Enlarging the lexicon: the field of technology and administration from 1150 to 1500.(Linguistics)

Publication: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Adam Mickiewicz University Press

ABSTRACT

The description of the vocabulary belonging to the field of technology and administration during the Middle English period is thought to ascertain the well-known relationship between language and society through the lexical subsystem. To achieve this descriptive goal, the corpus material contains a selection of samples taken from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts between 1150 and 1500 (all text-types and all dialectal varieties have been included). The study entails the analysis of different variables such as the etymological origin of the terms, particular processes by which they entered the language (mainly borrowing) and the socio-historical context in which the form is used. Thus, the research is framed within a sociolinguistic approach (Baugh 1990; Blount and Sanches 1977; De la Cruz Cabanillas 2001; Hughes 2000; Tejada Caller 2001). In short, this paper is an attempt to explain the enlargement of the lexicon in a particular semantic field, to account for an intra-systemic phenomenon in reference to the external history of English.

0. Introduction

This paper aims to describe the vocabulary relating to the field of technology and administration during the Middle English (henceforth ME) period. "We will try to examine the sociolinguistic causes of the use and selection of terms in this field. Section 1 will be devoted to the social background to the ME period, that is to say, to the presentation of those historical events and other external (non-linguistic) factors that may have brought about an expansion in the vocabulary relating to technology in its broadest sense. Though the "big-bang" of technical terms takes place in EModE (Millward 1996; Nevalainen 1999) and the Middle Ages are dominated by Latin as the language of culture and learning, it is our intention in this paper to look into the external causes that may determine the slow emergence of non-Latin terms of a scientific character of some kind. The analysis will be approached within a sociolinguistic frame (Blount and Sanches 1977; Baugh 1990; Tejada Caller 1999; Hughes 2000; Fennell 2001). In order to explain the enlargement of the lexicon in the semantic field of our interest, this intra-systemic phenomenon will be studied in relation to the social factors of the period, that is to say, with reference to the external history of English. After reviewing the historical background, section 2 will describe our corpus of data. We will basically refer to the samples of ME contained in the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, Diachronic Part (HC). Out aim in this paper requires the analysis of all text-types as well as all varieties of English in a period characterised by its high dialectal diversity in order to ascertain to what extent these two variables (text-type and dialect) are significant in the semantic field under survey. Once the data have been compiled, the subsequent section (3) will focus on the analysis of the terms selected by means of various computer resources. The above-mentioned analysis revolves around several variables, namely, semantic field, dialect, text-type and etymological origin. Finally, section 4 will deal with the conclusions obtained from our scrutiny, of the data. The relationship between all these variables will demonstrate that the history of the vocabulary of a language is inevitably related to the historical heterogeneity of the different peoples inhabiting a particular territory.

1. Socio-historical background

Jinhzi (1992) suggests the necessity of the parallel study of culture, historical events and language changes because there are connections among them. External events provoke internal language changes, especially in certain fields which are more readily influenced by these external factors. The circumstances of the period we are interested in gain special relevance in the development of the English language all through the Middle Ages. (1) Every single historical event may have an effect on the linguistic system.

It is generally accepted that from the 8th up to the beginning of the 11ch century very few Scandinavian loans can be traced. Most of them are of a miscellaneous character, though types of ships, references to people, and some social and legal terms can be also included (Moskowich 1995a). The influx of terms of an Old Norse origin increases gradually but it is not until the beginning of the 11th century that the semantic nature of these loans changes. In this sense, Scandinavian terms relating to the sea, social life, law, commonplace objects and trading terms can also be dated to the 11th to the middle of the 12th century. The Norman Conquest (2) meant contact with another foreign language. As a result, Anglo-Norman became the official language of the court, for justice and politics, not the language of everyday speech among the conquered. French influence on English is generally recognised by its imprint on the semantic fields of "person-rank", "finance", "buildings", "law", "social relations", "religion", "military affairs", "nature", "clothes", "household objects", "physical action", "appearance", "faculty", "moral and intellectual" and "miscellaneous" (Serjeantson 1935: 216-239). However, we will see that net all the terms in these fields are necessarily of Norman origin.

Studies on the history of the English language have traditionally categorised loans in different semantic fields. Such classifications seemed to match semantic field and etymological origin. These traditional approaches lacked the consideration of the social circumstances behind linguistic facts. However, the categorization in different semantic fields of Seandinavian, French and native terms is net that unbalanced if we look for an explanation in the socioexternal context. As a matter of fact, the final settlement of the Scandinavians in England led to their absorption, provoking an assimilation of linguistic habits probably due to the resemblance...

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