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Dialect Boundaries and Dialect Translation: The Case of Middle Scots and Middle English

  • Tim William Machan EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 5. November 2016
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Aus der Zeitschrift Anglia Band 134 Heft 4

Abstract

The late-medieval Scottish–English border had a porous impermeability. Politically, there was in theory a demarcation between Scotland and England that remained relatively fixed from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, though a zone of marches surrounded that demarcation, and border disputes continued throughout the period. On the English–Scottish linguistic border, such porous impermeability took several forms. The extremes would be works written primarily in either Scots or some form of English and arrayed between them is what might be called the interlinguistic marches: works written in a language neither entirely Scots nor entirely English that somehow depends on and elides any easy distinctions between the varieties. These marches, and what they say about the Scots–English linguistic border, are the focus of this paper. The paper begins by looking at several texts whose language challenges any easy pronouncements about Scots–English dialect boundaries. Originally written in one variety, they survive as well in copies wherein the text has been rewritten, in all or in part, in the other variety. These rewritings might be called ‘dialect translations’, though other terms also could apply, each of them reframing not only the rewritings but also the varieties and language dynamics they help create. From these examples the paper turns to the larger issue that is its primary concern: the medieval English linguistic repertoire, including the grammatical integrity and social significance of medieval English regional varieties in general. Language and dialect boundaries certainly do matter, but it is speakers who decide how and when.

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Published Online: 2016-11-5
Published in Print: 2016-11-1

© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Articles
  3. Grass-Bed: A Poetic Compound in the Alliterative Tradition
  4. Middle English Counter-Rivere
  5. Dialect Boundaries and Dialect Translation: The Case of Middle Scots and Middle English
  6. Between Homonymy and Polysemy: The Origins and Career of the English Form Dialect in the Sixteenth Century
  7. ‘Übersetzen’ als Kulturprozess: Thesen zur Dynamis gemachter Welten
  8. Not for an Age? Robert Lowell’s Historical Moment
  9. Reviews
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  11. Daphné Kerremans. A Web of New Words: A Corpus-Based Study of the Conventionalization Process of English Neologisms. English Corpus Linguistics 15. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2015, 278 pp., 21 tables, 50 figures, € 56.00/£ 45.00/$ 72.95.
  12. Jack Grieve. Regional Variation in Written American English. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, xviii + 335 pp., 81 figures, 35 tables, £ 69.99.
  13. Hans-Peter Wagner. An Introduction to British and Irish Fiction: Renaissance to Romanticism. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014, 262 pp., 60 illustr., € 29.50.
  14. Birgit Neumann (ed.). Präsenz und Evidenz fremder Dinge im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert – Supplementa 19. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015, 576 pp., 57 illustr., € 49.00.
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  17. Stephan Buhr. “Infinite Possibilities”: Die Zweite Generation der Transzendentalisten und die Idee einer “Universal Religion”. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015, 234 pp., € 28.50.
  18. Philipp Löffler. Pluralist Desires: Contemporary Historical Fiction and the End of the Cold War. New York: Camden House, 2015, 182 pp., £55.00.
  19. Peter Freese (ed.). The ‘Journey of Life’ in American Life and Literature. American Studies – A Monograph Series 260. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015, 259 pp., € 32.00.
  20. Johanna Hartmann and Hubert Zapf (eds.). Censorship and Exile. Internationale Schriften des Jakob-Fugger-Zentrums 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, 285 pp., 11 illustr., € 45.00.
  21. Books Received
Heruntergeladen am 9.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/ang-2016-0071/pdf
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