Old English ea in Middle Kentish place-names.(Critical Essay)

Publication: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies

Publication Date: 06-AUG-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press

ABSTRACT

This research paper intends to contribute to the study of Medieval English dialectology by focusing on Kentish, traditionally regarded as a Middle English dialect in which sounds and linguistic changes behave differently. This contribution will be done through the formal analysis of Old English <ea>, a relevant dialectal variable, in Middle Kentish place-names. It is common knowledge name-forms provide real (and sometimes unique) information about the behaviour of certain phonological distinctions. Accordingly, we will concentrate on the analysis of this onomastic material and compare our conclusions, firstly, with other place-name studies, and secondly, with other more traditional phonological distributions attained by authors who have based their analyses on individual literary works reflecting this regional variety of the English Middle Ages.

1. Medieval English dialectology and place-names

Middle English is a period in the history of the English language characterised, among other things, by its great dialectal diversity, never witnessed in England before or after. Within this, Kentish or the south-eastern variety, has been regarded, by those who have traditionally studied the so-called anchor texts in search of the regional features reflected in them, as a peculiar dialect of Middle English where sound changes behave differently.

Complementary to these traditional textual analyses is the onomastic approach developed within the field of medieval dialectology during the 20th century. In it, names are regarded as true informants of phonological change. Kristensson claims, in this sense, "the material which has so far proved most profitable for the investigation of OE and ME dialects consists of place-names" (1967: XII). Apart from their inherent condition as accurate locators of dialectal variants, their real importance for a dialectal investigation lies, on certain occasions, in providing the only evidence of specific sound developments.

Serjeantson (1922, 1924, 1927a, 1927b), Ekwall (1931), Smith (1956), Ek (1972, 1975) are all works in which English medieval dialects have been studied from an onomastic standpoint. This perspective yet receives a further boost in the 1950s when Kristensson decides to embark on a survey of the Middle English dialects. So far, this project has produced a volume corresponding to the six Northern counties and Lincolnshire (1967); another one devoted to the West Midland counties (1987); the one that studies the East Midland counties (1995); and finally, the recently published Kristensson (2001), on vowels (except diphthongs) in the Southern counties. This research project, still in process, aims to study Middle English dialects through the analysis of name-forms (place-names and surnames) from c. 1290-1350 and takes as a primary source the Lay Subsidy Rolls, the official documents that, unanimously, seem to reflect more faithfully the local uses.

In the present dialectal research, we intend to participate in this onomastic perspective by doing a formal analysis of OE ea in medieval place-names of Kent. It is our intention to analyse the development of this dialectally relevant Middle Kentish diphthong (in either the first (unique) or second constituent of a compound noun), by checking our early Middle English material (i.e., the 12th century) against the data assembled for late Middle English (i.e., the 14th century).

Our analysis cannot hence be limited to consult solely the above mentioned subsidy rolls. On the one hand, because these rolls date back, in their earlier stages to the second half of the 12th century, a period when these had not been yet regularly established. On the other, because there are authors who consider other documents to be equally important as medieval dialectal sources, for example Arngart, for whom the Assize Rolls "may claim a nearly equal right with the Subsidy Rolls of being described as local documents" (1949: 26-27).

Consequently, we will take, as a main source for our data-gathering, Wallenberg's The place-names of Kent (PNK, 1934). (1) In this compilation the author, after scrutinising the most relevant documents of the time, shows us the written records of every single medieval farm, town, parish or hundred in Kent. These records, besides their corresponding source references, include an etymological definition that has served as a base to gather the present material. Up to now, this is the most important compilation, despite some justified objections about the archaic and obscure origin of our forms, for a research on the medieval place-names of Kent.

Another aim of this research paper is to take the Linguistic atlas of late mediaeval English (LALME, 1986) as a frame with which to compare our 14th century data. This linguistic atlas represents the most up to date and complete work of reference within dialectal studies. With a geographical perspective, but still adopting a new methodology, the authors of this Atlas give us a more approximate picture of the late medieval English variation. By applying systematically a strict questionnaire of linguistic items to a heterogeneous selection of texts or documents from c. 1350-1450, they got to generate in Kent a total of 14 Linguistic Profiles. These will be, as far as OE ea is concerned, thoroughly examined here.

2. Middle English distribution of Old English ea

As in Old English, the study of the phonetic evolution of diphthongs in the Middle English period is quite complex, given the inaccuracy of its corresponding spelling representations (already in Old English, the digraphs <ea> and <eo> were used to express certain single vocalic sounds). This lack of precision is enhanced by the monophthongisation process, regarded as characteristic of the transitional period between Old and Middle English. This process, in which old diphthongs tend to be smoothed out, occurs in the middle of the 11th century, precisely when scribes are trying to adequate orthography to the new phonological values. This coincidence causes the fact that even after ea and eo were reduced, they kept on being used to...

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