an artificial literary language differing from the current spoken dialect (Hulbert 1946). The name is taken from the A of Ancrene Riwle's MS Corpus Christi College Cambridge 402 (ed. Tolkien 1960) and the B of MS Bodley 34 of the so-called 'Katherine Group' (facsimile ed. Ker 1959). The originals of the Ancrene Riwle and the Katherine Group were in the same language and spelling (AB), and therefore belonged to much the same time and place. Their literary and stylistic quality, again, point to a place where (Welsh marches) and a time when (c. 1230) native tradition was not wholly confused or broken. For example, it retains the OE a as /a:/ after the rest of the Midland had gone to /o:/. Critical of some of Tolkien's conclusions is Bliss (1952-1953b) who would not exclude the possibility that either Ancrene Riwle or Katherine Group was merely translated into the AB dialect instead of being originally written in the AB dialect with later dialectal admixtures added in transcription, as Tolkien proposed. Nevertheless, studies of the AB dialect as a linguistic entity have proliferated with some excellent results. Dobson (1966) coming to Tolkien's defence has observed that the original text of the Ancrene Riwle can be reconstructed by the ordinary processes of collation and textual criticism. Using these methods he discovers that the author

XII

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

and the reviser are one and the same person. Furthermore, he proposes that the MS Cotton Cleopatra C 6 text has been revised by the author using the pure form of the AB language (which would imply no difference between literary language and dialectal spoken language). MS Corpus Christi College Cambridge 402 then is the fair copy of the former. Comprehensive studies of ME dialectology have been few. One of the more ambitious was that of J. P. Oakden, Alliterative Poetry in Middle English (1930-1935). The first half of the first volume concerns itself with dialectal problems. He chooses carefully selected literary documents for each dialectal area and then proceeds to localize other literary documents on the internal fit of certain criteria such as OE a + nasal, OE y, OE a, numbering forty-five in all. There are some inconsistencies in Oakden. He states in his introduction that he does not find evidence of place names reliable, but in his text he proceeds to use place names as evidence. Although he categorically rejects the findings of previous investigations, nonetheless he proceeds to use them in his text and relies heavily on the work of Ekwall, Wyld, Jordan, et al. He provides the reader, however, a dialectal map of isoglosses representing each of his criteria. The next important dialectal study was that of Samuel Moore, Sanford B. Meech and Harold Whitehall (hereafter MMW), 'Middle English Dialect Characteristics and Dialect Boundaries' (1935), done in preparation for a comprehensive Middle English Dictionary. They use documentary sources — 266 — in addition to literary texts — 43 — but only ones that can be externally localized. MMW do allow their documents to be mixed with London forms, but not with forms from other dialectal areas. Their dialectal criteria are far more selective than Oakden's, only eleven. The path blazed by Oakden is not given due recognition by MMW. They give his work only a passing reference, yet silently criticize the work of Oakden and take exception to his conclusions without naming him or his work specifically. The investigation of MMW had a three-fold goal: (1) determination of isophones for the individual criteria; (2) designation of dialect boundaries as a result of several of these isophones; (3) from references in Oakden of physiographical factors MMW take their cue to do a thorough correlation of isophones and boundaries with the topography. On the whole MMW's effort is superior to that of Oakden's, but it is a question of standing on the shoulders of preceding scholarship. Their successors in the undertaking of the Middle English Dictionary have found it necessary to modify and complete only a few of the findings (Kurath and Kuhn 1956-: Plan and Bibliography). Important in the study of Middle English dialects has been Lund University. From there the results have been largely published in the monograph series Lund Studies in English. The two guiding lights have been Eilert Ekwall and Olof Arngart. Following up the inititative of the English Place Name Society (cf. Wyld and Serjeantson 1929), both have been strong proponents of place name studies based on the structural approach. Ekwall (1938) in response to MMW investigated the ajo boundary by place name material and could make only insignificant variants to the MMW iso-

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

XIII

phone. Arngart (1949) goes further and discounts the picture of the ME dialects which can be obtained from literary sources and proceeds to suggest some of the possibilities of place name studies, discussing past studies and the methodology proposed for future studies. His student, Gillis Kristensson (1965), has proceeded to detail examples of this approach based on the onomastics of the Lay Subsidy Rolls from 1290-1334. His findings are much more precise than Oakden's or MMW's. For example, he can say that in the former half of the 14th century, OE a was retained as an unrounded vowel in the whole of Lindsey [part of Lincolnshire] and a small strip of land along the Lines, border in the West Riding (the area east of Snaith) [Yorkshire], and appeared as /o:/ in Kesteven and Holland [Lincolnshire]. Kristensson later extended his investigations into a monograph on the Northern dialect (1967). The most recent innovation in ME dialect studies has been launched by Angus Mcintosh (1961, 1956, 1963) who used graphology. Mcintosh differs from some American writers on graphology (like Robert P. Stockwell) who define a grapheme as that which renders a phoneme. Rather for Mcintosh the beginning of classification is the letter itself, for instance he states that ' is a morpheme in the graphological system and that /b/ is its meaning (or, to be safe, one of its meanings)' (1961). His method of graphemic analysis, he suggests, will give a new significance to the study of punctuation, abbreviations and capitals, spaces between words, and other related matters. We are to 'approach a Middle English text as a manifestation of a system operating in its own right — a system specifically of written language such as we might envisage flourishing even if all its users were deaf and dumb' (1956). RifferMacek (1966: 127-128) following Mcintosh makes this tenet very clear: Written language has its own system, the development of which is not necessarily parallel or even dependent on the other expression of the language, the spoken language. Thus written language conveys meaning directly through its visual signals in some sense independently of their relations to the spoken language. Mcintosh promises to give us a Dialectal Atlas of ME based on graphemic contrastive analysis alone. His standards for localization do not depend upon external evidence, but rather upon internal 'fit' of the dialectal characteristics. This fit relies on the same kind of isoglosses as those of Oakden. Francis (1962) has set up a system under which one could conceivably conduct a graphemic analysis. In general, his system is a highly logical and ordered portrayal of what every palaeographer must learn for himself in bits and pieces. The system makes itself available for computer analysis by its high degree of ordering. Kline (1967) takes his initiative from Francis and very carefully discusses the procedure ol programming the IBM 1620 computer in his third chapter: 'Preparation of Data for Computer Processing Analysis' (24-93). Unfortunately he does not attempt to relate his results to phonology. At this point the article by Logan (1967) on studying the results of a computer analysis for what it might contribute to ME dialectology

XIV

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

is very valuable. He goes beyond the studies of Mcintosh and Francis and considers the problem of a text existing in several MSS. For instance he shows how the allophone [v] of the phoneme /f/ in one MS could occur in initial position but only after a preceding voiced ending; in another MS [v] occurs only in morpheme-initial position after a prefix; in a third MS [v] does not occur at all. An example of graphemic analysis and its application to phonemic analysis is McLaughlin's Graphemic-Phonemic Study of a Middle English Manuscript (1963). His study of MS Cotton Nero A 10 (the Gawain poet) reaches few definite conclusions because of his strict interpretation of graphemic and graphonemic neutralization. Since both and occur before a nasal in the MS the contrast becomes irrelevant. The multivalued suppresses a phonemic contrast since it may represent both /0/ and /6/. The graphemic approach to dialectology seems to await more comprehensive application than it has heretofore received. Sandved, Studies in the Language of Caxton's Malory and that of the Winchester Manuscript (1968), has done a partial graphemic analysis for purposes of diachronic comparison and contrast. His findings are what one might otherwise expect: Caxton often uses the NE transliterations for , and or for as well as a decreased number of tachygraphs. It would seem that the best candidate for a graphemic analysis would be a holographic copy in which idiolectal characteristics of the author may still be traced. Unfortunately, few MSS could qualify for this condition. Therefore it would seem that the work of Jordan and others in the phonological analysis of ME dialects still stands. The study of ME language contributes to the study of literature in many ways. One of these is indirectly through textual criticism. A good example of ME phonology and dialectology's use in determining a critical text is the edition of The Chastising of God's Children and the Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God by Bazire and Colledge (1957). Both translations are based on Willem Jordaen's Latin translations of Jan van Ruysbroek's treatise De Gheestelijcke Brulocht and Van den blinckenden Steen respectively. The detailed description of the pedigree of the fourteen extant MSS of The Chastising derived through phonology and dialectology has been set forth separately by Bazire (1957a). See also Colledge (1952) who needs to use only the methods of palaeography and bibliography for an analysis of the unique MS of The Treatise of Perfection. Other uses of language study in literature are more obvious as a careful reading of the Reeve's Tale with its mixed dialects will show. Tolkien, 'Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale' (1934), has done this careful reading for us. He believes that a close examination of all the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales with respect to the Northernisms in this tale would have a special textual value for the Canterbury Tales as a whole. Tolkien's study shows furthermore how the dialogue in dialect adds to the literary texture of the tale. An example of a Frenchman's efforts to acquire English is traced in the poems of Charles of Orleans (ed. Steele 1941-1944). His imprisonment in England in various

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

XV

places from Kent to Yorkshire can be traced in his language (see Daunt 1949). The work of Richard Jordan has been quoted and cited continuously in linguistic, textual and explicative studies of Middle English for forty-five years. It is hoped that this English translation and modest revision will further accrue to the well deserved honor of his name.

AN AID TO DIALECTAL STUDY

In determining the dialectal provenance of any given poem only the rhyming words should be studied in view of their OE origins. For instance, one of the lyrics of MS Harley 2253, De Clerico et Puella, rhyming aaaa was written in the Northeast Midland but transcribed in a West Midland dialect. We know this from the fact that the transcriber preserved the original spelling only in rhyme. OE a + nasal remains /a/ in rhyme (man : am); elsewhere /a/ — /o/ (man ~ mon). OE ce becomes /a/ in rhyme (faste : caste); elsewhere /a/ ~ /e/ (was ~ wes). OE y becomes /i/ in rhyme (synne : wynne); elsewhere /i/ ~ /y/ (kynne ~ custe). OE a is regularly /o:/ (sore, lore). OE ce1 and ce2 both appear as /e:/ (levedy, lete). OE eo appears in rhyme as /e:/ (trewe : se^e); elsewhere OE eo alternates between /e:/ and /0:/ (drery ~ luef). To tabulate these results dialectally we note the following. The OE a + nasal remaining /a/ in rhyme excludes the West Midland as the original dialect. OE ce becoming /a/ in rhyme excludes the West Midland and Kent as the original. OE y becoming /i/ points specifically to the North and the Northeast Midland. OE a becoming /o:/ excludes the North. OE &x and ce2 becoming /e:/ excludes the Southeast Midland. OE eo appearing as /e:/ in rhyme again excludes the West Midland. Therefore by the triangulation of various criteria the Northeast Midland is proven to be the original dialect of De Clerico et Puella. West Midland elements in the transcription are OE a + nasal > /o/, OE ce > /e/; OE y = /y(:)/ but > , and OE eo > /»:/. Although graphemics is not specifically covered by this text, nor have we indicated the graphemics in our list of dialectal phonemes, in passing we should mention that certain written forms are indicative of dialectal areas. For example, the North came to use as the sign of /a:/. The NE doublets raid and road are the results of this practice (OE a > /o:/, later , south of the Humber). Again, characteristic of the North is the substitution of the graph for as in vater 'water'. In Kent voicing of /s/ in initial position to /z/ is often reflected in the orthography as : zenne 'sin'. In the South and the Southwest Midland voicing of initial /f/ to /v/ is likewise reflected in the orthography as : vader 'father'. Bliss (1957: 282) maintains that > was generally retained in conjunction with marks of abbreviation. In these words > represents the voiced sound so that a distinction tended to emerge between ) representing /S/ and representing /8/.

translator's preface

XVI

Some of the MSS in which these distinctions occur have been listed by Appel (19361937). Mcintosh (1956) points out that occurrences of and of East Anglian 'might' and 'shall', the found in certain areas in such words as