Volume 137, Issue 2

This corpus‑based paper explores the history and present status of the contrast between noun‑dependent that ‑clauses and ‘complex’ gerunds containing their own subjects. With seven of the fifteen nouns under scrutiny, the emergence of the that‑ clause either follows that of the gerund or the two complement types emerge at about the same time. This suggests that we will have to qualify the general assumption that since the eighteenth century English has promoted non‑finite subordinate clauses at the expense of finite ones. More crucially, with by far most of the nouns investigated, the that ‑clause has gained much further ground over the last few centuries, with American English spearheading this development since the early nineteenth century. In line with the Complexity Principle, the grammatical environments favouring the more explicit that ‑clause over the complex gerund include subject complexity and different types of structural discontinuity. Intriguingly, however, the easy‑to‑process there ‑clause containing the nouns in question is also found to favour the that ‑clause at the expense of the complex gerund.

It is well known that the set of kinship terms in Middle English showed considerable influence from French. In the case of aunt and uncle , this accompanied major restructuring of the system of kinship terms, as the Old English set of four distinct terms for paternal and maternal uncles and aunts were replaced by just two terms for ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’, regardless of whether paternal or maternal. In comparison, the words for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’ have attracted little attention, as their story has appeared simpler: Old English had words for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’, irrespective of whether paternal or maternal, and so did Middle English. The terms are also similar in structure, with native terms in which words for ‘father’ or ‘mother’ are the head and eald ‘old’ is the modifier (whether in a compound or a phrasal structure) being replaced by borrowed terms ( grandsire , granddame ) or hybrid terms ( grandfather , grandmother ) in which French grand ‘big’ is the modifier. This paper shows that behind this apparently simple story there lurk some significant complications which point to considerable disruption and instability in the terms for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’ in both Middle English and French (with interesting and perhaps significant parallels also in other West Germanic languages). Consideration of these complications also casts new light on early lexical borrowing into Middle English from Anglo-Norman.

In 2017 two objects carrying runic inscriptions that are identifiable as personal names were found. Both date to the ninth century; both are dithematic (compound) names. The object identified as a spoon or fork handle from Sedgeford in Norfolk bears a familiar male name, Biarnferð . This contains a runic graph hitherto unseen, which may, despite the provenance of the find, be interpreted as a representation of the diphthong ia that developed in the Kentish dialect by the middle of the ninth century. There is in fact a historically known individual of this name who witnessed a series of Canterbury charters in the mid-ninth century. The other object, a strap-end from Elsted in West Sussex, carries what can be identified from its final element, ‑flǣd , as a female name, although the whole name cannot be read. What is legible cannot be identified with any previously recorded personal name. Evaluation of these finds emphasizes how Anglo-Saxon runic writing practice continued to adapt to changes in the language and the regularization of roman-script literacy in the ninth century. Finally, the role of literacy within a nexus of cultural relationship involving individuals and artefacts is also highlighted.

This paper is a linguistic study of the copy of the Prick of Conscience in Oxford, St John’s College, 57 (SJC). The principal aim is to determine the provenance of the text’s scribal language. SJC was made by a professional scribe, also responsible for copying other popular contemporary works. These include manuscripts of the prose Brut Chronicle , some of the stories of the Canterbury Tales and the unique Tale of Beryn in Alnwick Castle, Duke of Northumberland, 455, the source of the designation of this scribe as the ‘Beryn Scribe’. In LALME , only the language of the last-mentioned of this scribe’s productions was analysed, and localised to South Essex. It has been assumed that the Essex localisation of Alnwick Castle 455 is valid for all this scribe’s texts, including SJC, and that he was a ‘consistent translator’ into his own scribal dialect. Nevertheless, the language of SJC shows features whose distributions are not characteristic of Essex. The original Prick of Conscience was composed in Northern Middle English. The retention of a deal of Northern features in SJC casts doubt on the idea of its scribe as a ‘consistent translator’. The exemplar used by the SJC scribe is unknown and was not necessarily written in the same variety as the original. Still, some information about it can be gleaned by comparing SJC’s language with those of four other manuscripts to which it is closely related within the stemma of the Prick of Conscience .