Medieval English: The state of the language

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH: THE STATE OF THE LANGUAGE

Review article of The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume I (1992) The Beginnings to 1066, edited by Richard M. Hogg, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Cloth. xxiii + 609 p., £ 60.00, ISBN 0-521- 26474-X; Volume II (1992) 1066-1476, edited by Norman Blake, Cloth xxi + 703 p. £ 65.00. ISBN 0-521-26475-8.

In the last few decades several large-scale data-oriented projects in the field of English historical linguistics have been undertaken. One is the Dictionary of Old English project in Toronto with its spinoffs, such as computerised texts and concordances. Another one is the Helsinki Corpus of Diachronic Texts, partly based on the Toronto material. The Old and Middle English parts of the Helsinki Corpus are at present undergoing syntactic tagging (in the case of the Old English material, with the help of morphological coding). The Helsinki corpus also includes Early Modem English texts, but a more extensive corpus of Early (and Late) Modern English is now being prepared by Edward Finnegan and Douglas Biber. Furthermore, electronic texts for complete works of more and more indi- vidual writers are becoming available.

With the help of these materials, it is is now far easier than before to collect data on many aspects of the history of English quite fast and reliably. The analysis of such data, however, is another matter. Apart from an adequate theoretical linguistic background, one also needs a sound knowledge of the state of the English language at the time one is interested in if one wants to provide adequate and interesting interpretations of the data. There is therefore a need for a thorough but accessible historical treatment of the English language which can serve as background by giving a comprehensive overview of the state of the language in the various periods. Richard Hogg, the general editor of The Cambridge History of the English Language (CHEL) states in his general preface that it is the aim of CHEL to fill the gap between introductory histories of the language and specialized works, and that it is meant to "provide a solid discussion of the full range of the history of English both to the anglicist who does not spe- cialise in the particular area to hand and to the general linguist who has no specialised knowledge of the history of English" (Vol. I: xv). What we can expect from CHEL, therefore, is an overview of the important features of the English language at its various stages of development as well as an introduction to more specialised studies.

CHEL is projected in six volumes, the first four in chronological order: Vol. I going from the beginnings to 1066, Vol. II from 1066 to 1476, Vol. III from 1476 to 1776, and Vol. IV from 1776 to the present day. The periodization roughly coincides with Old English (Vok I), Middle English (Vol. II), and ModE (Vols. III and IV), though these terms are not used in

Neophilologus 79: 509-523, 1995. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

510 Willem Koopman and Wire van der Wurff

the volume titles. The cut-off dates are motivated by political and social developments rather than linguistic considerations. Thus, the Norman conquest in 1066 did not cause any immediate change-over from Old English to Middle English, but it did eventually result in certain features of the standard Old English written language becoming less prominent, so that the English language from then on suddenly appeared to change a lot. The remaining volumes of CHEL are about English in Britain and overseas (Vol. V, which appeared in 1994), and English in North America (Vol. VI). The two volumes reviewed here contain, besides an introduction to the period, chapters dealing with phonology and morphology, syntax, dialects, lexis and semantics, onomastics, literary language, and the Indo- European background (in Vol. I).

No attempt has been made to impose a single consistent theoretical framework on the over forty different scholars contributing to CHEL. Apart from the practical problems involved (is it possible to find even two lin- guists that agree in all respects on theoretical matters?), Hogg says that "[w]hilst this work aims to be authoritative, it is not prescriptive, and the final goal must be to stimulate interest in a subject in which much work remains to be done, both theoretically and empirically" (Vol. I: xvi). This seems to us a valid stance. However, the relative lack of theoretical uni- formity has an obvious disadvantage too. The same subject may get very different treatment in the two volumes (see, for example, our remarks below on the chapters by Kastovsky and Burnley, dealing with vocabulary and semantics). Nevertheless, having read the first two volumes to come out, we think that on balance Hogg's decision has worked out well, although this is something that different readers (of different theoretical persuasions) may wish to judge for themselves.

Richard Hogg is also the editor of Vol. I (The Beginnings to 1066). In his introduction to this volume he deals with the political, ecclesiastical and literary history of the period and its relevance for the history of the language. Political events influenced what has come down to us, and in which linguistic form. Ecclesiastical events were equally important, due to the key role that the church played in the production and preservation of manuscripts (including non-literary texts, such as charters). The literary history determines which literary texts are available and from what time.

A point stressed by Hogg is that there is no sudden break between the Old and Middle English periods attributable to the Norman Conquest. The influence of the conquest was primarily political and had effects in the long term (mainly on the vocabulary). The introduction ends with a section dealing with the nature of the evidence and the kinds of distortions that there can be in them. There is a limited body of texts, which can lead to problems of interpretation (if something is not recorded, does it mean that it was ungrammatical?). Furthermore, most of the data is of the same kind: it is socially homogeneous, very often the texts are translations from Latin, the writing is usually of a formal nature, and in the later Old English

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period there are clear signs that a written standard is being used. The way in which editions sometimes depart from manuscript readings should also be noted. Hogg illustrates this by comparing a facsimile page of The Wanderer with a transcription and the way this appears in four different editions of the poem. He points out that editorial practice influences our appreciation of written Old English, a point that has been made before but that bears repeating. The illustration chosen by Hogg is from a single unique manuscript (The Wanderer appears only in The Exeter Book), but problems arise also when texts survive in more than one version or copy, as Allen (1992) shows in some detail for the ~lfr ic manuscripts. Some of these have been preserved only in late copies and it is therefore dangerous to assume that they show ./Elfric's written practice in the same way as other manuscripts do. Careful handling of all the available evidence is required.

The importance of social and historical developments is also stressed by Blake, editor of Vol. II (1066-1476), in his introduction to that volume. He first provides a nut-shell history of the study of Middle English, making clear that there has been a great deal of work on phonology and spelling, but somewhat less on morphology, vocabulary and syntax. This is followed by a sketch of the external linguistic history of England in the Middle English period, in which English had to compete with French and Latin as the medium of writing (and, as a spoken medium, though at different levels, with Celtic and Old Norse). The decay of the late West-Saxon standard, the ensuing fragmentation and local standardization, and the rise of the London-based standard are also dealt with, and put in a historical/political context.

English is an Indo-European language, and to set the scene Vol. I therefore includes a chapter on "The Place of English in Germanic and Indo-European", in which Alfred Bammesberger tries to trace the line from Old English back to Indo-European. He does so in considerable detail, which brings out an inherent problem with this subject. The detail is necessary to illustrate, but at the same time its abstract and specialised nature is not conducive to great readability. It is hard to strike a balance here, and perhaps Bammesberger has not found it. The detail given in effect is likely to be insufficient for the specialist but far too great for the non- specialist.

Bammesberger opens with a brief discussion of linguistic reconstruction, after which the phonological ancestry of English is traced from its Indo-European base, followed by examples of each phoneme illustrated from various Indo-European languages. The phonological terminology employed is sometimes different from what Hogg and Lass use in their sections on phonology. It is left largely unexplained how Germanic became the way it is usually reconstructed, although Grimm's Law and Verner's Law are discussed separately. Apart from these two sound changes, Bammesberger does not really give us a sense of a changing language where develop-

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ments can be interpreted with reference to an overall system. Thus we get little insight in how and why the language developed to the pre-Old English stage. The discussion of morphology concentrates on n~uns, adjectives and verbs. Old English shows a great deal of reduction when compared to what we can reconstruct for Indo-European, but there are also some interesting innovations, such as certain adjectival inflections and weak verbs.

Most of the illustrative material in Bammesberger's chapter comes from the fields of phonology and morphology. It is in these areas that reconstruction can most successfully be applied by using cognate forms, since the single word level is sufficient for this purpose. As has been repeat- edly pointed out (see for example Lightfoot (1979: 154ff), Mithun and Campbell (1982) and Winter (1984)), it is far more difficult to reconstruct syntax. There is no obvious syntactic system comparable to the phonemic system for phonology, or the paradigm for morphology, which provide us with a framework within which change can take place. Syntax by defini- tion involves combinations of words, and although modern syntactic work is yielding some insight into the principles governing these combinations, it has not led to the formulation of precise constraints on the paths of syntactic change. This means that syntactic reconstruction remains a hazardous occupation. It is probably for this reason that Bammesberger restricts himself to a (very) brief discussion of the main patterns in positional syntax ("the arrangement of word groups", as he calls it). Here object-verb order is commonly reconstructed for Indo-European and on the evidence adduced by Bammesberger this seems reasonable. The inscription on the Gallehus horn, however, given by Bammesberger to illustrate Germanic object-verb order, has alliteration and, judging from the Old English alliterative patterns in Beowulf, this could well have an influence on the syntax. Two further points of syntax are briefly touched upon: the position of a coordinated imperative (illustrations from Greek and Beowulf) and an Old English inno- vation in the way relative clauses were formed. Bammesberger's general view that a deviation from the basic syntactic pattern "serves to render some special emphasis" (Vol. I: 60) appears somewhat simplistic in the light of what we know of modern languages with variability in werd order, such as Dutch. The chapter concludes with some remarks about what part of the lexicon can be traced to Indo-European, the possible original Indo- European homeland, and inherited forms of word formation.

Both volumes contain a chapter on "literary language", written by Malcolm Godden for Old English and Norman Blake for Middle English. From these two chapters, the differences between Old and Middle English styles of writing emerge clearly. Thus, Godden gives an overview of the poetic style of Old English, with its strict observance of verse-patterns and copious ornamentation in the form of synonyms, compounds, formulas, and variation. Blake shows that little of this survives into the Middle English period, and discusses the various hypotheses concerning the origins of Middle English alliterative verse (an unbroken oral tradition, or the influ-

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ence of late Old English alliterative prose, which itself drew on verse con- ventions, as is described in some detail in Godden's chapter).

Both chapters emphasize the fact that present-day views of literature and literary language cannot be transposed wholesale to the study of medieval literature, in which, as noted above, there is often widespread variation in copies of one and the same text and concepts of authorship were different from what they are today (for a good recent discussion of these points, with reference to Chaucer's Boece, see Minnis and Machan 1993). One of the consequences is that often it is fruitless to try and attach much meaning to the choice of particular lexical items, as Blake in particular (following his earlier work, e.g. Blake 1977) emphasizes (thus creating some tension between his own chapter and that on Middle English lexis and semantics by Burnley, who does not hesitate to call attention to the significance of lexical choice in various cases).

Although both Godden and Blake provide discussion of stylistic issues that may be helpful to students first embarking on the study of medieval English texts, the nature of the material is such that the reader does not come away from these chapters with a feeling that this particular field is one in which ideas are sharply formulated, or hypotheses can be put to stringent tests. The result is that these chapters are much more discursive than the ones on, for example, phonology and morphology, or syntax. In Godden's chapter, this sense of difference is heightened by the fact that at various points (pp. 514, 516, 519) he seems to be suggesting that Old English prose writers had to invent a syntax for their language, which lacked rules. This, it seems to us, is an untenable position, as a reading of Elizabeth Traugott's chapter on Old English syntax shows.

This chapter and the one by Olga Fischer on Middle English syntax are arranged along roughly identical lines, in that both have sections on the noun phrase, the verb phrase/verb group, negation, subordinate clauses, and word order. A point at which they differ somewhat from each other is that Traugott has a lot to say about the meaning and function of the various syntactic patterns and phenomena of Old English, and little about change in this period, while Fischer discusses in detail the nature and causes of many syntactic changes in Middle English, devoting somewhat less attention to matters of meaning/function.

This difference in emphasis (besides reflecting the theoretical perspec- tives and interests of the two authors) will probably make good sense to the average reader of these two volumes of CHEL. In dealing with Old English texts, many readers will be struck by the outlandishness of the grammatical system (which has features like productive use of the subjunctive, a thriving case-system, three genders, variable use of the articles/demon- stratives, heavy use of correlative structures, "un-English" use of tense and aspect forms, impersonal verbs, etcetera), and the consequent difficulty of perceiving the functions of these features. As Gneuss (1991: 23) puts it: "For the speaker and reader of Modern English who is beginning


to study Old English, texts written in that language may at first appear strange and somewhat difficult". Moreover, there is little observable variation or syntactic change in the surviving Old English texts; the few examples, such as the rise of verbal periphrasis, increased use of prepositions, weakening of the contrasts between wesan, beon and weor19an, are summed up by Traugott in a short final section.

The syntax of (late) Middle English texts, however, will strike the average reader as more familiar, i.e. closer to the present-day system and its associations of constructions with functions. As Dunn and Byrnes (1973: 13) say: "There are many subtle differences in syntax between Middle English and Modern English, but few will present any real difficulty to the reader." An obvious question to ask is then not so much what the meanings of grammatical constructions are, as why there is this difference between Old and Middle English syntax, i.e. what changes there have been and why they have happened. Moreover, a somewhat wider acquaintance with Middle English texts will make readers aware of the fact that there is a great deal of diachronic development in the period, which again raises questions about change.

The various sections of Traugott's chapter on Old English syntax deal with topics like markers of (in)definiteness, agreement in the NP and between NPs, subject-verb agreement, the use of tenses and moods, aux- iliaries and pre-modals (which for the most part lack epistemic force in Old English), case-assignment and the nature of subjects and objects (here she adopts Plank's (1983) view that the accusative expresses an "antago- nistic" participant, the dative a minimal participant, and the genitive a source or stimulus), marking of coordination and subordination, types of subordinate clauses and the use of the indicative/subjunctive in them, negation, and word and clause order. The focus is on Alfredian and ~lfrician prose, the two text types most often read and providing the best database for the study of Old English syntax. Because of its emphasis on matters of meaning, its copious exemplification and avoidance of specialized terminology, the chapter will be a useful and relatively painless introduction to Old English syntax also for students interested mainly in the literary study of Old English texts.

After reading the chapter, such students might identify some general areas of Old English syntax that have so far not been studied well. One of these involves the question whether there are any functional correlates to the use of specific word order patterns. From survey works like Myhill (1992) it is clear that many languages with some freedom of word order exploit the choice between variants for pragmatic purposes. For Old English, however, there has been little systematic study of this topic, and this is reflected in Traugott's chapter, which deals with it only very briefly (pp. 277-280). More structurally inclined students will perhaps note the absence of explicit discussion of the formal derivation of the various Old English word orders; Traugott does refer to work exploring such matters (of which

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there has been an increasing amount over the last decade or so), but - probably wisely in a work of this kind - does not devote much space to it.

While there have been other wide-ranging treatments of Old English syntax before Traugott's chapter (see especially Mitchell 1985), Fischer's chapter can be regarded as the first comprehensive general description of Middle English syntax. It synthesizes the results of a great number of earlier detailed studies of particular constructions and authors, using a traditional grammatical framework (here and there enriched with notions from the generative model) to structure the information. As a consequence, Fischer's chapter will be a useful starting point for further research on specific problems of Middle English syntax. Among the many changes that she discusses are the development of the genitive (decline of the objective genitive, the rise of the group genitive, absolute genitive and double genitive), the Middle English history of the impersonal verbs, the rise of the perfect, the origins of dummy do, developments in relative clause marking, the extensions in the use of the to-infinitive, the shift towards verb- object order, and the emergence of prepositional and indirect passives. In most cases, Fischer identifies structural factors (such as the shift towards consistent verb-object order), rather than French or Latin influence, as providing the impetus for change in particular constructions. In the section with Further Reading, detailed references are given to studies relevant to each topic dealt with, enhancing the value of this chapter for historical syntacticians.

Traditionally the study of Old mad Middle English has concentrated on phonology and morphology (which is in fact all that most grammars of Old and Middle English deal with). It is not easy to synthesise this mass of scholarship, but Richard Hogg (Vol. I), and Roger Lass (Vol. II) perform this task successfully in their very readable chapters on Phonology and Morphology. They manage to convey a sense of the history of the language as a process of continuous change, though change does not take place at the same rate throughout.

The two chapters are identical in organization. They begin with a brief introduction about the problems involved in gathering and interpreting evidence about older stages of a language. A section on orthography follows before the phonology proper can be tackled. Naturally Hogg has more to say here, as the origins of the Old English writing system must be briefly explained. In the discussion of phonology the theoretical orientation is explained in sufficient detail to enable the reader to follow the exposition without getting bogged down in theoretical discussions. Both writers describe the changes that took place during their period with reference to the stage immediately preceding, and put great emphasis on the phonology as a system. The changes they describe are discussed in terms of how they affect and alter this phonological system, an approach that makes it possible to bring together a lot of material in a coherent way.

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Hogg, in his treatment of Old English phonology, takes as his "target" Late West Saxon (=/Elfrician West Saxon, ca. 1000). He regards this as a different dialect from Early West Saxon (-- Alfredian West Saxon, ca 900)i which many handbooks use as their basis. Hogg (and Lass too) is at pains to point out that West Saxon is not the precursor of Standard Modern English. Any discussion of Old English phonology must inevitably take West Saxon as its basis because of the paucity of material for the other dialects, making it impossible to trace the history of English in a direct way. The choice of Late West Saxon is an interesting one and has much to recom- mend it. Compared with Early West Saxon there is more material to work with and it is closer to Middle English, which in a work on the history of the language can only be an asset. The chapter thus brings matters to a point where Lass can take over for Middle English. Phonological "trends" are clearly traced and described, with sufficient attention to areas where consensus is lacking among scholars and the reasons why that is so, while at the same time the detail is not overwhelming. The suggested reading provides a good guide to further investigation. What we miss here, however (and did not find in the chapter on dialects either), is any reference to (or discussion of) the work by Kitson (1992), who argues that, even for Old English, dialect maps of considerable detail can be drawn up, based on charter bound material. If Kitson's basic assumptions are correct, this approach will provide a new window onto the phonology of Old English.

The morphology is discussed after the phonology because many phonological processes (mainly in unstressed syllables) affect the morphology. The reduction of endings is, however, not only caused by phonological change, but is also steered by analogical processes, amply illustrated by Hogg. With morphology too we get into the realm of syntax. This is illustrated by the discussion of the origin of the West Saxon ending for the second person singular, present indicative: -st (where the t derives from cliticization of the second person pronoun following the verb), and syncopation of the vowel in the endings of the second and third persons present indicative in West Saxon, which is explained in a similar way. Much of the Old English material is of a rather formal nature (not just in language but also in spelling), so we are not usually in a position to trace developments in informal language. There are tantalizing glimpses, but that is all.

Hogg makes good use of the idea of trends or tendencies which seem to occur again and again, an idea also found in the chapter on Middle English by Lass, who sees in much of the Middle English development a case of drift. Whatever one may think of the idea that languages can drift in particular directions and that certain phonological configurations are avoided by a language (e.g. front rounded vowels in English) and elimi- nated when they appear, it cannot be denied that Lass uses these ideas to good effect in his exposition. He frequently goes back to the Old English

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and even pre-Old English stages to illustrate what he sees as the "English" trend.

The range of Middle English dialects is considerable and obviously it is impossible to deal with the phonology and morphology of all of them in just one chapter. Lass's decision to concentrate on "the southeast midlands, in particular the educated speech of London" (vol II: 32) is well motivated. This is after all the variety that standard English derives from. Information about the regional history can be fround in the chapter on diatec- tology. One of the strong parts of Lass's chapter is the discussion of suprasegmentals, which is concise and lucid and enables him to present a more coherent picture of the phonology than is found in the handbooks. Middle English morphology is largely a matter of a great reduction in the endings and analogical processes, as Lass makes very clear.

The empirical details given in both chapters seem generally reliable, although one can quarrel with Hogg's phrase "occur only occasionally" for the dual (vol I: 144-45). Dual forms are not as infrequent as Hogg seems to suggest. They are found throughout the period, and in many texts (e.g. Boethius), but are naturally never as frequent as non-duals. All in all they are more than just a few isolated forms (see Healey and Venezky (1980) for details).

In Lass's chapter, we noted the unfortunate choice of the word husas

to exemplify a typical Old English -as plural (vol II: 95/96). Hus was neuter in Old English and, being a heavy stem, remained unchanged in the nom/acc plural. According to the Old English Concordance (Healey and Venezky 1980), the form husas occurs only once, in a late Old English text:

ChronE 1116.18 On [oisum ylcan geare b~emde call 19~et mynstre of Burh & ealle l~a husas butan se Captelhus & se Sl~epperne

Another point of detail concerns the inflected infinitive in Old English, which is claimed to occur "mainly after prepositions" (vol II: 145). Mitchell (1985: §921) makes clear that the preposition is almost always to (a few cases with f o r to are found in late texts) and that instances without a preposition are suspect.

However, it would be unfair to dwell on points like this. Both chapters provide a competent and very digestible treatment of their topic, and they should be recommended reading not only for those coming to the subject without much previous background, but also to those who have struggled with the standard handbooks.

Dialectology (the systematic study of regional variation in language) is treated by Thomas Toon in Vol. I ("Old English Dialects") and by James Milroy in Vol. II ("Middle English Dialectology"). The variation we can observe is much greater in the Middle English period than in the Old English period. This is due not only to the survival of more material from all over the country, but also to the absence of what can be called a written standard

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in Middle English. Such a standard can be observed in the Late Old English period, though it was never as uniform as the standard written language is today. The scope of dialectology is therefore greater in the Middle English than in the Old English period.

Toon focusses much of his attention on Mercian, and has relatively little to say about other Old English dialects, ignoring the later period completely. He attempts to show that variation in the written record need not necessarily be interpreted as devoid of meaning. In the case of Mercian, most of it can be interpreted as showing stages of sound changes in progress. The chapter takes a great deal for granted, and it is unlikely that the unini- tiated reader will be able to grasp all of it easily (although this should be one of the aims in a book of this nature). Thus, the table on p. 416 assumes that we know what is meant by ~e 2, and that the reflexes discussed there apply usually to vowels in stressed positions only. It is not clear what the asterisks in Figure 6.4 are meant to represent. Much of the discussion is also rather abstract, with hardly any illustrative material, and this does not make it easy to follow. Late West Saxon is totally ignored and there is no attempt to indicate how one should deal with variation in later manuscripts. While the variationist approach advocated by Toon may work for the Mercian material, it is not clear whether and how it would work for other material. Occasionally Toon is tempted to go into phonological matters, as on p. 446, where he discusses the order in which the pre-Old English sound changes took place. This does not seem to be very relevant for Old English dialectology, since the difference in the order of sound changes does not influence the actual appearance of the forms in the manuscripts. Like others before him, Toon is pessimistic about the possibilities of establishing Old English isoglosses; as pointed out above, recent work by Kitson suggests that the position is not totally hopeless in this respect. The variation discussed by Toon is primarily phonological, with little room for morphology or syntax (it is dismissed in "Further Reading", which otherwise is disappointing; there are very few references and suggestions to help the reader).

Milroy does a much more successful job in his treatment of Middle English dialectology. His introductory section is a good discussion of the problems facing anyone wanting to engage in Middle English dialectology. He deals with the type of written sources and their interpretation, and follows this with sections on geographical variation and the methods that can be used to draw conclusions from it. The final section deals with intra- textual variation. There are short descriptions of the main dialect indicators (variants) as well as some illustrative texts. A prominent place is given to A linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (McIntosh et al. 1986) and its methodology. The section dealing with it could serve as a good introduction to anyone who approaches the atlas for the first time and wants to know what sort of information it contains, what it sets out to do and what its methodology is. Milroy focuses on regional distribution of variants

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but does not go into the origin of the forms. The sort of information a variationist approach could yield is illustrated by a couple of short case studies. Altogether, this chapter forms a perceptive and instructive discussion of the main issues in Middle English dialectology: what is available, the ways to come to grips with the problems, and the results that can be achieved by careful analysis. In this, Milroy avoids swamping his readers with detail, for which he wisely directs them to the available handbooks.

Both volumes contain chapters on onomasfics written by Cecily Clark. An advantage of having the subject treated by the same person is that it makes for unity of exposition and ensures that the chapters are organized along similar lines. Moreover, much of the name material relevant to the Old English period survives in sources properly belonging to the Middle English period, thus also favouring one treatment.

Names have a rather special status as linguistic material and the study of onomastics is not only relevant for the history of the English language, but also for (social) history. The change in naming practices after the Conquest tells us a great deal about the social history of the period. Provided names are carefully interpreted, they can yield valuable linguistic material, especially for periods where other sources are scarce. The names in early Latin versions of Bede's Ecclesiastical History have been used to supple- ment and expand our knowledge of early Northumbrian, for which there are otherwise few texts available. There are, however, countless problems and pitfalls in interpreting and weighing up the evidence, as indicated and discussed at various point by Clark. The skills required for this field of study are substantial, and it is hoped that universities will be able to continue training students properly in it in an era with steadily decreasing staffs and increasing emphasis on 'relevance".

Each of Clark's chapters deals with the sources and the relevant methodology, then divides the material into two main groups: anthroponymy (names relating to human beings) and toponymy (names relating to places). A great deal of material still awaits research (especially for the Middle English period), and Clark is at pains to stress the possibilities this field of study offers. Her discussions attempt to illuminate while at the same time keep down the amount of detail, and in our opinion she manages to do this quite well though perhaps with greater success in the Middle English chapter than in the Old English one. The suggestions for further reading point the non-specialist to important material, and show how the field should be approached.

As should be clear from what has been said above, the chapters by Hogg and Lass on phonology and morphology include discussions of inflec- tion but not of derivation or word formation. These matters are dealt with in the chapters on "Semantics and Vocabulary" by Dieter Kastovsky in Vol. I, and "Lexis and Semantics" by David Burnley in Vol. II.

In the introductory section to his chapter, Kastovsky first discusses some general issues concerning lexis (the different senses of the term


word, the relation between word meanings and culture, the existence of various dimensions of lexical variation) and then describes some prominent features of the vocabulary in the surviving Old English texts. Here he points out the absence of evidence for social variation in Old English, the limitation to relatively few fields of discourse, the virtual absence of informal records, the low percentage of loan words in Old English, the existence of large morphologically related word families (as an example, a list of some 75 words derived from the verbs gan/gangan is given), the widespread occurrence of morphophonemic alternations due to earlier sound changes, and the conspicuous use of lexical variation in the poetic records.

This introduction is followed by sections on foreign influence, diatopic and stylistic variation in vocabulary, patterns of word formation, and semantics. The first three of these provide a full account of the structure of the Old English lexicon. The section on foreign influence starts with a description of the differences between direct loans and indirect loans (i.e. semantic loans, loan translations, and loan-creations), and then, with the aid of these concepts, discusses the lexical influence on Old English of Latin, Scandinavian, Celtic, French and the continental Germanic languages. For each language, the general circumstances of borrowing and the nature of the borrowing process are considered, with special attention to those aspects that figure prominently in the secondary literature, and very full lists of examples are given. At various points, Kastovsky notes the existence of difficulties of interpretation and classification, and lack of consensus in the secondary literature on general issues or the status of particular examples.

Kastovsky's section on lexical variation in Old English contains a review of studies aimed at distinguishing dialect words and word-formation patterns (i.e. Anglian versus West-Saxon features, with further dialectal/diachronic distinctions within the latter). Some of the early studies are criticized for inadequate methodology. In this section also, Kastovsky considers the differences between poetic and prose vocabulary.

One of the central problems in studying patterns of derivation and compounding is that of productivity. As Kastovsky explains, this problem is even more acute in the study of language no longer spoken, especially if the written records do not cover the entire period concerned. Particular instances of this problem are signalled at various points in the body of the section on word-formation, which contains a full presentation of the various classes of compounds, prefixes, suffixes and zero-derived forms in Old English. The discussion of compounding is arranged according to the word classes of the elements concerned, and their grammatical relations. Derivational patterns are also described in detail, with due attention to areas where change appears to be taking place. Thus the loss of meaning and decay of many prefixes is noted; to explain this, the interesting sugges- tion is put forward (Vol. I: 313f) that the use of loan translations from

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Latin (e.g. ontimbran for instruere) may have sped up the decay of in particular the verbal prefixes. Altogether, Kastovsky describes the Old English system of word-formation as being "in a stage of transition from stem-based to word-based inflexion and derivation, with a residue of originally root- based patterns" (Vol. I: 397). In the final section, Kastovsky presents the results of several studies of lexicat meaning, from early onomasiological investigations to more recent ones employing the concepts of the semantic field, contextual analysis and componential analysis.

In Burnley's chapter in Vol. II, the emphasis is somewhat different, as already appears from his introductory section. Here, he stresses the importance of variation and variability, which can be observed in spelling, word division, word form, and lexical meaning. Altogether, this results in context playing a vital role in the identification of words and their meanings. In Burnley's section on the structure of the lexicon, this is worked out in some detail in the discussion of lexical collocations and style (as determined by, and indicative of, dialect, level of formality and field of discourse). By way of illustration, various passages from Middle English literature are discussed, some of which contain comments on stylistic matters by Middle English writers themselves. There are further examples of the importance of context in the section on lexical meaning, where the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is found to be useful for the study of Middle English word meaning. Topics such as irony, synonymy, hyponymy, and specific semantic fields (in particular the use of colour words by Chaucer) are also dealt with here.

In the section on semantic change, Burnley is critical of the terminology traditionally used in this field (i.e. terms like narrowing, specialization, widening, metonymy, etc.), pointing out that they only give a spurious sense of order in handling the data. He identifies as important mechanisms of semantic change the introduction of new lexemes, the existence of near- homonyms, and the occurrence of homonymic conflict. As an example of the latter, he advances the loss of the meaning "dragon" for the word drake. An important factor in this, apart from the borrowing of the word dragon from French, was the existence of the identical word drake meaning "male duck". Avoiding a simplistic clash-of-meanings account, Burnley points out that in actual use the similarity of form could lead to inappro- priate and distracting associations, which would disfavour the choice of the form drake for the meaning "dragon".

As may be evident even from these brief remarks, Burnley's chapter on Middle English, in comparison with Kastovsky's on Old English, is somewhat more slanted towards the reader of texts (in particular Chaucer's works) than toward the linguist interested in the technical details of this stage of the language. On the other hand, Burnley's chapter also includes sections on foreign influence and word-formation, which are relatively speaking more technical. In these, the various issues addressed in Kastovsky's corresponding sections are taken up (though in somewhat

522 Willem Koopman and Wim van der Wurff

less linguistic detail) and their further development in the Middle English period is traced. Looming large in both sections is of course the topic of French influence; in fact, one will obtain a good overall picture of the state of the art of this issue from reading Burnley's discussion.

In multi-volume works of this size it would be surprising if the occasional error did not slip through the various checking stages. These range from minor misprints to inconsistencies in the references. Some of the misprints we noted are: (in Vol. I) the Roman page numbers in the Contents are incorrect; U.S.A. for U.S.A.) (p. xvi) (correctly printed in the same preface in Vol. II); compounds for compound (p. 65); ~EChom for A~CHom (p. 247); (in Vol. II) a curious misprint for are (p. 87, below (39)); (Traugott for Traugott (p. 264), and a footnote (number 29) (p. 144) seems to have survived the proofreading. We found an incomplete example in Vol. I (214 on p. 256) and one without a complete reference (Vol. I, 274 on p. 275). There is a reference to § 1.2 (Vol. I: 11), which should be § 1.1.

There are some errors in the bibliographical information: Vol. I: 399 lists Kastovsky forthcoming b, while the bibliography only gives Kastovsky forthcoming; Kastovsky (1988 c and 1989) (Vol. I: 407), and Quirk 1963 (Vol. I: 504) are not listed in the bibliography, and Stenton (1974) (Vol. I: 582) should be (1947). In Vol. II: 43, Lass 1988 is not in the bibliography, while in the bibliography itself we find Tajima (1888) for (1988); Fisiak (1985) for Fisiak (ed.) (1985), and we noted that van Draat is under v, while van Kemenade is under K.

The Glossary, which is the same in both volumes, is generally good and useful. Definitions that we found less helpful are those for aorist, aspect, interlanguage, and telic. "Umlaut" and "middle" (used by Bammesberger Vol. I: 57) are some of the terms that might have been included but are not.

The printing in the volumes we saw is of somewhat uneven quality. This occasionally results in vaguer print than seems necessary in what is intended to become a standard reference work, and to variation within one and the same volume. In our copies, pages 36/37 of Vol. I are certainly less clear than e.g. pages 318/319. This can also be observed in Vol. II. Occasionally the printing is slightly indistinct or even mutilated (see e.g. the last line of page 571, Vol. I).

To sum up, we think that these first two volumes of CHEL will turn Out to be very useful both as overview works and as sources for further research. They provide in an accessible and relatively compact form a wealth of information about all aspects of the history of English in the two periods discussed. Much of the existing scholarship is discussed in them, and they guide the reader to more detailed work, thus forming good starting points for further investigation. We look forward to seeing the two volumes dealing with the Modern English period (Vols. III and IV), which we hope will

Review Article 523

be as valuable an addit ion to the (quite scanty) scholarly work for this period

as the two med ieva l vo lumes are for Old and Middle English.

English Department University o f Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands

WILLEM KOOPMAN

English Department University o f Leiden P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands

WIM VAN DER WURFF

References

Allen, Cynthia (1992) 'Old English and the Syntactician: Some Remarks and a Syntactician's Guide to Editions of the Works of JElfric', in Fran Colman (ed) Evidence for Old English, Edinburg: John Donald, pp. 1-19.

Blake, Norman F. (1977) The English Language in Medieval Literature, London: Dent. Dunn, Charles W. and Edward T. Byrnes, eds. (1973) Middle English. New York: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich. Gneuss, Helmut (1991) 'The Old English Language', in Malcolm Godden and Michael

Lapidge (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23-54.

Healey, Antonette DiPaolo and Richard L. Venezky (1980)A Microfiche Concordance to Old English (= Publications of the Dictionary of Old English 1). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Kitson, Peter (1992) 'Old English Dialects and the Stages of the Transition to Middle English', Folia Linguistica Historica 11, pp. 27-87.

Lightfoot, David W. (1979) Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McIntosh, A., M. L. Samuels and M. Benskin (1986) A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

Minnis, Alastair J. and Tim W. Machan (1993) 'The Bocce as Late-Medieval Translation', in Alastair J. Minnis (ed) Chaucer's Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, pp. 167-188.

Mitchell, Bruce (1985) Old English Syntax, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mithun, M~ianne and Lyle Campbell (1982) 'On Comparative Syntax', in J. Peter Maher,

Allan R.'Bomhard and E.F. Konrad Koerner (eds) Papers from the 3rd International Conference'~n Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 273-291.

Myhill, John (1992)Typological Discourse Analysis: Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Linguistic Function. Oxford: Blaekwell.

Plank, Frans (1983) 'Coming into Being among the Anglo-Saxons', in Michael Davenport et al. (eds) Current Topics in English Historical Linguistics. Odense: Odense University Press, pp. 239-278.

Winter, Werner (1984) 'Reconstructional Comparative Linguistics and the Reconstruction of the Syntax of Undocumented Stages in the Development of Languages and Language Families', in Jacek Fisiak (ed) Historical Syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 613-625.

Medieval English: The state of the language

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