Historical Linguistics and Palaeography, two inseparable tools to teach History of the English language (original) (raw)
Related papers
Quaerendo, 2008
One of the main objects of the discipline of medieval palaeography is the construction of a 'scale' of datable elements in the script, which would enable us to fix undated manuscripts in time and space. Such a scale could best be constructed on the basis of the script found in charters and other documentary sources, as these come in sufficient numbers and are nearly always exactly dated. Th is preliminary study, based on 384 such documents from the Low Countries from the period 1300-1500, indicates that this could be a successful approach: analysis of a few letterforms (g, d, e) leads to the conclusion that these forms indeed show a datable evolution. Moreover, the types of script found in this corpus neatly fall within the Lieftinckian categories used in the study of book script, showing that the scripts in books and administrative documents are by no means separate entities.
2012. Sobol. The paleography of an Old English poetical text
The paper discusses the role of paleographical evidence for the analysis of medieval texts, exemplified by problems pertaining to Resignation. This Old English poetical text is solely preserved in the manuscript known as the Exeter Book, which dates to the 2 nd half of the 10 th c. AD. Until 1920 editors would erroneously recognise the poem's initial line, although thus obtained first word of the text had been unattested. Also, during the copying process the scribe made numerous mistakes, of which some were corrected already in the manuscript by the writer himself or his medieval readers, but others were left unnoticed-such is the case especially with repetitions and omissions.
京都大學文學部研究紀要, 2012
The majority of Middle English texts are anonymous, and they do not provide information as to when and where they were produced. It is, therefore, often necessary for Middle English text editors to date and localize the language by analyzing its various features. Fortunately, for late Middle English, the existence of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME) (see McIntosh, Samuels, and Benskin 1986) is now a great help. By using the "fit-technique" of LALME, one can reach a fairly accurate localization of the language of the scribe at issue. 2 The dating of language, by contrast, is not an easy task, unless some reliable external pieces of evidence are available. In relation to medieval works in general, Damian-Grint(1996: 280) states: "Philological evidence will give a rough approximation of the period in which a work was composed but can rarely indicate a possible date of composition to within even half a century". When a particular manuscript is concerned, the nature of the script together with codicological information can suggest the approximate date of its production, but I have long wondered how linguistic analyses can make a further contribution to this area than they do now. The aim of the present study is to see if some linguistic features can function as linguistic scales to make the "chronological fit" possible. I will analyze for this purpose two different versions of a single text: MS Cotton Tiberius D. VII(MS １ This research was in part supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grantin-Aid for Scientific Research. ２ Iyeiri(forthcoming)illustrates the use of LALME by analyzing the language of the parchment section of MS Pepys 2125, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and shows that there are some caveats to be taken into consideration in LALME's "fit-technique". For details of the "fit-technique" of LALME, see Benskin(1991)among others.
The function of the early Anglo-Saxon runic inscriptions up to c.600AD. (MA thesis)
The research aim of this thesis is to attempt to answer several interlinking research questions concerning function of runic inscriptions pre-600AD. The primary questions are: what are the functions of the early Anglo-Saxon runic script before c.600AD? What specifically is the communicative function of the inscriptions: what are the inscriptions communicating about, and how? The secondary questions, dealt with in less detail in this thesis, are: What is the communicative environment pre-c.600AD and can we reconstruct it with our data? Is there a relationship between textuality and materiality? The findings of this thesis challenge our notion of what the act of ‘reading’ is, and by challenging our ideas of function and communication, we can hypothesise a concept of a communicative act suitable for pre-c.600AD culture, taking away our twenty-first century preconceptions of function and how much they rely on our ideas of ‘reading’. Through examining the runic text and the rune-bearing object, it appears that the act of communication was often composite, ‘made up of several things’- multimodal and multi-sensory, hugely varied in communicative domains, styles, and functions. The rune-bearing object appears to be considered when choosing a material to carry the message, as well as be an integral part of the message in some instances. The functions of runic inscriptions, both socio-culturally and communicatively, before c.600AD are primarily to denote ownership and personalisation, with alternate functions such as commemoration and private communication also present. Likely designed to be handled in the process of being read, by taking away our ideas of reading left to right in a straight line with text viewable 100% of the time, we can hypothesise a wider range of functions of the inscriptions. This corpus gives us just a glimpse of the communicative variety of the ‘Dark Ages’ and further research will illuminate, in time, much more about the functions of writing pre-c.600AD.
2006
The aim of the present paper is to present an approach to the vernacularisation of English scien-tific texts with special attention to lexicon. Word-formation is a better indicator than other linguis-tic levels of the extent to which the scientific register is adapted to the vernacular because such vernacularisation can be seen clearly when scientific items reproduce the patterns of the general lexicon. To this end, we will attempt to measure the degree of development of the vernacular scientific register by analysing word-formation processes. It is also our intention to ascertain whether there is a predominance of one particular linguistic stratum in texts of that kind from the late Middle Ages, unveiling the etymological origin of some lexical items of diverse provenance. The paper is therefore divided into four sections. In section 1 the socio-historical context of the scientific register is described briefly. Section 2 covers the processes of lexical enrichment in Middle English...