History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics [Reprint 2011 ed.] 9783110877007, 9783110132168

Table of contents :
I. Theory and methodology
Translation and the history of English
The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English
Evidence for regular sound change in English dialect geography
A social model for the interpretation of language change
How to study Old English syntax?
II. Phonology and orthography
Exceptionality and non-specification in the history of English phonology
The myth of “the Anglo-Norman scribe”
Old English ABCs
What, if anything, was the Great Vowel Shift?
Lexical and morphological consequences of phonotactic change in the history of English
Lexical phonology and diachrony
Homorganic clusters as moric busters in the history of English: the case of -Id, -nd, -mb
Middle English vowel quantity reconsidered
III. Morphology and syntax
On explaining the historical development of English genitives
A touch of (sub-)class? Old English “preterite-present” verbs
The information present: present tense for communication in the past
Structural factors in the history of English modals
Subordinating uses of and in the history of English
The distribution of verb forms in Old English subordinate clauses
Relative constructions and functional amalgamation in Early Modern English
The use of to and for in Old English
Man’s son/son of man: translation, textual conditioning, and the history of the English genitive
Why is the element order to cwæð him ‘said to him’ impossible?
On the development of the by-agent in English
Pragmatics of this and that
A valency description of Old English possessive verbs
Who(m)? Constraints on the loss of case marking of wh-pronouns in the English of Shakespeare and other poets of the Early Modern English period
“I not say”: bridge phenomenon in syntactic change
IV. Lexis and semantics
The status of word formation in Middle English: approaching the question
Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English: are the French words of the Katherine Group English?
Rich Lake: a case history
V. Varieties and dialects
The evolution of a vernacular
Relativization in the Dorset dialect
William Barnes and the south west dialect of English
A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the value of texts surviving in more than one version
A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: tradition and typology
A chapter in the worldwide spread of English: Malta
“Du’s no heard da last o’dis” – on the use of be as a perfective auxiliary in Shetland dialect
On the morphology of verbs in Middle Scots: present and present perfect indicative
The pace of change in Appalachian English
Variability in Old English and the continental Germanic languages
Variability in Tok Pisin phonology: “Did you say ‘pig’ or ‘fig’?”
VI. Text types and individual texts
Chaucer’s Boece: a syntactic and lexical analysis
The linguistic evolution of five written and speech-based English genres from the 17th to the 20th centuries
The do variant field in questions and negatives: Jane Austen’s Complete Letters and Mansfield Park
The repertoire of topic changers in personal, intimate letters: a diachronic study of Osborne and Woolf
Text-types and language history: the cookery recipe
Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380–1480
Abbreviations of titles of textual sources
Name index
Subject index

Citation preview

History of Englishes

Topics in English Linguistics 10 Editors

Jan Svartvik Herman Wekker

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

History of Englishes New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics

Edited by

Matti Rissanen Ossi Ihalainen Terttu Nevalainen Irma Taavitsainen

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1992

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data History of Englishes : new methods and interpretations in historical linguistics / edited by Matti Rissanen ... [et al.]. p. cm. — (Topics in English linguistics : 10) Includes index. ISBN 3-11-013216-8 (acid-free paper) 1. English language — Grammar, Historical. 2. English language—Research —Methodology. I. Rissanen, Matti. II. Series. PE1101.H5 1992 425'.09—dc20 92-31358 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging in Publication Data

History of Englishes : new methods and interpretations in historical linguistics / ed. by Matti Rissanen ... — Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1992 (Topics in English linguistics ; 10) ISBN 3-11-013216-8 NE: Rissanen, Matti [Hrsg.]; GT

© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting and printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin Printed in Germany.

Preface

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. The conference was held at the University of Helsinki in May 1990 as one of the events of the 350th jubilee year of the University. The topics of the papers accepted for inclusion clearly show the increasing interest in geographical and social variation and in the detailed study of texts in English historical linguistics. It is also interesting to note that the former distinct borderline between historical linguistics and philology is disappearing. Although the aims and methods of these two approaches should not be confused, they clearly support each other and scholars will benefit greatly from the mastery of the basic methodologies of both in their attempts to describe and explain the past stages and development of English. All in all, it is not surprising that more than one-third of the papers published in this volume can be conveniently grouped under the headings Varieties and dialects and Text types and individual texts. This emphasis does not, however, mean that other approaches to linguistic analysis would have been neglected. A variety of models of description and levels of abstraction is displayed by the contributions included in the other four sections of this volume: Theory and methodology, Phonology and orthography, Morphology and syntax, and Lexis and semantics. The contributions of the four plenary speakers reflect the present focus in the field: Labov discussed the evidence given by British English dialects on sound change, Milroy the social model of change, and Romaine the varying phonological system of Tok Pisin. Blake's paper represents the revival of an important topic of study: translation as an influence on the development of English. The number of scholars attending ICEHL6, 180 participants in all, graphically strengthened the feeling that the interest in the study of the history of English has been rapidly growing in the last decade or two. The organizers made a special effort to include in the programme all papers submitted which were appropriate in content and of a high scholarly standard, a total of 75 contributions in two parallel sections. The length of the oral presentations varied, and short talks could be supported by written versions of up to four pages in the book of abstracts.

vi

Preface

One afternoon in the conference programme was reserved for the introduction of ongoing and recently finished research projects in the field of the history of English. During this session, seven projects were introduced and discussed: The Dictionary of Old English; a Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English; The Catalogue of Incipits of Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English; The Historical Thesaurus of English; the Hartlib Papers Project; The Shakespeare Database; and The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, Diachronic and Dialectal. Two papers based on these introductions (Laing and Smith) are included in the present volume. The sociolinguistic bias mentioned above can also be seen in the Workshop on Standardization organized by Dieter Stein and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade immediately before the conference. The papers from this workshop will be published in a separate volume by Mouton de Gruyter. Organizing a conference is always an effort which demands good cooperation between individuals and institutions and plenty of unselfish voluntary work. The organizers would like to thank the staff members and students of the English Department of the University of Helsinki for their generous and enthusiastic help. We also wish to express our gratitude to the Ministry of Education, the University of Helsinki, the British Council, the United States Information Service, Finnair and Pohjola Insurance Company for valuable financial support. Our thanks are due to Mouton de Gruyter for accepting this volume for publication and for the friendliness and efficiency of their editorial staff. We are grateful to the readers who assessed the papers submitted for this volume, and, finally, we wish to thank Miss Kirsi Heikkonen, who carried out the numerous duties of the editorial secretary with great skill, accuracy and good humour. Helsinki, March 1992

Matti Rissanen Ossi Ihalainen Terttu Nevalainen Irma Taavitsainen

Contents

I. Theory and methodology

1

Translation and the history of English Norman F. Blake

3

The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English Andrei Danchev

25

Evidence for regular sound change in English dialect geography William Labov

42

A social model for the interpretation of language change James Milroy

72

How to study Old English syntax? Bruce Mitchell

92

II. Phonology and orthography

101

Exceptionality and non-specification in the history of English phonology John Anderson

103

The myth of "the Anglo-Norman scribe" Cecily Clark f

117

Old English ABCs Anne King

130

What, if anything, was the Great Vowel Shift? Roger Lass

144

Lexical and morphological consequences of phonotactic change in the history of English Angelika Lutz

156

Lexical phonology and diachrony April M. S. McMahon

167

viii

Contents

Homorganic clusters as moric busters in the history of English: the case of -Id, -nd, -mb Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell

191

Middle English vowel quantity reconsidered Nikolaus Ritt

207

III. Morphology and syntax

223

On explaining the historical development of English genitives Hans Ulrich Boas

225

A touch of (sub-)class? Old English "preterite-present" verbs Fran Colman

241

The information present: present tense for communication in the past David Denison

262

Structural factors in the history of English modals Ans van Kemenade

287

Subordinating uses of and in the history of English Juhani Klemola and Markku Filppula

310

The distribution of verb forms in Old English subordinate clauses Willem F. Koopman

319

Relative constructions and functional amalgamation in Early Modern English Lilo Moessner

336

The use of to and for in Old English Ruta Nagucka

352

Man's son)son of man: translation, textual conditioning, and the history of the English genitive Thomas E. Nunnally

359

Why is the element order to cwced him 'said to him' impossible? Michiko Ogura

373

On the development of the ^ - a g e n t in English Kirsti Peitsara

379

Contents

ix

Pragmatics of this and that Patricia Poussa

401

A valency description of Old English possessive verbs Herbert Schendl

418

Who(m)l Constraints on the loss of case marking of w/z-pronouns in the English of Shakespeare and other poets of the Early Modern English period Edgar W. Schneider

437

"I not say": bridge phenomenon in syntactic change Masatomo Ukaji

453

IV. Lexis and semantics

463

The status of word formation in Middle English: approaching the question Christiane Dalton-Puffer

465

Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English: are the French words of the Katherine Group English? Juliette Dor

483

Rich Lake: a case history Veronika Kniezsa

506

V. Varieties and dialects

517

The evolution of a vernacular Guy Bailey and Garry Ross

519

Relativization in the Dorset dialect Nadine van den Eynden

532

William Barnes and the south west dialect of English Bernard Jones

556

A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the value of texts surviving in more than one version Margaret Laing

566

χ

Contents

A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: tradition and typology Jeremy J. Smith

582

A chapter in the worldwide spread of English: Malta Gabriella Mazzon

592

"Du's no heard da last o'dis" — on the use of be as a perfective auxiliary in Shetland dialect Gunnel Melchers

602

On the morphology of verbs in Middle Scots: present and present perfect indicative Anneli Meurman-Solin

611

The pace of change in Appalachian English Michael Montgomery and Curtis Chapman

624

Variability in Old English and the continental Germanic languages Hans F. Nielsen

640

Variability in Tok Pisin phonology: "Did you say 'pig' or 'fig'?" Suzanne Romaine

647

VI. Text types and individual texts

669

Chaucer's Boece: a syntactic and lexical analysis Henk Aertsen

671

The linguistic evolution of five written and speech-based English genres from the 17th to the 20th centuries Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan

688

The do variant field in questions and negatives: Jane Austen's Complete Letters and Mansfield Park Mary Jane Curry

705

The repertoire of topic changers in personal, intimate letters: a diachronic study of Osborne and Woolf Anne Finell

720

Text-types and language history: the cookery recipe Manfred Görlach

736

Contents

xi

Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380—1480 Laura Wright

762

Abbreviations of titles of textual sources

771

Name index

781

Subject index

791

I. Theory and methodology

Translation and the history of English N. F. Blake

This paper springs from my work as editor of the second volume of the Cambridge History of the English Language which involves not only editing one's own volume but also reading the contributions offered for the other volumes. In what I have read so far translation is recognised as something that is of tangential importance in many chapters, though it is never discussed as a whole or its influence recognised as something pervasive. In this respect it differs from many modern approaches to language whose theory and practice are often influential in determining how historical developments are viewed and thus need discussion in individual chapters. Inevitably modern dialectology informs one's approach to the study of medieval dialects, even though the information available in each case is so different. Studies of modern pidgins and Creoles raise the question of whether Middle English was a pidgin. The theories that lie behind modern sociolinguistics, semantics and pragmatics inform the theoretical position adopted in approaches to historical problems. Many of the technical words linked to these theoretical positions will appear in the glossaries which accompany each volume, but it is unlikely that "translation" as a concept will appear in them because it is one which hardly surfaces in the volumes themselves. Yet translation is a subject of considerable interest to modern linguists and others, and the literature which has built up around it is extensive. It may well be that it is not considered relevant to historical study because so much of what is written today about translation has been sparked off by providing biblical translation in exotic languages found in the Third World and by trying to find methods of improving machine translation particularly to meet the needs of science and supra-national bureaucracies, though the need to provide translations of literature has also been recognised. Typically translation within the historical linguistic context crops up in one of the following ways. It usually receives its fullest exposure in books dealing with the history of ideas or education such as R. F. Jones's The Triumph of the English Language, though in such books the practice of translation is drawn on for examples rather than to illuminate the theoretical position behind it. Studies of vocabulary inevitably refer to

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Norman F. Blake

translation because so many words have entered the language through the process of translating, but comment is usually restricted to individual words rather than expanded to the principles involved as a whole. Equally studies of specialised syntactic points, such as the history of the passive, may well call on the evidence provided by particular translations, though they are unlikely to examine translation as a universal influence on syntax. In histories of the language translation receives at best only incidental mention. Individual translations such as those by King Alfred may be referred to and it is not uncommon for some mention to be made of what is usually called "the flood of translations" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the overall importance of translation and its continuous influence on the language are subjects which remain untouched by historians of English. Finally, editors particularly of medieval texts often make some reference to the methods of translation used by their author if the text is a translation. When an English author has used what is called a "source" by its modern editor, a detailed linguistic comparison of this source with its English counterpart is not provided, for a text using a source is not regarded as a translation. With English translations it is the vocabulary which is commented on most fully by editors. Often this is done in the spirit of producing antedatings or new entries for the Oxford English Dictionary or the Middle English Dictionary as though to claim some special excellence for one's author and his inventiveness even though the words may have disappeared quickly or even immediately from the language. Not infrequently the comparison of the translation with the original leads to unfavourable comments on the translator's abilities, including such faults as haste or incompetence, though why the translation was made at all or why the translator worked in this apparently unsatisfactory way is less often the subject of comment or even speculation. These points raise the questions as to what is meant by translation and why modern studies on translation have failed to impinge on the historical study of the language. There may be a single answer to both these questions which has to do with the fact that translation in modern times is different in kind from that of earlier periods. Although it is difficult to date the change from the earlier to the modern form of translation, it should no doubt be placed somewhere in the nineteenth century. In modern times, as we have seen, translation has focused on the Bible, technical material, and literature with the emphasis being on the transfer of the content of a work from one language (or variety of language) to another taking into account the different contextual and cultural norms

Translation and the history of English

5

Figure 1. Model A

of each. Accuracy in the transmission of the content is predominant, and much less attention is paid to preserving the style or tone of the original. Translations can be made from any language, for the important factor is the content of the work to be translated rather than the language in which it is written. Translations from languages like Russian, Chinese or Japanese are now common. The aim of translation is expressed diagrammatically by Nida (1959: 16, Figure 2) as shown here in Figure 1, in which S stands for speaker (as source and encoder), Μ for message, R for receptor (including decoder and receiver), and C for the cultural context as a whole. The differences between the squares and triangles underline the problem as seen by modern theoreticians that not only is the context of one language different from that of another, but also the message which can be encoded in one language will equally be different from that of any other. For the context of a message to have the same impact in one language as it had in another it has to be shaped linguistically to fit the cultural norms of that language. In this way the nature of a translation qua translation can be hidden, for if it observes the cultural and linguistic norms of the target language it should seem no different from a work which had been written originally in that language. The function of a translator, therefore, is to make his role as invisible as possible. The purpose and nature of translation in an earlier period were quite different, a difference which is perhaps reflected in the status of the translators. While it would probably not be fair to consider today's translators as hacks, they have in England at least relatively little status and almost no exposure to the media. One does not read a work because of the particular translator for his role is concealed. In earlier times translators were important literary and national figures: King Alfred,

6

Norman F. Blake

Chaucer, Queen Elizabeth I, Pope and Dryden spring immediately to mind. Equally many translations are known as much for their translators as for their original authors: Chaucer's Boece, N o r t h ' s Plutarch, Chapm a n ' s Homer and so on. Translation was an activity which brought dignity and reputation to the translator; the translator was very visible. Chaucer was referred to by Deschamps as le grant translateur. This phrase reminds us that translation was a more catholic undertaking in earlier periods than it has since become. John Dryden underlines this point in the preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles when he divides translation into three m a j o r categories: metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation. These represent a decreasing order of faithfulness to the original. Metaphrase is an almost exact reproduction of the original in a different language and the translator aims to keep as close to his original as possible. Paraphrase is where the translator follows the outline and general sense of his original, but allows himself latitude to expand, contract and digress on it while keeping to its overall meaning and intention. Imitation is where the original serves as a model for the translator who takes general hints f r o m it but varies it as much as he wishes. As examples of these latter two categories Dryden cites Waller's translation of Virgil's AZneid book 4 and Cowley's versions of two odes by Pinder and one by Horace. Certainly in the medieval period a translator did not consider simply conveying the meaning of the words in the original to be sufficient. M a n y texts had acquired an extensive commentary and it was c o m m o n for elements of that commentary to be taken over into the translated form. In a recent study of several medieval translations including Chaucer's Boece Rita Copeland concluded: My purpose here has been to illustrate, through one set of well-known texts, how the place of translation within medieval vernacular writing can be revaluated in terms of its rhetorical-hermeneutical grounding. I have attempted to clarify the relationship of translation to the interpretative function of textual commentary, and I have argued for the grounding of translation in the rhetorical act of invention, which in medieval terms represents an extension of textual commentary, as an interpretative discovery and refiguration of language and meaning in antecedent texts. Such a rhetorical and hermeneutical framework argues for a real centrality of the idea and process of translation in vernacular poetics. (Copeland 1987: 74)

Right through f r o m the earliest period to the nineteenth century translation embraced a much wider range of activity than we today accord it. This approach was just as characteristic of the Renaissance. C h a p m a n in his translation of H o m e r relied so heavily on the edition, Latin translation

Translation and the history of English

7

Figure 2. Model Β

and commentary by Spondanus that a modern scholar has written that "Chapman n'a rien tant ambitionne qu'etre le Sponde anglais" (Schoell 1926: 175). The original and accumulated commentary were used by translators to enrich their own version which could be on occasion something very different from the text they set out to translate. In an earlier period the texts translated were broadly educational and literary so that the target language could be improved and the standards of education raised. Both the matter and the manner of the chosen originals were important, for translations were designed to improve the educational and linguistic-stylistic standards of the receiving language. Hence the texts were translated from languages which were regarded as superior in both these areas, with Latin, Greek and French being the main languages from which original texts were chosen. A few texts from some other languages were translated such as Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch, but not only were their numbers small, but also they were often regarded as works of high literary educational or academic merit, which is precisely why they were chosen. It was felt that a translation would make both the content of the work and its style available in the new language. This was an important consideration, because attitudes then towards differences in and improvements to languages varied from our own today. The purpose of a translation was to improve the receiving language and to make it as expressive and elegant as the original language. Earlier translators would not have agreed with Nida's model of the process of translation; for them it would have to be adapted as shown in Figure 2. In this representation the dotted lines represent the improvements which the target language could undergo through translation in order to approach the shape of the original language. Languages were not regarded as inherently different, even though they might appear so;

8

Norman F. Blake

they could be shaped and improved — and that was one of the main functions of translation. This is why important people were prepared to devote time and energy to translation; it was a task well worth doing which brought its own rewards. The main purpose of translation was to make the "triangle language" into a "square language". The role of translation was to provide a model or ideal language to which the language of the translation should aspire. Although to us a fifteenth-century translation may appear too hasty, too slavish or too pedantic, to people at the time the translation may have represented the way in which the language was expected to move in order to make it as expressive and as rich as the approved models. Most often that model was Latin, though French and Greek also contributed to it. While grammars and dictionaries may have assisted in establishing the norms of the idealised form of the language, it was translation which provided the living examples of that ideal and which inspired other writers to emulation. Today we have moved away from this concept of an ideal language because we wish to avoid prescription and we prefer to confer dignity on different varieties within a language so that no single variety in that language is given a special status. But this is a very modern attitude which has been brought about by the status of the English language in the world and by the current disregard by modern English and American people of the need to learn other languages. The position of Latin and Greek has declined rapidly in the last fifty years and it is now possible to have universities which teach neither. This has not been the historical position. From the coming of St Augustine in 597 until World War II it was accepted that educated and cultivated people would be familiar with at least one other language, usually Latin, and sometimes more than one. There is perhaps a need for every language to have a model to which it can aspire, and while English may fulfil this role for some other languages today it has no other language as its own model. Yet a model has almost always been considered a desideratum, as Auerbach (1965: 249) has written: "When Vespasian established the first state professorships in Rome, he set up one for Latin and another for Greek rhetoric. This was no unique or fortuitous phenomenon: an educated public almost always possesses more than one language and often takes a particular foreign literary language as a model for the development of its own." Since literature forms the bulk of the written language that survives and is studied historically, it is not surprising that English should have followed what Auerbach considers almost a universal law and had a foreign language to act as a model for the development of its own

Translation and the history of English

9

literary language. But it is translation which is able to realise that model. At different times the translators may lay particular emphasis on different facets of the model language. Sometimes it may be the enrichment of the vocabulary and sometimes it may be the development of the syntax in the translated language. Even within an area like syntax the model language is usually rich enough to promote at different times almost contradictory approaches: sometimes promoting a more elaborate syntax and at other times a plainer one. For the greater part of the history of English it is possible to posit three general levels of language: an elevated or literary language, a neutral language for the purposes of administration and science, and a colloquial language. These three are usually viewed in a descending order of excellence so that the elevated or literary language is regarded as the highest form of expression in that language to which all the best writing should aspire. Throughout the history of English translation has been one embodiment of that literary language precisely because translators were trying to put across not only the content but also the style of their originals. We should bear in mind what might be called the Erasmus/ Ascham model of style improvement. They promoted multiple translation from the classical to a vernacular language and back again so that a writer in the vernacular could improve his style through imitation. 1 Today the position is quite different. It could be said that elevated or literary language has largely disappeared. One no longer picks up a modern novel expecting to find an example of what people in the past would have regarded as elevated or literary style. This is because modern literary style has increasingly regarded colloquial and less standard forms of language as its models. With the demise of Latin and the elevation in esteem of previously disregarded varieties, literary language no longer has a uniformity of purpose or approach — if it could be said to exist at all. Consequently translators cannot provide an example of the model because the model is no longer found outside the language but within its own resources. This situation was neatly illustrated in a speech by the Prince of Wales at the end of 1989 which was subsequently commented on by a variety of academics and others. 2 In this speech Prince Charles reserved his greatest venom for the standard of English to be found in the New English Bible, which can of course be conveniently compared with that in the 1611 Bible (the King James version) or modern adaptations of it. Prince Charles described English as "a dismal wasteland of banality, cliche and casual obscenity", while one of the other commentators, D. J. Enright in The Observer, commented of modern biblical

10

Norman F. Blake

translations: "We don't want God sounding like a civil servant, any more that we want civil servants imagining they are God. Modern translators have achieved the miracle of turning wine into water." Both Enright (1989) and the prince accept that "The new versions [of the Bible] are promoted on the grounds that they are immediately understandable", and an interesting feature of the comments I have seen is that no one has criticised the New English Bible on the grounds either that it is an inaccurate translation or that it fails to reflect modern English culture. In other words, it has met the requirements of Nida's Model A: it has successfully transformed the words of a text in one culture into those suitable in a different culture. In some ways what Prince Charles and Professor Enright are complaining about is that the new translations do not measure up to the requirements of Model B. If our culture is a dismal wasteland of banality, cliche and casual obscenity, then the translators are right to reflect that in their new version of the Bible. What the detractors of this version want is for the new translation to consist of a language which is as elevated and as literary as the original. They wish the language of a modern English Bible to reflect an idealised version of English rather than current actuality. Since this is what most people have expected from translation for the last fifteen hundred years, it is hardly surprising that the complaints of those like Prince Charles are so vociferous. What we as historians of the language need to remember is how strong this feeling is and has been throughout the history of English and how important its role has been in the development of the language. We may quite naturally feel that we today should pay full attention to other varieties of the language which existed in the past and which still exist, but we should not let that perfectly laudable aim make us overlook how an ideal of English has shaped the way the language grew and the attitudes that people expressed about different varieties of English. Even Enright's article in The Observer had as its title "Tide of Pollution that engulfs our Language" — a hyperbole that is not uncommon in discussions of language. Within these discussions translation has always been an important element because there the contrast between the language of the original and that of the translation is explicit for those who know or think they know the language of the original well enough. Translation has shown the way by providing examples of the elevated language borrowed from their original and other authors have followed; as Thomas Nashe said in 1589, many writers feed on "the crums that fall from the Translators trencher" (McKerrow 1905: 312).

Translation and the history of English

11

It is time to turn from these more general points to a consideration of some aspects of the language which may have been particularly affected by translation, and in doing so I will bear in mind Dryden's rather generous definition of what is meant by translation. Although most people probably link translation especially with vocabulary, other areas of language can also be affected. These may involve standardisation, spelling, lexis, syntax and general literary composition, embracing rhetoric and similar aids to writing. As Dobson (1955) has reminded us a standardised language is an educated language, and I have already noted that Auerbach has claimed that an educated language means one where there is an external literary language which acts as a model. Even before that standardisation which produced our modern standard language developed, standardised forms of English occurred in different periods and places. This is interesting because there seems to me no reason in principle why a written language needs to be standardised. Variation in spelling, lexis and syntax is not a bar to communication, as modern varieties of English make clear and as must have been self-evident to users of medieval English. The concept of standardisation can have arisen only through knowledge of another language which was standardised, and that means Latin. As a dead language it preserved only written, literary material, and what may not have been standard to start with became so through the activity of copyists and editors. Standard varieties of English occurred in the medieval period where ever there was a strong tradition of teaching Latin and where, almost inevitably, comparisons of Latin with English and translations from one to the other were made. This most certainly applied to the West Saxon standard at Winchester in the tenth and eleventh centuries and to the AB language of Herefordshire in the early thirteenth century. It is difficult when one is dealing with a single author like Orm or Dan Michael to say that their works reflect a standard, but they do reflect a standardising process, and their works can be said to be imitations, if not metaphrases, in Dryden's sense of those terms. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the influence of translation was accentuated through the educational process and strengthened by the arrival of dictionaries and grammars. It is perhaps inevitable that translations are likely to be subject to the influence of standardisation first because of the model which the original work provides. In matters of spelling translation may have more influence than we have hitherto recognised. Translation, in the sense I have been using it, involves the impact of one written language upon another. It is perfectly possible to keep two written systems apart, particularly if the two systems

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are very different as are English and Greek. It is of course easier to keep them apart if you are not translating one into another, because as soon as you do that you have the problem of how to represent certain words in the translated language, particularly proper names and loanwords. If the two languages interact only at the spoken level, then it is likely that the borrowed forms will conform to the speech norms of the borrowing language; it is only when people are familiar with both written forms that they are likely to be influenced by the written forms in the other language. One has only to think in modern times of a name like Nikita Khrushchev, the former Soviet leader. If his name had come into English through speech alone there is no way that anyone would have spelt it with initial Kh- because that is not a regular graphemic combination in English. Equally the spelling -shch- internally in the name is unEnglish. It is those who knew the spelling in Russian and who wanted to be "correct" in their transliteration in English who used these spellings; others were less formal in their spelling of his name. When one language is being translated constantly into another, as Latin and to a lesser extent even French was, then there will be a continuous influence to adapt loanwords in the borrowing language to that of the original language. The influence can go deeper. Old English had a number of graphemes and graphemic units which were not found in Latin or French. One such is the group cw in words like cwen and cwedan. The graph was for all practical purposes not found in Old English. It is in the poem Genesis and Exodus from the thirteenth century that is found regularly for the first time, though some earlier Middle English writers had used it sporadically. It is surprising that this is so, since we are often told that the coming of the Normans led to a readjustment of the English spelling system under the influence of French. Why was not accepted earlier than the thirteenth century? As it is not such a regular feature of French as it is of Latin, it may well be that its introduction had to wait for a renewed translating activity from Latin into English resulting from the twelfth-century renaissance before its adoption could be assured. Genesis and Exodus is a translation at least in Dryden's sense of imitation and perhaps even in his sense of paraphrase. Some graphemes and graphemic units were introduced from French such as the groups in words like boil and coy. The latter is an example of a word which was primarily literary and which appeared in the language only through translation of romances and associated literature (Lowes 1910: 440 — 451). Even boil was a word for which an AngloSaxon equivalent existed and which may have started life in English as

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13

a literary word. Wtyat is notable about words with these graphemes is that the spelling is fairly regular, a regularity which comes from familiarity with the written language and perhaps therefore through translating activity. If foreign words are borrowed at a spoken level they are likely to confirm to the phonemic system of the borrowing language. When words are borrowed through the written level, which means particularly through translation, they may well keep their spellings which will in turn lead to the introduction and acceptance of new phonemes in the language, as is true of . It is often important in such cases that the spellings are reinforced by continuous translation and use so that they are widely accepted. The absence of much translation from Russian and the departure from the political scene by Nikita Khrushchev means that few English people would now know how to spell his name in what was at one time considered the appropriate way. The reinforcement of new forms at both a graphemic and a lexical level through continuous translation is important if those forms are to survive. This is another essential function that translation has played in the historical development of the language. One final example of the probable influence of translation on the graphemic system may be highlighted. It is a well known fact that during the sixteenth century English spelling was transformed through what has sometimes been called an etymologising principle. Words which had been borrowed from French with a French spelling but which were of an ultimate Latin origin were respelt to agree with their form in Latin. Hence egal became equal, parfait became perfect, dette became debt, and so on. It is probably not fortuitous that the sixteenth century also witnessed what has already been referred to as "the flood of translations", most of which were from Latin. Although the influence of translation may well have been supported by the growth of grammatical education and a renewed interest in etymology, it is unlikely that these changes would have been introduced and become permanent without the influence of the many translations from Latin. We know only too well that recommendations of grammarians and others, whether it is a Mulcaster in the sixteenth century or a Quirk in the twentieth, are unlikely to be adopted unless there are other forces at work to encourage their adoption. Although it would need considerable detailed research to prove this point, the coincidence of the spelling changes with the flood of translations strongly suggests that they are linked. It would after all only be another way in which the translators were able to achieve one of their

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aims — the raising of the standards of their own language towards those of the model language. At this point I would like to offer some thoughts on Old English which may serve as introduction to a consideration of lexis and syntax. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was common to appreciate the Latin background to Old English poetry. For example, the influence exerted by Virgil over Beowulf was documented in various parallels. It was accepted that Latin provided the model in language and literature for Old English. The concept of epic was classical, extended similies were thought to be imitations of those in the /Eneid, and the language of Old English poetry was quite different from prosaic language because it was a heightened language which reflected the literary language of classical works. All this changed with the new focus on oral formulaic poetry which prompted the assumption that Old English poetry was orally based and that meant in its turn that it reflected in its language, syntax and general approach the oral poetry of the Anglo-Saxons of an earlier period, even if the extant poetry has taken Christianity as its principal theme. One may question whether this is really so, though in the absence of any oral poetry this is probably unprovable either way. As there has been a recent trend to date most Old English poetry late in the Anglo-Saxon period, it may be worth thinking of Caedmon's Hymn which can be confidently accepted as one of the earliest extant pieces of Old English poetry. Although it has never been considered a translation in the modern sense, it has been suggested that it is based on the psalms and could readily be considered an imitation in Dryden's sense (Blake 1962: 243 — 246). We need to remember what Bede tells us as to the reactions to the hymn by the Abbess Hild and others in the community at Whitby. If to them the hymn had been a Christianised version of a heathen praise poem, they might well have asked Caedmon whether he knew any other pagan poems which could be adapted in this way. This is not what they did. Rather they thought of his poem as a kind of translation, as a version of the psalms. What they did was to set him down with the scholars who translated different parts of the Bible to him so that he could convert their translations into Old English poetry. This procedure is not unlike that followed in the New English Bible. Scholars prepared the first draft of the translation which they then passed on to literary committee so that its members could produce a literary version to serve as the final text. In each case there are three stages: original, translation and final version. Let us just remind ourselves of the poem:

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15

Nu we sculon herigean heofonrices Weard Meotodes meahte ond his modgepanc, weorc Wuldorfceder, swa he wundra gehwces, ece Drihten, or onstealde. He cerest sceop eoröan bearnum heofon to hrofe, halig Scyppend. Pa middangeard moncynnes Weard, ece Dryhten, after teode firum foldan, Frea celmihtig. It is possible that this poem is based on a pagan oral one, but it seems unlikely. The subject matter and theme are those of the psalms which praise God who revealed his power and omnipotence through the creation of the world. N o t only is the syntax literary with such features as the separation of genitive and head (wundra gehwces ... or) and the placing of the object in initial position {middangeard ... Weard ... teode), but also the vocabulary in its variation and choice is reminiscent of liturgical Latin. One may question whether oral poetry had such variation as that found in the first sentence in the different words for God and the manifestation of his power (heofonrices Weard, Meotodes meahte, his modgepanc, weorc Wuldorfceder, and ece Drihten). These are all features (guarding the world, creating the world, living forever) characteristic of the descriptions of God in the psalms, and Hebrew literature from which the Latin text comes is full of parallelism and variation which have been imitated in the Vulgate. It is more than likely that the psalms also provided Caedmon with the impetus to produce the circumlocutions in his noun groups which form the basis of the variation. Such circumlocutions are not characteristic of most Old English prose; it is found only in those prose texts which are consciously literary and aim at producing rhythmical alliterative prose. In the same way the examples of prolonged variation in Beowulf may well have been prompted by the example of Latin literary texts such as Virgil's AZneid. After all, as we shall note in a minute, this text together with other classical masterpieces encouraged the use of circumlocution in eighteenth century English poetry. In promoting circumlocution, imitation of Latin style may have provided the necessary spur to the development of compound words which created the required variation because the vocabulary of Old English was not sufficiently rich in simple lexemes to provide that variation. It is possible that the development of these most characteristic features of Old English poetry was the result of imitation of and translation from Latin.

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This process of translation sets up a traditional vocabulary, particularly in poetry which remains the stylistic trend-setter in literature. This tradition takes on certain forms which are shaped and reinforced through translation. The type of word deemed appropriate is the first element in that poetry goes in for the longer word. To start with the words are compound, formed from within the stock of Germanic simplexes, but later polysyllabic words from French and Latin become more common. Many of these words carry over with them the associations which their equivalents or even their models had in the parent language. As these words are used in English they develop echoes within English itself, though they are constantly reinforced through translation. A second element is that translation encourages the formulation of phrasal groups partly because these provide more sonorous circumlocutions, but also because they allow for the creation of symbolic image. Throughout English literature the use of such groups has been strongly exploited. Finally the phrasal groups allow for the development of parallelism and balance, the use of a cumulative style, and the emphasis upon rhythm. If these features were true of Old English, they are equally true of other periods. A. C. Partridge (1969: 172) has written of the better Elizabethan poets and prose-writers: Translation, rather than rhetoric, seems to have developed their sensibility for the fitness of words, and their feeling for the rhythm of phrases and sentences. Englishing Hebrew and Greek testaments of the Bible, humanists and divines acquired a feeling for verbal harmony, depending upon stress and tone in the grouping of syllables. Hence their resourceful use of syncope and apocope. Their work exhibits a resonance and plenitude of phrase, and a bold image-making.

The same could also be said for later centuries. Translation is also an important factor in the connotation of words. Classical literature and the Bible are both expressions of established cultures with a developed literary tradition. Each spawned further writing, particularly in Latin, which itself both used and extended the tradition. Many words became linked with particular associations within this tradition so that their use could readily evoke particular reverberations. The associations could also be generated when such words were borrowed into English. But such words did not so readily carry those associations by themselves since they formed part of what David Burnley (1979: 2) has called the "architecture" of a language — that structure which groups certain words and themes together into significant patterns. They form subsystems of meaning which are important in the culture in question

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because they often reflect ideas and events which are accepted as important within it. Although in time individual words may well come to evoke much of the response through their individual occurrence, for the most part it is necessary for the words to occur in their subset to promote the required associations. This is particularly true when the words are borrowed into English, for it takes time for the re-formed subset in the new language to become meaningful because it may be formed by both loan words from the original language's subset and by some native words which assume new connotations. In this process translation and imitation are essential. The words will bring their associations over to English because they occur in translations and will prompt the reader to make the link between the word in his own language and the associations of that word in the parent language. In his book which focuses on Chaucer and the fourteenth century, Burnley (1979: 11—28) examines certain key concepts and the words which are used to express them. One of these is the tyrannical king with the word tyrant a borrowing into English from Latin tyrannus. Although there may be other words which could express the idea of a tyrannical king such as usurper and despot, they do not carry with them the same overtones because tyrant was associated with the thematic development of unjust rule. It was set in contrast with the just king who observed the demands of piety ipite) and mercy. A tyrant acted with cruelty and behaved unpitously. He is often affected with ire and anger, and so acts unreasonably and impetuously. He does not observe prudence or show patience. He consequently inflicts the guiltless with fierce and undeserved torments. When the word tyrant or one of its derivatives occurs, it is likely to be accompanied by one or more of these other words in its subsystem. The meaning of tyrant is thus to some extent dictated by the other words and by the theme which they jointly create. These words are all borrowed from Latin (sometimes through French) and they bring with them the associations which these words had in Latin. In particular they remind one of examples of tyranny in the Bible and the Apocrypha such as Holophernes and Herod as well as those in classical history and literature such as Nero. The luggage which these words brought with them was enormous and provided English with the means of building up connotative meanings in words, particularly those in literary works. We have not done enough to explore this side of our vocabulary. The post-medieval centuries provide us with a similar picture, but it is not identical. In this period it is perhaps phrasal groups which predominate and they convey their associative meaning partly through being

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phrases modelled on Latin or Greek originals and partly through direct echoes to particular texts. The word tyrant would not evoke a particular text or even a particular example in every reader or listener, but eighteenth-century phrases could. An adjective like lambent provides a good example. It is used with a single noun, usually fire, to express the nature and colour of the flame. Virgil had used it in his /Eneid 11.683 — 684 together with flamma, and it was picked up by late seventeenth and eighteenth century poets in particular, as Dryden does in Killigrew. Ev'n love (for love sometimes her Muse express'd) was but a lambent flame which play'd about her breast.3 The phrase lambent plus a single noun had latinity written all over it and invited the reader to remember comparable passages in the classics. It was not used specifically to highlight a particular theme or to evoke a specific association, but rather to raise the tone through its latinity and to link it to the classical connotations. Other adjectives like liquid are much the same. Naturally such phrases may focus more on the classically derived noun or even verb, often in a participial form. I have said little about the early modern English period because the ink-horn controversy is too well known to need any comment. Although it cannot be claimed that all the new words at that time arose through translation, there can be no doubt that translation was one of the most important contributors to the introduction of loans. It has been claimed that: "The genesis of modern English, and the diversity of its vocabulary, were made possible by several centuries of painstaking translation, first of the Gospels, then of the major Latin and Greek classics." (Partridge 1973: 1). The central point of these centuries of painstaking translation was of course the early modern English period. In earlier discussions of translation, syntax as such is rarely the focus of comment because the primary emphasis is on style and manner. Typical of what was written is Alexander Fraser Tytler's comment in his Essay on the Principles of Translation (1791: 9) that "the style and manner of writing [i. e. of a translation] should be of the same character as the original". In essence this type of comment encouraged translators to reflect the syntax of the original in their own translation in so far as the differences in linguistic structure allowed it. As Ezra Pound noted in his essay on translators of Homer: "It seems to me that English translators ... have been deaved with syntax; have wasted time, involved their English, trying first to evolve a definite logical structure for the Greek, and secondly to preserve it, and all its grammatical relations, in English"

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(Pound 1934: 154). In the Middle Ages most educated people were clerks who were brought up on Latin and they were responsible for much of the administrative writing of the time. In addition in Middle English many educated people would have known at least two, and probably three, languages, and would have moved from one to the other without too much trouble. 4 In writing, whether administrative or literary, many of the models were in Latin and it would have been surprising if these had not acted as models for composition in English. When deeds and other administrative documents came to be in English, their style and syntax would reflect those found in their Latin exemplars. The same applies to many of the formulae associated with literary writing. Curtius (1953: 407 — 413) has shown how the humility formula, for example, was developed in classical texts and passed from Latin to all vernacular languages including English. The choice of words and syntax imitated those found in Latin. The same applies to prologues in which a book is presented to a patron and other similar addenda to the main work modelled on classical forms. As a language English is basically paratactic in its organisation and in its Old English stage it was relatively poor in subordinating conjunctions. A feature of Old English is the attempt to introduce more subordinating conjunctions, though their precise syntactic function is often difficult to determine. In many Old English texts forms like for pam pe seem to exist in a syntactic limbo somewhere between a subordinating conjunction and an adjunct (Mitchell 1985, I: 1850-1860, 1880). It is likely that this uncertain character was the result of trying to create conjunctions out of what had been adjuncts in order to make the style more hypotactic. And it is translation from Latin which would hold up hypotaxis as a model to be emulated. It is a notable aspect of English throughout its history that hypotaxis has been considered a more literary and hence a more estimable type of style than parataxis. Consequently most writers have experienced the tension between a drift to parataxis encouraged by the nature of the language and a pressure to create a more elevated style by employing hypotaxis. The question of whether hypotaxis is indeed stylistically better than parataxis can be answered only subjectively, but the influence of Latin has been so strong that for most people the superiority of the one over the other has been taken as self-evident. Even today many teachers continue to encourage their pupils to introduce more subordinate clauses into their essays because that is assumed to result in a better style. It is through translation that hypotaxis has been kept alive as the optimum style since translators have thought that their translations

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should mirror the style and manner of their originals and that naturally meant the use of multiple clauses in a hierarchical order. For those who promote a simpler style the answer has inevitably been a return to parataxis; and this is often justified on the grounds that such a style is more colloquial or more down to earth. This justificiation is itself revealing because it has implicitly ceded to hypotaxis the right to be considered the more literary and the more sophisticated method of composition. In principle hypotaxis is no more sophisticated than parataxis: it has merely been accepted as such by writers in English throughout its history because that was the style they associated with the classical languages and which they found reproduced in translations from them. Indeed it is not only hypotaxis, but any elaboration in the sentence which has been considered a marker of the high style of translation. An elaborate noun phrase is for this purpose the same as a system of subordinate clauses. The influence of translation on the development of English syntax and style has been studied most fully in the Elizabethan period. Translation was an avocation of nearly every classically-trained writer, dramatist and poet of the Elizabethan age, the notable exception being Shakespeare. Yet the influence of other men's translations upon his work was all-pervasive, particularly Thomas Hoby's The Courtyer (1561), William Golding's Metamorphoses of Ovid (1565 — 67), Thomas North's Plutarch's Lives, translated from the French version of Amyot (1579), George Chapman's Homer's Iliad (1598), Philemon Holland's Letters of Pliny (1601) and Morals of Plutarch (1603), and Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays (1603). In discussing the stylistic problems arising from their translations, these scholars showed that they were consciously engaged in the advancement of English prose, as well as poetry. (Partridge 1969: 63)

In his Tudor to Augustan English Partridge has shown the influence of translation and how stylistic and syntactic devices were imported to improve English. Some of these may be briefly noted here. In syntactic terms the avoidance of parataxis has usually meant the deployment of subordinate clauses through the development of subordinating conjunctions or the use of various participial constructions. The latter appear to have been infrequent or even unknown in English until they were introduced through translation, and they still remain rather literary where they survive. Perhaps most characteristic, because it is to most English speakers quintessentially Latinate, is the use of the ablative absolute. Even in Old English this construction was used in prose as in ^Elfric's gewunnenum sige (Mitchell 1985, II: 3804 — 3805), but it perhaps reached

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its maximum use in the Elizabethan period. Shakespeare employed it frequently: Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber (Titus Andronicus II.3.26). Purpose so barr'd it follows Nothing is done to purpose (Coriolanus III.1.148 —149). But he and other Elizabethans developed a nominative absolute with a personal pronoun being understood: I may not be too forward Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George, Be executed (.Richard III V.3.94-96); Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign; Two mighty eagles fell. (Julius Caesar V, 1.79 — 80). A further development encouraged by the ablative absolute was a nominative absolute construction to which a temporal preposition was sometimes added, presumably to assist clarity. This construction then came to resemble the post bellum confectum type found in Latin and is particularly frequent in classically-inspired authors such as Spenser and Milton: Sir knight with-hold, till further triall made (Faerie Queene 1.1.12). nor delaid the winged Saint After his charge receivd (Paradise Lost V. 247 —248). The need for subordinating conjunctions has been felt throughout the history of English in order to avoid ambiguity as well as to order the clauses in a hierarchical order so that their interrelationship was more explicit. In parataxis two clauses may be placed in sequence but their precise link will remain a matter of conjecture. Temporally one assumes that the first clause precedes the second in time, but with matters like causality the situation is not so clear. In a common proverb like Feed a cold and starve a fever, most speakers of English today will understand this sentence as two separate commands embodying two separate courses of action arising from two different situations. That is, if someone has a cold you feed him, and if he has a fever you starve him. But this is not what the sentence was designed to mean for there is a causal link between them to give the meaning "If you feed a person who has a cold, you will have to starve that same person when he develops the fever which will inevitably follow". Historically English is full of similar examples, though the correct interpretation is not always quite so easy to deduce. In

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Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice are we to understand the two clauses of "The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind" (I.iii.173) as two independent or two related statements? If the latter, is the first clause the result of the second?5 Such ambiguity may be a richness in a literary text, but it can cause confusion in ordinary language unless the pragmatics can allow the reader or listener to disambiguate it. Equally English has been short of appositional and attributive phrases and this lack has been supplied to some extent through an imitation of Latin which has been expedited through translation where models were made available for other authors and users of the language. Old English prose is relatively poor in its development of the noun phrase, though this is not nearly so true of Old English poetry which almost certainly developed this facility through Latin and translation. Elizabethan writers did the same so that we achieved the possibility of highly structured sentences which exploited not only elaborate noun phrases but also a high degree of subordination among its clauses. This ideal of a highly structured sentence has remained a feature of English writing throughout almost all its history and that ideal has been nourished through translation, though inevitably education in the form of grammar and rhetorical handbooks has played a part. But elaboration is not dependent on grammar and may often deliberately go against it. Some may feel that I have claimed too much for translation on the basis of insufficient evidence in this paper. What I have tried to do is to underline the pervasive quality of translation throughout the history of the English language. Too much has been assumed and written about translation without a sufficient theoretical and conceptual underpinning. What is needed now is some discussion of the theory of translation in a historical framework so that we have a proper framework in which to work. No doubt that framework will have to rely on studies of modern translation as a starting point. This should allow us to undertake a more thorough and far-reaching investigation of the role of translation in English than I have been able to accomplish here. It remains one of the major influences on the language which has yet to be properly investigated — and it is high time that we began. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

On translation in this period see Eric Jacobsen, (1958), especially pp. 130—147. Prince Charles's speech was reprinted in the Daily Mail on 20 December 1989. This and other examples come from John Arthos (1949). This matter is considered in J. D. Burnley (1989: 37 — 53). Further examples are found in N. F. Blake (1983: 123).

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References Arthos, John 1949 The language of natural description in eighteenth-century poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Auerbach, Erich 1965 Literary language and its public in late Latin antiquity and in the Middle Ages. (Translated by Ralph Mannheim.) London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Blake, Norman F. 1962 "Caedmon's Hymn", Notes and Queries 207: 243 - 246. 1983 Shakespeare's language; An introduction. London: Macmillan. Brower, Reuben A. (ed.) 1959 On translation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Burnley, J. D. 1979 Chaucer's language and the philosophers' tradition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 1989 "Late medieval English translation: types and reflections", in: Roger Ellis (ed.), 3 7 - 5 3 . Copeland, Rita 1987 "Rhetoric and vernacular translation in the Middle Ages", Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9: 74. Curtius, Ernst 1953 European literature and the Latin Middle Ages. (Bollingen Series 36.) (Translated by H. R. Trask.) New York: Pantheon. Dobson, Eric J. 1955 "Early Modern Standard English", Transactions of the Philological Society 25-54. Ellis, Roger (ed.) 1989 The medieval translator. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Enright, D. J. 1989 "Tide of pollution that engulfs our language", The Observer 24 December 1989. Jacobsen, Eric 1958 Translation a traditional craft. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel & Nordisk Forlag. Jones, Richard Foster 1953 The triumph of the English language. A survey of opinions concerning the vernacular from the introduction of printing to the restoration. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lowes, J. L. 1910 "Simple and coy: A note on fourteenth-century poetic diction", Anglia 33: 440-51. McKerrow, R. B. (ed.) 1905 The works of Thomas Nashe. (Vol. III.) London: Bullen. Mitchell, Bruce 1985 Old English syntax. Oxford: Clarendon. Nida, Eugene A. 1959 "Principles of translation as exemplified by Bible translating", in: Reuben A. Brower (ed.), 16.

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Partridge, A. 1969 1973 Pound, Ezra 1934

C. Tudor to Augustan English. London: Deutsch. English biblical translation. London: Deutsch. "Translators of Greek, early translators of Homer", in Make it new: Essays by Ezra Pound. London: Faber and Faber.

Schoell, F. L. 1926 Etudes sur I'humanisme continental en Angleterre. (Bibliotheque de la Revue Comparee 29.) Paris: Champion.

The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English Andrei

1.

Danchev

Introduction

1.1. General notes English is usually referred to as a language with a more or less analytic structure, in fact, as the most analytic of all the Germanic languages. Much more sparingly, if at all, do linguists speak of any synthetic trends in English. It has even been stated that "English, ..., is only analytic in tendency" (Sapir 1921: 128) and that although synthetic language means do exist in English they are "no longer productive" (Yachek 1961: 63), whereas some other authors, e. g., Trnka (1928) and Mincoff (1957), while pointing to syntheticity in English indeed, do not dwell on it at any great length. The purposes of this paper are to examine briefly 1) the various types of analyticity in English, 2) the evidence for synthetic developments and 3) finally, to offer some comments and tentative conclusions. The above-mentioned topics are viewed within the framework of a communicatively oriented interactive model of language change typology, which I have been trying to motivate in some recent work (Danchev 1987, 1989b, 1989c, 1991). As I have pointed out before, the model is based on the assumption of opposite competing factors of language change, variously formulated in a number of publications by authors such as Jakobson, Martinet, Lüdtke, Bailey and some others. The possibility is explored here of placing the "analyticity-syntheticity" dichotomy within such a broader context. As suggested by its title, this paper is concerned with analyticity and syntheticity in English. However, since the typological approach I have adopted presupposes cross-language comparisons, the paper also contains a number of selective references to other languages, including learner interlanguages. The latter point takes me back to an issue I have raised

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before: the heuristic gain that can be derived from supplementing historical linguistics data with applied linguistics data and more specifically of L2 acquisition (for some details cf. Danchev 1989a). Three types of data (of correspondingly diminishing relevance) will therefore be considered: from 1) English, 2) learner interlanguages and contact situations in which English is involved and 3) other languages.

1.2. A note on the terms "analytic" and "synthetic" Before proceeding it may be recalled that the terms "analytic" and "synthetic" have often been used in different meanings. This has been pointed out repeatedly, e.g., by Bally (1932 [1965: 143]), Zirmunskij (1976: 8 2 - 1 2 5 ) and quite recently again by Anttila (1989: 315). Therefore, as is actually the case with most linguistic terminology today, it is advisable to make it quite clear in what sense the respective terms have been used in every particular case. It is a useful reminder that "a language may be analytic from one standpoint and synthetic from another" (Anttila 1989: 313). In this paper I will maintain the important distinction between formal and semantic definitions of analyticity and syntheticity, suggested by a number of authors. Formal analyticity evidently implies that the various meanings (grammatical and/or lexical) of a given language unit are carried by two or more free morphemes, whereas formal syntheticity is normally characterized by the presence of one bound morpheme. The semantic criteria imply a one-to-one relation between form and meaning in the case of analyticity and a one-to-several relation in the case of syntheticity. The trend towards grammatical syntheticity is usually characterized by a reduction in the number of meanings of the respective bound morpheme and the ultimate establishment of one-to-one relation between surface and underlying structure (e. g., in the plural marker of nouns in Modern English, which carried several meanings in Old English), or even the complete loss of that bound morpheme. From a broader viewpoint analyticity is generally connected with syntagmatic parameters and syntheticity with paradigmatic features. Analyticity is therefore manifested in two or more language units, whereas syntheticity implies a single unit. There exist also mixed cases, of course, e.g., verbal analyticity, which displays both syntagmaticity and paradigmaticity 1 (several grammatical meanings are synthesized into the respective auxiliary verb). Some other

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problems, e. g. how to treat agglutination and polysyntheticity in nonIndo-European languages, will not be addressed here. The notions of analyticity and syntheticity are traditionally associated with morphology, but I will examine here the possibility of identifying analytic and synthetic developments at all three basic language levels — phonology, grammar and the lexicon, and the following two sections of my paper have been structured accordingly.

2.

The evidence for analyticity

2.1. Phonological analyticity Although it has been mentioned before (e.g., in Vachek 1961; Danchev 1985), phonological analyticity is usually overlooked in the literature. It can, however, easily be illustrated by various decompositions of more highly marked vowels and consonants into less marked ones. The evidence for phonological analyticity in English itself is rather scarce 2 and in some isolated cases such as the name Muir (with /ju:/ from earlier /Ü:/)3 it is not quite clear whether to treat this as an internal development of English or as a local form which has spread through dialect contact. Contact of one type or another (historical or in the classroom) does favour such changes indeed. Thus, for instance, as I have shown before (Danchev 1985), the umlaut vowels /ü(:)/, /ö(:)/, /ä(:)/ 4 of various languages such as French, German, Turkish, Finnish, English, a. o., are easily decomposed into rising diphthongs — /ju(:)/, /jo(:)/ /ja(:)/ both in learner interlanguages and in numerous loanwords in various receptor languages, e.g., English music (from Old French musique with /Ü/), Russian fjon (from German Föhn), Bulgarian Bljakpul (from English Blackpool; cf. also Jamaican English /kjat/ for 'cat' — cf. Wells 1982: 569, and also Danchev 1986: 242). In examples of this type the paradigmatically ordered distinctive features of the input umlaut vowels are syntagmatically redistributed in the output forms, i.e., one segment has been reanalyzed into two segments (for details cf. Danchev 1985). The same adaptation mechanism is behind the frequent decomposition in learner interlanguages of the English velar nasal consonant /η/ into a sequence of two distinct consonants — /ng/ (or /nk/ with final devoicing) in words such as king and of nasal vowels into sequences of oral vowels and nasal consonants in numerous loanwords borrowed from French,

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Polish, Portuguese into other languages (e. g., English point, round, haunt and many other similar words, borrowed from French). Worth noting here is the fact that when teachers wish to make understanding easier for elementary level students of English, they tend to use full, i. e., analytic forms such as I will and will he? which help comprehension, rather than the shorter synthetic forms I'll and /'wili?/ (will he?) (oral communication of R. Andreeva). It might be objected that most of the examples mentioned in this subsection boil down to borrowing and sound substitution, rather than to language change "proper". On the other hand, however, one way of "upgrading" borrowing would be to consider it as a kind of lexical diffusion (cf. Bailey 1982: 68). Since the strict distinction between borrowing and internal change is linked to the distinction between language and dialect, for which there do not exist any purely linguistic criteria, it would probably be more productive to think of a continuum rather than of a polar dichotomy between external and internal developments (cf. also the discussion of the neogrammarian versus the lexical diffusion view of language change in Labov 1981). Interlinguistic changes sometimes merely throw into sharper relief various types of intralinguistic processes and code-switching. Although the decomposition phenomena mentioned above are familiar and have actually been discussed by numerous authors, they do not seem to have been associated explicitly with analyticity before. When Vachek speaks of analyticity in phonology he has in mind the fact that analytic changes at one level (morphology) are bound to affect the entire system of the given language. Otherwise he does not point to any specific analytic features of the phonological developments he mentions, e. g., the shifting of syllable boundaries in Middle English.

2.2. Grammatical analyticity In addition to nominal and verbal analyticity (e. g., the English continuous, perfect and future tenses, the do interrogatives and negatives, as well as some other forms), one could also mention adjectival analyticity as seen in the spread of analytic forms of comparison in Late Middle English and Early Modern English (cf. Lakoff 1972: 1 9 1 - 1 9 2 and for more details Danchev 1989c). In the area of syntax one should mention here the transition from the ME me semeth to the ModE it seems to me sentence type, where the

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synthetic combination of two syntactic roles in the pronoun me (actor/ agent and patient/recipient) has been redistributed analytically between two different words, the role of the actor/agent formally being taken over by the impersonal (dummy) it. The list of analytic developments in grammar could be expanded, but the present survey is not meant to be exhaustive. Before concluding this subsection, however, let us take a somewhat closer look at the causality issue of analytic changes and for the purpose we could consider briefly various instances of nominal analyticity, which seems to be the most widely discussed type of analyticity in general.5 This will also highlight the supportive role of additional data from languages other than English. A discussion of the development of nominal analyticity in English is likely to begin with a reference to Jespersen's familiar view which links the loss of case endings to the contact between Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians in some parts of the country. And yet there exists the alternative view that English would have become an analytic language even without the contact factor. As in so many other similar cases (e.g., nominal analyticity in Bulgarian) it is rather difficult to give convincing precedence either to the external influence or to the internal development hypothesis. Given such a state of things it could be concluded that the whole issue is practically unresolvable, and this is the view shared indeed by quite a few scholars. It is at this juncture, however, that a more broadly based cross-language typological approach can provide some additional clues. By broadening the data range it should be possible to check on some other situations in which the loss of noun morphology is, or is not, concomitant with language/dialect contact. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Danchev 1990, 1991), the evidence is plentiful. Beginning with other Germanic languages such as Danish and Afrikaans (cf. Görlach 1986 and the references therein) one could continue with the Romance languages, the various descendants of Sanskrit, the Balkan Sprachbund languages, a.o., in practically all of which the reduction or loss of case paradigms correlates with prolonged historical contact situations. As regards learner interlanguages and immigrant speech, one could point to the reduction and even not infrequent loss of case endings in the speech of Russians who live among Bulgarians and of the latter when trying to speak Russian without solid previous instruction, and similarly in the Finnish spoken by Finnish immigrants in America (Campbell 1989). The latter case is particularly noteworthy as a non-Indo-European language is involved. Further evidence along the

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same lines comes from the German interlanguage (Gastarbeiterdeutsch), stripped of case endings, which is spoken by numerous foreign workers in Germany (Holm 1988).

2.3. Lexical analyticity This type of analyticity is illustrated easily by the frequent replacement of monoverbal lexemes by poly verbal ones or by free lexical combinations, either in historical development or in interlingual translation. Beginning with English data, one could take the tendency of English to favour phrasal verbs rather than affixation (cf. the comments in Trnka 1928; Vachek 1961) and verbal phrases of the to have a chat/shower/ smoke type, which often carry aspectual meanings (this has been noted by quite a few authors, e.g., Trnka 1928; Mincoff 1958) instead of the simplex verbs to chat I shower I smoke. The same trend transpires through relatively new noun phrases such as flight attendant (for the monoverbal stewardess), recently discussed by Shapiro (1989b). The most typical instances, of course, of intralingual analyticity occur in the explanatory definitions of the entries in any monolingual dictionary. Developments of this type are again very frequent in contact situations. Polyverbal paraphrases are typical of the translation of lexemes that do not have any straightforward equivalents in the target language. Thus, Nida (1969: 493) writes that "the process of transfer may involve an analytical redistribution of the components. This means that what is carried by one lexical unit in the source language is distributed over several (emphasis added here and above) lexemes in the receptor language", e.g., phylactery — little leather bundles with holy words in them, a. o. Lexical analyticity is frequently resorted to in learner interlanguages, e.g., the man who makes clothes for tailor in the interlanguage of some Bulgarian learners of English (I am indebted for this example to M. Bojadzieva-Milenova) and in applied linguistics parlance this type of paraphrase has been described as an "achievement strategy" (Faerh — Kasper 1983: 45 — 52), because it helps communication. The semantic components of a lexical gap in the interlanguage have been rearranged linearly and have been made explicit through a string of separate words. What occurs synthetically in the single lexeme teacher has been decomposed into a number of independent discrete elements.

Analytic and synthetic developments in English

3.

31

The evidence for synthetic developments

3.1. Phonological syntheticity The evidence for what could be regarded as phonological syntheticity in English is rather varied, but we could begin with the Ingvaeonic development of long vowels due to the loss of a following nasal before a spirant resulting, e.g., in OE gös 'goose', müp 'mouth', fif 'five', a. o. If one feels dubious about the synthetic nature of this and some other changes adduced in this subsection, the arguments in favour of regarding them as synthetic could be buttressed by the existence of reverse developments which can be defined as analytic. In this case, for instance, one could refer to the decomposition of nasalized vowels into a sequence of an oral vowel and a nasal consonant mentioned in the preceding section (2.1).

Another instance of phonological syntheticity in English can be seen in the appearance of the velar nasal /η/ ( = /n/ + /g/) 6 as an independent phoneme in Early Modern English. The reverse development, i.e., the analytic decomposition of this segment into two segments was seen to be typical of learner interlanguages (cf. 2.1.). Old English (and generally Germanic) i-umlaut, too, could be viewed as a synthetic development, because it can be represented as the approximate reverse of the analytic changes of/ü(:)/, /ö(:)/, /ä(:)/ to /ju(:)/, /jo(:)/, /ja(:)/ (cf. the preceding section and also Danchev 1985). According to Ilyish (1973: 53) i-umlaut is part of "a general tendency of OE — that of various parts of a word coalescing into a closer unit", which can be interpreted as a movement towards synthetic structure. The rounding of OE /eo(:)/ to /ö(:)/, /ie(:)/ to /ü(:)/ as well as some other similar developments in some western and south-western Early Middle English dialects could be mentioned here too, although tentative explanations only, such as, e.g., decreolization trends (cf. also 4.) outside Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian contact areas (Danchev 1986: 243) can be offered for the time being. Concluding this subsection it must be admitted that the evidence for phonological syntheticity is too scant to build too much on it. Nevertheless, the examples of the above-mentioned type seem worth considering.

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3.2. Grammatical syntheticity Proceeding chronologically, the list could be headed by the fusion of the negative particle ne with the following word in Old English, e. g., nelle (ne + wille), ncenig (ne + cenig), nceron (ne + wceron), a. o., quite well known to every reader of Old English texts. This evidence may look trivial, but it acquires a certain new significance when placed within the overall context of syntheticity in English. Interesting data and assumptions are contained in Vachek's (1961) publication quoted at the beginning. Commenting on the fact that individual words in English are less autonomous than equivalent words in, say, the Slavonic languages, he points out correctly (after Trnka 1928) that speakers of English are attuned to the more holistic perception of word groups. Vachek sees this as a manifestation of the trend towards analyticity. There is no doubt, of course, that the diminished synthetic autonomy of single lexemes in English is due to the loss of morphological markers and is one of the results of the trend towards analytic structure during the Middle English period. And yet the fact that word groups in English today are perceived more holistically than in languages with a richer morphology implies synthetic rather than analytic perception of such language structures. This holds true, for example, of the so called "group genitive", which appeared in Late Middle English (Carstairs [1987: 154] quotes an example from Chaucer) and has widened its sphere of usage ever since. Vachek mentions examples such as the man I saw yesterday's hat and qualifies them as instances of analyticity. On the other hand, this can also be treated as a synthetic development, as Mincoff (1957) does, because a string of words functions as one structural and semantic unit. Likewise one should note here the emergence in English of what Jespersen has referred to as "nexuses" and Vachek (after Mathesius) as "complex condensation", i.e., the replacement of subordinate clauses by collocations with non-finite verbal forms of the barking dogs do not bite (the example used by Vachek) type. When translated into most other languages, such a sentence usually requires two distinct clauses, i. e., the linear analytic decomposition into more language units than in the input structure. In tune with his overall approach, Vachek regards this type of "condensation" as an instance of analyticity. However, the criteria adopted in the present paper suggest a definition in terms of semantic syntheticity. The fact that a language may be analytic from one standpoint

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and synthetic from another was mentioned in the introductory part of this paper. The extensive use of the infinitive in the Modern English it is easy to wash sentence type evidently comes under the same heading. As pointed out by Vachek (1961: 33), when "a sentence dispenses with a subordinate clause, this undoubtedly results in closer cohesion of its elements" and he goes on adding that "in deciphering an English sentence of the above category the reader's (or listener's) attention can and must be concentrated so as to grasp the sentence as one compact whole" (emphasis added here and above). Unlike Vachek, however, Mincoff regards such constructions (his example is a man to admire) as a synthetic development. Indirect confirmation of the latter interpretation comes from the reverse process in the Balkan languages, where the infinitive was replaced by subordinate clauses. According to Joseph (1983) such analytic structures facilitate language processing (in conditions of contact), whereas synthetic language structures favour efficient language production. This is the place to mention also the much discussed Modern English the book sells well sentence type (Trnka, however, does not include it in his survey). It is said "to represent the result of a long chain of events, which reaches back to Old English" (Pennanen 1987: 376), but its more noticeable spread nevertheless belongs to the Modern (or "pre-Modern", as Thornburg [1990] defines it) English period. The synthetic nature of the subject, i.e., its semantic syntheticity (more than one grammatical meaning carried by one surface form) is seen in the fact that, as Pennanen (1987: 363) puts it, "the deep case of the subject could be described as nominative and ergative at the same time". Pennanen, who offers an updated survey and analysis of this sentence type (cf. also Thornburg 1990) further points out that " . . . the considerable frequency of pseudo-intransitive sentences in English ... is due to the concise and pregnant character of this verb-form, something that is well in agreement with the principle of the economy of expression." Worth noting here is the use of qualifications such as "concise" and "pregnant", which remind one of Vachek's use of words such as "compact", "condensation" and "closer cohesion" when referring to the replacement of subordinate clauses by nonfinite forms in Modern English, and similar qualifications are used by Mincoff and many other authors. Further on in Pennanen's paper there is a hint at a possible expressive connotation. Though not stated explicitly, it can be derived from the observation that this sentence type is highly favoured in advertising ("grist to the advertising copy-writer's mill"), humorous writing and generally in expressively coloured texts. The more expressive

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nature of such synthetic forms has also been noted by Mincoff (1957) and some other authors. Once more we come across a statement which seems to reflect not so much the specific features of the particular case, but rather the general thinking about the nature of the prevailing trend in English, namely that "it is tempting to look upon the popularity of the pseudo-intransitive construction as an expression ofthat cyclic movement towards analyticity (emphasis added) in English" (Pennanen 1989: 371). This shows again how important it is not to follow preconceived notions and to set out with precise formulations of "analyticity" and "syntheticity". Neither Vachek nor Pennanen offer any such definitions, probably taking for granted the existence of a commonly accepted but vague scholarly consensus. Be that as it may, the criteria of the present paper suggest that the developments considered in this subsection are synthetic (from a semantic point of view) rather than analytic. Without aiming at a full inventory of all the grammatical structures in Modern English that could qualify as synthetic, one could also mention here the rise of its in Early Modern English, aptly described by Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1990: 28) as more synthetic than of it, although it need not necessarily be seen as an "exception to the general drift". On the contrary, it could be considered as part of a new trend towards syntheticity during the Modern English period.

3.3. Lexical syntheticity One could begin with the highly productive patterns of nominal compounding in English (and many other languages — cf. Tauli 1958: 83 — 87), where the movement towards syntheticity can often be witnessed "in action", so to speak. It is reflected in the spelling of the originally free collocation loan word through loan-word to the single lexeme loanword and of a host of other examples (with a good deal of variation, of course). There is a degree of overlapping between lexical and phonological syntheticity in the transition from transparency to opacity of earlier compounds such as lord, lady, Essex (cf. also Tauli 1958: 84). One can agree with Trnka (1928: 139) that productive word-formation patterns with the affixes un-, ex-, re-, extra-, pre-, -ness, -ship, -ist, -like, -less, -able, -ize, to which some more could be added, represent synthetic developments.

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Another type of syntheticity can be discerned in some well-known instances of blending such as brunch and smog, mentioned by Vachek (1961: 22). He notes that this kind of blending is virtually unknown in other languages (and here too he sees an analytic development). In any case, one of the main factors for the birth and spread of such forms must have been their novelty, which made them more expressive than other words.

4. Concluding remarks The evidence reviewed so far is variously familiar and convincing, and incomplete as well. In any case, it would seem to warrant the following comments and tentative conclusions. (1) Beside analytic developments in English there are also some developments that can be qualified as synthetic. The latter are mostly ignored in the literature, but even when recognized by some authors, they are usually regarded as something like relict features (cf. Trnka [1928: 141] on the synthetic forms of adjectival comparison and of the genitive in Modern English) or as exceptions (cf., e.g., Nevalainen — RaumolinBrunberg (1990: 28) on the emergence of its in Early Modern English). The recognition of new synthetic trends is quite rare (one of the notable exceptions is Mincoff 1957) and generally runs counter to the received wisdom that English is an analytic language. Analyticity should therefore not be studied without bearing in mind syntheticity as well, the two forming an opposition which is best investigated as an entity (cf. here also Trnka 1928; Mincoff 1957; Bailey 1982). The isolated consideration of one of these trends only, as is usually the case with analyticity in English, is bound to result in a skewed picture both of the dominant historical trend in English and of the typological characterization of the language. (2) Both analyticity and syntheticity can be viewed as generalized notions which cut across all language levels. Despite the differences due to the specificity of each individual level (the most obvious evidence is grammatical and lexical), there emerge some global patterns of both analytic and synthetic change, the two types often linked by reversibility. This makes it possible to class together and view in a new light a number of phenomena that are usually studied separately.

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(3) One of the most challenging questions concerns the etiology of both analyticity and syntheticity. The cumulative cross-language evidence tends to confirm the view that analyticity is caused mainly by language/ dialect contact (for more details and references cf. also Danchev 1985, 1990, 1991), whereas syntheticity is observed mainly in the absence of such contacts (cf. also Bailey 1982). These observations can be linked to the familiar simplification 7 and complication strategies in such typical contact-born languages as pidgins and Creoles. From a communicative point of view this ties in with statements by authors such as Jespersen, Bally, Mincoff, Vachek and others to the effect that analyticity facilitates comprehension, i. e., the listener, whereas syntheticity enhances economy and expressivity, i.e., it serves the speaker. Analyticity is a preferred communicative strategy in language contact situations and on a more general plane it can be considerd as a cognitive strategy through which complex (i. e., difficult) structures are broken down into discrete elements that are processed one by one. This simplification strategy is very typical of interlanguages and Creoles and has been discussed by a number of authors. Syntheticity, on the other hand, was seen to be favoured by the absence of language contacts and to serve the purposes of economy and expressivity. (4) One of the most important possible conclusions bears on the overall typological characterology of English. It might be said that whereas the dominant typological feature of Middle English is provided by the marked trend towards analyticity, the Modern English period is characterized both by continuing analyticity and by reemerging syntheticity. Such a reference to both analytic and synthetic developments may remind one of Lakoff s (1972: 179) comparison of "drift" to a pendulum between analyticity and syntheticity. However, Lakoff has in mind a considerably longer historical period embracing Proto-Indo-European and modern times, whereas the "analyticity : syntheticity" interaction outlined in the present paper is placed within the historical development of English, especially of the Modern English period. It may also be recalled that Lakoff admits she cannot offer any explanation concerning the causes of such drifts from syntheticity to analyticity and vice versa. The approach adopted here makes it possible to account with a measure of plausibility for both analytic and synthetic developments in English (and any other languages) in terms of communicative strategies, determined by specific sociolinguistic situations. It would thus become possible to forgo the use of "the much maligned and tortured idea of 'drift'", as Malkiel (1981: 536) puts it. Instead, it

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can be claimed that there is no "inherent analytic tendency" in English, the Germanic (or other Indo-European) languages, a formula resorted to quite often as a convenient way out of explanatory difficulties. On the contrary, it can be asserted that every language has an in-built potential for development either towards analytic or synthetic structure, depending on specific communicative situations and strategies. Some of the synthetic developments considered here occur in Old English, but most of them begin or spread during the Modern English period and can be seen as decreolization phenomena, which complicate again the language system. Such an idea is evidently based on the premise that Middle English was a creole. This is a familiar issue and need not be taken up again here (cf. Danchev 1986, 1988; Görlach 1986 and the references therein). But if a broader view of creolization is taken, Middle English will be seen to display a number of features which would justify its description if not in terms of a full-fledged creole, then at least as something like a "creoloid" (Trudgill 1989: 115). The developments towards analyticity (as in Middle English) usually lead to simplification and the developments towards syntheticity usually result in complication, i. e., in more highly marked elements and structures which often constitute what Lass (1984: 155) has referred to as the "index of oddity" of a language. The synthetic changes during the Modern English period mark its more isolated (or "insular") development. Interestingly, one of those features in Modern English, the so called "group genitive", has also developed in Danish and Afrikaans (cf. Carstairs 1987), the two Germanic languages which seem to have moved closest to English as regards nominal analyticity (Görlach 1987) and could therefore be expected to exhibit parallel decreolization trends. It would probably be better to approach English as a typologically mixed language (cf. also Nikolaeva 1984: 113; Anttila 1989: 313), which evinces both analytic and synthetic features and trends. Though not exactly novel, this proposal requires further fleshing out. (5) The language change model outlined here is clearly teleological and thus follows the work of authors such as Jespersen, Anttila, Itkonen, to mention but a few (for more references and details cf. Adamska-Salaciak 1989). This concept of teleology must further be qualified as "functional", which remainds us of the views of Jakobson and Martinet, and more recently of Bailey and Romaine. Lack of space unfortunately forbids the more detailed discussion of some extremely important and interesting aspects of this topic such as, e.g., the conscious or unconscious nature of language change. Thus, for

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instance, it would be worthwhile to compare the current notion of "unconscious rationality of change" (Itkonen 1983 and elsewhere) with various communicative strategies in interlanguages (cf. Faerh —Kasper 1983). (6) In terms of the language change typology which I have adopted in some previous work (Danchev 1987, 1989c, 1991), analytic developments will fall mainly under the heading of "general" changes, whereas most of the synthetic developments will turn out to be "idiosyncratic" changes. F r o m the standpoint of the "lexical diffusion vs. neogrammarian change" opposition analytic changes seem to belong mostly to the first and synthetic developments to the latter type (cf. the reference to the connection between lexical diffusion and borrowing earlier in this paper — 2.1.). Language contacts merely illustrate more conspicuously what goes on all the time at the level of dialect and even idiolect contacts, which will favour one language variant or another. (7) It can finally be remarked that though still based on rather incomplete evidence and obviously requiring further research, the linking of analyticity and syntheticity in a communicatively oriented interactive model of language change opens up new possibilities both for the reinterpretation of a number of specific developments at all language levels and for the overall typological characterization of the English language. Notes 1. I have not c o m e across the terms "syntagmaticity" and "paradigmaticity" before. 2. It w o u l d be a tempting thought to consider s o m e o f the Great Vowel Shift changes, e. g., /i:/ > /ai/, /u:/ > /au/, /o:/ > / o u / as analytic dissimilations. 3. The number o f examples would increase if we accept the early evidence o f Smith and Wallis (cf. Melchior 1972) that at one time /ii:/ occurred also in native words such as new and brew. 4. This is a blanket notation I have used before ( D a n c h e v 1985, 1988) under which /ü(:)/ = /y(:)/ + /y(:)/, /0(:)/ = / « ( : ) / + / 0 / and /&(:)/ = /*(:)/. 5. It may be noted t h o u g h that m o s t Soviet linguists associated analyticity above all with verbal forms (for details cf. Zirmunskij 1976 and the references therein). 6. /r)/ could be considered as the partial synthesis o f /n/ and /g/ despite the fact that it emerged as an independent p h o n e m e in English after the loss of /g/ in the /rjg/ sequence. 7. It has been claimed that language contact does not necessarily lead to simplification (cf. T h o m a s o n — K a u f m a n 1988). Contact may indeed lead to the adoption of more highly marked forms, i. e., to complication, if specific sociolinguistic factors, e. g., prestige, are involved (Danchev 1988). There is no doubt, however, that the normal mechanism o f psycholinguistic adaptation usually results in simplification.

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References Adamska-Salaciak, Areta 1989 "The Teleologen on language change", Folia Linguistica Historica VIII/1 — 2: 457-480. Anttila, Raimo 1989 Historical and comparative linguistics. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 6.) Amsterdam — Philadelphia: Benjamins. Bailey, Charles-James N. 1982 On the yin and yang nature of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers. Bally, Charles 1932 Linguistique generale et linguistique frangaise. Berne: Francke. [1965] (4th edition.) Campbell, Lyle 1989 "On the proposed universals of grammatical borrowing". [Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 14—18 August, 1989, Rutgers University.] Carstairs, Andrew 1987 "Diachronic evidence and the affix-clitic distinction", in: Anna Ramat Giacalone — Onofrio Carruba —Guiliano Bernini (eds.), 151 — 162. Danchev, Andrei 1985 "On analysis and synthesis in sound change", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 83 — 104. 1986 "Interlanguage simplification in Middle English vowel phonology?" in: Dieter Kastovsky — Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), 239 — 252. 1987 "Some aspects of a language change typology". [Paper presented at the XlVth International Congress of Linguists, 10 — 15 August, 1987, Berlin.] 1988 "Language contact and language change", Folia Linguistica XXII/1 — 2: 37-53. 1989a "On global patterns of interlingual influence", in: 2nd Symposium on English and Greek: Description and/or Comparison of the Two Languages. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University, 33—46. 1989b "An interactive model of language change". [Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 14—18 August, 1989, Rutgers University.] 1989c "Language change typology and adjectival comparison in contact situations", Folia Linguistica Historica IX/2: 57 — 71. 1990 "Some notes on analyticity in English and Bulgarian and the case for diachronic contrastive linguistics", Contrastive Linguistics XV/4 —5, 32 — 36. 1991 "Language change typology and some aspects of the SVO development in English", in: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 103 — 124. Faerh, Claus — Gabriele Kasper 1983 Strategies in interlanguage communication. London and New York: Longman. Fisiak, Jacek (ed.) 1985 Papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 34.) Amsterdam: Benjamins —Poznah: Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Giacalone, Anna Ramat — Onofrio Carruba —Guiliano Bernini (eds.) 1987 Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 48.) Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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Görlach, Manfred 1986 "Middle English — a Creole?" in: Dieter Kastovsky — Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), 3 2 9 - 3 4 4 . Holm, John 1988 Pidgins and Creoles Vols. I, II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ilyish, Boris A. 1973 History of the English language. Leningrad: Prosvescenie. Itkonen, Esa 1983 Causality in linguistic theory. London: Croom Helm. Joseph, Brian D. 1983 The synchrony and diachrony of the Balkan infinitive. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kastovsky, Dieter 1991 Historical English Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kastovsky, Dieter —Aleksander Szwedek (eds.) 1986 Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries. In honour of Jacek Fisiak Vol. I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Labov, William 1981 "Resolving the neogrammarian controversy", Language 57: 267 — 308. Lakoff, Robin 1972 "Another look at drift", in: Robert P. S t o c k w e l l - R o l a n d K. S. Macaulay (eds.), 1 7 2 - 1 9 8 . Lass, Roger 1984 Phonology. An Introduction to basic concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malkiel, Yakov 1981 "Drift, slope and slant", Language 57: 5 3 5 - 5 7 0 . Melchior, A. B. 1972 "Sir Thomas Smith and John Wallis. The problem of early Modern English [y:] re-examined", English Studies 53: 201 —223. Mincoff, Marco 1957 "Za analitizma ν anglijski i bälgarski ezik" [On analyticity in English and Bulgarian], in: Studia linguistica in honorem acad. S. Mladenov. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 503 — 514. Nevalainen, Terttu—Helena Raumolin-Brunberg 1990 Its strength and the beauty of it: the standardization of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English". [Paper (draft) presented at the Second Workshop on Sociohistorical Linguistics, 22 May, 1990, Helsinki, I C E H L 6.] Nida, Eugene 1969 "Science of translation", Language 45: 4 8 3 - 4 9 8 . Nikolaeva, Τ. M. 1984 "Kommunikativno-diskursivnyj podxod i interpretacija jazykovoj evoljucii" [The communicative discourse approach and language evolution], Voprosy Jazykoznanija 3: 111 — 119. Pennanen, Esko 1987 "On the sentence type 'The book sells well'", Memoires de la Societe Neophilologique de Helsinki XLV: 363 — 376.

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Sapir, Edward 1921 Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Shapiro, Michael 1989 "Language type as cause of linguistic change". [Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 14—18 August, 1989, Rutgers University.] Stockwell, Robert P . - R o n a l d K. S. Macaulay (eds.) 1972 Linguistic change and generative theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Tauli, Valter 1958 The structural tendencies of languages. Helsinki: Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, ser. B, torn. 115,1. Thomason, Sarah G. —Terence Kaufman 1988 Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thornburg, Linda 1990 "Wuremes breden in wilderne: changing transitivity in pre-modern English". [Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, 2 3 - 2 6 May, 1990, Helsinki.] Trnka, Bohumil 1928 "Analysis and synthesis in English", English Studies 10: 138 — 144. Trudgill, Peter 1989 "Language contact and simplification", NORDLYD: Tromso University Working Papers in Linguistics 15: 113 — 121. Vachek, Joseph 1961 "Some less familiar trends of the analytical trend of English", Brno Studies in English 3: 9 - 7 8 . Wells, J. C. 1982 Accents of English 3. Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zirmunskij, Viktor Maksimovic 1978 Obscee i germanskoe jazykoznanie [General and Germanic linguistics] Leningrad: Nauka.

Evidence for regular sound change in English dialect geography William Labov

1. The Neogrammarian controversy Many of the major questions concerning language change, structure and function revolve about the continual evaluation of the Neogrammarian position on the nature of linguistic change. In this view, the principal mechanism of change is the regular and mechanical shift in the target position of a sound of the language, affecting every word that contains the sound to a degree that is entirely determined by the phonetic environment that the word provides. This is considered by many the indispensable foundation of historical reconstruction; Hockett (1977) cites it as one of the four great scientific achievements of modern linguistics. The substantive issue at the heart of the Neogrammarian idea emerges in Bloomfield's re-statement: ... sound change is merely a change in the speakers' manner of producing phonemes and accordingly affects a phoneme at every occurrence, regardless of the nature of any particular linguistic form in which the phoneme happens to occur. ... The whole assumption can be briefly put into the words: phonemes change. (Bloomfield 1933: 353)

Though the Neogrammarian view remains as the central working hypothesis of comparative and historical linguistics, there has always been considerable opposition to the central idea that the basic mechanism of sound change is regular and mechanical. Today we encounter such opposition from at least three distinct sources: — Functional theorists who argue that sound change is directly modified by the need to preserve meaningful distinctions. — Proponents of the view that lexical diffusion is the fundamental mechanism of change: that sound change proceeds word by word. — The evidence from dialect geography that "every word has its own history." 1 This discussion will deal with issues raised by the second and third group, and review the evidence of dialect geography as it bears on the

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

43

regularity of sound change. For over a century, both the supporters and the opponents of the Neogrammarian position have accepted the idea that this evidence contradicts the testimony of historical and comparative linguistics and points towards a word-by-word mechanism of linguistic change. It has been observed by many that Bloomfield, a dedicated exponent of the Neogrammarian view, never resolved the contradiction between this commitment and his passionate involvement with dialect geography: Isoglosses for different forms rarely coincide along their whole extent. Almost every feature of phonetics, lexicon, or grammar has its own area of prevalence — is bounded by its own isogloss. The obvious conclusion has been well stated in the form of a maxim: Every word has its own history. (Bloomfield 1933: 328).

2. A proposed resolution The slogan "Every word has its own history", "Chaque mot a son histoire" is often attributed to Gillieron, who drew heavily on the ideas of the most resolute opponent of the Neogrammarians, Schuchardt. The picture that we have inherited since the earliest days of the controversy is that the procedures of historical and comparative grammar support, or even demand, the Neogrammarian position, while the facts of dialect geography are irrefutably against it. The Neogrammarian controversy is in fact the NEOGRAMMARIAN PARADOX: there are large bodies of evidence that point in opposite directions. Labov (1981) presented quantitative evidence from the study of change in progress that demonstrated highly regular sound change for some sound changes, but clear examples of past and present lexical diffusion in others. The 1981 attempt to resolve this paradox has gradually developed the following characterization of the two opposing modes of change: REGULAR SOUND CHANGE is t h e result o f a g r a d u a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f a

single phonetic feature of a phoneme in a continuous phonetic space. It is characteristic of the initial stages of a change that develops within a linguistic system, without any social awareness ("change from below"). LEXICAL DIFFUSION is the result of the abrupt substitution of one phoneme for another in words that contain that phoneme. The older and newer forms of the word will usually differ by several phonetic features. It is most

44

William Labov

characteristic of the late stages of an internal change that has developed a high degree of social awareness or of borrowings from other systems ("change from above").

The resolution of the paradox proposed is a form of complementary distribution. Regular sound change is characteristic of low level phonetic sound changes, such as the backing, fronting, raising and lowering of vowels. These are continuous processes, last rules added to a grammar and free of grammatical and lexical conditioning. A different kind of change affects category membership at higher levels of abstraction, such as the shortening or lengthening, tensing or laxing of vowels. These rules tend to be phonetically discrete, show rough phonetic conditioning with many lexical exceptions, and are often grammatically conditioned. These are the prototypical cases of lexical diffusion. Thus we have the characteristic template: REGULAR SOUND CHANGE

LEXICAL DIFFUSION

vowel shifts

shortening and lengthening of segments diphthongization of mid and low vowels change in place of articulation

diphthongization of high vowels changes in manner of articulation vocalization of liquids deletion of glides and schwa

metathesis of liquids and stops deletion of obstruents

This is not an absolute distinction, since there are many counter examples that might be considered in a fuller discussion. For the present, this paradigm is submitted as a background for an examination of the import of the evidence of dialect geography.

3. Evidence for lexical diffusion Much of the recent evidence for lexical diffusion is derived from the computational analysis of data drawn from dialect geography. The original position of Wang, Chen and Hsieh was based on the analysis of the 1958 Chinese dialect survey of 17 dialects which formed the DOC — Dictionary on Computer (Cheng —Wang 1972, Wang —Cheng 1977, Wang 1977). Wang and his students have also turned their attention to

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

45

English dialect geography, and in 1986 Ogura published Historical English Phonology: A Lexical Perspective. This is a valuable and systematic treatment of the data which provides the base necessary for further advance on the major issues of language change. In general, Ogura accepts the idea that both regular sound change and lexical diffusion exist. But in particular, she argues for lexical diffusion as the fundamental mechanism of all of the sound changes considered. Ogura (1986) examines the progress of the Great Vowel Shift of English as it is reflected in the 311 points of Orton's Survey of English Dialects. This fine-grained data set provides an excellent opportunity of testing the two competing views: whether it is sounds or words that change. The vowel shifts comprise low level sound changes involving lacking, fronting, raising and lowering of the nuclei. The resolution outlined above would lead us to expect regular sound change. Ogura's Appendices Β and D are compilations of all the phonetic forms for all of the 311 communities for words that bear on the Great Vowel Shift. She refers to these tables in stating, "The data in Appendix Β clearly show that the change of ME i: does not simultaneously occur but gradually extends its scope across the lexicon," and for ME u:, "it is clear that the change propagates itself across the lexicon." And at the end of her first chapter, Ogura concludes: "We have claimed that the processes of the development of ME i: and u: have propagated themselves gradually from morpheme to morpheme." (1986: 45) Table 1. Five M E u: words by phonetic environment and frequency (from Ogura 1986, Appendix E)

Word

Freq

1 2 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 8 !3 8 u: DU OU 3U o: ou 33 o: AU DU D 3 D: au a: au as ;I : a

8 9 aeu asa

cow eyebrow hour flower flour

46.95 1.18 159.7 52.2 21.08

29 10 1 41 5 4 19 4 1 15 6 11 6

52 1 43 45

31 35 28 28 28 1

1 1 1 2 1

1 1

6 2 11 9 5 10 7 9 1 6 8

4 4

2 46 3 50 2 10 78 9 85 3 13 84 5

10 3 4 44 40

9 9 9 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 6 6 7 7 8 9 9 3 3 3 4 5 xs x: 8u ea 63 ε: ε ceu 6u eu sy oey ey aey aei ai ai DI IU1 13 ii: Y; i: 1 2

1 1 2 2 4

74 1 65 64 55 52

3

3

1

2

1

2

14 13 1 2 1

4 2 8 10 1 11

4 4

1 4 4 1

17 15

1 1 6

7 7

1

1 16 14 20

2

3 υ

4 Λ

46

William Labov

These conclusions seem to be considered self-evident from the data of Appendices Β and D. They are not based on quantitative reasoning, though some quantitative methods are used to display the data. Appendix Ε condenses the data by summing for each ME u: word the number of times that each different phonetic form was reported in the Orton & Dieth records. The type of data generated is illustrated in Table 1, which gives the first five items in the series. Each horizontal line may be thought of as a sound spectrum for the given word. There are 45 different phonetic forms used for the 30 ME u: words that Ogura extracts from the Atlas materials. In addition, a frequency figure extracted from the American Heritage dictionary is given for each word.

Type (2) 7 7 4 5 6 6 9U >- ay -»-oey >- ey -*-aey Type (3) 4 2 3 1 UU ->- IU ->-ia u: 5 4 2 3 1 u: > - UU »- IU ->· y: i: 1 4 2 3 ii u: ti: ->- y: 4 2 3 1 u: Λ uu -»- υ

8 9 9 ai -»-αϊ -»- Di

- > ·

Figure 1. Successive stages of advancement of the vowel shift for ME u:

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

47

3.1. The vowel shift index At the top of each column in Table 1 are numbers from 1 to 10 — categories assigned by Ogura to represent the relative degree of advancement of the Great Vowel Shift. The basis for these assignments is the scheme shown in Figure 1, developed by Ogura to represent the successive stages of advancement of the vowel shift for ME u: (based on Ogura 1986: Figure 3.2). The circled elements represent the stages which she terms the "main routes", on the basis of their frequency in the data. Other sound changes branch off in different directions. I have superimposed on each phonetic category the numerical values that Ogura assigns to each phone in the Orton and Dieth data. The INDEX OF VOWEL SHIFT ADVANCEMENT is calculated for each word by multiplying the number of occurrences of each phonetic form by the value of the category, and summing. The

Table 2. Vowel shift advancement of ME u: words by phonetic character of following segment) (from Ogura 1986, Table 3.2) labial

dental

velar

free

voiced

thousand trousers

2107 2096

bow drought sow

1623 1911 2009

voiceless

house mouse louse

2121 2103 2094

bough plough

2008 1946

about out without snout

2091 2106 2129 2112

south mouth

2115 2098

down round crown ounce bounce drown

2109 2098 2088 2110 2091 2108

hour flower flour

2069 2069 2071

owl

2110

nasal

liquid

room

711

cow eyebrow

2110 1941

48

William

Labov

results are illustrated in Table 2, with words classified by the voicing and place of articulation of the following consonant. Table 2 provides an overview of the phonetic dimensions that might or might not determine the diphthongization of ME u:. Ogura uses it as a basis for general statements about phonetic conditions ("words in which the u: precedes labials or velars are the laggers"). She also uses Table 2 to support the idea that phonetic conditioning does not determine the progress of the sound change, re-asserting that individual words have very different values. It may be noted that the words ending in apicals are quite homogeneous in their various sub-groups, with a relatively narrow range from 2100 to 2120. The words ending in /r/ are a uniform set of exceptions, with values below 2100. The truly eccentric values are found in the labial and the velar columns. The single word room has a very low value; this could be the result of either lexical eccentricity or phonetic conditioning. Among the velars there is so much lexical variation that average values are meaningless. Cow shows a very high value, while eyebrow is very low, and bow is much lower than any other word.

4. Chi-square analysis Let us now examine the data more closely, using mathematical tools that will allow us to decide whether or not there is evidence for lexical diffusion. The data examplified in Table 1 gives us a distribution of each word across 45 phonetic categories. We can compare the distributions of any pair of words by chi-square, which will show us the probability of any differences being the result of change fluctuations. If each word had its own history, we would expect these distributions to be significantly different, without making reference to the geographic placement of the differences. Table 3 shows a number of such pair-wise comparisons of ME u: words. For the great majority of word pairs, the chi-square value shows no significant differences. A sampling of such non-significant results are shown on the left. At the top of the column, with the lowest chi-square values, are words that have the most similar phonetic environment: drown/ crown, house/louse, down/round, and the homonymic pair flour/flower. The value of chi-square increases from top to bottom, and the last four or five items show values that approach 10. Though this is still well below

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

49

Table 3. Pair-wise chi-square evaluation of phonetic distributions of ME u: words

not significant down/crown house/louse down/round about/out cow/snout thousand/cloud hour/flower flower/flour thousand/trousers house/mouse cow/louse ounce/bounce sow/bough house/out bough/plough cow/out snout/without thousand/bough cow/eyebrow

chi-sq

d.f.

1.4 2.0 2.4 2.4 2.4 2.6 2.7 2.9 3.6 3.6 4.3 4.7 5.2 8.5 9.6 11.2 12.2 12.7 15.4

12 9 11 11 9 9 11 11 9 9 9 9 9 12 9 10 10 9 10

chi-sq

d.f.

Ρ < .05 bough/out drown/eyebrow

18 19

9 10

Ρ < .001 flower/eyebrow flower/house flower/drown hour/out

66 68 72 71

11 12 12 12

77 77 83

10 10 10

bow/bough bow/drought bow/out

269 286 310

13 14 14

room/out room/plough room/bough

298 370 406

12 11 12

drought/without drought/cow drought/out

the .05 level of significance, it cannot be accidental that these are the items that are most different in their phonetic environment. Some pairs contrast free vs. checked environments (cow vs. out), while others contrast simple initials with an initial cluster of obstruent plus liquid (cow vs. eyebrow)·, these clusters have been found to have considerable effect on changes in progress (Labov — Yaeger — Steiner 1972: Ch. 3). At the right are pairs that are significantly different. The top pairs, at the .05 level, continue the types of phonetic contrast found in the set at the bottom of the left hand column. These .05 effects are still well within the range of change fluctuation. Since we are comparing many more than 20 pairs, we would expect by chance to find several results at the .05 level (1 out of 20). Next is a set of four pairs that differ at a higher level of significance. These all contrast a word ending in /r/ with words that do not, and the differences are most likely the results of phonetic conditioning. Further down there is a set of pairs that oppose drought to other words. Drought is a unique phonetic item: it is the only word with an original

50

William

Labov

ME velar in a checked syllable; the Orton and Dieth records show that this velar is retained as /f/ in many dialects. The pairs that follow, with much higher chi-square values, cannot be accounted for by phonetic conditioning. This is obviously true for the homonymic pair, bow and bough. Indeed, this would seem to be the kind of lexical diffusion that Ogura was looking for. Unfortunately, her interpretation of the ambiguous spelling bow was incorrect. The item is drawn from question set VI-9 (Orton —Dieth 1962: Introduction): 5 Of a man whose legs are shaped like this [curving inward], you say he is ... [expecting]

knock-kneed. 6 Of a man whose legs are shaped like this [curving outward], you say he is ... [expecting]

bow-legged. The element bow here is not of course drawn from the word meaning 'genuflect' with ME u:, from OE bugen 'to bend', but rather refers to the shape of a bow, that is, the weapon from ME bowe < OE boga, which followed a very different history and is a member of the /ow/ class in almost all dialects today. As far as room is concerned, it is generally accepted that vowels before labials did not participate in the vowel shift. Ogura reports that 11 of the 311 points show the participation of room in the vowel shift; my own reexamination of the original Survey volumes finds only four such points, in an isolated area in west Lancashire. This is evidently an independent phenomenon, having nothing to do with the main vowel shift. Once we remove these two items, the evidence of chi-square shows no significant lexical differences that cannot be accounted for by the most obvious kind of phonetic conditioning.

5. Multiple regression The chi-square analysis of Table 3 suggests the presence of phonetic conditioning in the reflexes of ME u: — in the influence of free vs. checked finals, of following nasals, of preceding liquid clusters, and so on. The chi-square measures simply indicate that certain pairs were more different than others, without demonstrating what the effects were. If such phonetic effects were general over all dialects, and if all of the sound

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

51

changes followed a single linear dimension of which the index of vowel shift advancement was a true measure, we could identify these effects through a single multivariate analysis. These two assumptions will be referred to as the GENERALITY and LINEARITY conditions in the discussion to follow. Given the nature of the data, multiple regression would be the appropriate tool for such a multivariate analysis. The dependent variable — the index of vowel shift advancement — is a quantitative integral scale. Secondly, the phonetic environments which form the independent variables are partially but not completely independent of each other. For example, following nasals can occur with preceding liquid clusters {drown) but often do not {down). If the generality and linearity conditions hold, a multiple regression analysis would yield significant coefficients for the presence of a following nasal consonant, of a preceding cluster, of a free vowel, etc. Table 4 shows results from a stepwise multiple regression analysis of the 30 ME u: words listed in Ogura's Appendix Ε (the full data set from which Table 1 is taken). The dependent variable is the index of vowel shift advancement, and the independent variables included all of the phonetic features of the preceding and following segment that have been found to influence vowel shifts. Since we are testing for evidence that would support either of two hypotheses — regular phonetically conditioned change and lexical diffusion — it is also useful to include an independent variable that would be sensitive to the presence of lexical diffusion. Such an indicator is word frequency, since the majority of studies that show lexical diffusion show a strong frequency effect, with the more frequent words favored in the change. From the many environmental conditions tested, only a few effects emerge. Four significant negative coefficients, shown in bold type, indicate conditions that retard the advancement of u: words along the vowel

Table 4. Stepwise multiple regression analysis of reflexes of M E u: words (Dependent variable: Ogura vowel shift index) Analysis of all u: words. Ν = 30, r2 = .997 Variable

Coefficient

Τ

Ρ (2

Following labial BOW Following velar Preceding liquid Frequency

-1377 - 362 - 149 33

-71.08 -18.35 - 9.87 - 3.75 - 1.15

0.000 0.000 0.000

-0.008

0.002 0.263

tail)

52

William

Labov

shift path. The four are all significant, but sharply graded in the size of the effect. The most powerful effect, -1377, is that of a following labial, which as we have seen is entirely due to the mistaken inclusion of the word room. The second effect, -362, is the result of mistakenly including the word bow. The third significant coefficient is the retarding effect of the following velars at -149. The velars that allowed the participation of the preceding vowel in this diphthongization are the ones that were eventually vocalized, as when drought is pronounced [draut]. The remaining velars inhibited the change categorically — there are no words with rhymes in /awk/ and /awg/ today. Ogura's coding of this class does not distinguish between those that have following velar or labial-dental consonants phonetically, and those vowels that occur finally as the result of the total vocalization of the velar vowel. For example, the word trough is realized with a free vowel by 7 of the 14 Norfolk respondents, with a final /{/ by 2, with a final /Θ/ by 1, and with either /{/ or a free vowel by 4. There are of course no /aw/ diphthongs before /f/ or before /Θ/, but all the free vowels are diphthongs ending in a back glide /w/. The value of-133 therefore registers the fact that in some dialects for some informants, the velar consonant is not vocalized. The lexical irregularity is not to be attributed to the vowel shift, but to the consonant vocalization. Only one true phonetic condition emerges; the small effect of a preceding liquid /I/ or /r/. This negative result might mean that in spite of the hints provided by the chi-square analysis, there is no sizeable influence of the phonetic environment on the vowel shift. This would then suggest the dominance of lexical diffusion, since most regular sound changes do show phonetic conditioning of some kind. On the other hand, this negative result may be due to the failure of either the generality or linearity conditions. The generality condition is fairly well supported in most studies of phonetic influences on sound change, since it rests upon the general patterns of co-articulation and anticipatory assimilation. 2 However, the linearity condition seems much less likely to hold in this case. Returning to Figure 1, we see that the main path of the diphthongization of u: involves three different phonetic directions: first, the falling or opening of the nucleus from [u] to [a]; then a fronting from [a] to [ae]; and then a raising from [ae] to [e]. From a phonetic viewpoint, the route is curvilinear rather than linear. Different phonetic effects can be expected to apply to favor or disfavor the change at each stage. Furthermore, there are a number of side chains that involve entirely different types of

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

53

Figure 2. Development of ME u: in house and mouse in 311 points in England

sound changes: monophthongization, development of an inglide, shortening, unrounding of the glide, and so on. In order to arrive at a single, straightforward index of advancement of the shift that would take all data into account, Ogura had to assign these side chains to the same numbers as the next stage in the main series. Yet it is clear that very

54

William

Labov

different types of phonetic conditionings will favor the advancement of sound change along these side chains. Linear correlations of advancement with particular phonetic conditions will therefore combine opposing conditioning effects in opposite directions, and average out to zero. Another aspect of this non-linearity can be seen in the geographic distribution of the reflexes of ME u:, the proper domain of dialect geography. Figure 2 shows the values for all 311 points in England for the two words house and mouse. Along the eastern half of England, there is a very regular progression of forms, starting with [u:] in the north, and proceeding to [cou], [aco], [aero], and [εω] in the southeast quadrant. This may be interpreted as the result of a steady expansion of the diphthongization process from an origin in the southeast towards the north. But in the western half of England, the situation is far more complex, with many local movements disturbing this regular progression, and many points of local origin. Some areas show the monophthongization of the diphthong, and others the shift of the glide from /w/ to jyj. The conservative effect of overlap with Welsh speakers can be seen in several of the sub-areas next to Wales. Thus there is strong indication that the overall regression analysis of the data will be disturbed by a lack of linearity in the west. Finally, the multiple regression analysis of Table 4 shows that word frequency has no effect in favoring the change. This is another indication that the typical configuration of lexical diffusion is absent, although it does not rule out the possibility of lexical diffusion operating in the data to some extent.

6. Multi-dimensional scaling In the light of this non-linear configuration, and the limited results with regression analysis, it would seem advisable to follow an opposing mathematical approach. Instead of attempting to fit the histories of the 30 individual words into a pre-conceived format, we may apply a mode of analysis that maps the actual differences between the words as they are reflected in the distributions over the 45 phonetic forms. Factor analysis, which reduces the variation of the original data set to a smaller number of dimensions, is one useful approach to this task. However, it shares with multiple regression the assumption of linear relations among the elements involved, and often leads to a higher dimensionality than we

Regular sound change in English dialect geography

55

can easily interpret. 3 Multi-dimensional scaling (Shepard 1962, Kruskal 1964, Shepard et al. 1972) looks for any nonlinear relations between data points: similarity, association, correlation, interaction, etc., which can be defined as a type of "proximity." The program then seeks by iterative means a set of distances in a small number of dimensions — usually two or three — which are monotonically related to the proximity data. Figure 3 shows the two-dimensional display that is the result of entering the 30 M E u: words into a multi-dimensional scaling program. 4 The central group of 16 words without special phonetic conditioning are grouped in a tight cluster at upper right. This is the central u: word class. All of the other words scattered about the diagram contain allophones with particular phonetic conditioning. (a) The word room is at the far left, isolated from all others. As we have seen, it does not belong in this series. (b) The word bow, which also doesn't belong in the series, is also isolated in low central position. (c) The word drought appears in low central position, even further from the main distribution. Drought as noted above has a unique phonetic distribution that separates it from other words ending in velars. (d) Three words ending in /r/ are grouped closely together on the lower half of the vertical axis: hour, flower, flour. (e) The one word ending in a lateral, owl, occupies the same position as the /r/ words horizontally, but has the position of the main distribution vertically. (f) Three words with free vowels originally ending in ME g are grouped together to the left of the vertical axis: sow, plough, bough. Cow and eyebrow, which have no etymological g are grouped separately nearby. Figure 3 is not difficult to interpret. The horizontal Dimension 1 is related to participation in the vowel shift. The word room, which participates minimally, is at extreme left. Next is bow, which does participate, but as a member of another class — M E o:. The vertical Dimension 2 registers the influence of the following consonant, as we will see in more detail in the figure to follow. Figure 3 also shows to what extent the influence of M E g continues to determine the behavior of bough, sow and plough. Figure 4 shows the results of an analysis in which the peripheral words are dropped, and the main word class is submitted to multidimensional scaling. The result is a fine-grained pattern of phonetic conditioning. At the top, we see words ending in nasals — thousand, bounce, crown, ounce,

56

William Labov lough _J ,bough V sow V owl Ο Γ COW • ä . eyebrow V

0.6

ν"

ΓΟ 0.4 i » 0.2 0.0

φ X

I—

-0.2 -0.4 -0.6 hour

_bow -0.8

fe flower

-1.0

flour -1.2 drought

Ο

-1.4 -4.0

-3.5

-2.5

-3.0

-2.0

-1.5

-1.0

-0.5

i 0.0

0.5

D i m e n s i o n

1.0

1

Figure 3. Multi-dimensional scaling of all ME u: words

1.25

bounce.

1.00 thousand

0.75 σ —

3

Β

0.50

down about

φ

0.25

ω

0 0 0

Δ out Δ

•

ounce β ™

trousers • Π louse south< > — I

-ohouse

ο ' -025

drown

m Μ κ ι round Ε l·

mouth

3

-0.50

•

_#

Μ

-0.75

0

__/n/

-1.00

•

_/s/

-1.25

•

_J7J

-1.50

Δ

„N

-1.75

Ο

__/th/

-2.00 -2.25

π ω

yjwithout

Δ Ι-

crown

Ο JL cloud

Δ

• _J Early Old English /b/ : /# , as in (bindan) 'to bind', jC [ + n a -

140

Anne King

sal] , as in 'to climb'; Early Old English /β/ —> Early Old English [v] : /V _V, as in ( h e o f o n ) 'heaven'; / C [ + voice], as in 'liver' and /C [ + voice] # , as in 'ointment' (cf. the examples cited earlier in this paragraph). This [v] was associated in spelling with [v] rein) are compatible with this explanation. Jones suggests, though this does not appear to be the account of his choice, the possibility of "diphthongization of the vowel space before it" [the fricative], based on spellings in the Late Northumbrian gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, such as oo) a χ s,, χ d χ son,, χ e χ bN XX w ( (χ e L) = 0.

Obviously, this statement holds both for low vowels (LO) and for nonlow vowels (LO'), so that (9)

p ( x e ( O C η Lo))->(xeL) = p(xe(OC' η Lo')) —> (x e L) = 0,

This statement simply means that neither low, nor non-low vowels were lengthened if they were not OSL inputs. Now, if both statements (8) and (9) are true then it must also be true that (10)

A vowel which is low and which is either an OSL input or not is more likely to be reinterpreted as long than a vowel which is nonlow and which is either an OSL input or not.

or, formally, (11)

p ( x € ((OC η Lo) V (OC' η Lo))) —> (x e L) >

ρ (x e ((OC η Lo') V (OC' η Lo'))) —• (x e L) Obviously, this statement implies that (12)

Whether or not a vowel is an OSL input, it is always more likely to be reinterpreted as long if it is low than if it is non-low.

or (13)

ρ (x e ((OC ν OC') η Lo)) —• (x e L) >

ρ (x e ((OC ν OC') η Lo')) ^ ( x e L). Since every vowel is either an OSL input or not, is easy to see that it is redundant to state the condition χ e (OC ν OC'), at all. Statement (13) can therefore be rewritten as (14)

ρ (χ e (Lo)) - > ( x e L ) > ρ (x e (Lo)') -> (x e L).

Middle English vowel quantity reconsidered

217

Informally, this reads Low vowels are more likely to be reinterpreted as long than non-low vowels. Quod erat demonstrandum. It is obvious that parallel deductions could be made for all parameters of VLR, so that VLR can be generalized to cover all Middle English non-OSL-inputs in which no change of vowel quantity occurred without losing its adequacy. 5.2. In the final sections, then, it remains to be shown that VLR can also accommodate such non-OSL-inputs in which changes of vowel quantity did occur and that VLR can therefore be indeed regarded as a general rule of Middle English vowel quantity adjustment. 5.2.1. Not surprisingly, the case of shortenings is fairly obvious. As a matter of fact their traditional descriptions are already implicit in VLR. It just has to be generalized to express the obvious assumption that whatever favours lengthening disfavours shortening and vice versa. This can be easily done, of course. One possible way would be to rewrite VLR as (15) «k χ

a χ s„ χ d χ son c χ e χ bN χ χ w (σ5) χ y χ w ({σ„ι, σ„ 2 ,... σΗη}) χ ζ χ hN '

In such a formula, Trisyllabic Shortening is handled by the parameter w ({σ„ι, σ„ 2 ,... σ„,„}), because the overall weight of the weak syllables in a foot is of course greater in words that have two unstressed syllables than in words which have fewer. It is exactly such words, however, that the traditional Trisyllabic Shortening rule is meant to account for: it can therefore be discarded in the same way as OSL. Note, by the way, that our formula has the advantage of being able to account for the shortenings in suderne or erende even if their final schwas are regarded as unstable — as they probably should (cf. Minkova 1982). Although the vowels in question could then not be regarded as antepenultimate, QUAR predicts that the great weight of the second syllables alone makes shortening relatively probable, while in the case of suderne vowel height will even have increased that probability. Shortening Before Consonant Clusters (as in clensian —> clensian 'cleanse'), then, is handled by the w (σ5) parameter, because, generally speaking, the more consonants there are in the coda of a syllable, the

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greater the weight o f t h a t syllable will be. It is of course true that referring to the w (σ8) parameter is not always equivalent to referring to the number of consonants that follow a vowel. One aspect in which there is a difference, for example, is the status of /st/ clusters as in resten. In a weight based approach with general maximal syllabication such clusters count as ambisyllabic and therefore weigh less than, say, /nt/ clusters as in plante, but more than single consonants as in maken. As we have shown above, this is in accordance with the data. An approach that tries to predict changes of vowel quantity from the mere fact that /st/ can be viewed as CC cluster, runs into serious difficulties. Thus Luick assumes shortening to be triggered by /st/ in dust or fist, while lengthening must be assumed to have been triggered by the same cluster in waste or haste.1 In our approach, on the other hand, the different fates of the two types of items can be accounted for very elegantly by deriving them from the different heights of the affected vowels. As QUAR suggests, the mere presence of an /st/ cluster will have neither tipped the balance in the direction of vowel shortening nor in that of vowel lengthening. 5.2.2. The final set of date against which our formula has to be tested, then, is the one which has traditionally been accounted for by the so called Homorganic Lengthening rule. This is probably done best by examining its Modern English reflexes in the same way as those of potential OSL inputs. Doing so, one will find that they behave indeed very much as expected. 8 First, the relevance of the s„ is obvious and need not be discussed in any detail. Just like OSL "homorganic" vowel lengthening occurred only in stressed syllables. (It was not implemented in notoriously unstressed words such as and, for example.) Second, the w ({a wl , ··· Specifier N'

(2)

N" Ν' —* Ν (Ρ") (cf. Lightfoot 1980: 256) S'

Such PS-rules interact, of course, with other rules of grammar, which, in turn, are determined by fixing other parameters of UG. Differences between language can thus be traced back to some parameter or other which has been fixed differently. Under this view of grammar historic change, which may often take place in clusters, is particularly interesting according to Lightfoot because it might be the case that "apparently unrelated simultaneous changes may manifest one parameter of UG which has been fixed differently" (1980: 257). A particular change is thus explained by showing that "it is related to some other novel aspect of the grammar," (Lightfoot 1980: 25). Within the allegedly restrictive theory of grammar REST, 8 it is expected that "given a change in some parameter, certain phenomena must follow" (1980: 260). 3.3. In his attempt to attain impressive levels of explanation for several changes in the history of English, one of which concerns genitive constructions, Lightfoot first gives a survey of the various classes of rules supposedly made available for particular grammars by UG, such as PS rules, lexical redundancy rules, transformational rules, rules of interpretation, etc. He revises his 1979 analysis in which he had argued that there was no motivation for a rule of NP Movement (cf. [3]) before late Middle English. He now considers (3)

Move N" (cf. Lightfoot 1980: 262)

this to be inadequate for two reasons: "First, if transformations must be stated in as general a form as (3) and therefore do not hold of specific

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constructions types, it is implausible to claim that Old English lacked the rule, because it had a fairly free word order and therefore presumably movement rules were operative. Also from the earliest time one finds nominals like the destruction of Rome and, with an 'objective genitive', Rome's destruction, but never * Rome's destruction of. This suggests that (3) held of the earliest English grammars. Second, no explanation was offered for why Move N" should be introduced" (1980: 2 6 5 - 2 6 6 ) . 9 Since for Lightfoot it is not plausible to attribute a set of simultaneous innovations such as passive to a chance factor having to do with foreign influence (cf. 266) he now argues that Move N" has always been part of English grammars and that a lexical redundancy rule relating actives and passives has never played a role (cf. 268). This rule of N P Movement together with Lightfoot's version of case-theory (compare [4] and [5]) and the strong version of X-bar theory are supposed to account for the data in (6) and (7) if it is assumed that prepositions used to assign Oblique case in Old and Middle English but now assign Objective case at surface structure. (4)

Government: where α is a lexical category or Tense, α 'governs' β iff the first branching node over a dominates β (where α does not dominate β) and there is no lexical category intervening between that branching node and β.

(5) a. b.

Surface case: N" —>• Nominative iff governed by Tense N" —> Objective iff governed by V (cf. Lightfoot 1980: 269)

(6)

SpecN' [[portrait]N [Sasfo'a]N (Det) N '

(13)

N'

(14)

N" - » N" POSS (392)

(AP) Ν (Allen 1975: 389)

There seems to have been a tendency to position inflected genitives according to their syntactic/semantic subclass and/or their being accompanied by a qualifier (cf. Mitchell 1985: 551). It emerges from the figures

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given by Timmer (1929: 51 —52) that in the majority of cases the genitive of names of persons and proper names stood in front-position, and of names of things and all others in post-position (cf. also Mitchell 1985: 548, 551). Mitchell concludes: "So the choice between pre- and postposition probably depended on stylistic and rhetorical considerations rather than on the meaning of the noun in the genitive" (1985: 552). To account for these surface distributional facts of Old English Lightfoot must at least modify the structure in (6) in such a way that post-head NPs as well pre-head NPs can receive genitive case-marking, alternatively. Obviously, it would not make much sense within Lightfoot's own assumptions to move a preposed genitive NP to post-head position or to derive preposed "objective genitives" from the complement position in a structure like (6). In other words there is in Old English not sufficient motivation for distinguishing structurally between prenominal specifiers and postnominal complements as required by X-bar theory. The most striking pieces of evidence against X-bar-theoretical approaches to Old English are structures in which a pre-head genitive phrase, which has no determiner and a determiner of the head noun may occur simultaneously next to each other (cf. [15], [16]).12 (15)

we sceolan gehytan on godes we must believe in God's (masc.gen.sing.) da gehalgodan cyricean the (fem.acc.sing.) holy (f.a.s.) church (f.a.s.)

(16)

mid his dam with his (masc.gen.sing.) the (masc.dat.sing.) ecan Feeder eternal (m.d.s.) Father (m.d.s.) (cf. Allen 1975: 3 9 2 - 3 9 3 )

3.5. If structures like these are grammatical in a language, Chomsky's original arguments for adopting the X-bar schema collapse, because, if determiners and subject genitive NPs are not in complementary distribution in the specifier slot, underived and derived nominals are not parallel, the broad structural symmetry across major categories does not exist, the X-bar theoretic parameters head first/head last and specifier first/specifier last cannot be determined or fixed and specifiers cannot be differentiated from complements in terms of dominance relations. 13 This means that Old English as against Middle English was a "flat" language, or, in Chomskyan terms, a non-configurational language, like Japanese,

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Walbiri or Modern German. Non-configurational languages are characterized by such properties as rich case-marking systems, free word order, no NP-movement, no expletive elements and discontinuous constituents. 14 Old English possessed most of these features. There was even a split genitive construction which was far more common than the group genitive up to Chaucer's time. In this discontinuous construction the possessor is positioned immediately after the head as in the Duke's brother of Brittany instead of the Duke of Brittany's brother.15 According to Closs-Traugott (1972: 142) "The split construction illustrates, as do the split relative and the split coordination ... the preference in earlier English for grouping and splitting complex constructions according to their length rather than according to their syntactic unity." Flat or non-configurational languages possess no phrase structure rules in the usual sense and therefore no underlying order of constituents. The basis of a non-configurational language rather contains rules or rule-schemata that generate strings of words of arbitrary length in an arbitrary linear order without hierarchical relations to each other. 16 Why Lightfoot does not consider the possibility that Old English might have been such a non-configurational language is open to speculation. The main reason might be that the configurationality parameter does not simply concern the licensing of the violation of some principle or inviolable constraint of UG under specified conditions, but involves the presence or absence of a whole subcomponent of UG, namely of the transformational component. Motivating a different fixing of this parameter from Old English to Middle English and Modern English and, correspondingly, the emergence of a tranformational component would have been too radical an innovation to be plausible diachronically. Notice at this point that the consequence — if free word order, rich case marking, etc. then no hierarchical relations between constituents — follows only in grammatical models that equate constituency with linear position and adjacency of elements while ignoring morphological indicators. 3.6. Having seen that X-bar approaches cannot cope adequately with the distribution of adnominal inflected genitives in Old English due to their positional freedom within NPs, let us now examine briefly how Lightfoot's theory can handle genitive constructions in Middle English. As we saw above he assumes that it was a parameter of grammar that changed in Middle English: Whereas in Old English and early Middle English prepositions assigned Oblique in the base they now assign Objective case in surface structure. Here again it seems that Lightfoot's

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theoretical framework is inadequate to even capture consistently the surface distributional facts of Middle English. The most significant of these was that the preposition of which in Old English only meant 'from, out of "spread from partitive use to possessive constructions and to many others that had involved the genitive marker" (cf. Closs-Traugott 1972: 128). Traditionally, this spread has been attributed to the influence of French de (cf. Closs-Traugott 1972: 128).17 To account for this French, or more precisely, Anglo-Norman influence, which, after 1066, was surely part of the creolization process that affected late Old English, 18 Lightfoot's generative theory would have to provide for potential bilingualism and creolization by modifying its concept of linguistic competence and its formal rule correlates, accordingly. 19 Thus, for Middle English it does not suffice to attribute the spread of the postposed o/-genitive, and concomitantly the rise of double genitive constructions, to the analytic pattern "possessed + preposition + possessor", characteristic of Romance languages (cf. Domingue 1977: 92). In addition to this analytic pattern where the preposition could be de or ä, the system of Old French also contained a synthetic pattern in which the oblique form of substantives denoting persons, especially proper names, titles and kinship terms could follow or precede the head noun to express possession or dependence (cf. [17] and [18]).20 (17)

fil maistre Henri 'son of master H.'; la mort Rollant 'the death of R.'; li serf sum pedre 'the servants of his father'; la fille le roi 'the daughter of the king'; le chienet sa niece 'the little dog of his niece'

(18)

la roi fille 'the king's daughter'; la Dieu merci 'God's mercy'; le Carlon messagier 'C.'s messenger' (cf. Plank 1979: 622)

Parallel constructions containing uninflected, prepositionless possessor nouns also occurred in early Middle English (inn hiss Faderr bosemm, inn hiss moderr wambe) and even in early Modern English (the emperoure moder, the Frenche Kyng dowthur [cf. Plank 1979: 623]). As a result of the creolization process all positional and constructional possibilities for genitives in Old English and Anglo-Norman are found in early Middle English, i.e. pre- and postpositioning of the inflected genitive, but also of the o/-genitive. This is amply documented for genitive singular nouns and o/-genitives in the singular for the Orrmulum in Lehnert (1953). He also shows that because of the variety and ambiguity of the morphological markers for the genitive plural, there are only a few instances of preposed

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inflected genitive plural nouns in the Orrmulum. The majority are constructed with of in postposition. Given, however, that the Old English genitive marker -es, which itself had been only one out of a large number of Old English genitive inflections, was generalized in Middle English first to all singular nouns and then to all plurals, one is left with the problem of having to explain why -(e)s genitives were lost post-nominally in the course of Middle English. 3.7. In his attempt to demonstrate that in the development from Old English to late Middle English, English case inflections were all lost and that Modern English's is not an inflection but some kind of phrase-final enclitic particle, Janda (1980)21 suggests that for the reanalysis of -es from a morphological element into a syntactic one and the emergence of group-genitives in late, Chaucerian Middle English, the so-called hisgenitive of Middle English played a decisive role (cf. [19]). (19)

(1420) Seynt Dunstone his lore·, (1467) Harlesdone ys name; (1526) The Busshope of Rome his laws; (1583) the daulphin of France his power, (1639) Dr. Read his treatise on wounds', (1693) Mr. Careless his letter (cf. Janda 1980: 248)

This construction, which had its origins in Old English (cf. Closs-Traugott 1972: 124) and is obviously parallel to possessives like dem Mann sein Haus, der Frau ihr Haus in Modern German and its dialects,22 became very popular in Middle English because the homophony of -es and his led to confusion and a subsequent reinterpreatation of the generalized Old English genitive -es as his. But it was exactly where the -es inflection was not followed by a noun or noun phrase that it could not be reanalysed as his (cf. Janda 1980: 248). Therefore postnominal -es genitives were lost in Middle English and replaced by o/-genitives. As proof for this kind of reanalysis Janda gives the data in (20) where his was used invariantly not only with masculine but also with feminine and neuter nouns. (20)

the quene ys modyr (1467); Margaret ys doughter (1488); my moder ys sake; Winchestre his toun (cf. Janda 1980: 249)

In support of his claims Janda puts forth two crucial facts: "(1) that the spread of the group genitive exactly parallels the spread of the Αώ-genitive, and (2) that, in the north of England, where the to-genitive was last to show up in written texts, ..., in spoken dialects, the genitive is generally marked by -0, as in the lad father stick 'the lad's father's stick'. It is as if the genitive inflection -es had been lost everywhere except where it could be reanalyzed as his" (1980: 250).

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4. 4.1. It seems obvious that neither the morphological and positional variety of genitive constructions in Middle English, nor the reanalysis of a morphological marker into a syntactic phrase-final enclitic particle can be adequately captured within Lightfoot's formal framework, i. e. in terms of X-bar and case-theory, and a different fixing of a parameter concerning case-assignment by prepositions in the base or in surface structure. Lightfoot's theory is too restrictive and too unconstrained at the same time. On the one hand it precludes the "interpenetration" of modules and components — they are claimed to be autonomous and separate from each other so that, for example, no syntactic rule can be subject to phonological conditions or constraints (cf. Zwicky 1984: 369). 23 On the other hand, the parameter model runs the risk of becoming empirically vacuous because there are no constraints on its parameterization potential, i. e. any component, module, rule type or other theoretical construct is open to parameterization. 24 An adequate explanation of the changes from Old English to Middle English and Modern English presupposes a linguistic theory that not only encompasses potential bilingualism and its creolizing effects on the languages in question, 25 but also provides for the means to formally represent these effects on the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic level. This requires, however, giving up the autonomy and priority of syntax and the strict separation of levels and components as postulated in Chomskyan generative approaches. 4.2. As a possibility to represent the morphological expression of syntagmatic relations, a hallmark of Old English syntax and of the syntax of Modern German, I proposed in (1975) a universal syntactic basecomponent that generates hierarchically stratified but linearly unordered sets of syntactic constituents. These are followed by language specific rules which may introduce either strings of formatives or abstract morphological case markers or prepositions or postpositions or combinations of these thereby reflecting the ways in which grammatical relations may be encoded in natural languages. In the case of fixed word order languages the familiar types of transformations apply to such strings; in the case of free word order languages deletion and addition operations yield terminal unordered sets of constituents the possible linear arrangements of which are enumerated by linearization rules which in turn are triggered by pragmatic factors. 26 The stage of derivation of unordered sets of terminal syntactic constituents in a highly inflecting language is viewed as corresponding to a tree-like mobile. Whatever the horizontal sequence of

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constituents of a certain hierarchical level may turn out to be, the vertical dominance relations remain the same. If such a tree-like mobile is projected onto a two-dimensional place, i. e. in the case of linearization the branches may cross each other, thereby representing the discontinuous realization of constituents. 4.3. In a syntactic model that separates the hierarchical definition of grammatical relation between constituents from their linear position, the theoretical deficiencies and shortcomings of both the Standard Theory and the parameter approach can be avoided. Thus, the historical development from Old English to Modern English does not have to be depicted as the simultaneous loss of morphological case marking rules — the surface realizations of which guaranteed the freedom of word-order in Old English — and of the scrambling rules27 that are required to derive just this variety of possible surface linear orders from a certain deep linear order of elements. One is not committed either to assume that Old English was a non-configurational or flat language without PS-rules and a tranformational component, i. e. a language which had a category VP only at Logical Form but not in syntactic structures 28 and that in Middle English the parameters concerned were fixed differently resulting in the emergence of a tranformational component. A grammatical model incorporating a universal syntactic base-component that separates relations of immediate dominance from linear precedence and contiguity of constituents 29 can do without such theoretical artefacts as scrambling rules or ad hoc parameters. It offers a theoretical framework within which the bi- or multilingual competence of speakers can be consistently captured, a precondition for any attempt at reconstructing the creolization processes that took place during the Middle English period. In such a model syntactic properties of linguistic structures can be explained not by resorting to formal hypothetical syntactic constructs (cf. Boas 1984: 33, 66 — 69), but by establishing causal and functional relationships between syntactic phenomena and morphological, lexical and semantic properties and by relating syntactic regularities to the effects the morphophonological properties of these structures have on perceptual factors. Notes 1. Itkonen (1978: 190) argues that: "It remains incomprehensible why this particular set of objects (i. e. sentences), as distinguished from sets of objects investigated by standard natural sciences, requires its own type of knowledge (i. e. linguistic intuition)".

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2. In addition, Chomsky's original direction of arguing from observables to "unobserv-

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19,

20.

21

ables" is now reversed: as the ultimate outcome of his investigations in Syntactic Structures he had envisaged "a theory of linguistic structure in which the descriptive devices utilized in particular grammars are presented and studied abstractly, with no specific reference to particular languages" (1957: 11). Now, he takes his general theory of grammar, i. e. universal grammar, for granted and argues "that a given language has the property Ρ because U G requires that this be the case (1976: 304). No one is willing, or perhaps able, to check either the consistency of some new analysis in some module with all previous ones of the same or similar linguistic data within this or other subsystems or the internal consistency of the over-all framework. Thus, King (1969: 81) argued that adult grammar change is confined to rule additions in the sense of "addition of items to the lexicon, minor modifications in the formulation of a rule, addition of at most a few rules to a component of the grammar" (page 66). This means that sound changes are claimed to be abrupt (King 1969: 112—113). Syntactic change is dealt with in King (1969: 142-150). For a detailed comparison of REST and ST see Boas (1984: 72 — 82). Empirical arguments against the various X-bar theories are presented in Boas (1984: 159-329). Compare Boas (1984: 296 — 309) for an examination of restrictivity claims. In this and all subsequent quotations Lightfoot's numbering of examples has been adjusted to ours. As expected, this difference in supposed to follow from the interaction of the various subtheories concerned. See, for example, Fries (1940: 205), Q u i r k - W r e n n (1955: 89), Allen (1975: 389), Mitchell (1985: 548 ff.). Compare also Mitchell (1985: 551—556) where he discusses all the different linear orders in which a governing noun, its accompanying genitive and the adjectives qualifying the genitives and/or the governing noun may occur. Cf. the references given in note 7 and Radford (1988: 253, 2 7 3 - 2 7 4 , 278). The configurationality parameter is dealt with in Boas (1990). See also Janda's (1980: 246 — 247) discussion of split genitives in Old English. Cf., e.g., Chomsky (1981a: 42). Nunnally (this volume) presents evidence against the "nativeness" of the periphrastic genitive in Old English. For the diffusion of French in England see, e.g. Vising (1923: 12 — 17). Creolization is to be understood in the sense of Bailey — Maroldt (1977: 21), i.e. as the "gradient mixture of two or more languages." They claim: "The only question of substance is whether Old French was creolized with Anglo-Saxon ..., whether Anglo-Saxon was creolized with Old French, or whether the mixture was of so thorough-going a nature that it makes little sense even to pose the question at all" (22 — 23). Cf. also Romaine (1988: 55). Similar objections apply to those synchronic generative models which cannot explicitly reflect the potential bilingual or multilingual competence of speakers. Cf. Boas (1975: 17-18). See also Hawkins (1981: 266 — 267) and grammars of Old French such as Anglade (1965: 154-155). Janda defines inflections as elements which serve to indicate a grammatical relationship between the form to which they are attached and other parts of the sentence (cf. 1980:

238

22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

Hans Ulrich Boas 245). Analyzing Modern English 's as a case inflection would entail that the most marked case inflection of Old English has been retained. This would fly in the face of what markedness predicts for historical change (cf. Janda 1980: 245). In Dutch and its related Creoles the same type of construction can be found (cf. Stolz 1987: 2 8 7 - 2 9 0 ) . Due to this compartmentalization view the homophony of the morphological element -es and the syntactic unit his — the main point in Janda's explanation — cannot be directly captured because it involves the phonological realization of elements of distinct levels or components. See, e. g., Rüffer (1986: 80), who treats even Warlbiri as a configurational language whose free word order he derives through parameterization of certain serialization restrictions and a reinterpretation of the X-bar formalism. Cf. also Grewendorf— Sternefeld (1990: 3) where a "Scrambling Parameter" is introduced to account for free word order phenomena in German. See note 27. Obviously, Lightfoot underestimates the high degree to which early Middle English was influenced by Anglo-Norman. He only mentions "a chance factor having to do with foreign influence (1980: 266). Linearization rules are dealt with in Boas (1975: 179-180). For a discussion of scrambling rules see Boas (1975: 192 — 105) and most recently Grewendorf — Sternefeld (1990) who give an overview of the various scrambling theories and the controversy between "move a " ( + configurational) and base structure (— configurational) approaches to free word order. The papers in Grewendorf — Sternefeld (eds.) (1990) are by the way paradigm examples of the arbitrary character of GB analyses. See also note 3. Compare Chomsky (1981b: 137): "By the projection principle, S-structures are also comparable across languages, differing according to the ways in which parameters for configurationality and order are fixed. At LF, there is always a category VP; languages are of the subject-predicate form at LF. In configurational languages, VP appears as a category in syntactic structures as well." For linguists working in this structuralist tradition it seems conceptually impossible to visualize a syntactic constituent VP whose constituenthood manifests itself through morphological coherence of subconstituents and corresponding pronominalizations rather than through linear adjacency in a string and/or the necessity of being moved only as a unit. In a similar vein the adherents of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar postulate structural descriptions for sentences which always display both dominance and precedence simultaneously (cf. Gazdar et al. 1985: 47). They reject, however, any nonlinear levels of syntactic structure or nonlinear stages in the derivation of linearized structures.

References Allen, Cynthia 1975 "Case marking and the NP cycle in Old English", Linguistic Analysis 1: 389-403. Anglade, Joseph 1965 Grammaire elementaire de landen franfais. Paris: Armand Colin. Bailey, Charles-James N. —Karl Maroldt 1977 "The French Lineage of English", in: Jürgen Μ. Meisel (ed.), Langues en contact — pidgins — Creoles — languages in contact. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 21-53.

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Boas, Hans Ulrich 1975 Syntactic generalizations and linear order in generative transformational grammar. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 1984 Formal versus explanatory generalizations in generative transformational grammar. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1989 — 1990 "Wie konfigurational sind das Deutsche und das Englische?", Klagenfurter Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 15/16: 24 — 34. Chomsky, Noam 1957 Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton. 1965 Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1976 "Conditions on rules of grammar", Linguistic Analysis 2: 303 — 351. 1980 "On binding", Linguistic Inquiry 11:1 —46. 1981a "Principles and parameters in syntactic theory", in: Norbert Hornstein — David Lightfoot (eds.), Explanation in linguistics. London: Longman, 32 — 75. 1981b Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Closs-Traugott, Elizabeth 1965 "Diachronic syntax and generative grammar", Language 41: 402 — 415. 1972 A history of English syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Domingue, Nicole Z. 1977 "Middle English: Another Creole?", Creole Studies 1: 8 9 - 1 0 0 . Fries, Charles C. 1940 "On the development of the structural use of word order in Modern English", Language 16: 1 9 9 - 2 0 8 . Gazdar, Gerald —Ewan Klein — Geoffry Pullum —Ivan Sag 1985 Generalized phrase structure grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Grewendorf, Günter — Wolfgang Sternefeld 1990 "Scrambling theories", in: G. Grewendorf — W. Sternefeld (eds.) Scrambling and barriers. Amsterdam: Benjamin, 3 — 40. Hawkins, Roger 1981 "Towards an account of the possessive constructions: NP's Ν and the Ν of NP", Journal of Linguistics 17: 2 4 7 - 2 6 9 . Itkonen, Esa 1975 "Transformational grammar and the philosophy of science", in: E. F. K. Koerner (ed.), The transformational-generative paradigm and modern linguistic theory. Amsterdam: Benjamin, 381—445. 1978 Grammatical theory and meta-science. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Jack, George B. 1978 "Rome's destruction and the history of English", Journal of Linguistics 14: 311-312. Janda, Richard D. 1980 "On the decline of declensional systems: The overall loss of OE nominal caseinflections and the ME reanalysis of -es as his", in: Elizabeth Closs-Traugott — Rebecca Labrum —Susan Shepherd (eds.), Papers from the 4th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 243 — 352. King, Robert D. 1969 Historical linguistics and generative grammar. Engelwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

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Lehnert, Martin 1953 Sprachform und Sprachfunktion im "Orrmulum" (um 1200). Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften. Lightfoot, David 1979 Principles of diachronic syntax. Cambridge: CUP. 1980 "The history of NP movement", in: Teun Hoekstra — Harry van der Hülst — Michael Moortgat (eds.), Lexical grammar. Dordrecht: Foris, 255 — 284. Lyons, Christopher 1986 "The syntax of English genitive constructions", Journal of Linguistics 22: 123-143. Mitchell, Bruce 1985 Old English Syntax. Vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon. Nunnally, Thomas E. 1992 " M a n ' s son/son of man: Translation, textual conditioning and the history of English genitive". (This volume.) Plank, Frans 1979 "The functional basis of case systems and declension classes: From Latin to Old French", Linguistics 17: 6 1 1 - 6 4 0 . Quirk, Randolph —C. L. Wrenn 1957 An Old English grammar. (2nd ed.) London: Methuen. Radford, Andrew 1988 Transformational grammar. A first course. Cambridge: CUP. Romaine, Suzanne 1988 Pidgin and Creole languages. London: Longman. Rüffer, Norbert 1986 Konfigurationalität. Duisburg: L.A.U.D.T. Stolz, Thomas 1987 "Kreolistik und Germanistik: Niederländisch-basierte Sprachformen in Übersee", Linguistische Berichte 110: 283 — 318. Timmer, B. J. 1939 "The place of the attributive noun-genitive in Anglo-Saxon", English Studies 21: 4 9 - 7 2 . Vising, Johan 1923 Anglo-Norman language and literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenword Press. Yngve, Victor H. 1975 "Depth and the historical change of the English genitive", Journal of English Linguistics 9: 47 — 57. Zwicky, Arnold M. 1984 "Autonomous components and limited interfacing: Phonology-free syntax, the Hallean Syllogism, and their kin", in: Joseph Drogo — Veena Mishra — David Testen (eds.) Papers from the 20th Regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society: Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 365 — 386.

A touch of (sub-)class? Old English "Preterite-Present" verbs Fran Colman

1. The question of class Both major word-classes and sub-classes thereof may be identified by a combination of types of criteria, involving syntactic, morphological, and lexical semantic properties, and labelled according to notional criteria (see, e.g., Lyons 1968: 273; Matthews 1974: 4 7 - 4 8 ; Anderson 1989: 14 ff.). 1 The question of what constitutes a sub-class, or paradigm within a major word-class, is of intrinsic interest to linguistic theory. The "paradigm economy principle" convincingly advocated in Carstairs (1987), for instance, must presuppose identification of inflectional paradigms; so too must the accounts of morphological restructuring in terms of "paradigmatic displacement" in Schuh (1978). But a classification of paradigms is also of interest to the history of English morphology, specifically, for this paper, with respect to Old English "Preterite-Present" verbs. That the so-called "Preterite-Present" verbs of Old English belong indeed to the major word-class Verb is probably uncontroversial; but whether or not they may be seen to constitute a discrete sub-class of verbs for this period of English is open to question: attempts to answer the question in morphological terms may offer some insight into the subsequent fates of these verbs, and the lack of any motivation for ascribing to post-eleventh-century English a sub-class labelled "PreteritePresent". Recorded forms of the Old English "Preterite-Present" verbs (as in, e.g. Campbell 1959: §767; Prokosch 1938: §65) are given in Figure 1. The classification of these verbs as constituting a sub-class, and of belonging to an identifiable paradigm, is traditionally made on the basis of their historical morphological development from proto-Germanic. So, Campbell (1959: § 726), for instance, says of these verbs: "originally strong past tenses of present meaning ... they developed a past tense with a dental formative in Gmc.". Further subdivision within this group is traditionally claimed, on the basis of correspondence of the present-tense

242

Fran Colman

Present I.

witan





ägan , , ,

II.

*dugan , >-agent in English

389

Table 5. The frequencies of prepositional phrases with of and by in the corpus

Period I Period II

o/-phrases

fty-phrases

phrase-ratio of:

7643 6826

1033 1150

7 : 1 6 : 1

by

The general predominance of the preposition of in the corpus could mean either that of-phrases tended to occur with a greater frequency than those with by, or that of was used in more functions than by, or both. A survey of the corpus shows that the o/-phrases have a tendency to cluster, as in the following examples, which illustrate both the general frequency and functional variety of the preposition: Emme, the wyff of Robed Reynys, made a covenaunt with Cecilie Grene of Hemlyngton in the name of Roberd Reynys of Acle, and bowte of her a pencion weche the seid Cecilie Grene shuld an had terme of her lyve. (Reynes, The commonplace book, 291); ... who, within the compasse of a smal Argument, of one harlot, and of one good wife, did vtter so moch learning in all kinde of sciences as, by the iudgement of Quintilian, he deserueth so hie a praise that... (Ascham, The scholemaster, 218); etc. Passages with a corresponding frequency of by are hardly to be found. In order to compare the functional loads of both the prepositions a count was made of the dated OED examples for the various functions numbered for of and by in the dictionary. The results are presented in Figure 3. D of

100

•

by

90

80 « 70

aj

3 60 °50

j>-agent

suffer

L

send serge* set (*) 3 stablish* support

L

L R/L

L R

R

teach tell

— take 2 R—teach testify*

think translate^) 3 treat use 2

R

shed show 5 slay spoil* stir*

tempt take(*) 5

R

sell send(*) 5 serve set shake

understand witness worship* write 28

L wreak —R— write 60

28

take(*) 5 tarry - teach tell temper think touch treat : use 2 utter witness work wowe write 2 99

advertise 'consider'; assoyl 'absolve'; assail/assault 'attack'; demand 'ask'; dress 'prepare'; embraid 'taunt, mock'; english 'translate'; foul 'befoul'; head 'behead'; let 'prevent'; liken 'compare'; minish 'take away'; move 'propose'; nip 'cut'; prompt 'help'; serge 'search'; wowe 'avow'; (a)wreak 'avenge'.

and those occurring with both agentive prepositions with a double line ( ). Verbs found only in verb pairs are marked with an asterisk *, and those occurring also in verb pairs with an asterisk in parentheses (*). The primary use in certain contexts or senses has been indicated in two cases: R for biblical or related religious uses and L for statutory and related legal uses, with a + -mark prefixed, if the verb also occurs in

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Peitsara

other uses. The number of instances is given if there are more than one. The meanings of some verbs, which may not be obvious, are given at the end. The total number of verbs found with agent phrases in the corpus is 170. The number of verbs with agentive by is twice that of verbs with agentive of in period I and more than three times that in period II. This seems to imply that the by-agent was the more productive variant. The numbers of instances per verb are generally small. Only about one third of them are found more than once, the most frequent being some very general and neutral verbs, such as make, take, give and say. The origin of the verbs is shown in Table 8. Verbs of Latin and French origin are not distinguished, because Latin loans were often adopted through French in Middle English: Table 8. The distribution of native and foreign verbs with the of- and Z^-agents of-agent

Period I Period II

by-agent

native

foreign

native

foreign

61% 29%

39% 71%

42% 45%

58% 55%

In period I the majority of the verbs with agentive of are native, while with the by-agent foreign verbs predominate slightly. This may indicate either that the ό^-agent is productive and freely used with various verbs, also foreign loans, or that it is easily used with the latter because it itself is modelled on French. In period II the proportions are reversed with agentive of, so that the great majority of verbs with it are foreign. With agentive by the proportions are almost the same as in period I. This would seem to prove that of tends to linger on in official contexts and higher style with educated vocabulary. The sudden reversal of the proportions is, however, interesting and would require further study. The general proportions of native and foreign verbs in the texts of the corpus would be needed as comparative material before any definite conclusions can be drawn. Only about one fifth (32 or 19%) of the verbs in the verb list (Table 7) are attested in both periods. The majority of these only occur with agentive by {bring, choose, command, convey, deliver, do, enact, keep, make, move 'propose', name, ordain, pay, send, set, tell, think and treat).

On the development of the 6>'-agent in English

395

If the expected development is from an earlier use with agentive of to a later one with by, this is only shown by five verbs (bear, give, put, witness, write). Five others show the contrary development (call, offer, say, take, teach), while four verbs only occur with agentive of (command, desire, hate and know). A chronological development where a generally used agentive of would have been gradually replaced by agentive by in this period is thus not supported by the evidence of these verbs. It would rather seem probable that the distribution of the variants had been established before this period, and some verbs had only been accepted with one of the variant prepositions. According to the OED (of. 15), agentive of would have been used particularly with participles expressing a continued non-physical action (admired, loved, hated, ordained) and a condition resulting from a definite action (abandoned, deserted, forgotten, forsaken), or when the construction approaches the subjective genitive (He was chosen of God to this work), or the agent expresses the cause (frightened, terrified) or the source of origin (born). Of the participles given as examples in the OED only born and hated occur with agentive of in the corpus, ordained and chosen are only found with by, and the rest are not attested with agent phrases. But the group of four verbs mentioned above as governing agentive of in both periods (commend, desire, hate and know) indeed consist of those expressing a continued non-physical action. Because the semantics of the verbs seems to play a part and there are verbs occurring with both agentive variants even in the same period, a further study has been made of the semantic fields of the verbs and their possible connection to the choice of the agentive preposition. It appears that certain general tendencies are valid. Of is preferred with verbs that have a religious meaning or that occur in religious use, by with verbs that have a legal or official meaning or use. The percentages of such verbs with the two agent variants are given in Table 9 (see also Table 7 above). Table 9. The occurrence of religious and legal verbs with the agent variants o/-agent

Period I Period II

i>y-agent

relig.

leg.

others

relig.

leg.

others

71% 32%

4% 4%

25% 64%

15% 4%

25% 35%

60% 61%

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The above percentages show that the majority of the verbs with agentive of in period I are of the "religious" type and these still form an important third of those in period II. The "legal" verbs form the largest single group (about 1/4) of the verbs with agentive by in period I and they increase proportionally (to about 1/3) in period II. Of is used if the agent is God or some other authority, as with allege, clepe, give, liken, number, put, say, testify and write. It is further preferred with "commenting" verbs: commend, demand, praise and reprove, and, as expected, with verbs expressing continued non-physical action: despite, envy, hate, honour and know. In general, of seems to linger on with abstract and mental verbs. By is used with reporting verbs (say, tell, utter)·, mostly with editorial verbs (add, compile, english, minish 'cut', set, translate and write)', usually with 'escorting' verbs (bring, conduct, convey, lead)', and generally with verbs referring to concrete action and single events. If these assumptions are valid, the distinctions should also be apparent when one and the same verb is found in different uses. Therefore a separate study was made of the verbs that occur with both agent variants in the corpus. There were fifteen of them: allege, bear, call, examine, give, know, offer, put, receive, say, take, teach, use, witness and write. While the choice of the agent variant with most of these conformed to the textual distribution discussed above in section 5, there was a distinct semantic agreement in the following cases. With three verbs — bear, call and take — agent variation is connected with a change of meaning. As suggested by the OED, bear in the sense 'to give birth' governs agentive of: The childe pat sail be borne of her... (The York plays, 123). In the concrete sense 'to carry' it governs agentive by: Many also precyous Jewels ... were in that temple born awaye by Nabugodonosor and Nabuzardan his capytayn. (Fitzjames, Sermo die lune, 7). Call governs of in the sense 'to name': ...foure cornered figurs, and ar called of the Grekes trapezia, of Latin me menfulae and of Arabitians helmuariphe (Record, The path-way to knowledg, 6); in the sense 'to summon' call takes the by-agent: Hammon ... was called in by Jhon Piers... (The diary of Edward VI, 354). With the of-agent take means 'to consume': The holy scripture sayeth, the wine ... is good to be taken of them that haue a weake and a feeble stomach (Turner, A new boke of ... all wines, 25); with the 6j-agent take has the concrete sense 'to catch': One that ... had thought to assemble the people was taken by the gentlemen of the shier, and afterward punished (The diary of Edward VI, 273); by is

On the development of the by-agent in English

397

also found in a legal sense: in accions of dette taken ...by our Soveraigne Lorde the Kynge or by any person to his use ... (Statutes 3,2). With three other verbs — allege, say and write — agentive of implies general validity and authority of the action: But this of moost Wryters is testyfyed & alleged (Fabyan, The new chronicles..., 12); And it is say de of many Doctors, that... (Vicary, The anatomie..., 60); as is wry ten of Thoby {In die innocencium, 8). With the ^j-variant they refer to single concrete events: After this were there many other Reasons ...by Sir Thomas Moore in his owne defens alleaged (Roper, The life of Sir Thomas Moore..., 92); as it is saide by all {The cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac, 583); and in a letter: reservyng thys to be written by my self at laysor... (Tunstall, Letters, 1)· When abstract gifts are given by the Lord or some other authority, give governs of: the grete power geuen vnto hym of god (Fitzjames, Sermo die lune, 2); pe manere of knowynge of symple fringes is $euen of Galten in pe firste bokes... {Die cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac, 576); with concrete presents agentive by is used: this house gyuen to hym by the king... (Leland, The itinerary, 16); ...money ... geuen by others... (Ascham, The scholemaster, 279). In addition to the above evidence, there are, however, counter-examples, in which the same verb occurs with both agent variants without any apparent difference; for example: thei were received of all the nobles {The diary of Edward VI, 268) as against: The marquis du Means, conte d'Anguien, and the constable's son wer received at Blackheth by my lord of Rutland, my lord Gray... etc. {The diary of Edward VI, 268). The former instance is the only one with receive and agentive of in the corpus, as against four others with receive and by. Furthermore, it is the only instance of agentive of in this text, as against twenty with by. Further textual study is needed to explain this irregularity. Such instances could, however, also mean that the original distribution of the agent prepositions was becoming forgotten.

9. Conclusion This being a preliminary study, many questions remain unanswered and many assumptions are still based on inadequate evidence. Closer textual study, together with further analysis both backwards and forwards in

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Kirsti Peitsara

time from the periods studied for this paper, would give a fuller picture of the development. Some conclusions may nevertheless be drawn here. I hope to have shown, firstly, that the ^j-agent prevailed in English in the 15th century, i.e. two centuries earlier than suggested so far. The earlier assumption must have been based on limited and, in part, the wrong kind of data, largely religious and instructional texts. But this was excusable as long as a comprehensive historical corpus, such as the HC, was not available. The necessary consequence of the first conclusion is that agentive by can hardly have been rare before 1400. Secondly, it appears that there has not been a development from a general agentive of into a general agentive by in Middle English, but the two variants have existed side by side (possibly together with some others excluded from this study) for some time. They were, however, not in free variation in the 15th and 16th centuries but had become specialized, partly according to the type of text and partly according to the semantic fields of the participles in the passive clause. This specialization was more complicated than, and partly different from, that described by some scholars, and it apparently involved foreign influence. Thirdly, the Middle English period was particularly favourable for the gradual grammaticalization of by in agentive function because of the heavier functional load of the preposition of and the lack of special grammaticalization for by. Appendix. AR ΒΙΑ BIO COME CORO CORP DOC EDUC EX FICT HANDM HANDO HIST IR IS MYST NEWT NI

The HC denotations for text type argumentative biographies: autobiographies: other comedies correspondence: official correspondence: private documents educational expository fiction handbooks: medicine handbooks: other histories instruction: religious instruction: secular mysteries New Testament narrative: imaginative

On the development of the by-agent in English NN OLDT PROC PROL RELT ROM SCIM SCIO SERM STA TRAV TRI XX

399

narrative: non-imaginative Old Testament proceedings prologues religious treatises romances science: medical science: other sermons statutory travelogue trials no prototype

Notes 1. Originally by, too, was local, but this cannot be called its major function in the periods considered. 2. For the difficulty of distinguishing between the agent and other prepositional phrases, see Kilpiö (1989: 136). 3. One text (Fitzjames, Sermo die lune) in period I showed three instances of agentive bi. The final figures for be were not yet available when this paper was read at the ICEHL6 Conference in May 1990, because their selection from among forms of the verb be had not been completed. By now it is apparent that the 16 instances of agentive be corroborate the assumptions expressed in this paper. 4. For example, St. Mark — Ch. I, if it had been included in the Helsinki Corpus, would alone have yielded as many as three instances of agentive of.

References Aickin, Joseph 1693 The English grammar. London. [1967] [Repr. English linguistics 1500-1800, 21. Menston: The Scholar Press Ltd.] Franz, Wilhelm 1924 Shakespeares Grammatik. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitäts Buchhandlung. Green, Alexander 1914 "The analytic agent in Germanic", JEGP 13: 5 1 4 - 5 5 2 . HC = The Helsinki corpus of English texts, diachronic and dialectal. Jones, Richard Foster 1953 The triumph of the English language. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hewes, John 1624 A perfect survey of the English tongue. London. [1972] [Repr. English linguistics 1500-1800, 336. Menston: The Scholar Press Ltd.] Kilpiö, Matti 1989 Passive constructions in Old English translations from Latin, with special reference to the Old English Bede and the Pastoral Care. (Memoires de la Societe Neophilologique 49.) Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique.

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Kytö, Merja 1991 Manual to the diachronic part of the Helsinki corpus of English texts. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Lodwick, Frances 1972 The works, (ed. by Vivian Salmon.) London: Longman. Mitchell, Bruce 1985 Old English syntax 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Moessner, Lilo 1989 Early Middle English syntax. (Linguistische Arbeiten 207.) Tübingen: Niemeyer. Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960 A Middle English syntax. Part. I. (Memoires de la Societe Neophilologique 23.) Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique. OED = The Oxford English dictionary. 1888-1933 (Ed. James A. H. M u r r a y - H e n r y Bradley-W. A. C r a i g i e - C . T . Onions. (13 vols.) Oxford: Clarendon. Poole, Joshua 1655 The English accidence. London. [1969] [Repr. English linguistics 1500-1800, 5. Menston: The Scholar Press Ltd.] Shakespeare, William 1951 The Complete Works. (The Tudor edition, ed. by Peter Alexander.) London — Glasgow: Collins. Smith, Herbert 1907 "Syntax der Wycliffe — Purveyschen Übersetzung und der 'Authorized Version' der vier Evangelien", Anglia 30 (NF 18.): 4 1 3 - 5 0 0 . Strang, Barbara Μ. H. 1970 A history of English. London — Colchester: Methuen & Co. Svartvik, Jan 1966 On voice in the English verb. The Hague —Paris: Mouton & Co. Visser, F. Th. 1973 An historical syntax of the English language. Part III. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Pragmatics of this and that Patricia

Poussa

1. Introduction 1.1. The paper was prompted by the following statement in a systemic description of modern English: "This, that, these, those share some of the abilities of the personal pronouns to refer to persons, mainly in the plural forms, but not (in the singular) except in a pejorative sense" (Nixon n.d.: 56; my italics).1 This was to me a new idea, but finding that my native-speaker intuition supported it, and wishing to know why this should be so, I began looking for examples of the pejorative singular. The OED has a first example for 1905, in a representation of direct speech: (1)

'Would you like to marry Malcolm?' I asked. 'Fancy being owned by that! Fancy seeing it every day!' (Eleanor Glynn, Vicissitudes of Evangeline: 127).

and I soon found another in a recent novel set in Victorian London: (2)

The sergeant was large and ponderous. He had with him a lank-haird woman. 'This here alleges she's the dead man's wife, sir.' Ί don't know what you mean by that. We were married ten years ago for better or worse, and mostly it's been worse' (Symonds 1982: 119).

In this example, it appears that contemporary readers are alerted to the sergeant's prejudice by the subject pronoun, a grammatical choice, even before the lexical verb allege is uttered. We may suppose that the author, our contemporary, intended this effect: therefore our personal internal grammars all include the new rule. I would characterize the usage as comic-dishonourific. In other words, the singular pronouns this/that, when used of persons, have begun to function as social diectics. This usage seems to be widely understood among speakers of standard English from both north and south, though it is not frequently produced. When

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Patricia Poussa

asked, native speakers agree that the comic-dishonourific meaning applies only in the singular, but cannot say why. I concluded that the answer must lie somewhere in the historical development of the English deictics, and consulted grammars. 1.2. Jespersen comments on this and that in Part II of A Modern English Grammar as follows: While in the adjunctal function the plural forms these and those correspond exactly to the singulars this and that, the same cannot be said with regard to the same forms used as principals, for here this and that can no longer be used in speaking of persons, while these and those can. The sg of those who is not that who (which is not used), but he who {she who)·, similarly there is no sg that present corresponding to the pi those present (1922: 406, section 16.31).

This state of affairs, which for ease of reference I shall call Jespersen's Gap, is a prerequisite for the development of the comic-dishonourific use: personal singular this/that, no longer used for spatial or textual deixis, is freed f r o m the uses illustrated in (1) and (2), i.e. social deixis. Conversely, the attestation of the comic-dishonoriflc use in any lect must imply that Jespersen's gap has previously become total, or near-total. In further discussion of this point (which is of course aimed at the elucidation of M o d E only), Jespersen cites in section 16.33, under "the non-anaphoric use", examples of the earlier singular personal use from Malory, Shakespeare, Defoe and Browning. The last two, both from poetry, are given below: (3)

Elder and younger share the goods of fate. This all the brains inherits, that th'estate (Defoe G 94).

(4)

This rends his hair Because his child is taken to God's breast, That gnashes teeth and raves at loss of trash (Browning 2.256).

Jespersen comments: "In the two last quotations, this and that are used in contrast instead of the more natural this man and that man", and points out that his Shakespearean example is ambiguous, and may be a neuter. At the beginning of the same section (16.33) he remarks: "In the sg this and that have perhaps at no time been very frequent; now at any rate they are very rare, and the quotation f r o m Browning sounds quite un-English" (1922: 409). In sum, Jespersen is unable to give any reason for the gap in the singular. Further, he cannot pinpoint its beginning, and here he resorts to a fudge: in fact, reference to the OED shows that forms of this are

Pragmatics of this and that

used in Old English to refer to people, in singular and plural both this and that are found in Middle English in similar subsequent development of Jespersen's Gap is thus a fairly event in the history of English: there must be some underlying the abandonment of this usage in the singular only.

403

alike, and uses. The important reason for

1.3. In the following sections, I shall explore Jespersen's Gap using various approaches. Firstly, I look at the situation in present spoken standard English, where we can appeal to native speaker/hearer intuition. 2 Secondly, in Section 3, I compare the Present-day English system with synchronic states of other languages, including Old English. Section 4 points out a semantic shift in the resumptive pronouns in general. Section 5 gives a rough chronology of the development of Jespersen's Gap in English, with the aid of examples drawn from the OED. Section 6 discusses the diatopic dimension, and concludes.

2. Constraints on third person pronoun choice in present English

2.1. The following rules have been arrived at by introspection, but I am tolerably sure that they are general to contemporary speakers of Standard English. Other English dialects can have different rules. 3 The rule for interpreting initial thisjthat would seem to be: "Assume referent to be NONHUMAN. Exceptions: see 2.3. below." Thus this/that normally corresponds to the pronoun it. Examples: Referent

Singular

Plural

CHAIR

It has a green cover. (S)he has a green hat. This has a green cover. * This has a green hat.

They have green covers. They have green hats. These have green covers. These have green hats.

(WO)MAN CHAIR (WO)MAN

2.2. The plural does not mark the +/— HUMAN distinction. Both they and these are undistinguished. Hence there is no bar to These have green hats.

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Patricia

Poussa

2.3. Some situations, e. g. introductions, unique identifications, make it unnecessary to make the +/— HUMAN distinction in the singular. Examples: This is John. the inventor, the culprit, a lady with a dog. our hotel. In these examples the addressee is being shown the referent, and the clause is equative in meaning. Reference to the OED shows that this is an old use, shared by Old English and Modern German, which both use the neuter here. The verb to be is always present in these constructions. The use of that is of course more general in Old English than in Modern English, where this and that are clearly contrastive in terms of place deixis. (There would seem to be a straight continuity between modern That's a good boy! and Beowulf, paet waes god cyning\). This is a somewhat unspecific and weakly deictic that, which in the modern example could be substituted by there. 2.4. In modern English, when we refer to human beings, we are normally constrained to distinguish +/— HUMAN on a singular pronoun subject. If we choose + HUMAN, 3rd person, we are then constrained to choose gender: either he or she. Examples: Referent COGWHEEL

JOHN/MARY

It I This is

splendid. ( un) reliable. responsible for increased output, the architect of our prosperity/ruin. He j She is splendid, etc. etc. * This is splendid, (un) reliable. *This is responsible for increased output. l*This is the architect of our prosperity.

The last example is not grammatical in this series, but could be interpreted under Rule 2.3. above. (John realizes he is being introduced, and smiles sheepishly.) 2.5. The reason why this/that is disallowed in the singular seems to lie in the Gender system. This/that can be class-shifted to act as a personal

Pragmatics of this and that

405

pronoun only where it can make the choices required within the personal pronoun system. Thus in the singular, where (natural) gender choice is compulsory on the 3rd person pronoun, this/that is blocked. Because in modern English this and that cannot be marked for gender, they have become restricted to non-human referents (the it words). In the plural, no gender choice is required, so these and those can be class-shifted into the set of personal pronouns. The system is shown in Figure 1, below.

singular

GENDER CHOICE

•he • she

NUMBER CHOICE

plural

they +

these/those

Figure 1. Choices in the PE 3rd person pronoun system

As we are dealing with class-shifted items, the lack of symmetry between the singular and plural in the personal pronoun system of Modern English must be regulating the surface illogicality of the behaviour of this/that vs. these/those. 2.6. Historically, it would seem to be the loss of grammatical gender, combined with the partial retention of natural gender marking, which has caused the modern English anomalies. The next section will demonstrate that languages with grammatical gender systems distinguishing masculine and feminine are more symmetrical in this respect. Chronologically, the system presented in Figure 1 can be taken to represent the use of the class-shifted determiners at the beginning of this century, as described by Jespersen (though of course it may not have been very new at the time). Nixon's rule is not included in Figure 1, though it probably already operates for some speakers, as in example (1).

3. Anaphora, deixis, gender For contrastive anaphora (or pragmatic reference), one needs at least a two-term system. Distinctions can be made by means of spatial deictics, proximal/distal, or by utilising the morphological markers of the gender

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Poussa

system. (Some languages, like French, can do both simultaneously: celuici/celui-lä, etc.) Levinson (1983: 87) gives the examples: a. John and Mary came into the room: he was laughing but she was crying. b. John and Mary came into the room: this was laughing, but that was crying. (The second is an English gloss of a Turkish example, but could equally well be Finnish.) The modern French system is presented below, as Figure 2. Note that -ci, -la can be appended to any determiner.

• singular

GENDER CHOICE

• il + celui-cij-la • eile + celle

G E N D E R CHOICE

• ils + ceux • elles + Celles

NUMBER CHOICE

plural

Figure 2. Choices in the Modern French 3rd person pronoun system

This language has a grammatical gender system with a binary choice, either m. or f. The class-shifted determiners pattern quite symmetrically with the personal pronouns. No decisions about +/— HUMAN have to be made in this system. The personal pronouns can refer to humans, nonhumans and inanimates, and so can the class-shifted determiners. Finnish, in Figure 3, below, is included as an example of a language which has no grammatical gender, nor any natural gender marking on the pronouns. Here too, the class-shifted determiners pattern just as the personal pronouns. singular

• hän + tämä/tuo,

(je) 4

• he + nämäjnuo,

(ne)

NUMBER CHOICE

• plural

Figure 3. Choices in the Finnish 3rd person pronoun system

Finally we take Old English or rather late West Saxon, the literary standard dialect of Old English, in Figure 4. This is a grammatical gender

Pragmatics of this and that

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language with three genders, m., f., η. When they refer to persons, the resumptive pronouns tend to pattern with natural, not grammatical, gender.5 The neuters, hit + pisjpeet are not included in the diagram, but we cannot say that they are totally absent, because of the possible personal uses with the copula, referred to under 2.3. singular

- GENDER CHOICE

he + pesjse heo + peos/seo

NUMBER CHOICE

• plural

/»(e) +

pasjpa

Figure 4. Choices in the OE 3rd person pronoun system

4. A semantic shift 4.1. This system is semantically closer to Present-day English (Figure 1) than to French (Figure 2), in that natural gender dictates pronoun selection, at least in the singular. There is a clear continuity between Old English and Present-day English in that the plurals of the personal pronouns and the determiners are identical for all genders in both. However, Old English differs from Present-day English in that the patterning of the class-shifted determiners is in Old English still symmetrical with that of the personal pronouns proper, as it is in both French and Finnish, and also in modern German. Jespersen's Gap is specific to later English, and contradicts a general tendency to symmetricality in the languages illustrated. I will argue that the two stages of English diagrammed above are separated by a semantic shift. In fact, the Old English system shown in Figure 4 is in several respects closer to Modern German, a 3-gender language, than to Present-day English. Semantically, the Old English determiners are closer in meaning to their Modern German equivalents because Old English had not yet developed the proximal/distal distinction of Middle English this/that, but depended on grammatical gender marking for textual cohesion. In Old English grammatical gender marking was expounded principally on the determiners, usually on the proto-article se seo pcet and the demonstrative pes peos pis. The breakdown of gender-morphology on the determiners

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inevitably caused changes in textual cohesion, both written and spoken. More morphological distinctions were retained on the personal pronouns, but their phonetic shape /hV/ was not very distinctive. From the point of view of anaphors, and pragmatic reference, the adoption of they and she forms in Middle English, which began from the subject position, was systemically and perceptually well-motivated. There was a great deal of interdialectal variation in pronominal forms, which became apparent after the weakening of the Old English literary standard dialect, so that different dialects took different paths in maintaining textual cohesion. The proximal/distal distinction on this/that first appears in the Ormulum, an East Midland text about 1200, and the influence of Old Norse is a possibility here, as the OED suggests. But unlike Old Norse, English developed a preposed definite article, too, giving a threeway contrast. The plurals of this and that differed in the northern, central and southern dialects until late Middle English, and in particular the plural those lagged in southern dialects, until it was spread as the standard form through the printed texts of Caxton. Prior to this the spoken language could use the series this here, that there, these here, them there, paralleled in other Germanic languages, and these are still widespread in spoken use, as in (2). 6 Improvements in textual deixis continued in the 16th-century refinements of the personal pronoun system. His became confined to human antecedents, while it gained a new genitive, it, rapidly replaced during the 17th century by its.1 By this point it appears that speakers are again using historical gender markers in anaphora, but now their role is to distinguish the human referents from the rest. The distinction HUMAN versus NONHUMAN has emerged as a major organizing principle in the selection of referential pronouns, in place of grammatical gender. Outside the demonstratives, we may remark that the same kind of semantic change also took place among the relative pronouns. The specialization of whose to human antecedents, while of which began to collocate with inanimates, 8 similarly improved the cohesion of written texts, and possibly the rise of who in the nominative in the 15th century 9 is to be seen as part of the same tendency. This chain of linked events in Middle English and Early Modern English irresistably recalls a phonological parallel. Let us, for the sake of argument, call it the Great Gender Shift.

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5. Chronology of Jespersen's gap 5.1. The argument sketched above is that in the evolution of Old English to Present-day English, morphological loss caused syntactic change, which caused semantic change, which in turn led to other grammatical changes. Supposing that each change took several generations to complete, this would account for the long time-scale involved, even without taking into account conflicting solutions from different dialects, and models from other languages spoken in England, notably Old Norse and French, which all provided input for the modern standard dialect which began to take shape from the 15th century, but is still subject to mutability. Clearly, semantic mergers and splits are more difficult to observe than phonological ones, but the class-shifted determiners provide a possible vantage point, a fairly constant theoretical category, from which we may deduce semantic change going on in the pronoun system as a whole, in spite of the deficiency of our data for some periods. The following scattered finds from the OED give some indication of suitable spots for more thorough investigation. 5.2. In the examples which follow, I have followed the progress of this rather than that, largely because the latter functioned as proto-article in the earliest period, as described in 4.1. (5)

circa 1275: per arysen tweyne and bigunne to speke, pes seyde hwat he wolde pe temple al to-breke. (Passion our Lord 244 in O.E. Misc. 44).

(6)

al300: Queη pat sco pis can iesus se. (Cursor M. 11351.)

(7)

circa 1374: This is so gentil and so tender of herte. (Chaucer, Troilus III 855 (904).)

(8)

circa 1380: More pan Jonas is he pis. (Wycliffe, Sermons, Sei. Wks. II, 52).

(9)

1426: He thys ys wroth, he that ys glad. (Lydgate, De Guil. Pilgr. 20110.)

(10)

1451: And pis pat schuld be his successour he lerned for to do lich as he saide. (Capgrave, Life of St. Gilbert 77).

Example (5) is a late appearance of the m. sg. pes, which gave way in Middle English to invariable pis, which had been the Old English neuter. 10

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Some 13th- to 15th-century examples, e. g. (6) and (8), suggest that some writers are uncomfortable with the systemic gap left by loss of grammatical gender marking on the demonstrative pronoun, though on the other hand the type he this/she this may be modelled on French. Certainly in (9) a French model seems likely. Many writers use plain this to refer to people, however, and there is no sign of the pejorative use in Chaucer's usage in (7), or Capgrave's in (10). The OED examples from Shakespeare are somewhat ambiguous, but not convincingly pejorative: (11)

1601: What a blunt fellow is this grown to be! (Julius Caesar I ii 299.)

(12)

1588: Hector was but a Troyan in respect of this. (Loves Labours Lost V ii 640.)

I tend to the opinion that Shakespeare's this is neutral, and takes its colour from the context. Hamlet's bedroom speech to his mother, where he shows the portraits of her two husbands, seems to support this interpretation: (13)

and what judgment! Would step from this to this? (Hamlet III iv 70-71.)

Though it is possible that an exhaustive search would produce better Shakespearean examples, including some of that, I think it fairly safe to assume that he does not have Jespersen's Gap, and therefore does not have the comic-dishonourific this and that. However, the OED does record a comic-dishonourific it, under the heading "Childish it" at I.l.b., with the gloss: "Used in childish language, and hence contemptuously or humourously, of a person". The example: (14)

1588: See where it comes, (LLL V ii 337).

is particularly clear, as it is used of the Princess, who with her two ladies has just been the subject of a practical joke by the three young noblemen disguised as Muscovites. The young men are gloating too soon, however, as the Princess has not been deceived. This comic-dishonourific it seems to have the same meaning as the Present-day English example of it in (1), whereas his use of the class-shifted determiners is not yet so advanced. In order to fix the time of development of Jespersen's Gap more closely, it is necessary to look at the stages of the specialization of it to the NONHUMAN meaning. This is slower than might be expected from the

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discussion of the Old English system shown in Figure 4, and one reason for this seems to be the continuing use of the old neuter form with the copula. Under the type "It is I" (1.2.a.) the OED includes: (15)

circa 1000: pa spraec se haelend ... ic hyt eom. (Ags. Gosp. Matt. xiv 26.)

(16)

1377: If any peple perfourme pat texts it are pis pore (Langl. P. PL B. xv 321.)

freres.

and under the type "It that" (V.13.): (17)

circa 1305: Louerd ... pu hit ert pat ich habbe iloued. (St. Edm. Conf. 562 in E.E.P. (1862) 86.)

(18)

1611: Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab? (Bibl. Isa. li 9.)

Though the King James Bible is notoriously old-fashioned, this use would slow up the progress of it to the unambigiously NONHUMAN meaning required for (14). It is also possible that Shakespeare reflects the usage of the most advanced speakers of his day in (14). 11 A check on the genitive of it at this period shows that Shakespeare has adopted the genitive form it, but does not yet have the later 17th-century form its/ it's, while the King James Bible still uses his. Now if Shakespeare's generation sits on the cusp on our Great Gender Shift, it is quite feasible that in Shakespeare's idiolect the semantics of the class-shifted determiners should lag behind the development of the personal pronouns proper, and Jespersen's Gap is not to be found in Shakespeare. We might have a better possibility of demonstrating Jespersen's G a p or its extension, the comic-dishonourific singular, by searching through the works of later dramatists, e. g. those of the Restoration period. Looking for comic-dishonourifics might be described as the funmethod, but if they are not to be found, then the development of Jespersen's gap could probably be demonstrated in future, given very large, tagged machine corpora. As I tend to the belief that the change is speech-led, it could well take two centuries for Jespersen's G a p to work through to more formal, written styles. Further, the influence of French and Latin in these styles would tend to slow the development. This is as far as I am able to go in the matter of chronology by using the OED. Before leaving this topic, I would like to comment on a few more OED examples of it, firstly (19)

circa 1300: Wei we witeth hit is a wrecche. (Beket 1003.)

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which it seems to me is classed erroneously under I.l.b. "Childish it", together with (14), which is a genuine comic-dishonourific. In the light of examples (15) —(18), I do not see that this it can be unambigiously classified as contemptuous. The point of the later dishonourific has nothing to do with childish language, but is the result of the semantic shift described above. 1300 seems much too early for this meaning. The last two examples are of she for it (She I.2.): (20)

circa 1380: & pe dore were strong & huge, wip pe stroke sehe fle^. (Sir Ferum. 2182.)

(21)

circa 1475: A chambre ...full fair wroght & well, ... She myght in no wise ... more fairer be. (Partenay 4495.)

The OED suggests French influence here, and this seems reasonable. In this case we may argue that the influence of French has been rather to delay the semantic shift of it to NONHUMAN than to advance it. More generally, we must note that the gender structure of the Latin > Romance languages as a whole, and in the determiner system (see Figure 2) does not favour the development of Jespersen's Gap, so that Latin and French influence is liable to act as a brake on this development at all periods. Therefore Jespersen's Gap is most probably a native Germanic development.

6. The diatopic dimension 6.1. So far our discussion has been rather lacking in diatopy. We have contrived to avoid problems of diatopic variation by discussing mainly standard dialects. This involves a fiction, which is embedded in the OED approach, that the late Old English data from Wessex is the direct ancestor of the Modern English data from the London area. Though dialectal variation is a commonplace in Middle English studies, and a separate speciality in Present-day English studies, we tend to overlook it in Old English, and to forget that there is a large geographical block of missing dialects, situated on the North Sea coast. They are *East Saxon (Essex), *East Anglian (Norfolk), and *East Mercian (Lincolnshire). I use the labels applied by Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 266) for the sake of

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their geographical transparency (though I do not accept their whole argument). 12 It follows from this that we have a diatopical gap in Old English, which tends to look more like a diachronic one in the OED manner of presentation. Thus we cannot tell whether the gender loss period in Old English was rapid, or extremely slow. This unappreciated geographical gap underlies the controversy about creolization vs. "normal" transmission in the development Old English > Middle English, in which the loss of grammatical gender marking is the central datum. 6.2. In the light of the above, a linguistic geography approach to the loss of grammatical gender may be helpful. Suppose we arranged like beads on a string all the present Germanic dialects, from Iceland and Norway in the north west to the High German dialects in the south east. We would end up with three-gender dialects at both ends, and in the middle, around the North and Baltic Sea, two-gender dialects, and English, with one. The central sea-coasts have been the innovating area. If we had done the same thing in the year 990 there would have been more threegender dialects, including proto-West Frisian and West Saxon, but it is impossible to give a certain value for our missing East Midland dialects, or for those spoken around the mouths of the Rhine (Frisia Major, or Frisia citerior to the Anglo-Saxons). For the English dialects I shall plump for two, which will allow me to hypothesize that the loss of grammatical gender in this area was a slow drift, helped on by language contact. If I choose three, I commit myself to a French creolization scenario, which I find unacceptable (see the arguments in Poussa 1982). If I choose one, I tend towards a Viking creolization explanation, possibly with "Frisian" involvement, which is preferable. Perhaps the best answer in our present state of knowledge is a graded 1—2 — 3 continuum, diatopic, diasocial and diachronic, extending into the Old English period. 13 6.3. The quest for the origins of Jespersen's Gap has led us very far afield, but there are some advantages in this. If the diatopic argument presented is valid, then, as the present continental dialects of Germanic still form an uninterrupted gender continuum, we do have access to some Germanic dialects which are still in the 2-gender stage of development, and it should be possible to do some comparative dialectology among these dialects, not only at the syntactic level, but also the semantic. In these Germanic dialects gender reduction has been uniformly towards masculine vs. neuter, unlike the Romance languages, which have tended to masculine vs. feminine. We may suppose that the unattested dialects

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(or stages) of Old English would conform qualitatively to the Germanic patterns, though the rate of change of the insular vs. continental varieties has obviously differed. Though we cannot easily ask semantic questions of dead texts, we can use direct methods with present speakers, and the behaviour of the classshifted determiners is a constant category which could well be investigated with living informants. Associated developments in the pronouns which show up in spelling forms lend themselves better to the sociohistorical textual approach. Thus it is possible that future syntactic atlases and diachronic textual studies of the North Sea Germanic dialects may yet throw light on what developments are to be expected among the referential pronouns when a three-gender dialect reduces to two, or one. Conversely, the details of the historical English Great Gender Shift may be of interest to those studying ongoing syntactic developments in continental dialects. 14 I conclude that our Great Gender Shift may not be at all unique, but could be viewed as an integral part of the continental gender drift of the whole Germanic continuum. This theory can be tested, but not within the linguistic confines of the British Isles. Are there any scholars out there in the 2 — 3-gender belt with evidence for the diatopic or diachronic spread of Jespersen's G a p in other Germanic dialects? Notes 1. The examples and argumentation which follow are my own. As parts of Nixon's work are in use in teaching first year students in the University of Sheffield, I have been able to check my intuitions against those of some British undergraduates, born around 1970, and some Spanish and German visiting students. 2. Some reasons for starting a historical analysis with the present situation are demonstrated by Strang (1970) in A History of English. In this particular case, starting with present languages enables us to use the framework of general theories and descriptions of reference, such as those listed by Levinson (1983: 60 — 61), who summarizes: "Since demonstrative pronouns typically involve a gesture, it seems easy to assimilate such acts of reference to general theories of action' (p. 60). Because of the nature of historical evidence, most of the historical discussion has to revolve round the deixis of written texts, but each of us learns how to refer in infancy, through face-to-face interaction. If language acquisition is primarily a face-to-face business, so too is language change. 3. E. g. Northumberland, which has additional items, yin and yon in the determiner set. The following examples are from a recent historical novel, set around 1815 (Aiken, 1987: 1 0 - 1 1 , 217). (1)

...said Miss Winship, setting her chiselled lips together with the obstinate expression which had caused her nurse Phemie, regarding her at the age of three, to remark, 'Ee, yin's a hunk o' the auld granite, if iver there wor!'

Pragmatics of this and that (2)

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

415

'They say ...ye were angry aboot it, an' did awa' wi' the boy.' 'And do you believe that yourself, Mrs Slaley?'... 'No, ma'am. Ye wor a bit hard on Annie, now-an'-now, but ye'd nivor do a thing like yon. That aw do believe.' They are quoted here merely as a deterrent to monodialectal thinking. Se and ne are bracketed because although they are sidely used in spoken (nonstandard) Finnish, yet they are not entirely acceptable in the written standard, when referring to human beings. This may indicate that written Finnish finds the + H U M A N distinction useful for anaphora. In some words, e. g. pis wif, n., 'this woman', grammatical gender conflicts with natural gender. Mitchell and Robinson note that "there are already signs that the feeling for grammatical gender is weakening" in Alfred's preface to the Cura Pastoralis, where the m. noun wisdom is referred to "first by the grammatically right masculine hiene and then by the neuter hit which seems appropriate to us" (1986: 104). Those there is unidiomatic and redundant in the (southern) dialects I am familiar with, probably because those was a later arrival and was a distal from inception. An example from north-east Norfolk, spoken 1990: "So he'd catch them outside villages there, and Leatherdale'd catch these ones here" (my own tape-recording). Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (in press) demonstrate the development of ITS (spelling form it's or its) in the Early Modern English (1500 — 1710) section of the Helsinki Corpus, in a paper delivered in the Second Workshop on Sociohistorical Linguistics, held in Helsinki in tandem with the conference reported in this volume. I had no knowledge of this paper before delivering my own, but am now pleased to refer to the draft they have since shown me. They speak in their introduction of "what looks like a semantic drift in the modern English gender system". They are concerned with the rise of + HUMAN meaning in the referential pronouns, and are able to sharpen, and in some details to correct, the general picture given in the OED. Rather than summarize their conclusions here, I am pleased to refer the reader to their forthcoming paper, and to remark that we found we had arrived independently at the same problem-complex, and had suggested rather similar solutions, in spite of very different approach-routes. Nunnally (this volume) presents some new data on this development. Discussed by Ryden (1983). Or, horrid thought, that the comic-dishonourific could have been used for females before being extended to males. The neuter is also selected in Middle English in the case of that, which is used also as relativizer, with all antecedents, regardless of gender, animacy or humanness. While in agreement with Thomason and Kaufman on the necessity for retrodiction, I think that their general argument is flawed by their not taking into account the evidence of continental (Frisian and Scandinavian) parallels in the existing Old English dialects presented in Nielsen (1981a: 61 and 1981b: 258), place name evidence for Frisian settlement in the Old English period presented by Bremmer (1981) and archeological evidence for early pre-Viking Scandinavian setlement in the Anglian area presented by Hines (1984). This occasionally leads them into absurdities, as in their remarks on the timing of Low Dutch influence (p. 323). These would certainly have been avoided had they known more about the trading activities of the "Frisians", of both Frisia major and minor, in the high middle ages. These are comprehensively described by Lebecq (1983).

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13. And, by extension, probably diglossic, with WS as the High language, and literary standard. This might explain the apparent accident of the survival of no written records in *East Saxon, *East Anglian, *East Mercian. 14. The apperance of nonhistorical wh- pronouns, which has occurred most strongly in English and Dutch, could be connected with the advance of the Gender Shift across the Germanic dialect continuum.

References Aiken, Joan 1987 Deception. London: Gollancz. Ärhammar, Ν. R. —W.T. Beetstra —Ph. H. Breuker —J. J. Spahr van der Hoek (eds.) 1981 Fryske Nammen 3. Fryske Akademy: Ljouwert. Bremmer, Rolf 1981 "Frisians in Anglo-Saxon England: A historical and toponymical investigation", in: N. R. Arhammer —W.T. Beetstra —Ph. H. Breuker—J. J. Spahr van der Hoek (eds.), 45 — 94. Hines, John 1984 The Scandinavian character of Anglian England in the pre-Viking period. (BAR British Series 124.) Oxford. Jespersen, Otto 1922 A modern English grammar. Part II: Syntax. Vol. 1 (2nd edition.) Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Lebecq, Stephane 1983 Marchands et navigateurs Frisons du haut moyen age. (2 vols.) Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille. Levinson, Stephen C. 1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, Bruce —Fred C. Robinson 1986 A Guide to Old English. (4th edition.) Oxford: Blackwell. Nevalainen, Terttu —Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (in press) "Its strength and the beauty of it: The standardization of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English", in: Dieter Stein — Ingrid TiekenBoon van Ostade (eds.) Nielsen, Hans F. 1981a "Old Frisian and the Old English dialects", Us Wurk 30: 4 9 - 6 6 . 1981b Old English and the continental Germanic languages: A survey of morphological and phonological interrelations. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. Nixon, Graham n.d. Understanding English structure. [Unpublished MS.] Nunnally, Thomas (this volume) "Man's son/son of man: Translation, textual conditioning, and the history of the English genitive". [Paper originally read at the 6th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics.] Poussa, Patricia 1982 "The evolution of early standard English: the creolization hypothesis", Studio Anglia Posnaniensia 14: 70 — 85.

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Ryden, Mats 1983 "The emergence of who as relativizer", Studia Linguistica 37: 126—132. Simpson, J. A. — E. S. C. Weiner (eds.) 1989 The Oxford English Dictionary. (2nd edition, 20 vols.) Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stein, Dieter — Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.) (in press) Papers from the Second Workshop on Sociohistorical Linguistics. May 1990. Helsinki. Strang, Barbara 1970 A history of English. London: Methuen. Symonds, Julian 1982 The Detling murders. London: Macmillan. Thomason, Sarah Grey—Terrence Kaufman 1988 Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley —Los Angeles—London: University of California Press.

A valency description of Old English possessive verbs* Herbert

Schendl

The systematic description of the lexicon was for a long time the Cinderella of linguistics. This has certainly changed in recent years: both theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics have re-discovered the lexicon. One of the most positive aspects of this development is the synthesis of various approaches which for a long time were studied independently: this especially holds true of the description of verbs. Here the combination of semantic field theory and semantic and syntactic valency theories has led to a framework which integrates the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic aspects in a systematic and complementary way. The development just outlined has, however, hardly influenced research in Old English. The number of field studies of OE verbs is still limited and only very few provide a systematic description of the syntactic and semantic relations between verb and NPs (see, e. g., Goossens 1985, Ogura 1981). Outside field studies, investigation in the syntagmatic relations of OE verbs is still unsystematic and unsatisfactory. One reason for this may be that this aspect lies on the crossroads of syntax, semantics and lexicography. Neither Bosworth-Toller nor Visser (1963 — 1973) or Mitchell (1985) always provide the information looked for. The situation will not change much with the new Dictionary of Old English (Cameron —Amos —Healey 1986). Of the about 130 verbs listed in fascicle D, only 19 entries provide information on the syntactic constructions found with these verbs. The present paper will concentrate on the syntagmatic relations of Ο Ε verbs denoting possession, mainly those expressing a change of possession (i. e. verbs such as sellan 'to give', niman 'to take', onfon, begietan 'to receive' etc.). Though the paradigmatic aspect of meaning is essential for a complete lexical entry, it will not be discussed in any detail. Verbal meaning is, however, included insofar as the semantic-functional valency is derived from the meaning of the verb. This requires a semantic subclassification of verbs. In my descriptive framework the verb is seen as the central part of a proposition, on which a number of complements (including the subject) are directly dependent.

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The data of the study is based on a corpus of those "Alfredian" texts that are preserved in manuscripts from the 9th and the first half of the 10th centuries, to exclude the diachronic aspect as much as possible; the texts and the manuscripts used are found under (1): (1)

(i) Parker Chronicle (incl. 924; MS CCCC 173); (ii) Laws of Alfred and Ine (MS CCCC 173, Έ'); (iii) Cura Pastoralis (MS Hatton 20, Ή'); (iv) Orosius (BM Additional 47967, 'L'); (v) Boethius (prose parts of MS ' C \ Cotton Otho A.VI); (vi) Bede, Ecclesiastical History (MS Tanner 10, 'T').

Possession is certainly one of the most basic relations human beings are capable of perceiving or establishing. Changes of possession such as GIVING and TAKING, on the other hand, belong to the basic patterns of human interaction. Two main subtypes of possession are generally distinguished (see Seiler 1983: 47, Rauhut 1986: 33): (i) "inalienable" ("given") possession, as in John has a sister; John lost his sister in a car accident, The king was beheaded on a rainy day; (ii) "acquired" ("alienable") possession, as in John has a house, John sold his house. Of these two subtypes only the latter will form the object of this study. "Alienable" possession can be defined as a relationship between a possessor and a possessum; the possessor is prototypically [ +animate], the possessum [ +concrete]. The possessor must have potential control over the possessum, i. e. an "alienable" relation presupposes the existence of an agent (Seiler 1983: 4, 11, 47). Possessive verbs are characterized by a semantic feature DISPO (Schendl 1985: 158, Rauhut 1986: 31); its most general linguistic expression is one specific reading of the lexical item have, OE habban (as in the sentence A has B)\ all other possessive verbs can be related in a systematic way to this lexeme (Bendix 1966: 4 4 - 4 6 , Rauhut 1986: 2 7 - 2 8 ) . They can be subclassified semantically by means of the features [MOVE(MENT)] and [ACT(IVITY)], which denote extralinguistic states of affairs (cf. Jackendoff 1976: 93 f.; Dik 1980: 7; Schendl 1985: 151; Schendl 1988: 126 f.): (1) [-MOVE, -ACT] have; (ii) [-MOVE, + A C T ] keep·, (iii) [ + MOVE, -ACT] lose; (iv) [ + MOVE, + ACT] sell. The classes are seen as non-language-specific and thus also valid for Old English, see (2): (2)

+ MOVEMENT + ACTIVITY

sellan, (a)giefan (ge)niman (be)reafian for ice tan 1

— MOVEMENT — ACTIVITY

findan forleosan forloetan2

+ ACTIVITY

— ACTIVITY

healdan, habban2

habban1 agan

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On the basis of detailed contextual analyses about 140 verbal lexemes could be classified as denoting a possessive relation and subclassified according to [±MOVE] and [±ACT]; of these, only verbs with more than five instances were analysed further, leaving about 50 lexemes. The semantic analyses of the OE verbs are supported by corpus-based "diagnostics" formulated on the basis of modern linguistic tests (see Schendl 1988: 127 — 137): for the feature [ + ACT] these are: embedding in a matrix clause with verbs expressing a command etc., use of imperative, modification by certain adverbials, etc.; for [DISPO] the co-occurrence of a verb with the possessional "verb of reference" habban in a coherent stretch of text and in certain semantic relations; pairs of synonyms and antonyms, etc. Cf. example (3) with bcedon governing the converse verbs ageafe and gereafade: (3)

hiene baedon pcet he him ageafe pcet he jcerj on him gereafade. (Or 79.27)

The semantic-functional valency of the verbs is a function of the verbal meaning since it is derived from the verbal features described above: these are regarded as η-place predicates that establish corresponding semantic relations. Thus [MOVEMENT] is a 3-place predicate ascribing to its arguments the semantic relations /abl(ative)/ (i.e., "source of the movement/change"), /adl(ative)/ ("goal"), /obj(ective)/ ("object of the movement/change"). [ +ACTIVITY] accords the relation /agent(ive)/ to the active source or goal. With possessive verbs the arguments standing in an Iadl/ and /abl/ relation are accorded an additional /ben(efactive)/ relation by the feature DISPO, which distinguishes "possessive" sources and goals from locative and cognitive ones. The resulting bundles of hierarchically ordered semantic relations form semantic roles ("R"), with a maximum of four relations per role in our model.1 Four relations only occur with [-MOVE, + A C T ] verbs such as own or OE healdan, where the possessor is seen as the neutralization of /abl/ and /adl/ and thus assigned both relations. The constitution of semantic roles by bundles of semantic relations offers a number of advantages: it makes the semantic affinities between both possessive, locative and cognitive verbs and between static and dynamic possessive verbs explicit. Furthermore, converse lexemes are differentiated by their roles, though the differently bundled identical relations again make the semantic similarities explicit. Lastly, though the semantic relations are directly derived from inherent verbal features, the roles in turn are not redundant.

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Each role is directly assigned to a morphosyntactically marked complement. The labels of the C-classes 1 to 4 correspond to the morphological cases, with C3a denoting the "instrumental case"; C5 comprises PPs. These complement classes are understood as commutation classes with a wide range of possible categorial fillings. Semantic and syntactic valencies are thus seen as complementary, though semantic valency is considered basic. The entry under (4) illustrates the valency of OE sellan 'to give', which functions as the archilexeme of the subfield of "verbs of giving" (about 250 instances). 2 The entry provides information on: (i) the semantic-functional valency, i. e. the number and nature of the semantic roles; (ii) the morphosyntactic valency, i. e. the configuration of C-classes; (iii) the attested categorial filling of the C-positions; 3 (iv) the role appearing as CI, i.e. in subject position, in the passive. Further information relates to the optional character of a C-class, indicated by the brackets with C3; the slant between C3 and C5 indicates that the R(/adlative/, /benefactive/) is realized either as a C3 or — with nouns marked [-animate] — as a C5. A complete lexical entry will, of course, have to provide additional information: this will include a semantic specification of the NP in the C-positions: thus, e. g. gegan is only attested with nouns denoting a country, town, castle or a people, while there is no such restriction with gewinnan; with losian the object lost must be movable etc. Furthermore, notes on ambiguous or problematic constructions and individual examples will have to be included. sellan4 R(/abl/, /agent/, /ben/) R(/obj/) - C4 R(/adl/, /ben/) (C3)/C5(o«,to + N[-anim])

(4)

Passive: R(/obj/) — CI CI: C4: C3: C5:

N, PN, Pr, Ptc, CI (RC1 se) N, PN, Pr, Adj, Num, Ptc, CI (RC1 front(te)), lnf(0) Ν, PN, Pr, Adj, Num, Ptc PP {on, to)

Some of the patterns found in the corpus are illustrated under (5): (5)

a.

Ic him sealde hwcste & win & oele & gold [Ί gave them wheat and wine and oil and gold'] (CP 369.5)

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b.

c.

d.

& Antonius forgef eall pat gafol pat mon to Rome sellan sceolde ['and Antonius released them from the tribute that they should give (pay) to Rome'] (Or 141.21) & eall pat feoh... pe hie wip pcem sylum & wid pcem weorce sellan woldon ['and all that money ... that they wanted to give for these columns and for that work'] (Or 111.14) he larde dcet mon celmessan warlice sellan sceolde ['he taught us to give alms cautiously'] (CP 335.20)

A systematic description of OE valency poses a number of problems, both in principle and in detail, some of which shall be discussed in the following. The most problematic aspect of valency theory is certainly the differentiation between verb dependent "complements" and so-called "free adjuncts". As shown in detail in Schendl (1989 - 1 9 9 0 : 301 - 304), a purely linguistic solution of this problem is not possible for corpus languages: contrary to Greule's claim (1982: 1 9 0 - 2 0 6 , 2 0 9 - 2 1 3 ) , neither morphological criteria nor operational procedures yield satisfactory results. On the other hand, the distinction seems necessary to prevent the uncontrolled increase of complements in the lexical entry. 5 In the present model a maximum valency of three is set axiomatically for possessive verbs by the verbal features. This is justified by recourse to basic notional, i.e. extralinguistic, "situational types" (see Abraham 1980 — 1981: 21). Starting from the definition of possession as a relation between a possessor and a possessum (see above), the basic situational types of any change of possession are GIVING and its converse GETTING or TAKING. The abstract elements that prototypically constitute the situations of GIVING and TAKING are the "source", "goal", and the object of a change. Against this extralinguistic frame of reference the OE lexemes are described after careful contextual analyses, i. e. the final quantitative valency description within this frame is the result of empirical analyses. However, only the linguistic constituents referring to these three entities will be classified as complements. This does not imply an isomorphism between linguistic and notional valency, since lexeme-specific reductions of this maximal frame are possible (cf. also Wotjak 1974: 258 f.; Fillmore 1977a: 72 f.). Furthermore, information on additional constituents that are largely determined by the semantic verb class, thus having a greater degree of predictability, is provided with each entry. Such elements have been discussed extensively and either been classified as a special type of "adjunct" ("valenzmögliche

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Angaben", see Ungerer 1988: 62), or as a third class between complements and adjuncts ("so-called Middles", see Somers 1984: 523 — 528). They are not derived from verb features and thus not part of the verbal valency. For practical reasons, however, their inclusion in a description of OE verbs seems justified. Such elements are typically the INSTRUMENT with a hammer in (6 a) and the BENEFICIARY her in (6 b). Further candidates are adverbials denoting the purpose of the possessive change. Some OE examples are given under (7)· (6) (7)

a. b. a.

b. c.

He smashed the cup with a hammer. He bought her a book / a book for her. Instrument/Means/Manner: begietan: mid golde; mid cenige feoh; mid swicdome on gafole oppe on hergiunga purh pone wisdom gegan: mid gewinnum, mid gefeohte geceapian: mid feo gebycgan: mid fela pusenda talentana, mid feo Purpose: sellan: wip pcem weorce, to wife, to bote Beneficiary: begietan: him, Drihtne geniman: him

Lexeme-specific reductions of the maximal frame are obvious with verbs such as polian (11 instances, Laws only) and forleosan (15 instances), both meaning 'to lose' (see the verb entries under (8)). The meaning of these verbs excludes the specification of the 'goal' of the change (i. e. R(/ adlative/, /benefactive/), except in metaphorical use or in a different meaning of the verbs. (8)

a.

forleosan: R(/abl/, /ben/) -»• CI R(/obj/) - » C4 polian: R(/abl/, /ben/) CI R(/obj/) — C2

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b.

c.

Sehendl

Se bid swide onlic deem stioran de his stiorrodor forliest on see ['He is very like the steersman who loses his helm on the sea'] (CP 431.35) geselle CXX scill. & dolie his landes ['He shall pay 120 shillings and lose his land'] (Lawine 51)

Even a semantic role that is part of the semantic valency of a given verb need not have a morphosyntactic realisation. This is due either (a) to its deletion, or (b) to its incorporation into the verb. Deletion can be either (i) contextually determined or (ii) be the result of the semantic unspecificity of the argument (see also Kastovsky 1981 a: 189 ff., Schendl 1985: 173 —186).6 The contextual deletion rules of Old English differ in a number of points from Modern English (see Schendl 1985: 278 — 289, with ample references to Mitchell 1985); the sentences under (9) provide some examples that are unusual from a modern point of view, such as anaphoric deletion of C4 in (9 a). (9)

a.

ongyrde hine pa his sweorde & sealde his pegne ['he unbuckled his sword and gave (it) to his attendant'] (Bede 196.28)

b.

His forme gefeoht wees wid Atheniense & hie oferwonn ['His first battle was against the Athenians and (he) defeated them'] (Or 61.22)

c.

Ond se biscop nom hlaf & bletsode & peem cyninge sealde ['And the bishop took bread, and blessed (it) and gave (it) the king'] (Bede 166.1)

The situation is more complicated with gewinnan 'to get by fighting': All eight instances in the corpus have two complements (CI, C4), without explicit mention of the source of the change (cf. also Mitchell's entry (1985: § 1092): "win, get by fighting s. t. (acc., gen, dat.)"). The Concordance to Old English lists, however, two late instances from the Peterborough Chronicle with an additional C5 that realizes R(/adlative/, (benefactive/), i. e. the source, see (10). This could point to unspecified deletion in the eight corpus sentences, i. e. to a valency of 3 for gewinnan. (10)

Hu he mihte Normandige of him gewinnan ['How he might win Normandy from him'] (Chr 1090)

Because of the late date of the two entries (1090, 1105), however, we have to reckon with a possible change of meaning and valency. In such

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cases the empirical data is given precedence over the assumption of unspecified deletion in all corpus instances, something which is empirically unprovable. Thus gewinnan is classified as having a valency of 2, like geridan (see [11]), even though the largely synonymous verbs gefaran and gegan are attested with a C5 as source and thus have valency 3. (11)

gewinnan: R(/adl/, /agent/, /ben/) - » CI R(/obj/) - C4

The semantic incorporation of a role into the verb will be illustrated with the verbs beheawan 'deprive s. o. (acc.) of s. th. (dat.)' and beheafdian 'to behead' under (12). Both have a functional-semantic valency of 3. While the syntactic valency of beheawan is 3, that of beheafdian is 2: with the latter the 'object of change' (heafod) is incorporated into the verb (indicated in the verb entry by an asterisk). Both verbs denote inherent possession. (12) a.

beheawan: R(/adl/, /agent/, /ben/) CI R(/abl/, /ben/) C4 R(/obj/) C3a beheafdian: R(/adl/, /agent/, /ben/) —• CI R(/abl/, /ben/) -> C4 *R(/obj/) * heafod

b.

poet hi hine sceolden py heafde beheawan ['that they should cut off his head'] (GDPref 3(C) 37.254.9)

c.

Hi beheafdodon syppan pone ... cempan pe nolde beheafdian pone halgan wer ['They beheaded the ... warrior who did not want to behead the holy man'] (ALLS (Alban) 123)

Semantic incorporation has to rest upon careful analyses, both of the context and of the lexeme in question, i.e. its word formation pattern and its semantic history. Unlike beheafdian, there is no semantic incorporation with bereafian 'the deprive s. o. of s. t.', in spite of the morphological incorporation of the noun reaf into the verb, see the entry for reaf under (13). This is due both to a semantic change and to the derivational relationship between reaf and (be)reafian. (13)

reaf I. 'spoil, booty'; II. 'raiment, a garment, robe, vestment' (Bosworth-Toller, s. v.)

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Reaf I is evidently a deverbal derivation from reafian (see Kastovsky 1968: 93, 274), while there is no synchronic derivational relation between reaf II and the verb. Thus reaf I and II must be considered homonyms. From a diachronic point of view the three lexemes are undoubtedly related: the base form must be reaf II 'garment, robe', from which a denominal verb reafian 'deprive of garment' was derived; at this stage the role (/objective/) was incorporated morphologically and semantically (cf. also Goth, bi-raubon and beheafdian). A semantic change led to the semantic excorporation of the (/objective/) *reaf i. e. to the new meaning 'deprive of (X), rob'; at this stage reaf I was derived deverbally ('that which is taken, robbed'). Here the diachronic direction of the derivation as illustrated in (14) is crucial to the solution of the problem. (14)

reaf 11 'robe' etc. —> (be) reafian 'deprive of robe' etc. —• 'deprive of s. t.' —> reaf I 'that which is taken, booty'.

After this discussion of basic problems of a description of Old English verb valency, the question of converse lexemes shall be examined. Such lexemes evince different perspectives on possessive relations and their changes. These different and changing assignments of semantic roles to C-classes clearly relate to the thematic organization of sentences. The definition of possession given at the beginning is clearly based on the extralinguistic relation. There are evidently various ways of viewing and describing such a relation and its change in a specific language. The systematic relation between existential, locative and possessive constructions has been discussed repeatedly (e.g. by Lyons 1968: 388 — 395 and Clark 1978). This connection is obvious in sentences such as those given under (15) (cf. Lyons 1968: 391 f.; Clark 1978: 87): (15) i. ii. iii. iv.

There is a book on the table, ("existential") The book is on the table, ("locative") John has a book, ("possessive") Johannes habet librum. The book is John's. ("possessive") Liber est Johannis. — Est Johanni liber.

"Existential constructions" will not be discussed in this paper. In (iii) the possessor is CI, the possessum C4, while in (iv) the possessum is CI and the possessor C2 (or C3). These two different perspectives on "possessor" or "possessum" are also attested in Old English, see (16):

A valency description of Old English possessive verbs

(16) a.

427

Hwelc fremu bid menn dcet he gestriene eal doet him ymbutan sie, gif he forliesd dcet him oninnan bid, swelce he eall gegadrige dcette his ne sie, & forspilde hine selfne? ['What benefits it a man to acquire all that is without him, if he lose what is within him, as if he gathered all that is not his, & destroyed himself?'] (CP 333.10)

b.

Wa deem de ealnig gaderad an hine selfne doet hefige fenn, & gemonigfaldad date his ne bid. ['Woe to him who always gathers on himself the heavy mud, & increases what is not his.] (CP 329.17)

c.

Gif se hlaford him ponne wif sealde, sie hio ond hire beam pees hlafordes ['If the lord gave him a wife, then she and her children shall belong to the lord.] (LawAfEl 11.6)

All three examples are from texts or passages where Latin influence is possible or likely; the wide-spread distribution of this construction in the languages of the world, however, makes a native Germanic origin probable. Furthermore, Clark (1978: 113) has shown that "the presence of a Aave-possessive in a language always implies the presence of a ^-possessive in the same language, but not the reverse". The construction with habban (or agan) as found under (17) is, however, far more frequent: (17)

Se pe hcefd Xhida ['he who has/owns ten hides of land'] (Lawine 65)

The possessor in the C3 position (as in Est Johanni liber) is not attested in the corpus; there is, however, one instance with beon + a locative C5, which seems to imply possession, see (18), though a purely locative interpretation is also possible: (18)

Ciricsceat mon sceal agifan to pam healme ond heorde, pe se mon on bid to middum wintra ['Church-money shall be paid on/ for the harvest and hearth on which one sits at mid-winter'] (Lawine 61)

The number of possible perspective multiplies with the three constituents of a change of possession. The following discussion of the main types found in the corpus starts from the extralinguistic relation and the possible movement of the three constituents in relation to each other. This is

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illustrated by an English paraphrase, which is followed by an OE verbal lexeme denoting this perspective, and its valency pattern. This procedure avoids forcing a prefabricated grid on the data. The question as to which of the verbs can be termed possessive and which should be classified as locative is left out for the moment. 7 Types 1 and 2 denote the basic notions of GIVING and TAKING/GETTING, which are expressed by sellan 'to give' (type 1) and onfon 'to get' and geniman 'to take' (type 2) Type 1: 'Bede gives the book to Bertha.' sellan Cl/abl/, C4/obj/, C3/adl/ (19)

Ic him sealde hwcete & win & oele & gold [Ί gave them wheat and wine and oil and gold'] (CP 369.5)

Type 2 a /-agentive/: 'Bertha gets the book from Bede.' onfon Cl/adl/, C4/2/obj/, C5/abl/ (20)

pa stowe ... pe he from pam ... cyninge onfeng ['the site ... which he received from the king'] (Bede 210.21)

Type 2 b / +agentive/: 'Bertha takes the book from Bede.' (ge)niman Cl/adl/, C4/obj/, C3/abl/ (21)

& him dcet an genam pat he self hcefde ['and took from him what he already had'] (Or 62.4)

Sellan and onfon/ (ge)niman are obviously converse lexemes, more specifically 1—3 converses; i. e. the first and the last roles are exchanged in their assignment to the CI position (cf. Lyons 1977: 280). Contrary to Modern English, a passive sentence with sellan could not be equivalent to an active one with onfon, since only the C4/objective/ could be transformed into CI. (I.e. the type 'He was given the book' was not possible in Old English.) This restriction on the passive might account for the extremely small number of passives with sellan, namely only 4 out of about 250 instances, all from Bede, and with an unspecified "source". 8 (22)

ond him wees seald seo bysen on gewrite pas seonodes ['and he was given a copy in writing of the synodical proceedings'] (Bede 314.31)

Type 3: 'Bertha takes Bede from the book.'

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This type is more problematic. Its paraphrase implies an "inverse" perspective, i. e. that the person is seen as being taken from the inanimate object and not vice versa. Such an interpretation has been proposed for verbs such as bereafian, beniman etc. Thus, Visser (1963 — 1973: §§ 680 f.) interprets the instrumental case eallum his cehtum in example (23 a) as an "ablative object", while Kageyama (1974: 106) assigns to the OE genitive the basic semantic function "Source" or "Location": according to his interpretation heora clapa ond wcepna in (23 b) would have to be assigned the relation /ablative/. (23) a.

pcet his cirice eallum hire cehtum wees bereafod ['that his church was robbed of/from all its possessions'] (Bede 298.19)

b.

pcet he hie bereafade heora clapa & heora wcepna ['he deprived them of their clothes and their weapons'] (Or 66.27)

With such an inverse interpretation, the verb bereafian would be a 2 — 3 converse of geniman and thus have the valency patterns given under (24); the "normal" interpretation, on the other hand, is exemplified in the pattern under (25): (24) (25)

bereafian

Cl/adl/, C2/abl/, C4/obj/ Cl/adl/, C3a/abl/, C4/obj/ Cl/adl/, C2/obj/, C4/abl/

A definite decision is hardly possible for early Old English. Sentences such as (26), where the C5 on us 'from us' clearly denotes the "human" source, point however to a re-adjustment of an unusual pattern to the "more natural", since "anthropocentric" pattern of Type 2 (Cl/adl/, C4/ obj/, C5/abl/). (26)

& lytles hwcet on us bereafiad ['and take from us a little bit'] (Cl/adl/, C4/obj/, C5/abl/) (Or 83.2)

The different frequencies and textual restrictions of the three patterns of bereafian are given under (27): in all three patterns CI denotes the goal of the possessional change, i.e. R(/adl/, /agent/, /ben/). Only in the Orosius, however, are more than one of these patterns found. (27)

bereafian CI, C4, C5 CI, C4, C2 CI, C3(a), C(4)

Or 2 2 0

CP 0 3 0

Bede 0 0 1 0

Bo 0 2

Total 2 8 1

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For the interpretation of type 3 example (28), from Boethius, is noteworthy. It shows a deliberate change of perspective with the verb afyrran 'to remove, take (away)' within the same sentence. Though the valency pattern remains constant (Cl/adl/, C4/obj/, C3/abl/), the change from the : +human: "source" and the :-animate: "object" to a :-animate: source and : + human: "object" shows parallels with the "inverse" interpretation of bereafian. (28)

pcet hi ongiten hwonon him se wela come & olecce pcem pe Ices he him pone welan afyrre, odde hine pam welan ['that they understand whence the riches come and be submissive to him lest "he take them the riches or them of/from the riches'"] (Bo 134.17)

Types 4 and 5 are characterized by a difference in directionality, i.e. type 5 presents an inverse perspective of type 4. Though the semantic and syntactic valency patterns of (be)cuman are identical, the difference is again mirrored in the assignment of the semantic roles to the entity marked [ + human]: Type 4: 'Bede comes to the book.' becuman Cl/obj/, C5/adl/ cuman Cl/obj/, C5/adl/ (29)

pcet hie eft to hiora agnum becoman ['that they came then to their property'] (Or 87.24)

Type 5: 'The book comes to Bede.' becuman Cl/obj/, C3/C5/adl/ cuman Cl/obj/, C3/C5/adl/ (30) a. deah pcem feohgitsere cume swa fela welena swa para sondcorna bid be pisum sceclifum ['even if to the avaricious man come so many riches as there are grains of sand by the cliffs of the sea'] (Bo 19.1) b.

be poem andweardan welan pe oft cymd to deem goodum ['about the present prosperity/happiness which often comes to the good'] (Bo 134.10)

Types 6 a and b are differentiated by the presence vs. absence of the relation /agentive/ in the Cl-position, while type 7 again presents an inverse perspective of type 6. In six out of the seven instances of the verb

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losian i.e. type 7) the object lost is [ +animate] (cattle, slaves); only in example (33) is it [-animate], but [ +movable]. Type 6 a /-agentive/: 'Bede loses the book.' forleosan Cl/abl/, C4/obj/ (31)

Se bid swide onlic deem stioran de his stiorrodor forliest on see ['He is very like the steersman who loses his helm on the sea'] (CP 431.35)

Type 6 b / +agentive/: 'Bede abandons the book.' forlcetan Cl/abl/, C4/obj/ (32)

pa forlet he eal pa ding, pe he for worulde hafde ... & eac of his edle gewat ['then he left all that he had in the world ... and also withdrew from his country'] (Bede 216.33)

Type 7: 'The book escapes (from) Bede.' losian Cl/obj/, C3/abl/ (33)

Gif mon ... munuce feoh odfeeste ... & hit him losige ['if a man entrusts property to a monk ... and "it loses" him'] (LawAf 20)

The table under (34) shows the mapping of the different perspectives into the valency patterns. Some of the types discussed above can certainly be interpreted as "figurative" or "metaphorical", and the respective verbs as locative (e. g. cuman and becuman\ with losian this is already less clear). The question is, however, not relevant in this context. What counts is the linguistic means available within the OE verb system to describe an extralinguistic change of possession. These are mirrored in a difference in the thematic organization of sentences. Unless otherwise stated, the CI always stands in an /agentive/ relation; the semantic features under / adlative/, /ablative/ and /objective/ are the normal semantic specifications of an NP in the relevant positions; any deviation is indicated under the relevant type. 9 Different types of perspective of OE verbs Type

Lexeme

1 2a 2b

sellati onfon geniman

Goal [ +human] C3 CI/-agent/ CI

Object [+concrete] C4 C4/C2 C4

Source [ + human] CI C5 C3

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bereafian (be)cuman (be)cuman forleosan for Ice tan losian

CI C5 [ + conc] C3/C5 [ + hum]

C4 CI CI C4 C4 CI

[ + hum] [ + hum] [ + conc]

C2 [-I-conc]

CI/-agent/

CI [ + conc]

C3 [ + hum]

In conclusion, the survey of the attested valency patterns under (35) shall be briefly commented on: Even at first glance the different number of patterns between GIVEand ΤΑΚΕ-verbs is striking. There are roughly twice as many patterns with the latter. While with GIVE the /adlative/ relation ("goal") is clearly assigned to a C3 (to a C5 only if the NP is [-animate]), there is no such definite assignment of the /ablative/ ("source") relation with TAKE verbs. With the largest number, it is, however, a C5 (with cet, on, from). If we leave the abstract valency patterns and look at their realizations, these C5s are only very rarely expressed in a given utterance: i. e. the pragmatic or communicative need to denote the source of a ΤΑΚΕ-action seems to have been much smaller than the need to denote the goal of a GIVEaction. With ΤΑΚΕ-verbs the source is more regularly expressed with the 6e-verbs, which evidently offer a different perspective on the whole process of TAKING. The number of such lexemes is, however, rather small. Both the small number and the unusual perspective may have contributed to the fact that these verbs tend to show variations of pattern and later either disappeared or changed into another pattern. The beginning of this process already seems to be indicated in the variant patterns found in the corpus. With the other lexemes, variant patterns are less frequent and restricted to certain subtypes. Apart from the partitive genitive, which could be subsumed under the predominant C4-class, the main variation is found between C3 and C5. Finally, the differing frequency of the variant patterns with a given lexeme (see above for bereafian) are a further point worth mentioning, though a systematic study of this point is beyond the scope of this paper. (35)

Valency patterns

/abl/

/obj/

CI CI

C4 C2

CI CI CI

C4 C2 C4

/adl/

( i ) GIVE

forltEtan, forleosan polian (ge)sellan*, (a)giefan, blotan (ge)betan, gedcelan, offrian forgiefan onlcenan (ge)sellan*, bebycgan

C3 C3 C5

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(ii) TAKE

befon, flndan, forste lan gefon, geracan, gesamnian gestrienan strienan stalian niman, geniman* geniman*, onfon*, under/on begietan, bereafian, geceapian gefaran, gegan, gebycgan ofteon ceapian, onfon beniman* onfon* beniman* bedoelan, beniman*, bereafian* reafian * The asterisk denotes verbs with more tl

C4 C2 C3

C4

CI CI CI CI

C5 C3 C5 C4 C5 C4

C4 C2 C2 C4 C3 C3

CI CI CI CI CI CI

C4

C2

CI

one valency pattern.

Notes * Special thanks to Dr. H. Mittermann for his extensive discussion of an earlier version of this paper. 1. Relations are written within slants, roles within brackets. 2. The entries for the largely synonymous verbs (a)giefan, forgiefan, gesellan differ only in minor points from that for sellan, though synonymy does not necessarily imply identical valency structures. 3. This information is redundant in a complete grammar of Old English except for information on clausal and infinitival complements; at the present state of the grammatical description of Old English it seems, however, justified. 4. Abbreviations: N(oun), P(roper)N(ame), Pr(onoun), Adj(ective), Num(eral), R(elative), Cl(ause), Ptc 'Particle', lnf(0) 'Infinitive without to\ PP 'Prepositional Phrase'. 5. Cf. also Hickey's approach (Hickey 1984) and its discussion in Schendl 1989 — 1990: 303-304. 6. While contextual deletion rules are part of a text grammar, the possibility of unspecific deletion has to be indicated in the lexical entry, see the C3 with sellan in (6). Unspecific deletion can only be detected by way of negative delimitation, i. e. it is assumed if the deleted complement cannot be definitely recovered from the linguistic context. These two basically different types of deletion are not systematically separated in traditional descriptions such as Visser. 7. Instead of the complete role specifications only the relevant semantic relations /ablative/, /adlative/, /objective/ and /agentive/ will be given. 8. It is noteworthy that types 5 and 8, which view the possessum in the CI position in an active sentence, are equally rare. 9. The different theoretical status of the semantic features [ + h u m a n ] etc. as properties of an NP, and of the semantic relations /adlative/ etc. should once again be emphasized.

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References Abraham, Werner 1980 — 1981 "Der Entscheidungsweg zur Valenzbestimmung. Wie legt man die Leerstellen bei einem Prädikat fest?", Alpha. Zeitschrift für Deutschstudenten 3: 17 — 26. Bendix, Edward, H. 1966 Componential analysis of general vocabulary: The semantic structure of a set of verbs in English, Hindi and Japanese. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bosworth, Joseph — T. Northcote Toller 1898 An Anglo-Saxon dictionary. (Supplemented by T. Northcote Toller 1921.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cameron, Angus — Ashley C. Amos — A. diPaolo Healey 1986 Dictionary of Old English: Fascicle D. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Clark, Eve 1978 "Locationals: Existential, locative and possessive constructions", in: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), 8 5 - 1 2 6 . Cole, Peter — Jerrold M. Sadock (eds.) 1977 Syntax and semantics, 8: Grammatical relations. New York: Academic Press. Cole, Roger W. (ed.) 1977 Current issues in linguistic theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dik, Simon C. 1980 Studies in functional grammar. London: Academic Press. Esser, Jürgen — Axel Hübler (eds.) 1981 Forms andfunctions: Papers in general, English and applied linguistics presented to Vilem Fried on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 149.) Tübingen: Narr. Fillmore, Charles 1977 a "The case for case reopened", in: Peter Cole — Jerrold M. Sadock (eds.), 59-81. 1977 b "Topics in lexical semantics", in: Roger W. Cole (ed.), 76 — 138. Fisiak, Jacek (ed.) 1984 Historical syntax. (Trends in linguistics: studies and monographs 23.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1985 Papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 34.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Goossens, Louis 1985 "Framing the linguistic action scene in Old and Present-Day English: cwepan, secgan, sp(r)ecan and Present-Day English speak, talk, say and tell compared", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 149-170. Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.) 1978 Universals of human language, 4: Syntax. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Greule, Albrecht 1982 Valenz, Satz, Text. Syntaktische Untersuchungen zum Evangelienbuch Otfrids von Weißenburg. München: Wilhelm Fink.

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Healey, Antonette diPaolo — Richard L. Venezky 1980 A microfiche concordance to Old English. Toronto: The Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies. Hickey, Raymond 1984 "A valency framework for the Old English verb", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 199-216. Jackendoff, Ray S. 1976 "Towards an explanatory semantic representation", Linguistic Inquiry 7: 89-150. Kageyama, Taro 1974 "The Old English genitive and role transposition phenomena", Studies in English Literature: 89 — 113. Kastovsky, Dieter 1968 Old English deverbal substantives derived by means of a zero morpheme. [Diss. Tübingen.] Esslingen: Langer. 1981a "Implizite Kasus", in: Günter Radden — Rene Dirven (eds.), 189 — 200. 1981b "Interaction of lexicon and syntax: Lexical converses", in: Jürgen Esser — Axel Hübler (eds.), 123-136. Lyons, John 1968 Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markus, Manfred (ed.) 1988 Historical English. On the occasion of Karl Brunner's 100th birthday (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Anglistische Reihe 1.) Innsbruck: Institut für Anglistik. Mitchell, Bruce 1985 Old English syntax. (2 vols.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ogura, Michiko 1981 The syntactic and semantic rivalry of quoth, say and tell in Medieval English. Hirakata City: Kufs Publication. Radden, Günter — Rene Dirven (eds.) 1981 Kasusgrammatik und Fremdsprachendidaktik. (Anglistik und Englischunterricht 14.) Heidelberg: Winter. Rauhut, Frank 1986 Have — Semantik, Syntax und funktionale Charakteristik eines Verbs (Linguistische Studien, Reihe A, Arbeitsberichte 186.) Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften. Schendl, Herbert 1985 Untersuchungen zur Valenz altenglischer Verba. [Unpubl. habilitation diss., University of Vienna.] 1988 "Semantic verb classes and the use of diagnostics in Old English", in: Manfred Markus (ed.), 1 2 4 - 1 3 9 . 1989 — 1990 "Probleme altenglischer Verbvalenzen", Klagenfurter Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 1 5 - 1 6 : 2 9 8 - 3 1 3 . Seiler, Hansjakob 1983 Possession as an operational dimension of language. Tübingen: Narr. Somers, Η. L. 1984 "On the validity of the complement-adjunct distinction in valency grammar", Linguistics 22: 507 — 530.

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Ungerer, Friedrich 1988 Syntax der englischen Adverbialien. (Linguistische Arbeiten 215.) Tübingen: Niemeyer. Visser, Frederik Th. 1963 — 1973 An historical syntax of the English language. (4 vols.) Leiden: Brill. Wotjak, Gerd 1974 "Untersuchungen zur Bedeutung ausgewählter deutscher Verben", Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 27: 246 — 262.

Constraints on the loss of case marking of wA-pronouns in the English of Shakespeare and other poets of the Early Modern English period Who(m)1

Edgar W. Schneider

1. Introduction The English language is currently undergoing the final stage of a process which started almost a thousand years ago, the loss of case marking in w/i-pronouns in pairs of oppositions such as who/whom and whose/of which. This is an important development, because it eradicates one of the final remnants of the earlier case system of English and therefore appears to be in line with the language's "drift" from a predominantly synthetic to a largely analytic nature (see Sapir 1921: ch. 7). This change was preceded by a related phenomenon, one which I do not propose to discuss any further here, the merger between the accusative form whone/whane/ whaene of Old English and the dative (later to be called "oblique") form whaem/wham in the transition to Middle English. The loss of the final consonant in the resulting form whom began as early as in the Late Middle English period, and it has not finally vanished. Although Sapir predicted its disappearance "within a couple of hundred years" (1921: 167), the form whom is still very much alive; however, it is considered very formal, and in spoken English it is practically restricted to a few marked positions, especially immediately after a preposition. In fact, it is not even clear whether we are talking about a process of ongoing change or imminent loss at all, for a closer look at the facts seems to indicate a case of long-standing, stable variability rather than linear development: "the present uncertainities about the use of who and whom are perfectly familiar in the 16c — indeed, they are almost as old as the use of these forms as relatives" (Strang 1970: 143). Whether whom is really disappearing is far from uncontroversial, while whose even seems to be gaining ground again, according to modern grammars. Quite surprisingly, however, we have comparatively few details concerning the precise conditions effective in the early phases of this devel-

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opment, together with the inroads it made. There is an extensive literature on relativization in that period, but most of it focusses on topics other than the incipient morphological change that affected these forms. The primary interest of many studies is the choice of relative p r o n o u n s and constructions, in particular the intrusion of the w/z-forms into this function 1 — a problem which is only indirectly related to the present topic. Another matter that is frequently dealt with is the gradual restriction of who and its inflected variants to h u m a n antecedents and, alternatively, of which to n o n h u m a n s 2 — this will also not be dealt with in any greater detail here, but it is a constraint that has been taken into consideration and will be found to play a role in the selection of the possessive forms. Finally, we have references to the repeated occurrence of the marked f o r m whom in the subject position in the Early M o d e r n English ( E M o d E ) period 3 — a related phenomenon that is a product of the instability of case marking systems at that time but is not the topic of the present study. The use of who for whom in non-subject positions has been observed and commented on (e.g. G r a b a n d 1965: 273 — 276), but it has not been the focus of individual studies. All that we have on this pattern are fairly general assessments of its frequency but no detailed analysis of the constraints that operate in this process. G r a b a n d remarks: "Der Rivalitätskampf zwischen who und whom wird merkwürdigerweise von frühne. G r a m m a t i k e r n k a u m beachtet" [Remarkably, the rivalry between who and whom was hardly noted by E M o d E grammarians] (1965: 274), and roughly the same applies to the present day. In addition, the related paradigmatic relationship between the genitive forms whose and of which has been almost totally ignored. 4 This paper provides a systematic and quantitative analysis of the impact of a number of presumably influential factors on the choice of whom or who in non-subject functions and of possessive/genitive whose or of which in literary texts of the Early M o d e r n English period, and thus attempts to throw further light on the details of this process. F o r the first of these variables, I will present a fairly comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon in question in Shakespeare's English, followed by a brief comparison with the usage in the idiolects of six other poets respectively of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, namely Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson (in his poetry only), George Herbert, John Milton in his poetry, and William Congreve. Variability in the genitive will then be studied for all authors jointly.

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Shakespeare's English is an obvious choice because the corpus of his writings, in addition to being widely studied and the best-known model case of Early Modern English, is sufficiently homogeneous and comprehensive to permit such an approach. Furthermore, his use of language is innovative and creative, while many of his contemporaries and other writers of the Early Modern English period are much more conservative in their linguistic usage.

2. Methodology In the corpus outlined above, all forms of whom and who in nonsubject functions were listed and coded 5 according to a number of factors that were thought to be of possible influence: — text type, for Shakespeare only, as marked by Spevack: "p" for prose passages, "v" for verse lines; — clause type: the two main types of interrogative ("Int") and relative ("Rel") clauses were distinguished; each of them was subdivided into two subtypes, namely "main" vs. "sub(ordinate)" if Int, and "defining)" vs. "nondef(ining)" in the case of Rel; — syntactic function of the wA-pronoun in the respective clause: "Odir" (direct object) or "PrepC" (prepositional complement). In the latter case, the preposition was noted, 6 and it was coded whether it preceded the whword or was stranded, i. e. postponed behind it to the end of the clause (v/n, i.e. "vorjnach")·, — human or non-human antecedent. The same procedure was employed in the coding of the attestations of whose and possessive of which, with the exception of syntactic function, which cannot be ascribed to these typically attributive items in the same fashion. The database management system: "R:Base for DOS" was used to store and analyze this set of information. Two complementary approaches were employed for the quantitative analyses. For a preliminary analysis, the provisions for counting, cross-tabulation, and conditional selection of response types offered by R:Base provided quantitative distributions that could be submitted to testing for statistical significance. In particular, the chi-square test of independence for a contingency table was used to

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test the null hypothesis of independence between the selection of form (who/whom) and the variants of the respective constraint. 7 Second, the VARBRUL program package was chosen for a comprehensive analysis, because it is the best possible tool for investigating which input factors contributed to a given variant distribution and the extent to which each factor was effective. VARBRUL has been developed by American and Canadian linguists and mathematicians as a means of automatizing the calculating of variable constraints in Labovian "variable rules", as introduced in Labov (1969). While the concept of the variable rule as such, and in particular its formalization within the generative framework, are only rarely adopted nowadays because of certain theoretical shortcomings, the explanatory power of VARBRUL for a factor regression analysis has won wide recognition and is frequently used, especially by American sociolinguists. 8 The program provides a statistical regression analysis of all the factors that contribute to the choice of either form, and calculates the strength of influence of each factor. It permits the analyst to define a set of possibly influential factor groups (as, in the present case, text type, clause type, syntactic function, etc.) and, within each of these, a set of individual factors, or environmental conditions, (such as p-v, Rel-Int, etc.), and requires that every individual occurrence of a form in a study corpus be categorized for exactly one applying factor per factor group. Within a factor group, the effect of each factor is then expressed as a value which may vary between 1 — if the factor is a knockout constraint that absolutely determines a variant — and zero — a knockout factor that inhibits it. Among factor groups, the significant ones are selected and ranked from the most to the least influential one by a so-called stepup/down routine.

3. Whom/who in Shakespeare's English The Shakespeare database consists of 526 items, 71 instances of who (13.5%) and 455 cases of whom (86.5%). Table 1 provides the VARBRUL output; square brackets indicate details that I have added for explanation. The first part is the so-called " M A K E C E L L " display of frequencies for individual factors, corresponding in principle to simple matrix crosstabulations of one factor by another which are provided, for example, by R:BASE and can be submitted to an individual chi-square analysis.

Constraints on the loss of case marking of w/i-pronouns

441

Table 1. Output of VARBRUL analysis (program IVARB) for who/whom in Shakespeare [modified, with explanatory additions] Binomial variable rule analysis of shakvarb. ell Who/whom in Shakespeare 5/17/1990 9 : 7 : 43 Token file: shakvarb. tok Condition file: shakvarb. con Application value: 0 [ = who] Group

APPS*

TOTS

Percent

1 ([Factor] 2 [text type]) ρ ν

24 47

68 458

35 10

Total

71

526

13

[prose] [verse]

2 ([Factor] 3 [clause type]) i r

42 29

94 432

45 7

Total

71

526

13

[interrog.] [relative]

3 ([Factor] 4 [clause subtype]) m s η d

34 8 23 6

70 24 309 123

49 33 7 5

Total

71

526

13

[main int.] [subord. int.] [non-def. rel.] [defining rel.]

4 ([Factor] 5 [antecedent]) h i

67 4

478 48

14 8

Total

71

526

13

[human] [non-human]

5 ([Factor] 6 [syntactic function]) ο ρ

49 22

300 226

16 10

Total

71

526

13

[dir. object] [prep, comp.]

Column APPS shows the absolute frequency of the selected "application value", in this case who, in a category. TOTS gives the total number of tokens per category, and the third column, PERCENT, shows the resulting proportion of the application value out of the total number of possible tokens.

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Table 1. (continued) Group

Ϊ OTS

APPS*

Percent

6 ([Factor] 7 [preposition]) w 1 f t r Total [n m V i g h a

3 9 1 6 1

19 10 17 74 21

16 90 6 8 5

20

141

14

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

19 18 5 8 9 5 3

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

[with] [withal] [on [to] [for]

* * * * * * *

knockout knockout knockout knockout knockout knockout knockout

* * * * * * *]

[on] [from] [over] [in] [against] [through] [at]

7 ([Factor] 18 [position of preposition]) V η

10 12

202 24

5 50

Total

22

226

10

Total

71

526

13

63 Cells Input ρ = i = m = h = ο = w = ν =

.46 .59 .78 .71 .47 .72 .41 .27

*APPS TOTS Percent

[before] [after]

19 Factors — pvirmndshiopwlftrvn V r η i Ρ 1 η

.41 = .22 = .56 = .53 = .28 = .77 .73

d

= .42

s

=

.31

f

= .58

t

=

.30

r

=

.42

= frequency of selected "application value", in this case who = total number of tokens per category = proportion of application value out of total number of possible tokens

The additional step-up/step-down routine of IVARB selects three of the factor groups as significant within the regression procedure. According to this analysis, the choice of wh-form is most strongly determined by clause type, with the position of a preposition coming next in influence and text type third in importance.

Constraints on the loss of case marking of w/a-pronouns

443

3.1. Text type The first paragraph of the M A K E C E L L display in Table 1 concerns factor 2, text type (because factor 1, form, contains the application value). It tells us that who was found 24 times (APPS) in prose passages, out of a total of 68 (TOTS) prose examples, i.e. in 35 per cent of all possible cases. In verse lines, the corresponding value is only 10 per cent, so informal style, prose, obviously favors the use of the uninfected form. The distribution is highly significant, with an error probability of less than 0.1 per cent (chi-square = 29.67 at 1 degree of freedom [df]). The regression estimates the impact of the factor "prose" as .59 on the scale between 1 and 0. This indicates that what we are encountering here is a case of "change from below", an innovation introduced at the lower end of the socio-stylistic range of internal variation. It is interesting to observe that this is in line with the stylistic values attributed to these forms in modern English.

3.2. Clause type The next two paragraphs of Table 1 display the distribution of w/z-forms across clause types and subtypes. As mentioned before, the type of clause in which the form occurs is the strongest of all influences found, with a chi-square value of 92.09 at one degree of freedom and an error chance of less than 0.1 per cent. Although we do have 29 instances of an object form who in relative clauses, this amounts to no more than 7 per cent of such clause types, and it is predominantly in interrogative clauses that objective who is to be found, being chosen in almost half (45 per cent) of all possible cases; VARBRUL evaluates the impact of interrogative clauses in promoting the form who as .78. This result confirms general assessments given by previous grammarians (Graband 1965: 283; Franz 1939: 296; Brunner 1962: 157-158). Brunner's statement that the usage extends from main to subordinate interrogative clauses is in line with the figures, and also with the .71 estimation in the regression formula, but cannot be statistically substantiated on the basis of the cross-tabulation of these instances. 49 per cent of the main interrogative clauses, as opposed to only 33 per cent of the subordinate interrogatives, have the uninfected form who, but the chi-square test indicates that the possibility of this distribution being a chance result cannot be excluded, even at the lowest level of confidence that is conventionally accepted, namely 95 per

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cent (chi-square = 1.12 at 1 df). The subtypes of relative clauses do not play a role, there being but a slight difference (7% of nonrestrictive versus 5% of restrictive clauses), which is far below the significance threshold (chi-square = 0.56, 1 df)· The coding of whether or not the referent is human was intentional and is relevant for the study of whose/of which. It would have been an unexpected result if there had been a connection between this factor and the choice of who or whom·, as it turns out (paragraph 4 of Table 1, factor 5), this is not the case. Cross-tabulation was carried out and showed that there is no significant correlation (chi-square = 0.77, 1 df).

3.3. Syntactic function At first sight, the precentage values of this category, displayed in paragraph 4 of Table 1, appear similar to those of the one just mentioned, category of referent. Due to the much more equal distribution of the attestations over the two subcategories, however, the results have to be seen quite differently — a detail that illustrates the need for a statistical evaluation of figures. Sixteen per cent of the direct object forms, as opposed to ten per cent of the prepositional complements, are uninflected, a distribution which in itself is significant at ρ < .05 (chi-square = 4.25, df = 1). However, this has to be interpreted with care. One factor which is clearly of greater influence is the position of preposition complement clauses: only five per cent of all w/i-forms which immediately follow a preposition are uninflected, but with preposition stranding the form who comes up in fifty per cent of all instances (chi-square = 44.55, 1 df: significant with p divid + en b. /divi/

While verbal inflection would attach to stem (6 a) and yield (7 a), abstract nominal derivation would operate on stem (6 b), also using an allomorph of the suffix; the result would then appear as in (7 b). (7)

a. b.

DIVIDEy + INFINITIVE > /divid + en/ DIVIDEy + ATIONan- > /divi + sion/

Within Natural Morphology, in order to avoid abstract morphemes, we could start out with the base /divi/. Instead of T4, dyvisoun would then be T1 or T2 (/divi + soun/), whereas inflection would have to operate on T6 because of the extra /d/ (/divi + d + en/). There are various reasons why this solution is undesirable, the most important one being the counter-intuitive shape of the stem /divi/. Obviously the question of which status Natural Morphology ascribes to the input to morph(on)ological processes merits a more thorough treatment than can be given here. For the moment we have to make do with the observation that Natural Morphology would not favour abstract representations of morphemes. If there is a choice, as in the case of /divi(d)/ above, Natural Morphology prefers those morpheme representations which are less abstract or nearer to the word-level.

The status of word formation in Middle English

473

This is also the reason why threshold 6 is needed in the description of Middle English derivation. It allows us to account for the different number and/or order of segments in cases like corump + en : corup + cion or obei+en : obedi+ence without recourse to abstract morpheme representations. 17 3.3. Let us now take a look at how the suffixes in (4) are actually distributed over this scale. The table in (8) gives us a first approximation based on a cursory review of the data collected from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Germanic suffixes are in upper case, Romance suffixes in lower case. (8)

Morphotactic

transparency of nominal suffixes

1

2

3

4

5

6

DOM HEDE NESS SHIP LAC RHEDEN ment (ite) (aunce) (erie)

UNG ite al aunce acie age erie esse

ite

acioun (aunce) acie

TH (NESS) (aunce) UMLAUT

acioun

Several suffixes appear in more than one place; if one type of behaviour is clearly less frequent than the other it appears in brackets. At this point my account of frequency is a more or less impressionistic one, based on a cursory review of the data. A detailed account of the figures concerning a subgroup of these suffixes will be given in section 4.2. below. For the moment the table in (8) tells us that Germanic patterns cluster mainly round thresholds one and five. Romance suffixes have only one representative on level one; the majority occupy threshold two, with thresholds three and four being occupied exclusively by Romance suffixes. At threshold five we have suffixes with additional stem-mutation such as TH, but I have also included word-formation by umlaut in the table for a more complete representation of the word-formation options available for Middle English. We can thus say that Germanic derivation is strongly agglutinative, but that it also has the choice of stem-nuclear mutation, i. e. umlaut. Romance derivation ranges from being weakly agglutinative to being

474

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Dalton-Puffer

entirely fusional. It all depends now on which of these can be regarded as best representing the system-defining properties of Middle English derivation in the sense of Wurzel (1984). If we accept the claim that English morphology was undergoing a typological change from a variable to an invariable-base morphology, a process that probably started in Late Old English (Kastovsky 1988: 162), we can expect a reshuffling in the system-adequacy of several morphological processes. In the earlier system there was a well-defined place for processes operating on variable bases/stems, e. g. word-formation by umlaut or the strong-strength type derivation. In an invariable base morphology these processes have a much lower system-adequacy and hence their chances of remaining productive should be greatly reduced. For complex lexemes borrowed from French showing similarly unfashionable characteristics, chances of their derivational pattern ever becoming productive in English should be accordingly poor.

4. 4.1. In the following I would like to take a closer look at a subset of the suffixes in (4) and (8) in order to determine whether any of these expectations can be verified. These suffixes are: UNG, NESS, ATION, ANCE and MENT, all of which derive abstract nouns from verbs.' 8 All figures and percentages will refer to the token frequency of these five items in the Middle English part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, subperiods one to three. These three subperiods ME1, ME2, ME3 cover the years from 1150 to 1420. The five suffixes will be discussed in the order of falling frequency. 4.2. 4.2.1. UNG. As is well known, the form of U N G changes from /ung/ to /ing/ during the Middle English period. In ME1 over two thirds of tokens still have /ung/, after 1250 /ung/ has disappeared completely. Whatever its realization, UNG is attached to verbal infinitives. Due to the ongoing changes in the inflectional system, the morphological status of the infinitive is in a state of flux during the Middle English period. In dialects where the inflectional infinitive ending -en is still going strong, the derivation of UNG-nominals would have to be classed as stem-based. In

The status of word formation in Middle English

475

the northern dialects, and, in general, at a later time, the ending -en was lost and the derivation with U N G thus has to be regarded as word-based. The next step is to check all the occurrences of U N G for their rating on the scale of morphotactic transparency (MTT) as presented in (3). With a modified format of the scale that retains only the numbering of the thresholds, our results for U N G can be presented as follows: (9)

MTT of U N G : 1

2

3

4

5

6

1840 100%

By placing the token figure and the percentage close to "T2" but not quite under it I want to indicate that UNG-formations tend to undergo resyllabification but not in all cases. This method of representation is admittedly a bit imprecise but I prefer not to emphasize the distinction between T1 and T2 while we cannot be sure of its relevance to morphology. 4.2.2. NESS. The suffix NESS forms abstract nouns chiefly from adjectives and verbs. The table in (11) breaks down the NESS-formations according to the category membership of their derivational base. (10)

The suffix NESS ( 1 1 5 0 - 1 4 2 0 ) wordclass of base

ME1 token

ME2 type

ME3

token

type

token

type

A V other

372 85 11

94 27 3

243 40 6

53 5 1

527 35 13

101 6 1

TOTAL

468

124

289

60

575

108

Formations on the basis of numerals, quantifiers and nouns — subsumed under "other" — are so few that we shall disregard them for the moment and concentrate on NESS-words derived from adjectives and verbs. When it attaches to adjectives, NESS forms abstract nouns denoting a state (nomina essendi) of the type holinesse, euelnesse. These formations are highly transparent, which probably accounts for the continuing popularity of the suffix. 19 But de-adjectival NESS is not our concern at the moment. As for deverbal formations, in Old English, NESS could attach to the infinitive stem as well as to the past and present participles of the

476

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Dalton-Puffer

verb without any discernible effect on the action-noun meaning of the derivative (Kastovsky 1985: 246). With strong verbs this freedom of choice entailed vowel alternation through ablaut, a process type considerably further down on the naturalness scale than the formations on an unchanging adjectival basis. Examples for deverbal NESS would be: drednessejdradnesse, druncnesse, asolknesse, ales (end) nesse, forgefenessel forgifnesse. A calculation of the percentages for the "types" columns of table (10) reveals that deverbal NESS-formations make up 21.7% of all types in subperiod one, 8.3% in subperiod two and 5.5% in subperiod three. 20 This is a noteworthy decline and I suspect it is the continuation of a process that started before the Middle English period so that the figures for subperiod one do not reflect the original strength of the deverbal NESS-pattern in English. However, there is no way of making any more definitive statements in the absence of a quantitative study of NESS in Old English.21 For Middle English word-formation as a whole this means that NESS can no longer be rightfully regarded as a deverbal suffix. 4.2.3. ACIOUN. Out of 599 tokens in the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, 485 items (80.9%) have a related verb testified in Middle English.22 114 (19.1%) are simplex or their bases occur only as part of other derivations; these items have been added to the naturalness scale in an ad-hoc adaption under the rubric "RS" for "Root&Simplex". (11)

MTT of ACIOUN 1

2 157 26.2%

e.g.: Tl/2 T3 T4 T6

3 53 8.8%

4 202 33.7%

5

6 73 12.2%

RS 114 19%

accuse + en = accus+ acion affect + en — affec + cion dyvid+en = dyvi(s)ion corump + en = corup + cion

Only about a quarter of all words containing ACIOUN are ideally transparent. What is worse, those which are not, are opaque in four different ways. 4.2.4. AUNCE. With 520 tokens, this suffix is almost as frequent as ACIOUN. Formations with AUNCE are distributed over the MTT-scale as follows:

The status of word formation in Middle English (12)

MTT of A U N C E 1

2

3 33 6.4%

165 31.7%

e.g.: Tl/2 T3 T5 T6

477

4

5 63 12%

6 16 3.1%

R 125 24%

S 118 22.7%

signefi + en : signefi+ance purvei+en : purve + ance contain + en : conten + ance obei+en : obed+i+ence

About one third of the words containing the string /a(u)nse/ is clearly transparent (Tl/2); the rest are spread over the scale much in the same way as words containing A C I O U N . 4.2.5. MENT. This is the only Romance suffix which is consonant-initial. In those cases which are analysable on a Middle English basis (286 tokens), the suffix behaves very regularly. Apart from these, there are also a large number of words which cannot be analysed on a Middle English basis. On the MTT-scale this appears as follows: (13)

MTT of M E N T 2

1 286 75.5%

3

4

5

6

RS 93 24.5%

4.2.6. Now we are in a position to compare the MTT-scales of U N G , ACIOUN, A U N C E and MENT. As was mentioned above, NESS drops out of the list of deverbal noun suffixes fairly early on, probably even prior to the time we are considering here. In a ranking of the four remaining suffixes, U N G — with all its occurrences on T l / 2 — clearly comes first, followed by MENT; A C I O U N and A U N C E can be regarded as sharing third place. As it stands, this naturalness rating of our data tells us several things: how many tokens of each suffix are to be found on each M T T threshold, whether a suffix has a dominant process type (UNG) or not (AUNCE), how transparent the formations are on a whole, etc. This picture, however, is static. If we want to know how active each suffix was in the Middle English word-formation system, the scales tell us only half of the story, namely, how often each suffix occurs. Although

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this is an important criterion for determining the productivity of a suffix, it is not the only one. A more powerful criterion would be the rate at which a suffix forms new words. For a historical study this is clearly a problematic issue. But in the case of Middle English we are in a position to a least partly circumvent the problem by looking for hybrids, i. e. lexical items where the base and the suffix come from different subparts of the vocabulary. (These subparts are, of course, words of Germanic and words of Romance origin.) The assumption would be that more natural suffixes should have less difficulty in accessing the other part of the vocabulary and should therefore form more hybrids than the less natural suffixes. Table (14) below gives the relevant figures for the four suffixes under discussion. (14)

Hybrid formations with U N G , A C I O U N , A U N C E , M E N T in ME1 —3

1. 2. 3. 4.

UNG MENT ACIOUN AUNCE

tok

% of to

typ

% of ty

202 2

10.9 0.5

91 1

18.4 2.4

—

—

—

—

-

-

-

-

The picture presented is very clear: the ranking of the four suffixes according to the number of hybrid formations is identical with their naturalness ranking on the M T T scale. Of the Romance suffixes only the transparent M E N T has formed a marginal number of hybrids. Even though it is consonant-initial and should thus be at least as "good" as U N G , it proves to be a poor competitor for this strong native suffix. 5. In the present paper I have tried to present arguments for choosing Natural Morphology as a framework for the description of Middle English word-formation. The main point is that Natural Morphology allows us to capture the dynamics of a language contact situation while offering a descriptive component sufficiently finetuned to allow detailed data-analysis necessary for a corpus-based approach. In the light of a pilot analysis of data, it was found that the framework of Natural Morphology promises valuable insights. As indicated in the introduction, the original question about the productivity of non-native word-formation in Middle English may well have to be reformulated. There are indications that we should ask whether Romance suffixes became productive at all, rather than how and when

The status of word formation in Middle English

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they became productive. More conclusive statements, however, must be reserved until more suffixes have been considered in the method presented in this paper. This, as usual, points to the need for additional work. Notes 1. I would like to thank my colleagues Ardith J. Meier and Arthur Mettinger for their helpful comments, the former also for giving the manuscript a through scrub and polish. 2. See the References for Wehrle (1935), Raab (1936), Schmidt (1909), Gadde (1910), Martin (1906). 3. I would like to express my thanks to Matti Rissanen for allowing me to use the Corpus and to Merja Kytö for her technological and moral support during the collection of the data. For the Helsinki Corpus see the References under Kytö — Rissanen. The collection of data was carried out with the programmes Wordcruncher and Oxford Concordance Programme (OCP). For programme-internal reasons affecting reliability I eventually used the data obtained with OCR The Wordcruncher results now serve for reference to the context of words where necessary. 4. This is true of Görlach (1986) and Poussa (1982) who mainly rely on extralinguistic reasoning (and evidence where available). Bailey — Marold (1977), in fact, argue chiefly on the basis of linguistic evidence but their approach suffers from a lack of explicitness about their descriptive framework, which comes as no surprise if we look at the wide range of linguistic levels (syntax, lexicon, inflection etc.) from which their examples are taken. 5. Cf. Mayerthaler (1981), Wurzel (1984), Dressler (1985a and 1985b), and Dressier Mayerthaler — Panagl — Wurzel (1987). As I am dealing with derivation and not with inflection, I will draw on Dressler's ideas more than on those of the other "founding fathers" of the theory. 6. I am aware that Natural Morphology has been criticised on a number of points and would agree with several of them. Cf. a recent review of the Leitmotifs book in Linguistics (28(1): 162—167) by Stolze. Nevertheless, I continue to find the basic ideas of Natural Morphology very attractive and feel it is worth applying the approach to the diachronic study of the derivational morphology of one language, viz. Middle English. 7. Adapted from Dressier (1982, 1987: 104, and personal communication). 8. I am grateful to Arthur Mettinger for pointing out to me that this example is not, in fact, as straightforward as it may seem: the segment /a/ in the abstract noun logika is an inflectional suffix and does not surface in logik because the personal noun belongs to another inflectional class. It is therefore doubtful whether this Russian example can be regarded as subtraction. 9. Note that in ModE the pair dec[ai\de : dec[i\sion has slipped to threshold 2.5 due to the effects of the Great Vowel Shift: a nice example of how phonology overrules or counteracts the naturalness tendencies of morphology. 10. Compare the study by Bouterwek (1986) and Kastovsky (1989); the phonological processes that probably led to this development and some of its morphological reverberations are discussed in some detail in Kastovsky (in press). Compare the much more

480

11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

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conservative Modern High German, where word-groups related by vowel mutation even account for a much larger part of the lexicon than in Middle English. For discussions on this topic see, among others, Plank (1981), Dressler et al. (1987: 4-7). Adapted from Dressier (1985a: 3 1 6 - 3 1 7 ) and Dressier (1987: 104). The abbreviations PR, MPR, and M R stand for "phonological rule", "morphonological rule" and "morphological rule" respectively. Dressler's discussion of this point (1985a: 317) is not very informative. The only example for the intervention of such a neutralising phonological rule is the above-mentioned dflap. One is left in doubt as to whether it deserves a whole threshold of its own or whether it could perhaps be more profitably incorporated within threshold one. The suffixes are grouped according to origin and are in alphabetical order. The capital letters indicate that these are labels or "names" for the suffixes; the spelling coincides with their MED entry where appropriate. The syllable theory underlying this analysis is clearly onset-maximal, favouring syllables with an initial CV sequence. Most prominently, of course, SPE. Note also that I am trying to avoid the question of what happened to stress in Romance loans in Middle English, notably the ones containing suffixes such as ITE or ACIOUN which carried end stress in French. Note that in Present Day English the process connecting corrupt: corruption is further up on the MTT-scale. The reason for this was the standardisation of different form of the verb avoiding the segmental variation within the base. Or vice versa: the tendency for less natural morphological operations to become more natural was important in the choice of corruptv instead of *corrump. I have chosen the five dominant representatives of this group in terms of type and token frequency, but of course there are several others such as ERIE, AGE, ACY, AL. All the 1172 de-adjectival formations in the corpus can, in fact, be classed on Tl/2. The differences in absolute figures are due to the different length of the sub-corpora of the Helsinki Corpus — ultimately, of course, these are due to the fact that a different amount of texts has survived from different periods of time. Neither do I want to imply at this point that this is the only cause of the decline of deverbal NESS. Kastovsky (1985: 244—246) gives a thorough morphological and semantic analysis of deverbal NESS-formations, but the material presented does not allow us to reach any conclusions about the numeric strength of the pattern in comparison to the deadjectival "branch" of NESS. This means that there exists an entry in the Middle English Dictionary — or in Stratmann (1891 [1971]) for words after stok.

References Bailey, Charles J. — Karl Maroldt 1977 "The French lineage of English" in: Jürgen Meisel (ed.) Pidgins — Creoles — Languages in contact. Tübingen: Narr, 21—53. Bouterwek, Friedrich 1986 The history of deverbal gradation and mutation nouns since Old English. [Unpublished M. A. thesis, University of Vienna.] Chomsky, Noam — Morris Halle 1968 The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.

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Dressier, Wolfgang U. 1982 "On word-formation in natural morphology", Wiener Linguistische Gazette 26: 3 - 1 4 . 1985 a Morphonology. The dynamics of derivation. Ann Arbor: Karoma Press. 1985 b "On the predictiveness of Natural Morphology", Journal of Linguistics 21: 321-337. Dressier, Wolfgang U. — Willi Mayerthaler — Oswald Panagl — Wolfgang U. Wurzel 1987 Leitmotifs in natural morphology. (Studies in Language Companion Series 10.) Amsterdam: Benjamins. Gadde, F. 1910 On the history and use of the suffixes -ery (-ry), -age, and ment in English. Lund: University of Lund. Görlach, Manfred 1986 "Middle English — a Creole?" in: Dieter Kastovsky — Alexandr Szwedek (eds.) Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries. In honour of Jacek Fisiak. (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 32.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 329 — 344. Hiltunen, Risto 1983 The decline of the prefixes and the beginnings of the English phrasal verb. (Annales Universitatis Turkunensis, Ser. Β — Tom. 160.) Turku: Turun Yliopisto. Höge, Otto 1906 Die Deminutivbildungen des Mittelenglischen. Heidelberg: Geisendörfer. Hymes, Dell (ed.) 1971 Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kastovsky, Dieter 1985 "Deverbal nouns in Old and Modern English: From stem-formation to wordformation" in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.) Historical Semantics — Historical wordformation. Berlin: Mouton, 221—261. 1988 "Typological changes in the history of English morphology", in: Udo Fries — Martin Heusser (eds.) Meaning and beyond. Ernst Leisi zum 70. Geburtstag. Tübingen: Narr, 159-178. 1989 "Whatever happened to the ablaut nouns in English — and why didn't it happen in German?" in: Henning Anderson — Konrad Koerner (eds.) Historical Linguistics 1987. Papers from the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Lille 31.8 — 4.9.1987. Amsterdam: Benjamin, 253 — 264. 1991 "Language change, level interaction and typology: from stem-based morphology to word-based morphology in English". [Unpublished Ms.] Kytö, Merja — Matti Rissanen 1988 "The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: classifying and coding the diachronic part" in: Ossi Ihalainen — Merja Kytö — Matti Rissanen (eds.) Corpus linguistics, hard and soft. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 169-179. Marchand, Hans 1969 Categories and types of present-day English word-formation. (2nd edition.) München: Beck.

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Martin Friedrich 1906 Die produktiven Abstraktsuffixe des Mittelenglischen. Straßburg: University of Straßburg. Plank, Fans 1981 Morphologische (Ir)Regularitäten. Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr. Poussa, Patricia 1982 "The evolution of early Standard English: The creolisation hypothesis", Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 14: 69 — 85. Raab, Eduard 1936 Mittelenglische Nominalbildung. Erlangen: University of Erlangen. Schmidt, Κ. Η. 1909 Präfixwandlungen im Mittel- und Neuenglischen bei Verben, Substantiven und Adjektiven. Straßburg: University of Straßburg. Stratmann, Francis H. 1891 A Middle English dictionary. [1971] [Revised edition by Henry Bradley. Oxford: Oxford University Press.] Stolze, Thomas 1990 "Review of Dressler et al. 1987", Linguistics 28-1: 162-167. Wehrle, Otto 1935 Die hybriden Wortbildungen des Mittelenglischen (1050—1400). Freiburg: University of Freiburg.

Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English: Are the French words of the Kathevine Group English? Juliette

Dor

1. Introduction Research is often as cyclical as life itself. The present paper is a return to previous concerns of mine (De Caluwe-Dor 1977, 1982), in connection not only with the language of the Katherine Group1 — with which I have never really broken, but especially here with the statistical value of the first occurrences of French loan-words. My current enquiry was prompted by reading Janet Bately (1988) and by her plea for a re-examination of the true significance of lists of the use of French loan-words in the Katherine Group and of their actual integration into English. She advocated two main approaches to the issue: an examination of the relative frequency of the French words compared with their native synonyms, and an assessment of the ancientness of the loan on the basis of the other occurrences of the word. I asked a Liege student (Christine Georis) to deal with the former topic, and she wrote her licentiate's dissertation on a comparison between Hali Meidhad's use of French words and of native equivalents (Georis 1990). At the same time I resumed my previous investigation of the KG's borrowing system 2 and tried to solve an issue that had long puzzled me: are the five texts' French words genuine English words? Do they reflect an innovation or an actual change of the language?

2. Frequency counts Linguists have carried out frequency counts of the French words in the English vocabulary throughout the history of the language, usually as a basis for further research on the history of the process of borrowing, and with special interest in periods of intense borrowing.

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2.1. Let us remember Otto Jespersen's first analysis (1905), subsequently completed by A. Koszul (1937). For each letter of the alphabet, Jespersen took the first hundred or fifty French loan-words in the — at that time still uncompleted - OED. In 1935, A. C. Baugh returned to the OED and examined the words on pages numbered 00, 20,40 and so on. Fernand Mosse (1943) decided he would achieve greater precision if he analysed all the words in the OED beginning with a single letter. Using the theory of probabilities, G. Herdan (1956) took another step forward. Quite recently, my fellow-countryman Xavier Dekeyser (1986) made a new assessment, differing from Baugh and Jespersen in every respect. His work is based on the MED and gives relative frequencies for each quarter century; in fact, he has distributed the overall lexicon of each period into the following categories: mainly OE, OF, ML, L —F and "autochthonous" formations — those from contemporary English dialects, neologisms, hybrids, and so on. 2.2. In 1977 I examined the difference of attitudes between Katherine Group and Ancrene Riwle towards the borrowing process, 3 an obvious dualism of the AB language, and assumed that the tables or curves of French loan-words should be emended at some point in order to take such divergences of distribution into account.

3. Status of the borrowing We might wonder whether lexicographical data should not sometimes be reconsidered with a view to reinterpretation rather than count each occurrence indiscriminately. Statistical methods have reached a high level of accuracy, but, in general, too much emphasis has been put on the counting of distributions of occurrences, with a lack of qualitative interpretation of the material. What is also frequently found is a distorted assumption reversing information: the percentage becomes an indication of the time, place, social strata and even age of the author, with the general assumption that the higher the proportion, the later the composition. 4 In other words, an important factor, the status of the borrowing, has always been neglected. If there is a gap of almost a century after the first use before the next recorded usage, how far can it be said to belong to English? Is it not perhaps an artificial introduction of a foreign element

Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English

485

rather than a genuine and absorbed borrowing? In the case of reported speech, this may seem obvious (although MED records a case of reported speech as a first occurrence of priuilege in the Pet.Chron. an 1137). There is a certain degree of overconfidence in sources available, and, simultaneously, a lack of discrimination when confronted with word-citations. If I decided arbitrarily to use a French word now, would any contemporary native speaker of English ever imagine it is an English word? Obviously not. But also imagine that everything in our world is destroyed, apart from my text. Seven centuries later, this paper is discovered by a group of linguists. They would think the text reflects the English language of the final quarter of the 20th century, and would probably never question the claim of my French loan-word to be part of the language. The very absurdity of this example is probably more striking than any long demonstration could be. The phenomenon under discussion here was already so obvious in the 12th century that John of Salisbury observed that "it was the fashion to interlard one's speech with French words". 5 This comment alerts us to the consideration that although the present analysis is limited to the KG, the issue should be extended to other cases.

4. First occurrences of French loan-words in the KG6 There are quite a number of first occurrences of French loan-words in the KG. They have always puzzled me because quite often they are rather isolated; most often, we have to wait until circa 1300 to find the subsequent use of the word in the sources available to us. I am not going to discuss the issue of the unavoidable gap between written and spoken language, but I would like to try to determine whether or not these first attestations are actually English words, whether they mirror a genuine lexical renewal or are simply fortuitous stylistic effects of a literary centre eager to be adventurous. This is, at the same time, a methodological approach of the issue, since the whole field of linguistic borrowing is involved here. 4.1. Before coming to the heart of the matter, it is worth noting that the present methodological effort should also be applied to previous occurrences. After all, why could not previous first attestations be other cases of Anglicized French? Take the example of cuntasse: first recorded in

486

Juliette

Dor

Pet.Chron., year 1140: a lady "wes cuntesse of Anjou", followed by a gap until HM. Cuntasse might simply be her title, which was interpolated into English here. The same problem exists with curt, first used in connection with a French court, and ultimately used as an idiomatic entity akin to a place-name. And perhaps also with dame, first used in addressing a woman of rank or position, probably initially French, and thus a word of address akin to a proper name. My point is that other first records should also be reconsidered, especially when they are isolated. 4.2. All this is to say that after compiling the MED (the last published installment I had access to was "SL"), we are going to be confronted with the following possibilities: 4.2.1. a word belongs to the AB language exclusively, with no other occurrences, earlier, later or at the same time; 4.2.2. the word has already been used, but the Englishness of the first record is open to question, and its use in KG can arguably be considered as a first occurrence; 4.2.3. the KG language offers a first record (either of a single occurrence or of several occurrences, in one or several of the five texts of the KG and the Ancrene Riwle), and we have a gap before the next occurrence. The gap may be: until 1275, 1300, 1325-1330, 1350, Chaucer's time, 1400, 1425 or even 1500; 4.2.4. the KG offers a first record, together with contemporary occurrences: evidence, as it were, of the sudden brief enthusiastic use of a nonce word, but which was followed by an (apparent) gap; 4.2.5. the word was already fairly well-established: there are previous occurrences and contemporary occurrences, and it is followed by a subsequent tradition. 4.3. The last two cases are in fact cases of lack of interruption of occurrence, even though there may be apparent gaps, for it is essential to bear in mind that we have few literary documents from the 13th century. 7 It is therefore not surprising that we should have a reduced distribution of words during that period, and lack of occurrence does not necessarily confirm lack of existence, always, of course, provided that we have proof of integration somewhere, for example, several contemporary occurrences distributed among different texts.

Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English

487

5. Alien feature of French loan-words

While the chronological distribution of the word is definitely an interesting indication of its status, there are also contextual clues indicating whether it is well-rooted or alien. These can be categorized as follows: 8 5.1. The "author" clearly mentions the fact. 5.1.1. The author half pretends it is a "Latin" word (though it is, in fact, French). See, for example, H M 11/19. This provides an opportunity for him to introduce two new words: (1)

a gerlondesche schininde scheme pen pe sunne, aureola ihaten ο Latines ledene

5.1.2. The author deliberately creates a new word, for which he gives us a folk etymology and he mentions that "they are called...": (2)

mid gode riht muwen eidurles beon ihoten eildurles, vor heo habbed idon muchel eil to moni on ancre (Ancr.)

5.1.3. The author draws our attention to the fact he is introducing a new word. In the AR the interpretation of learned Romance borrowings by means of their English synonyms is very frequent: (3)

a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

cherite. pet is luue. cogitaciuns. det beod fleoinde pouhtes. desperaunce. pet is inn vnhope 7 in vnbileaue kunsence. det is skiles settunge. patience, pet is polemodnesse ignoraunce. det is. unwisdom & unwitenesse. penitence, pet is dedbote

h. i.

accidie, pet is cleopede slouhde distinctiuns pet 3e cleopied dolen9

and

Even though this practice remains less common in KG, there are several patterns, and they include the following: 5.1.3.1. directly, with an explanatory formula indicating that what follows is a translation:

488

(4)

Juliette

a.

Dor

H M pet swote smirles ... pet is icleopet basme

followed by a description of its use, with a native word: ismiret (4)

b.

SW mete pet me meosure hat

5.1.3.2. or with a relative clause of explanatory type: (5)

a. b.

H M J)is mihte pet is 3et pe uertu H M ure bruchele ueat, pet is, ure feble flesch

5.2. The author makes use of tautological compounds or phrases, sometimes availing himself of coincidental resemblances: (6)

a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. 1. m. n. o. p.

SK to pe temple i pe tun of his headene godes, euchan wid his lac forte wurdgin ham wid SK te maumetes temple ... to herien 7 hersumin hare headene godes SK pis pinfule gin wes ο swuch wise iginet SM i pe leieun t i pe ladliche lake of pet suti sunne10 SM iseiled wid his in-seil SM swotest to smeallen: ne his swote sauur SJ iordanes flum SJ pet ferliche fur i pe furneise SJ riche of rente H M i cleanschipe chaste H M i pullifeht fehte, 7 wid strong cokkunge ouercume HM liht eolie in a lampe H M pet seil pet seiled H M Dauid pe psalmwruhte speked i pe Sawter HM tukep pe to bismere as huler his hore H M pe passid alle odre widuten euenunge

There are also contextual tautologies: mesure, for instance, is translated by mete, but it is also part of an enumeration of the four cardinal virtues of righteousness, prudence, temperance, and fortitude: (7)

H M pe uertuz pet he streoned in pe purh his swete grace: as rihtwisnesse ant warschipe aseines unpeawes, mesure ant mete ant gastelich strengde to widstonde pe feond ant aaein sunne, simplete of semblant ant buhsumnesse ant stilde, polemodnesse ant reowfulnesse...

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5.3. He uses the stylistic device of repetitive word pairs of the translating type, alliterative or not. I have attempted to distribute my collection of instances into Inna Koskenniemi's four major types (1968) of semantic relationship, but it has seemed to me that the category of antonymy deserved a special treatment in my corpus: 11 5.3.1. Nearly synonymous terms 5.3.1.1. within an explanatory pattern (8)

a. b. c.

H M pet ... smirles ... pet is icleopet basme H M pis mihte ... pis is set pe uertu H M ure bruchele ueat, pet is, ure feble flesch

5.3.1.2. with the conjunction ant (9)

a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. 1. m. n. o.

H M of se muche dignete, ant swuch wurdschipe SK ha heold hire ealdrene hird...i pe eritage ant i pe eard pet com hire of burde Η Μ lauerdom ant me is trie SM, SJ H M milce ant merci (also milce 7 merci) H M , SW mesure ant mete (SW also mete pet me meosure hat) H M richesce ant worldes weole H M riche ant weolefule H M swetture ant sauurure SK, SM, crauant 7 ouercumen12 SK, SJ wid purpres 7 pelles SK wid pel ant wid purpre HM for a lust, ant for an edelich delit SK monie Clerkes ... ant se swide crefti of alle clergies SM i pe leien 7 i pe ladliche lake H M speoked togedere folliche, ant talkid of unnet

5.3.1.3. with an alternative conjunction (10) a. b. c. d.

H M ne ... wid unword ne wid uuel blame Η Μ ouerhohe oder prude SM liht oder lampe H M for a lust of ane hwile, pah hit punche delit

5.3.1.4. asyndetic type (11) a. b.

H M pe king wilni..., pe king ... desiri H M peoues hit steoled ham, reauers hit robbid

490

Juliette

c. d. e. f.

Dor

H M Godes spuse, Iesu Cristes brude H M i uertu, i meidhades mihte SW a gret boc al of sunnen iwriten ... his boc, pet is on euch sunne enbreuet SK he wrahte pulliche wundres ... miracles pet bi his men beod imaket

5.3.2. Contiguity of meaning 5.3.2.1. with the conjunction ant (12) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j.

H M Godes freo dohter ant his sunes spuse SK prudeliche ischrud ant iprud SM patriarche 7 prince SW te patriarches ant te prophetes H M άά swetture ant sauure SK sauure ant softe SK us forto sauuin ant makien us stronge purh his unstrengde H M in his luue ant in his seruise H M i pulli feht fehte, ant wid strong cokkunge SK forto fr ourin ant to fremien

5.3.2.2. asyndetic type (13) a. b.

H M eadi meiden, Godes sunes spuse SJ dreahen in to dorc hus to prisunes pine

5.3.3. Complementary terms 5.3.3.1. with the conjunction ant (14) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. 1. m.

H M i licome of lam ant i bestes bodi H M hare confort ant hare delit H M pe blisse ant te crune H M for a lust ant for an ... delit H M weorrid ant warped eauer towart tis tur Η Μ greued ... ant ... weorred H M muche confort ... ant eider is alles weis ipaiet of oder H M i widewene reng ant ... i widewene ring13 H M fehted ant weorrid Η Μ dignete 7 mihte SM leiuen 7 ladliche lake SJ ciclatuns 7 cendals SK pe meistrie ant te menske

Post-dating Romance loan-words in Middle English

n. ο. p. q. r. s.

491

SK, SM, SJ pine 7 passiun H M poisun 7 bale HM al pe este ant al pe else H M pi wit edstont, ant chastied pi wil SW deoflen pet ham meallid 7 derued ää SW poure ant lah

5.3.3.2. with an alternative conjunction (15) a. b. c. d.

HM iflesches fulde oder in worldes HM cangun oder crupel SM chapele oder chirche SM liht oder lampe

vanite

5.3.3.3. asyndetic type (16) a. b. c.

HM pe blisse upo blisse, pe crune upo crune H M hwuch delit ... hwuch eise SK dame dutest tu, cwen acangest tu

5.3.4. Antonymous terms 5.3.4.1. with the conjunction ant (17) a. b.

H M of poure ba ant riche H M wes helle irobbet and heouene bid ifullet

5.3.4.2. with the conjunction bute (18)

HM ne icrunet bute asailet

5.3.4.3. with the conjunction widute (19)

H M eise ... widute trubuil

5.3.4.4. betere pen (20) H M for ... a charbucle is betere pen a iacinct ... ant pah is betere a briht iacinct pen a charbucle won HM betere α milde wif oder a meoke widewe pen a prud meiden 5.3.4.5. ba (21)

SK & H M poure ba 7 riche

5.3.4.6. asyndetic type (22) a. b.

H M of pe riche, of pe poure SK & H M pe riche ... pe poure

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5.3.5. Enumeration 5.3.5.1. with the conjunction ant (23) a. b. c.

H M hit is pe meast god hwen he greued pe meast, ant towart te wid fondunge yvodeluker weorred H M i se swote eise, widute swuch trubuil, i gastelich este ant i breoste reste SW deoßen pet ham meallid ant derued άά ant drecched wid alles cunnes pinen

5.3.5.2. with an alternative conjunction (24)

H M ne nan ... crunen, ne hare delit, ne hare weden

5.3.5.3. asyndetic type (25) a.

b. c. d. e.

H M pet sorhfule angoise, pet stronge ant stikinde stiche, pet unroles uuel, pet pine ouer pine, pet wondrinde aeomerunge ... ant pine deades dute H M i se swote eise, widute swuch trubuil, i gastelich este ant i breoste reste H M pes cwenes, pes riche cuntasses, peos modie leafdis H M pes i pi breoste of onde ant of wreadde, of aisceunge ant of euch unpeawes weorre H M Godes spuse, Iesu Cristes brude, pe lauerdes leofmon

6. Chronological distribution of these loan-words14 6.1. Exclusively AB words 6.1.1. AB: cang A = 1SK; + lots of native derivatives Icangun A, B/1HM15 dute A, B/SK, SJ, HM; + also vb ( + the vb also from 1300 onward) eil-durl A (1250 Nero), ISM B: acangin 2SK ( + AB cang) aureola I H M biteuelin 1SK chapele ISM

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ciclatuns 1SJ cokkunge IHM cure 2SJ16 gerlondesche IHM17 mealle B/1SW meallin B/1SW18 6.1.2. Gap until 1275 chaste A, B/1HM eise A, B/4HM leccherie A, B/HM (several occurrences) ofseruin A, B/2SK, 1SJ; but also gerund in Lofsong Louerde (1250); also unoseruet (gap until 1297) ymage A, B/1SK (in the meaning of statue; 1300 for other senses) 6.1.3. Gap until 1300 angoise A, B/1HM archenglene B/1SJ, IS Κ asailin A, B/3HM blame A(v), B/1HM cendals B/1SJ (only MS B) charbucle 2HM 19 clergie 2SK *curt A, B/1SK: also PetChr & VspAHom, but in fact French interpolation?20 cwite A, B/1HM degre A, B/4HM desirin B/1HM dignete A, B/2HM duten A, B/1SK (only MS B) eritage A, B/1SK, IHM estat (1290) A, B/1HM (also stat) folliche (1290) A, B/1HM furneise (1290) B/1SJ: then SLeg, -f again gap until 1340 ginin B/1SK greuin A, B/2HM hantin B/2HM huler B/1HM iacinct B/2HM 21 ; 1 occ. in 1300, + again gap until Wycliff22 largelich A, B/1HM

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— *lei Β (several occ. in SK & SM + prob, missing leaf of SJ): in the sense of 'laws of God, religious faith'; for other senses, see under 132523 meistrie A, B/SK, H M unoseruet (1297) B/1SM; al240 Lofsong in OE Horn passin A, B/4HM poisun B/1SK, I H M prince A, B/2SK, ISM; Wooinng Lord reisun A, B/1SK robbin A, B/2HM, SW samblantjsemblant A, B/1SM, 2HM, 1SW sauur (subst.) A, B/SM, MS R sauur (adj.) A, B/1SK, I H M seil A, B/HM ( + in 1258 Procl.Henrylll) 6.1.4. Gap until 1 3 2 5 - 3 0 aturnin B/1SW bascin B/1SM basme A, B/HM cost B/1SM 24 cunquearin B/1HM *cuntasse B/1HM feouerreres B/SJ gencling (error?) B/1SJ — * hurten A, B/2HM: but only in sense 1 (2 waves of borrowing, + see under well-established) 25 — *lei B/several occurrences 26 ordrin B/1SW ( + Α ordre subst.) priuilege A, B/1HM; in Pet.Chron. we have a case of reported speech prudin B/1SK reng B/1HM seilin A, B/SK, SM, HM 6.1.5. Gap until 1350 aromaz A, B/2SK ofseruinge (1340 Ayenb) B/1SJ (MS R); + 1250 LofsongLouerde 6.1.6. Gap until Chaucer's time adamantines I H M ; Wycliff 2 7 — barre 1SK; 1380 Firumb

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le(a)messe 1SJ, IHM, (only MS B) + recorded in Latin documents grandame ISM; Gower meistrenjmeistrin A, B/4SK, 1SW 6.1.7. Gap until 1400 aturn A, B/IHM; + aturnin (1SW) (weater)-bulge IHM crauant A, B/1SK, ISM *desputunge B/1SK (but also *0&N, but prob. Latin loan) - forschaldin A, B/1SJ 6.1.8. Gap until 1425 enbreuin A, B/1SW 6.1.9. Gap until 1500 atine B/1SK clergesse A, B/1SK 6.2. Contemporary occurrences + gap 6.2.1. Until 1300 baptiste: AB/SJ; Orm; TrinHom - beast: AB, Wooing Lord; O&N changin A, B/1SM, IHM; cl250 Somer is comen chastien A, B/IHM, 1SW; Trin Horn, V&V1 chere A, B/1SM, IHM, 1SW; cl250 Louerd crist thou confort A, B/3HM; al250 Orison Lord cunfessur 1SW; VspAHom, V&V1 dame A, B/SK, SM, SJ; cl250 LSSerm delit A, B/HM (several); cl250 Orison Lord *eoli (see under well-established) gentile A, 1B/HM; Wooing Lord; 1250 ANcr (Nero); early in surnames gin B/1SK; Orm; 1225 LayBrut; 1250 O&N 28 kecchen A, B/2SK, SJ (MS R); LayBrut (several); 1250 AncrNero; cl250 29 Seinte marie moder lai A, B/SM, HM; LayBrut lampe B/1SM, IHM; V&V1; cl250 SM2; - mantles B/1SM; TrinHom; V&V1; AncrCleo; WintBenR 30 marbre-stan B/SK; TrinHom maumez B/3SK, 3SM, 2SJ; LayBrut

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Mearch IS J; Orm (2X) nurrice A, B/2HM; 1250 SM2 parais A, B/SK, SM, SJ, HM; LambHom; 1250 Iblessed beo thu 2X31 passiun A, B/SK, SM, SJ; LambHom; 1250 Lofsong Louerde pilegrim A, B/1SK; LayBrut; V&V1; WintBenRule place A, B/1SK; 1250 Heil Marie preouin A, B/IHM, 1SW; TrinHom 6.2.2. Until 1325 me(o)sure A, B/IHM, 2SW; TrinHom purpre B/1SK, 1SJ; LayBrut. (2X)32 richesce A, B/1HM; TrinHom (several occurrences)33 6.2.3. Until 1340 prudeliche B/2SK; V&V1 6.2.4. Until 1400 beasteliche A, B/2HM 34 *desputunge B/1SK; O&N, but disputunge, hence Latin loan - * hurten A, B/2HM; ?also Orm 35 - hurtes A, B/1SJ 36 postles (1392/93) B/1SJ; LambHom; LayBrut 6.3. Words already well-established, or at least already recorded — crune37 — crunini% *cuntasse (but, perhaps, simply used as a title. See above). *curt A, B/1SK; PetChr an 1154; VspAHom; (but place-name? See above). *eoli/eoile A, B/SK, SM, SJ, HM; 2LambHom; then 1250 louerd as thu ard; then gap until 1300 feble A, B/2HM; WorBodGloss; TrinHom; LSSerm; c 1275 maximian flum B/1SJ; Orm; LayBrut(1225); 1275 Harrowing Hell; 1290 SM2, SLeg flurs A, B/1HM; 1225 Seinte Marie clane; O&N; Jacob & J; SLeg frut A, B/HM (several occ.); WordBodGloss(Jun); LambHom; Louerd asse thu ard; Glade us maiden small; SLeg Gius A, B/SK, SM, SJ; LambHom; cl250 Judas; On leome; Seinte Marie leuedei; KenSerm grace A + everywhere in B; LambHom; V&V; Lofsong Lauerde; Lofsong Lefdi; KenSerm; etc. in 1300 lake B/1SM; PetChron; LayBrut; gap until 132539

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martyr A, B/SK, SM, SJ; PetChron an.1137; cll75 BodHom; VspHom; LayBrut; TrinHom; SM2 meister A, B/SK (several occ.), 2SJ, SW; Orm; LambHom; WintBenRule; V&V1; TrinHom; WooingLord; O&N; 40 merci A, B/SM, SJ, HM (several occ.); LambHom; LofsongLefdi; LofsongLouerde miracle A, B/2SK; PetChron an 1137; 1250 Body&S; KenSerm; 41 paien A, B/1HM; TrinHom; 1225 Wooing Lord; KenSerm patriarche A, B/SM, SJ; WorSerm; Orm; LambHom; TrinHom; V&V1; SM2; KenSerm pe(i)s A, B/1SJ, IHM; PeterbChron an 1140; V&V1; LambHom; O&N; SM2; al275 Stod ho poure (adj. and subst.) A, B/SK, HM, SW; TrinHom; LayBrut; cl250 Body&S4 (2X); cl250 Vid word; O&N; 1275 ProvAlf TrinC; KenSerm prisun A, B/2SM, 1SJ; PetChron an 1112 & 1137; TrinHom; LambHom; SM2; 1250 Ar ne kuthe; Wooing Lord prophete A, B/SK, 2HM, SW; Orm; WorSerm; TrinHom; LambHom; cl250 Judas; Louerd asse thu ard; KenSerm prud A, B/SK, HM; LambHom; LayBrut; V&V1; cl250 Body &S4; al275 ProvAlf prude A, B/SM, SJ (R), HM, SW; WorSerm; LambHom; V&V1; LayBrut; O&N, Body&S4; KenSerm rente A, B/1SJ; PetChron an 1137; V&V1; O&N riche42 sauuin/saluin A B/1SK; Orison Lord(Lamb); Somer is comen; KenSerm sawter A, B/HM; LambHom; TrinHom creed; WintBenRule; Lofsong Louerde (or gap?) schurges A, B/1SK; Wooing Lord; SM2; al275 Stod ho seruin A, B/SK, 3HM, 2 SW; Orm; O&N; KenSerm seruise A, B/SJ, 2HM; LambHom; V&V1; SM2; Body&S4; Cristes milde moder; KenSerm

7. 7.1. Even though I realize that my collection of word-pairs remains empirical and slightly haphazard, it seems interesting to compare the chronological lists with the lists of word-pairs. This comparison yields the following results:43 7.1.1. AB: 2/4

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7.1.2. Β: 7/10 7.1.3. gap until 1275: 2/5 7.1.4. gap until 1300: 23/35 7.1.5. gap until 1325: 4/15 7.1.6. gap until 1350: 0/2 7.1.7. gap until Chaucer's time: 0/5 7.1.8. gap until 1400: 1/5 7.1.9. gap until 1425: 0/1 7.1.10. gap until 1500: 0/2 7.1.11. C o n t e m p o r a r y occurrences + gap until 1300: 8/25 7.1.12. until 1325: 3/3 7.1.13. until 1340: 0/1 7.1.14. until 1400: 0/5 7.1.15. words well-established: 17/31 With these, note: 7.1.12. cont. occ. + gap until 1325 (100%) 7.1.2. words only in Β (70%) 7.1.4. gap until 1300 (65%) 7.1.15. words well-established (54%) 7.1.1. words only in AB (50%) 7.1.3. gap until 1275 (41%) 7.1.11. cont. occ. + gap until 1300 (26%) 7.1.5. gap until 1325 (26%) 7.1.8. gap until 1400 (20%) 7.1.6. gap until 1350 (0%) 7.1.7. gap until Chaucer's time (0%) 7.1.9. gap until 1425 (0%) 7.1.10. gap until 1500 (0%) 7.1.13. cont. occ. + gap until 1340 (0%) 7.1.14. cont. occ. + gap until 1400 (0%) 7.2. A p a r t f r o m a few irregularities (which may be due to the small size of the sample), note that B's main trends are: 7.2.1. first of all to explain its own vocabulary, 7.2.2. then to account for words that will be recorded in 1300, 7.2.3. then to paraphrase well-established words, 7.2.4. then to explain words that exclusively belong to AB, 7.2.5. then to explain words that will be recorded in 1275. 7.2.6. Β is not particularly interested in paraphrasing words with contemporary occurrences followed by a gap,

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7.2.7. apart from the exception of 7.1.12, but there are only three words, and each of them is recorded in repetitive pairs only. 7.2.8. Β is not particularly interested in explaining words with a gap of more than a century, whether there is evidence of contemporary occurrences or not. 7.3. There must have been a core of fashionable French words with a certain degree of "adoptability" at the time of the preparation of the Btexts. Of course, Β could not have foreseen which words were going to be absorbed in the borrowing process. This accounts for 7.1.1., 7.1.2., 7.1.4. and 7.1.5. On the other hand, even though Β applies the process to well-established words (54%), it also seems to have been sensitive to the obsolete character of several of them that were going to be left in abeyance for over a century.

8. Further methodological considerations In my opening survey of frequency counts pertaining to the issue of the introduction of French loanwords into English, I mentioned Xavier Dekeyser's 1986 re-assessment, but made no mention of his second article on the topic. Of course, this was deliberate. On the basis of data collected by his students he drew the following preliminary conclusion: "The first century of the Middle English period was largely dominated by (preserved) OE elements. From the 13th century onwards, this ascendance was seriously affected by an incessant influx of new (both native and foreign) elements, which constituted an ever increasing majority since ca. 1300." (1989: 6). He further demonstrated that there is a chronological and causal link between the decline of the OE component and the increasing romanisation of the ME lexicon, and that this particular development is also borne out by the results of his NAVO (nouns, adjectives, verbs, others) approach. I won't dwell on his method and overall results here, interesting as they are, but my current concern can feed on some considerations he develops in the course of his article. On the basis of an investigation of the absolute and relative frequencies of the total losses of the OE lexis, Dekeyser reveals that while steadily

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rising in the 12th century, the "demise movement" reached its peak in the first quarter of the 13th century. That is to say, 1200 is the date with the highest number of last occurrences of native stock words (18.3% when restricted to the internal evolution in the course of the ME period). A comparison with the figures for new attestations (1989: 10) shows that in 1200 there were only 3.0% of them, and that the highest 13th century figure was reached in 1225, with 6.5%. Another point that is relevant for our present purpose is his comment on the distortion between written and oral attestations: they are, he says, bound to be working in reverse directions. If we expect innovations to be ante-dated and losses postdated, the comparison of the figures above clearly testifies to the redundancy of innovations, which is also of central importance to this issue. The results of his various tables enable him to assert that "the main cause of the gradual demise of the OE component is not lexical loss in the narrow sense of the word, but rather a massive process of lexical replacement. [...]. The presence of (more prestigious) new equivalents made many OE lexemes less and less fashionable and eventually caused them to disappear" (1989: 16). This fully corroborates what I have tried to demonstrate in this paper. The 5-texts are innovative. Without eliminating words from the native stock, they add French words, often redundantly, and they consciously and conspicuously combine the process with one of their favourite stylistics devices.

9. Conclusion My final point will be a question. Dekeyser (1986) compares two graphs. While the former represents Jespersen's and Baugh's absolute frequency values of French loan-words (see Figure 1), the latter is his own graph with relative frequencies (see Figure 2). Dekeyser's graph is far smoother than graph I: "It exhibits", he points out, "a smooth and, apart from the second quarter in the 12th and in the 13th century, a steady increase of Old French loans" (1986: 258). I would like to contend that the peak of circa 1225, followed by a sharp fall circa 1250 could be replaced by a smoother progression if we agreed that Β (and also A) introduced a considerable number of French words. Some of them ultimately succeeded in establishing themselves, but not necessarily because the AB language

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200

175

150

125

100

75

50

25

0

1100

1150

1200

1250

1300

1350

1400

1450

Figure 1. Jespersen's and Baugh's absolute frequencies (graph I) (Dekeyser 1986: 258; reproduced with permission of Walter de Gruyter & Co.)

had initiated a movement. A study of the semantic fields to which these loan-words belong would quickly demonstrate that these innovations were bound to be introduced. As is obvious from the sudden influx of new words without fortunes, matters were artificially precipitated, and this was followed by a period of stagnation. In other words, the style of sub-corpus Β distorted the more general corpus of early thirteenth-century loan-words. For all these reasons, could we not alter Dekeyser's graph 50

7. 40 30

20 10

0

1100 1125 1150 1175 1200 1225 1250 1275 1300 1325 1350 1375 1400 1425 1450 1475

Figure 2. Old French relative frequencies (Dekeyser 1986: 255, 259; reproduced with permission of Walter de Gruyter & Co.)

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and draw a straight line between 1200 and 1250, which would mean that we would have a steady progression during the whole 13 th century? Or, if we do not want to alter anything in the curve (which is the mirror of a situation), I wonder whether this anomaly is not another demonstration of my claim. Notes 1. J. R. R. Tolkien (1929) called attention to the similarity of the language of the AB texts: the language of A (i.e. Ancrene Riwle) and Β (i.e. MS. Bodley 34, containing the lives of SK, SM and SJ, and two treatises, HM and SW; the five texts of Β are also called Katherine Group). 2. J. De Caluwe-Dor (1977, 1979 a, 1979 b, 1981, 1982). 3. I concentrated almost exclusively on the treatment of verbs. See also Cecily Clark (1966); her figures were revised by E. J. Dobson (1976): 2.5% in SM, 2.9% in SJ, 3.9% in SK, 4.2% in SW and 6.3% in HM, against 10.7% in Ancrene Wisse, parts VI and VII. 4. See, for example, Mary Serjeantson (1935). 5. Quoted by Jespersen (1938: 85). 6. MS. Bodley 34 seems to have been written about 1 2 2 0 - 5 (see N. R. Ker 1960, J. Bately 1988). The texts must have been composed round 1200. 7. A glance at the bibliography of the MED will suffice to establish the poverty of documents. 8. The examples provided here are essentially representative of the main trends; I have not aimed at exhaustiveness. 9. Quoted by Inna Koskenniemi (1968: 69). She further shows that this pattern is obviously of interpretative origin, as already mentioned by Jespersen (1938: 89). 10. MED lai: OE lagu + O F lai 'lake, pool', + English fen SM; leiuen; H M lei-fen. 11. Scholars do not agree on the number and definition of categories. Koskenniemi decided to distinguish the four following types, but at the same time made clear that they cannot always be strictly separated. Even the use of conjunctions is not clear-cut, as she observes in connection with ant and oder. "In the literary texts, however, the second term often refers to the same thing as the first. It does not suggest an alternative idea but merely adds more weight to the statement" (1968: 78). Little wonder, therefore, that some of my instances are halfway between two categories; the division into categories is particularly difficult here, and I am aware that several occurrences could be recorded under other headings. 12. Only used in this phrase. 13. This is a special case, parallel to ablaut variation. 14. I realize that here too the division into categories is often a distortion of reality; for reasons of space discussion could not be given in detail, so only the results of my analyses are given here. 15. "?" indicates that the etymology is controversal. 16. But in two consecutive sentences. 17. Replaced by another word, gerlond, from 1325 onward. 18. It is important to know that mealle and meallin do not occur in the same sentence. 19. In two consecutive sentences.

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20. '"""stands for "can be found elsewhere". 21. But in two consecutive sentences. 22. According to Bately (1988: 68), it is a long-established word of Latin origin; yet, the form is OF. 23. — stands for several waves o f borrowing. 24. Loan translation of the French phrase ä tout prix. 25. In two consecutive sentences. 26. It is well-represented in B, but only in the religious sense o f 'laws o f God, religious faith'; it is then followed by a gap until circa 1300. The political sense o f 'laws of a country' is not recorded before a/cl325 (or 1307). 27. There must have been several waves o f borrowing: a) in the sense of "barrier, gate", and in place-names: it is an early borrowing, characterized by its plural in -en (vs. later -es); it is connected with O F barr(i)ere. It is followed by a gap until the late 14th century. b) the legal term (at the bar, in a court) is another borrowing, part o f the legal vocabulary. c) 'a bar for bolting a door', is O F barre. 28. There are quite a number o f contemporary occurrences around the meaning o f 'inventive talent, clever policy, snare, trap...' ( M E D 1.). Sense 3 (a) 'ingenious device or contrivance' is recorded in SK, but is then followed by a gap until circa 1300. 29. Its conjugation, remade on that of native ilecchen, provides another indication of the integration of the verb. 30. Also several waves o f graphies: TrinHom, GenEx, Ayenb: -en- (OE); here -an- (Lat. and OF). 31. There are two words parais and paradis. Both o f them are well-represented in E M E , but AB never has paradis, and MED's two citations under paradis (SM 38/19 and Ancr 181/24) should be recorded under parais 2. 32. Note that the four occurrences are part o f the same repetitive word-pair. 33. Note the pair worldes/ richescej weole; richesce is used next to native weole and richedom (also recorded in H M ) . 34. The first senses ('of an animal, pertaining to the animal functions of man') are not recorded before the late 14th century. The sense we find in A B is specialized: 'brutish, debased, sensual, wicked' ( M E D 3 a); it is followed by a gap until 1400.1 think beastelich was first borrowed directly from French bestial, with its pejorative meaning. There was a later re-formation on the substantive beast, with its more general meaning. 35, I think there are two words — ultimately of the same origin, with two main semantic differentiations: 1, 'injure, hurt (bodily, spiritually, feelings)', and 2, the semantic field o f the 'ram' ('to charge against, knock down'). Most o f the early or contemporary records belong to the field o f the ram (the sense o f Orm and LayBrut is not clear), while AB's occurrences belong to sense 1, sometimes extended to MED's sense 4 'to stumble against, touch upon, come to'. 36. Same problem for the substantive, but here, LayBrut clearly belongs to the same semantic group as AB; the field of the " r a m " is not represented before 1400. 37. Waves of graphies. 38, Waves of graphies. 39, With probable introduction o f a second semantic group 'pit', recorded in 1300. 40, Two semantic waves: (a) 'official ruler of God and o f women' (represented in A B , but not its basic use), (b) 'learning, education, degree, religion, skill' (well-represented in SK).

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41. The first records are exclusively in MED's sense 2 b (b): bi/purh miracle. 42. This word is of very complex origin; quite likely an English word. 43. Number of words recorded provided with a semantic explanation. I am quite aware of the fact that these figures should also be reconsidered with regard to cases of reborrowing. I hope to deal with this issue elsewhere.

References Ardenne, S. T. R. O. d' 1936 An Edition of the Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene. (Bibliotheque de la Faculte de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Universite de Liege, LXIV.) Liege — Paris: Faculte de Philosophie et Lettres & Droz. [1961] [Reprinted as EETS 248], Ardenne, S. T. R. O. d' - E. J. Dobson 1981 Seinte Katerine. London: EETS ss 7. Bately, Janet 1988 "Some Aspects of the Vocabulary of the West Midlands in the Early Middle Ages: the Language of the Katherine Group", in Donald Kennedy — Ronald Waldron - Joseph S. Wittig (eds.), 5 5 - 7 7 . Bennett, J. A.W. - G.V. Smithers 1974 Early Middle English Verse and Prose. (2nd ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clark, Cecily 1961 "Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group: A lexical divergence", Neophilologus 50: 1 1 7 - 2 3 . De Caluwe-Dor, Juliette 1977 "Divergence lexicale entre le Katherine Group et Γ Ancrene Riwle: Valeur statistique des premieres attestations de mots d'origine franpaise en anglais", Etudes Anglaises 30: 463 — 472. 1979 a "The Chronology of the Scandinavian loan-verbs in the Katherine Group", English Studies 60: 6 8 0 - 6 8 5 . 1979 b "L'integration morphologique des verbes d'origine scandinave dans le Katherine Group", Linguistics in Belgium, Linguistiek in Belgie, Linguistique en Belgique 3: 40 — 53. 1981 "Etymological convergence in the Katherine Group", in: Michael Davenport — Erik Hansen — Hans Frede Nielsen (eds.), Current Topics in English Historical Linguistics. Odense: Odense University Press, 211—223. 1982 Forms and meanings of the verbs contained in MS. Bodley 34. Paris: Publications de l'Association des Medievistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Superieur 7. Dekeyser, Xavier 1986 "Romance loans in Middle English: A re-assessment", in: Dieter Kastovsky - A. Szwedek (eds.), 2 5 1 - 2 6 5 . Dekeyser, Xavier — Luc Pauwels 1989 "The Demise of the Old English Heritage and Lexical Innovation in Middle English: Two Intertwined Developments", Dutch Working Papers in English Language and Linguistics 15: 1—20. Dobson, Eric J. 1976 The origins of Ancrene Wisse. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Georis, Christine 1990 French Loan-words in Hali Meiöhad. [Unpublished undergraduate "memoire", Liege: Philologie germanique.] Herdan, G. 1956 Language as choice and chance. Groningen: Noordhoff. Jespersen, Otto 1905 Growth and structure of the English language. Oxford: Blackwell. Kastovsky, Dieter — Alexander Szwedek (eds.) 1986 Linguistics Across Historical and Geographical Boundaries. Vol. 1: Linguistic theory and historical linguistics. (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 32.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kennedy, Edward Donald — Ronald Waldron — Joseph S. Wittig (eds.) 1988 Medieval English studies presented to George Kane. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer. Koskenniemi, Inna 1968 Repetitive word pairs in Old and Early Middle English prose. (Annales Universitatis Turkuensis B. 107). Turku: Turun Yliopisto. Koszul, A. 1937 "Note sur la courbe des emprunts de l'anglais au frangais", Bulletin de la Faculte des Lettres de Strasbourg 15: 79 — 82. Mack, Frances M. 1934 Seinte Marherete, pe Meiden ant Martyr. London: EETS 193. Millett, Bella 1982 Hali Meidhad. London: EETS 284. Mosse, Fernand 1943 "On the chronology of French loan-words in English", English Studies 25: 33-40. Paul, Hermann 1901 Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie I. Strassburg: Trübner. Prins, Anton A. 1941 "On the loss and substitution of words in Middle English" I, Neophilologus 26: 2 8 0 - 2 9 8 . 1942 "On the loss and substitution of words in Middle English" II, Neophilologus 27: 4 9 - 5 9 . Serjeantson, Mary S. 1935 A history of foreign words in English. London: Kegan Paul. Tolkien, J. R. R. 1929 "Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meidhad", Essays and studies by members of the English Association 14: 104—126. Zettersten, Arne 1965 Studies in the dialect and vocabulary of the Ancrene Riwle. (Lund Studies in English 34.) Lund: Gleerup. 1969 "French loan-words in the Ancrene Riwle and their frequency", Etudes Romanes de Lund 18: 227 — 250.

Rich Lake: a case history Veronika Kniezsa

1. Introductory 1.1. When analysing Scandinavian borrowings in the English language, Björkman (1900) proposed a series of principles for deciding whether a word common in the Germanic languages is a native one or a Scandinavian loan. First he applied phonological tests and listed as borrowings or at least as Scandinavian influence any items which showed a phonemicphonetic pattern differing from the general English tendencies (e. g. the voiced and voiceless velar stop /k/ and /g/ in a palatal surrounding, the unpalatalised /sk/, etc.). He then analysed the semantics of the words and found that some meanings general since the Middle English period could not be attested in Old English writings, but are shared by Scandinavian languages; he concluded that it is highly probable that, if not the word itself (since the phonemic test is not applicable), at any rate the new meaning had been borrowed from Scandinavian (the classic example being dream 'joy' in Old English, its present meaning in Scandinavian). He also tried to establish the dialect of the donor language. The above principles are also valid in the analysis of borrowings from French. 1.2. The words rich and lake are usually described in dictionaries and histories of the English language as borrowings from French. Both are explained to have undergone semantic changes (cf. 2.1.4. and 3.1.4.) dated to the Middle English period, which is regarded as a clear indication of French influence. There are also some sound changes involved, as in the case of rich. In order to be able to give a full account of the history of the two words, this paper not only examines the English developments but also looks at the same words as described for the French language. It also seems necessary to include the relevant forms and meanings in the other Germanic and Romance languages as well.

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2. Rich 2.1. 2.1.1. English nc/z adj. ( M o d G e r m reich) is an early continental borrowing f r o m Celtic, or as the O E D expresses it "is believed to represent an early Teut. adoption of Celtic *rix = Lat. rex king". The word is a consonant-stem masculine noun with the meaning "king, ruler" a cognate of Latin rex, regis. The reason why Celtic origin is presumed lies in the Gmc. vowel which is /i:/; Latin /e:/ would be preserved as /e:/ in Gmc. The original n o u n appears only as a G m c . personal name element as G o t h . Theodoric, Germ. Heinrich etc. In the Gmc. languages several forms developed representing various parts of speech: a noun rice (masculine ja-stem) with the meaning "ruling, kingdom"; an adj. rice "powerful, wealthy" being the most general. In Old English a masculine η-stem n o u n rica "a powerful person, ruler" was also attested (Bosworth —Toller 1972). While in M o d e r n High G e r m a n both n o u n a n d adjective have survived: Reich 'kingdom, empire', in English the n o u n has gone out of use, the single remnant being the second element in bishopric, itself also infrequently used. The adjective has the main meaning 'wealthy' b o t h in English and G e r m a n . Kluge explains that the meaning changed f r o m the original 'royal' (as compared to Latin regius) to 'powerful' to present day 'wealthy' the a n t o n y m of 'poor'. It is generally believed that Old English still used the adjective in the meaning "powerful"; the presentday meaning "wealthy" is later, probably a Middle English development, and therefore French influence is presumed. M a r y Serjeantson (1935: 55) mentions rich in its present sense in the word pair riche and powre where she discusses late 12th —13th century texts f r o m the Catherine Group. This treatment was not only adopted wholesale by Barbara Strang (1970: 252) but she also made some mistakes concerning the origin of the word in French (she believed that French riche was directly borrowed f r o m a Celtic language). 2.1.2. Old French riche is explained as a borrowing f r o m a Germanic language, (probably f r o m Old Franconian). In the earliest texts it was used in the meaning 'powerful', and the meaning 'wealthy' was first attested in Alexis (11th century) (Dauzat 1938: 632). It does n o t seem probable that this meaning is a special French development, since it can be found in early G e r m a n texts too.

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2.1.3. The proposition that rich 'wealthy' is a special development of the Middle English period is refuted by the examples in the Bosworth — Toller Old English Dictionary, which indeed lists this meaning as well, illustrated with quotations f r o m the Lindisfarne Gospels (circa 1000) among others. The O E D gives two pre-Conquest quotations, one from Bede (circa 900) and one from vElfric's homilies (circa 1000). Other examples can be found in the Microfiche Concordance of Old English; these texts are earlier than any French influence could be presumed. It seems possible that the meaning 'wealthy' had already developed when the Anglo-Saxons left the Continent; or that the extension of meaning from 'powerful' to 'wealthy' came as a natural process. 2.1.4. The French examples make it clear that when the word was borrowed into Old French, it was with the expanded meaning 'powerful, wealthy', hence 'wealthy' cannot be explained as a special French development, "a not uncharacteristical shift" as Strang believes (1970: 252). It is even less likely that the meaning 'wealthy' in English could be due to the influence of Anglo-Norman. What we can say with any assurance is that French riche helped to enforce this meaning, especially if we bear in mind that riche in French was not only used for persons but also for things, to mean 'expensive, valuable'; and this meaning has indeed replaced the original Old English one 'strong, powerful, mighty' (Bosworth — Toller), in this sense. In my opinion only in this one case can we talk about French influence in the development of the meanings of English rich. There are of course authorities who never subscribed to the idea of rich being a French borrowing. Walter Skeat argued that it is not a French word, "though existing as 'riche' in that language" (Skeat 1887: 61). Jespersen allows the possibility of French influence, cautiously remarking that "no one can tell exactly how much modern rich owes to OE rice 'powerful, rich' and how much to French rich'''' (Jespersen 1946: 88). The O E D gives no indication whatsoever that in the opinion of the editors Modern English rich should owe anything to French. 2.2. In the histories of the English language the phonology of rich is usually treated in the chapter on French borrowings, how O F /i:/ has developed in English. There arise several questions. 2.2.1. Authorities on the French language explain that the original Latin quantitative oppositions were changed into qualitative ones in Old French; this would mean that they presume only one neutral quantity in Old French and describe all the long vowels as later developments. Thus

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the vowel in O F riche < Gmc. ri.ki is usually described as being short, (Meyer-Lübke 1935, gives *rihhi as the form in which it was adopted into French), and it is short in Italian riccio too, etc. 2.2.2. O F I'll has to go back to an original Gmc. /i:/ to be able to retain the quality as /if (short Latin and Gmc. /i/ was realized as /e/; in this respect Fr. treated Latin /i/ similarly to OE, e. g. Latin cista > O E ceste). Fouche (1958), however, suggests that shortening already took place in a pre-literary period: Gmc ri. ki > *ritfo > riche. The question of course is: does that mean an overall shortening or one predisposed by the palatatalization of the affricate / t j / , a development not dissimilar to what happened later in Middle English? 2.2.3. There are very few French loan-words in English with the sequence [i:tfl; in addition to rich there is only chickpea (originally chich, present form only since the 18th century due probably either to simplification of the pronunciation, or to folk etymology), also with a short vowel; but the vowel quantity of trick seems to be more decisive: it is explained as a N o r m a n French version of O F tricher, which could have easily represented a long vowel; before a palatalized stop /k/ length would have been preserved, as is proved in native English pairs such as ditch and dike. Since the vowel is short in trick, we have to presume an earlier, O F shortening. Thus it is not entirely certain that we have to anticipate length in O F - A N riche in the late 11th century when it could have appared in English. In any case, whether the vowel of Fr. riche was long or short when Anglo-Norman started influencing Middle English, we accept Berndt's (1960) and Welna's (1978) explanation that the change of quantity in Middle English riche occurred well after the time when French borrowings were accepted into English. It does not seem entirely proper to talk about the Middle English treatment of French vowels, but only the development of English sounds in the course of the Middle English period. Whatever origin we accept for rich to be, it was definitely treated as a native word. 2.2.4. The proof of the above suggestion can be found in native words which had a long vowel in Old English such as ditch (OE di:c(e), and lich (OE li. ce), as well as Middle English whiche where the long vowel is the result of compensatory lengthening which followed the loss of /I/ before [tj] (cf. each < OE ealc, much < OE mycel, etc.). All the above words have shortened their vowel to /i/, a process explained by Jordan as a kind of dissimilation (Jordan 1974: 207). The process has been elaborated by Berndt, who explains it in terms of a diphthongization of M E /v.j and the absorption of the glide by the likewise palatal affricate:

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/i:/ + /tj/ > [/i] + [tj] > /i/ + /tj/ (Berndt 1960: 85). That the shortening is due to a new kind of phonotactics is proved by forms where instead of the palatal affricate the velar stop has been preserved or restored: ditch, but dike with a long vowel, or also like and l ich. However the above phonotactics seem to be dialectal: both Flasdieck (1954: 187) and Dobson (1968: 479) refer to Gil's remark that rich had been pronounced with a long vowel in the Northern dialects (Flasdieck quotes examples from Lincolnshire). Unfortunately no descriptions deal with rich. However, Wright added ditch to the word list of his Dialect Grammar: he gave this word with various diphthongal pronunciations in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire (Wright 1968: 406). 2.2.5. Luick (1964) also mentions late Old English doubling in the comparative: riccra, which he compares to Common Germanic doubling before liquids. He presumes that the would refer to a lengthened consonant possibly accompanied by the shortening of the preceding vowel. Similar phenomena can be observed in other languages too, where parallel variants develop with long vowel + simple consonant and short vowel + long consonant, e. g. in Hungarian standard szölö ~ dialectal szöllö, etc. In Middle English examples we can observe that the comparative and the superlative are almost regularly written with a doubled consonant grapheme: e. g. PCh riccere, ricceste, where we can presume a short vowel indicated by the , and no real consonant length. In these cases the vowel shortness can be explained by the forms consisting of three syllables. The examples in M E D show similar comparative and superlative forms: ricchere, riccheste in contrast to the positive riche, where the mute could indicate a still long vowel. Thus the short vowel in rich — argues Luick — can be the result of generalization and /i/ has been extended to the whole paradigm. 2.2.6. Luick — and following him, Flasdieck — believes that Modern English rich can be regarded as a combination of Old English rice and Old French riche, while Berndt, Welna, etc. treat the word as a French borrowing, allowing Old English rice to have some role. Dobson on the other hand treats it as an entirely English word.

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3. Lake

3.1. The etymology of lake is more controversial. Ultimately it has been traced back to Latin lacus, an -u- and also -i- stem masculine noun, from IE *(o)leq. The basic meaning was 'any kind of trough-like depression'. From this developed the meanings 'trough, tub' and also 'pond'. 3.1.1. In the Germanic languages there is O H G lacche 'puddle' and its OE cognate lacu; both morphologically correspond to -o-stem feminine nouns. In Old English there was another noun, lagu, an -u-stem masculine noun meaning 'sea, water' which was also the name of one of the runic characters. In the opinion of Walde (1954: I, 748) both OE lacu and lagu are related to Lat. lacus. 3.1.2. There is controversy, however, about the meaning of Old English lacu. In the main volume of Bosworth — Toller the meaning is given as Ά pool, pond, piece of water, lake', but in the Supplement there is a remark that all this information should be replaced by 'course of water, stream'. Apparently in the meantime the general opinion had changed. While the editors of the M E D accept that ME lake etc. (Vol. L. 1968) is the continuation of OE lacu which has developed two meanings, 1) 'an expanse of water, a lake' and 2) 'a stream, brook, river', the editors of the OED (1933 and 1989) are of the opinion that Present-day lake sb3 can be traced back to " M E lac, O F lac, ad Lat. lacus", and suggest that OE lacu and PE lake should be regarded as two independent and probably unrelated items of the vocabulary. They regard OE lacu as a native English word which derived from a Gmc. root *lak-, denoting 'moisture', hence the OE verb leccan 'to moisten'. According to the O E D the OE noun survives in the dialects where it means 'a small stream of running water, a channel of water', a view also shared by Jespersen (1949: 88; cf. also Wright: Dialect Dictionary 1968). The entry for Lake sb4 'pond, etc.' which is recorded from the fourteenth century, explains that it "may be due to confusion with lake discussed above or perhaps rather to an independent adoption of Latin lacus". 3.1.3. O F lac is not a straightforward development either. Latin lacus had developed into O F lai, representing the regular diphthongization before a palatal sound (cf. Latin pac-em> O F pais, etc.). In the southern French dialects no such diphthongization took place, hence lac. The southern form was later adopted also in the northern areas: lac was first attested in the writings of Chretien de Troyes in the twelfth century and

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soon ousted the regular development lai. Usually two meanings are mentioned: 1) 'tub, pit': thus in the Biblical story about Daniel in the lion's den. Wartburg (1950) explains that "lacus leonis" is the expression appearing already in the vulgate. Thus the French meaning is a direct continuation from the text of the Bible. 2) 'pond, great piece of water'. In O F lac is used only in the modern sense, i. e., 'pond'. However, Tobler — Lomatzsch (1963) has an interesting quotation from Ste. Leockad eb.133.II where lai refers to the River Aisne (p. 49). Tobler — Lomatzsch also separate meanings for lai as 'Grube, Graben (Abgrund, Schlucht)'. In the French development Central French lai had preserved and continued all the old meanings developed from Latin lacus, while the dialect borrowing lac was reduced to 'pond, piece of water'. It seems that lac became part of the literary standard, while the dialects carried on the original form with the diphthong (Wartburg 1950: V. 125). 3.1.4. According to Behrens (1886) the first sure instance of the meaning 'pond, piece of water' in English occurs in the Peterborough Chronicle. Laces and meres is the rendering of Latin lacus et stagnum of a Latin document dated from 667, in a twelfth century interpolation. Behrens is of the opinion that since this is a post-Conquest example, it must be due to Anglo-Norman influence. If it is so, it would represent a very early borrowing considering the first occurrence of the form in French texts (cf. 3.1.3.). 3.2. The phonemics of lake also presents problems. 3.2.1. The stressed vowel of OE lacu will develop into a long monophthong in Middle English through Open Syllable Lengthening, and would give Present-day [leik] after the Great Vowel Shift, The vowel quantity of the Middle English variants enumerated in the M E D is, however, somewhat ambiguously represented: the use of the macron to mark a long vowel is not quite clear: "lak(e", also "lac(e" — does this mean that the forms are presumed to have long vowel and the ones short notwithstanding the final 'mute' ? (Of course in M E could mark both short and long vowels.) While probably represents a long vowel, might indicate a short one. These examples would mean that the vowel quantity was at best alternating between short and long. It would be too rash to try to draw conclusions about what origin these vowel lengths represented in Middle English, whether they refer to native or French forms.

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3.2.2. Jordan (1974) and Flasdieck (1954) derive English lake from French and explain its vowel as a direct English borrowing from French. Jordan lumps lake together with pas, bas, debat as "Before a simple consonant long" (Jordan 1974: 204; similarly Berndt 1960: 83, Welna 1989: 112, Flasdieck 1954: 185). The equating of ME /a:/ with OF-AN /a:/ in the case of English lake does not seem to be without difficulties. All the authorities of the history of the French language describe the vowel of lac(u expressly as short (Tobler — Lomatzsch 1963, Meyer-Lübke 1935). The main problem is that if borrowed from French, lake has no partners in the present English vocabulary. There are three other words which go back to a low vowel followed by the voiceless velar stop, and all of them are with a short vowel: attack, sack (verb) and track. Sack (verb) incidentally is the same word as English sack (noun), both from Latin saccus (hence with an original short vowel in a closed syllable). Attack and track on the other hand could have been candidates for vowel lengthening in an open syllable, but both are short. Thus lake would be the only example to develop ME /a:/ before [k] in French. The group of words to which Jordan (1974) adds lake is also noteworthy in that its characteristic is not merely a final consonant but specifically a dental one, which will become mute later in French. 3.2.3. The above problems seem to have troubled Luick, who decided that lake must be an independent English borrowing directly from latin, with the vowel length being due to the Mediaeval school-Latin pronunciation, which preferred a long vowel in an open syllable in disyllables (and short in trisyllables), even if the original vowel quantity was reversed. He quotes o.dor, lividus as contrasted to Classical Latin odor, li. vidus (Luick 1964: 4 6 5 - 4 6 6 ) .

4. Conclusions 4.1. Björkman's principles for analysing lexical borrowings are also valid for French loan-words. In sections 2.1. and 3.1. I have applied the phonological test, to decide whether rich and lake can be proved to be borrowed from French. In the case of rich the result was that there is no decisive indication which would phonemically justify calling it a French word. Both its Middle and Modern English form can point both ways:

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it could be a native English or a borrowed element, and since the word was very frequent in Old English and equally frequent in Middle English, I really cannot see why it should be more French than English. In the case of lake the phonological test raises even greater doubts. Since the French word represented a dialect borrowing in the northern area, Central and Norman French included, it is difficult to decide the quantity of the vowel if the word was borrowed from French. On the other hand, there was a word in English which quite easily provided the present phonological pattern. It is true that there are spelling variants quoted in the M E D which could point to a French pronunciation, i. e. those which probably indicate a short low vowel (e. g. ), yet all the other spelling forms seem either to indicate a long vowel or are ambiguous at best (e. g. , wynn ρ and yogh 3 with examples of their use. It seems likely, therfore, that the writer of Μ was a French scribe unfamiliar with the Old English letters and that the ρ was copied, with almost complete accuracy, from his exemplar. J regularly uses w (capital Vv twice) rather than ρ which appears once only. It is almost certain that J's exemplar had ρ because is found, presumably in error for p , four times where w would be expected. 12 In differing proportions, all seven texts preserve the "early features" listed in 2 —5 above. 13 J and Τ are the least conservative while e is by far the most archaic. It is possible that e, which displays a great many Old English features, 14 may represent a text that is deliberately archaistic. In his study of the Caligula MS of La3amon's Brut, E. G. Stanley (1969: 23 — 37) has suggested that the language of the text becomes progressively more archaic as it proceeds. 15 He describes this phenomenon as deliberate orthographic archaizing, reflecting the scribe's consciousness of the archaic nature of the subject matter. Jeremy Smith (1991: 53 — 65) draws attention to awareness among early Middle English scribes of traditional English spellings. He suggests that in the South-West Midlands in and around Worcester there survived a strong sense of orthographic traditionalism leading at times to conscious attempts to produce archaisms. The archaic orthographic and grammatical forms in e may well not have been introduced by the scribe of e himself. Sometimes E, which is in general less conservative than e, preserves an archaic spelling not present in e. This suggests that the writer of the exemplar from which e and Ε both independently derive may have been responsible for archaizing the language of his own exemplar. A close word by word comparison of e and Ε should clarify considerably which forms are to be attributed to the common exemplar and which may be regarded as belonging to the scribes of e and E. It would perhaps be too much to expect that the "predominantly south-western" features so frequently commented on will turn out to be assignable to the archaistic exemplar. Whatever is the explanation for the conservative nature of the language of e and E, it is evident that one should not attempt to distinguish too

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sharply between diachronic and diatopic variation. The oldest text is Τ and, next to J, it is the least conservative linguistically. It has long been known that in the history of English the North and East have been more innovative than the South and West. Linguistic conservatism itself may therefore have regional implications. 16

4.2. Language mixture Linguistic similarities between texts may imply not simply that the scribal dialects of the copyists shared these features but merely that their exemplars' dialects did so. Comparison of the seven P M texts reveals that some of the grammatically conservative forms, such as weak noun plurals in -en and inflected forms of definite articles and adjectives, appear in the same context in all or most of the versions. It can be assumed in these cases that the forms have been perpetuated from the original, probably often for metrical reasons. How then can we be sure to what extent a surviving text represents (1) the language of its copyist (2) the language of its exemplar (and/or the exemplar's precursors) or (3) an inextricable mixture of the copyist's language and what has gone before? The comparison of two or more versions of a work, at least where copies are textually close, may enable us to isolate similar forms which can then be assigned to a previous stage of transmission. Even this does not necessarily imply that such forms are not also part of the language of any or all of the surviving copies. In the absence of parallel texts or other means of isolating the language of the copyist, recourse may only be had to an assessment of the internal homgeneity of the scribal dialect and to what extent its features match forms from texts of known dialectal provenance. However, in many cases we do have another possible way of distinguishing the language of the copyist. Where a scribe has written more than one text using exemplars of differing linguistic character is it likely that forms common to all the texts belong to the dialect of the copyist. Those that vary from text to text may be completely foreign to the copyist's usage and be perpetuated by him as so-called "relicts" from his exemplar. Alternatively, two or more variants of a particular word appearing in his exemplars may be more or less equally familiar to the copyist. In this case the variation in his usage is "constrained" by what he finds in his exemplar. 17 This constraint may lead him to write variants from his "passive repertoire" — that is forms known to him but which

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he would not normally use spontaneously; or it may cause the relative frequencies of variants in his "active repertoire" to be different from those in his own spontaneous usage. It will very often be possible to sort out different linguistic strata in a text by closely comparing its forms with those of other texts by the same hand. Three of the manuscripts of the PM, T, L and J, preserve other English texts in the same hand. Τ contains, after the PM, thirty-four prose homilies, written by the hand of the P M (Hand A) alternating with another hand (B). A third hand (C) writes the final homily. Preliminary impressions suggest that the prose homilies in Hand A are in a language similar to but not identical with that of the PM. For many words there are more variants in the homilies than in the PM; this is only to be expected in much longer texts which are themselves possibly of varied linguistic origins.18 Otherwise, the most obvious differences are the use in the homilies of p alongside pat for the conjunction, relative pronoun and demonstrative 'that'; the increased use of sh- displacing s- in words with Old English sc-; the appearance of forms of the word sin with i/y and u as well as those with e as medial vowel; and the use of g (rather than g) for palatal /j/ as well as for non-palatal /g/. L contains seventeen homilies, one in verse, in the same hand as the PM. I have not yet analysed the language of the homilies, but Celia Sisam's work (1951: 105 — 113) indicates that the usage of L's scribe is influenced by that of his exemplars. According to Miss Sisam, the P M belongs to what she calls the Β group of texts, which derive from a newer tradition than the A group. All but one of the five homilies shared by Τ and L also belong to the Β group. It is possible that textual and linguistic comparison of the two versions of these homilies will lead to further insights about the language of the scribes and their exemplars. J is a large verse miscellany many of whose texts are also to be found in other versions. It will be necessary to make separate linguistic analyses for each individual text and to compare them not only with each other but also where possible with those of copies in other manuscripts. Once this is done our knowledge of the textual and linguistic relationships of these manuscripts is likely to be considerably increased and clarified. Notes 1. Formerly the Gayre Institute for Medieval English and Scottish Dialectology. Professor Angus Mcintosh and Dr Margaret Laing are working in collaboration with Dr Jeremy Smith of Glasgow University. This investigation, which it is hoped will lead to the compilation of a Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, is one of the successors to

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9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

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the Middle English Dialect Project and its published results: A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, (LALME) (Mcintosh — Samuels — Benskin: 1986). O t h e r projects are also in progress. At the Institute for Historical Dialectology, D r Keith Williamson is investigating the dialectology of Older Scots. Professor Michael Benskin of the University of Oslo continues his work on Middle Hiberno-English and, in collaboration with Professor Arthur Sandved, o n the history of Standard English. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 636; manuscript Ε of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 1. London, British Library, Arundel 292, fols. 4r— lOv; Cambridge, C o r p u s Christi College 444, fols lr—81r; British Library, Stowe 34. F o r a description of scribal copying habits in the late medieval period, see M c i n t o s h 1973: 5 5 - 6 6 . Cf. also Benskin - Laing 1981: 5 5 - 1 0 6 . British Library, Cotton G a l b a xix. Three leaves only survive. Maidstone Museum A. 13, fol. 93r. Except for: (1) H a n d D of British Library, C o t t o n Cleopatra C. vi which probably belongs in West Norfolk. See M c i n t o s h 1976: 3 6 - 4 9 and cf. D o b s o n 1972: cxlff. (2) British Library, C o t t o n Titus D . xviii whose language, in the opinion of A n g u s Mcintosh, has a distinctly more northerly West Midland flavour than any of the other manuscripts containing texts of the Ancrene Riwle. The fullest account of the Poema Morale is by Betty Hill (1977: 97 — 144) who also provides excellent references to previous studies on the text. On the basis of loan-words and the grammatical form of words in rhyming position and on the palaeographical dating of the earliest surviving copy, T. N o n e of the manuscripts has clear indications of its date of production; the dates given are those generally accepted on palaeographical grounds. Comparable with the use of ρ is the realisation of the letter corresponding to Old English palatal g. All the texts distinguish between non-palatal /g/ in e. g. good, king and palatal /j/ in e. g. yet, young. The former is written g, the latter 3. However, in T, L, D and e 3 has the f o r m of Old English insular 5, while Μ has the 3-shape associated with later Middle English scripts. E's 3 is quite different f r o m insular 5 b u t is itself somewhat eccentric in shape. J does not have 3 at all but uses y for /j/. 2. Accusative and dative inflexions are retained occasionally by all the texts f o r the, him and them and in some adjectives, which also sometimes retain genitive endings. Case and gender distinctions are most frequently maintained in D and e and least in J and M. Distinctions are not made with complete regularity in any of the texts. 3. 3rd person singular indicative endings. Excluding verbs with vocalic stems such as do and go, the numbers of syncopated (S) versus unsyncopated (U) endings are as follows: Τ has 21 S, 46 U; L has 24 S, 31 U ; D has 34 S, 50 U; e has 45 S, 33 U; Ε has 37 S, 43 U ; J has 20 S, 43 U ; Μ has 39 S, 37 U. 4. Class II weak verb endings with -i-j-y- are regularly retained in all seven texts. 5. Noun endings. The development of the n o u n endings in Middle English is very complex. T h e eventual simplification of all paradigms to nominative, accusative and dative singular in 0 or -e and plural and genitive singular in -es took a long time. The PM texts display -es endings ultimately derived f r o m Old English strong masculine nouns, -en endings derived f r o m the weak declension and -e or 0 endings derived f r o m a variety of feminine and neuter declensions. Historical correctness is not always preserved. The numbers of the three types of ending in the seven texts are as follows: Τ -es (27), -e/0 (24), -en (19); L -e/0 (21), -es (12), -en (5); Ε

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Margaret

Laing

-e/0 (35), -es (25), -en (22); e -e/ö (39), -es (21), -en (6); Ε -e/0 (35), -es (24), -en (11); J -es (29), -e/0 (24), -en (17); Μ -