The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 2 part 1 pdf

The Cambridge History of the English Language is the first
multivolume work to provide a comprehensive and authoritative
account of the history of English from its beginnings to its present-
day world-wide use. Its coverage embraces not only areas of central
linguistic interest such as syntax, but also more specialised topics such
as personal and place names. Whereas the volumes concerned with the
English language in England are organised on a chronological basis,
the English of the rest of the world is treated geographically to
emphasise the spread of English over the last three hundred years.
Volume II covers the Middle English period, approximately
1066-1476, and describes and analyses developments in the language
from the Norman Conquest to the introduction of printing. This
period witnessed important features like the assimilation of French
and emergence of a standard variety of English. There are chapters on
phonology and morphology, syntax, dialectology, lexis and semantics,
literary language and onomastics. Each chapter concludes with a
section on further reading; and the volume as a whole is supported by
an extensive glossary of linguistic terms and a comprehensive
bibliography. The chapters are written by specialists who are familiar
both with the period of the volume and with modern approaches to
the study of historical linguistics. The volume will be welcomed by
specialists and non-specialists alike and it will remain the standard
account of Middle English for many years to come.
THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY
OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
GENERAL EDITOR Richard M. Hogg
VOLUME ii 1066-1476
THE CAMBRIDGE

HISTORY OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
VOLUME
ii
1066-1476
EDITED
BY
NORMAN BLAKE
Professor of English Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1992
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1992
Fourth printing 2006
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A
catalogue

record for this book is
available
from the British Library
Library
of
Congress
Cataloguing in Publication data
The Cambridge history of the English language
Vol. 2 edited by Norman Blake
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. The beginnings to 1066
-
v. 2. 1066-1476.
I. English language
-
History.
I.
Hogg, Richard M.
II.
Blake, N. F. (Norman Francis)
PE1072.C36 1992 420'.9 91-13881
ISBN 0-521-26474-X (v.
1)
ISBN 0-521-26475-8 (v. 2)
ISBN 0 521 26475 8 hardback
UP
CONTENTS
1
1.1
1.2

1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
2
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9
List of maps
List of
contributors
General Editor's
preface
Acknowledgements
List of
abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
Norman Blake
Beginnings of the study of Middle English
The study of Middle English since the
Second World War
English, French and Latin
Spelling and standardisation
Social and literary developments

Concluding remarks
Further reading
PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY
Roger Lass
Introduction
Phonology, origins: the Old English input system
The formation of the Middle English vowel system
Consonantal developments
Length and quantity
Accentuation
When did Middle English end?
Morphology: general matters
Morphology: the major syntactic classes
Further reading
Textual sources
page x
xi
xiii
xvii
xviii
1
1
3
5
9
15
20
21
23
23

39
42
57
67
83
90
91
103
147
154
Vll
Contents
3
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
4
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8
4.9
5
5.1
5.2

5.3
5.4
5.5
6
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
MIDDLE ENGLISH DIALECTOLOGY
James Milrqy
Dialect method and the study
of
Middle English
The study
of
geographical variation
in
Middle English
Variation theory
and
Middle English dialectology
Concluding remarks
Further reading
SYNTAX
Olga Fischer
Introduction
The noun phrase
The verb phrase
Questions
Negation

Composite sentences
Agreement
Word order
Some grammatical processes
Further reading
Textual sources
LEXIS
AND
SEMANTICS
David Burnley
Lexis
Foreign influences
Word formation
The structure
of
the lexicon
Semantics
Meaning, use and structure
Semantic change
Further reading
THE LITERARY LANGUAGE
Norman Blake
Introduction
Early Middle English literature
Later Middle English literature
Special features
of
the literary language
Further reading
156

156
167
192
201
204
207
207
210
233
278
280
285
364
370
383
391
398
409
409
414
439
450
461
461
485
496
500
500
508
517

532
540
Vlll
Contents
7 ONOMASTICS
Cecily
Clark 542
7.1 Sources and methodology 542
7.2 Anthroponymy 551
7.3 Toponymy 587
Further reading 604
Glossary of linguistic terms 607
Bibliography 629
Primary
sources
629
Secondary sources 634
Index Gil
IX
MAPS
1 The dialects of Middle English page 34
2 a/o forms in Lancashire, West Riding and
Lincolnshire 183
CONTRIBUTORS
NORMAN BLAKE
Professor
of
English Language
and Linguistics,
University of Sheffield

DAVID BURNLEY Reader in English
Language
and Linguistics,
University of
Sheffield
CECILY CLARK
OLGA FISCHER Senior Lecturer in English Language,
Universiteit van Amsterdam
ROGER LASS Professor of
Linguistics,
University
of
Cape
Town
JAMES MILROY Professor Emeritus of Linguistics,
University of
Sheffield
It was with great regret that
the
General Editor,
the
Editor and
the
contributors
to
the first two volumes
of
the Cambridge History
of
the English Language learned

of
Cecily Clark's death
on 26
March 1992. Although she was able
to see the
proofs
of
her chapters,
she was
unable
to see the
finished books.
We
hope that
the
chapters
she has written
for the
first
two
volumes
of
the Cambridge History may stand
as a
memorial
to her
life and work.
XI
GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE

Although it is a topic of continuing debate, there can be little doubt that
English
is the
most widely spoken language
in the
world, with
significant numbers
of
native speakers
in
almost every major region
—
only South America falling largely outside the net. In such a situation an
understanding
of
the nature
of
English can be claimed unambiguously
to be
of
world-wide importance.
Growing consciousness
of
such
a
role
for
English
is one of the
motivations behind this History. There

are
other motivations
too.
Specialist students have many major and detailed works of scholarship
to which they can refer, for example Bruce Mitchell's
Old English
Syntax,
or, from
an
earlier age, Karl Luick's Historische Grammatik der
englischen
Sprache.
Similarly, those who come new
to
the subject have both one-
volume histories such
as
Barbara Strang's History
of
English
and
introductory textbooks
to a
single period,
for
example Bruce Mitchell
and Fred Robinson's
A
Guide
to

Old
English.
But what is lacking is the
intermediate work which can provide a solid discussion of
the
full range
of the history
of
English both
to
the anglicist who does not specialise
in the particular area
to
hand and
to
the general linguist who has
no
specialised knowledge of the history of English. This work attempts
to
remedy that lack. We hope that
it
will be
of
use
to
others too, whether
they are interested in the history of English for its own sake, or for some
specific purpose such
as
local history

or the
effects
of
colonisation.
Under the influence of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, there
has been, during this century, a persistent tendency to view the study of
language as having two discrete parts: (i) synchronic, where a language
is studied from the point of view of one moment in time; (ii) diachronic,
where
a
language
is
studied from
a
historical perspective.
It
might
therefore be supposed that this present work
is
purely diachronic. But
Xlll
General Editor's preface
this is not so. One crucial principle which guides The Cambridge
History of the English Language is that synchrony and diachrony are
intertwined, and that a satisfactory understanding of English (or any
other language) cannot be achieved on the basis of one of these alone.
Consider, for example, the (synchronic) fact that English, when
compared with other languages, has some rather infrequent or unusual
characteristics. Thus, in the area of vocabulary, English has an
exceptionally high number of words borrowed from other languages

(French, the Scandinavian languages, American Indian languages,
Italian, the languages of northern India and so on); in syntax a common
construction is the use of
do
in forming questions (e.g.
Do
you like
cheese?),
a type of construction not often found in other languages; in
morphology English has relatively few inflexions, at least compared
with the majority of other European languages; in phonology the
number of diphthongs as against the number of vowels in English
English is notably high. In other words, synchronically, English can be
seen to be in some respects rather unusual. But in order to understand
such facts we need to look at the history of the language; it is often only
there that an explanation can be found. And that is what this work
attempts to do.
This raises another issue. A quasi-Darwinian approach to English
might attempt to account for its widespread use by claiming that
somehow English is more suited, better adapted, to use as an
international language than others. But that is nonsense. English is no
more fit than, say, Spanish or Chinese. The reasons for the spread of
English are political, cultural and economic rather than linguistic. So
too are the reasons for such linguistic elements within English as the
high number of borrowed words. This history, therefore, is based as
much upon political, cultural and economic factors as linguistic ones,
and it will be noted that the major historical divisions between volumes
are based upon the former type of events (the Norman Conquest, the
spread of printing, the declaration of independence by the USA) rather
than the latter type.

As a rough generalisation, one can say that up to about the
seventeenth century the development of English tended to be cen-
trifugal, whereas since then the development has tended to be
centripetal. The settlement by the Anglo-Saxons resulted in a spread of
dialect variation over the country, but by the tenth century a variety of
forces were combining to promote the emergence of
a
standard form of
the language. Such an evolution was disrupted by the Norman
xiv
General Editor's preface
Conquest, but with the development of printing together with other
more centralising tendencies, the emergence of
a
standard form became
once more, from the fifteenth century on, a major characteristic of
the language. But processes of emigration and colonisation then gave
rise to new regional varieties overseas, many of which have now
achieved a high degree of linguistic independence, and some of which,
especially American English, may even have a dominating influence on
British English. The structure of this work is designed to reflect these
different types of development. Whilst the first four volumes offer a
reasonably straightforward chronological account, the later volumes are
geographically based. This arrangement, we hope, allows scope for the
proper treatment of diverse types of evolution and development. Even
within the chronologically oriented volumes there are variations of
structure, which are designed to reflect the changing relative importance
of various linguistic features. Although all the chronological volumes
have substantial chapters devoted to the central topics of semantics and
vocabulary, syntax, and phonology and morphology, for other topics

the space allotted in a particular volume is one which is appropriate to
the importance of that topic during the relevant period, rather than
some predefined calculation of relative importance. And within the
geographically based volumes all these topics are potentially included
within each geographical section, even if sometimes in a less formal
way. Such a flexible and changing structure seems essential for any full
treatment of the history of English.
One question that came up as this project began was the extent to
which it might be possible or desirable to work within a single
theoretical linguistic framework. It could well be argued that only a
consensus within the linguistic community about preferred linguistic
theories would enable a work such as this to be written. Certainly, it was
immediately obvious when work for this History began, that it would
be impossible to lay down a' party line' on linguistic theory, and indeed,
that such an approach would be undesirably restrictive. The solution
reached was, I believe, more fruitful. Contributors have been chosen
purely on the grounds of expertise and knowledge, and have been
encouraged to write their contributions in the way they see most fitting,
whilst at the same time taking full account of developments in linguistic
theory. This has, of course, led to problems, notably with contrasting
views of the same topic (and also because of the need to distinguish the
ephemeral flight of theoretical fancy from genuine new insights into
linguistic theory), but even in a work which is concerned to provide a
xv
General Editor's preface
unified approach (so that, for example, in most cases every contributor
to a volume has read all the other contributions to that volume), such
contrasts, and even contradictions, are stimulating and fruitful. Whilst
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.
The task of editing this History has been, and still remains, a long and
complex one. As General Editor I owe a great debt to many friends and
colleagues who have devoted much time and thought to how best this
work might be approached and completed. Firstly I should thank my
fellow-editors: John Algeo, Norman Blake, Bob Burchfield, Roger
Lass and Suzanne Romaine. They have been concerned as much with
the History as a whole as with their individual volumes. Secondly, there
are those fellow linguists, some contributors, some not, who have so
generously given of their time and made many valuable suggestions:
John Anderson, Cecily Clark, Frans van Coetsem, Fran Colman, David
Denison, Ed Finegan, Olga Fischer, Jacek Fisiak, Malcolm Godden,
Angus Mclntosh, Lesley Milroy, Donka Minkova, Matti Rissanen,
Michael Samuels, Bob Stockwell, Tom Toon, Elizabeth Traugott, Peter
Trudgill, Nigel Vincent, Anthony Warner, Simone Wyss. One occasion
stands out especially: the organisers of the Fourth International
Conference on English Historical Linguistics, held at Amsterdam in
1985,
kindly allowed us to hold a seminar on the project as it was just
beginning. For their generosity, which allowed us to hear a great many
views and exchange opinions with colleagues one rarely meets face-to-
face,
I must thank Roger Eaton, Olga Fischer, Willem Koopman and
Frederike van der Leek.
With a work so complex as this, an editor is faced with a wide variety
of problems and difficulties. It has been, therefore, a continual comfort
and solace to know that Penny Carter of Cambridge University Press
has always been there to provide advice and solutions on every
occasion. Without her knowledge and experience, encouragement and
good humour, this work would have been both poorer and later. After

work for Volume I was virtually complete, Marion Smith took over as
publishing editor, and I am grateful to her too, not merely for ensuring
such a smooth change-over, but for her bravery when faced with the
mountain of paper from which this series has emerged.
Richard M. Hogg
xvi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume has been
a
long time
in the
making. Inevitably, some chapters
were finished before others, but they have all been revised
for
final
submission
in 1990.
All
chapters have been read
by
other contributors
to the
other
volumes, and by the general editor. We are grateful to all these people for their
comments.
I
hope
it
will not appear invidious
if

I particularly thank Richard
Hogg, John Algeo and Robert Burchfield among the other editors
for
their
helpful comments on individual chapters. We would particularly like to record
our thanks
to:
John Anderson, Fran Colman, Catherine Coutts, David
Denison, Heines Eichner, Gillian Fellows-Jensen, John Field, Margaret
Gelling, Manfred Gorlach, Suzanne Kemmer, Willem Koopman, Chris
McCully, Hans Meier, Lesley Milroy, Oliver Padel, Matti Rissanen,
Don
Scragg, Ann Hurleman Stewart, Patrick Stiles, Mary Syner, Linda Thornburg,
Elisabeth Traugott, Wim
van der
Wurff,
Nigel Vincent, Tony Warner and
Nancy Wiegand. There
are
many others
who
have helped
us as we
have
struggled to complete our chapters, and
I
hope they will not feel slighted if they
are included
in
such

a
general acknowledgement.
We acknowledge permission from Professor G. Kristensson and the editors
of Lund Studies
in
English
to
reproduce
the
map
'a/o
forms
in
Lancashire,
West Riding and Lincolnshire' on page 183.
xvn
ABBREVIATIONS
abstr.
ace.
adj.
AN
AScand.
Bo
BD
CA
CF
cl.
Co
CSR
CT

CWGmc
dat.
DB
demonstr.
DEPN
Du.
EME
EPNS
F
fern.
G
gen.
abstract
accusative
adjective
Anglo-Norman
Anglo- Scandinavian
Boethius
(Benson 1987)
Book
of
the
Duchess
Confessio
amantis (Macaulay 1900)
central French
class
coda
Compound Stress Rule
Canterbury Tales

Continental West Germanic
dative
Domesday Book
demonstrative
Dictionary
of
English Place Names (Ekwall 1960)
Dutch
Early Middle English
English Place Name Society
French
feminine
German
genitive
XVlll
List of abbreviations
Gk
Gmc
Go.
GSR
HF
IE
imp.
ind.
inf.
inst.
Kt.
LALME
Lat.
LGW

LOE
Mars
masc.
MDu.
ME
MED
Med. Lat.
MLG
Mod. F
N
n.
Nbr.
neut.
NF
nom.
NP
NSR
num.
o
obi.
Greek
Germanic
Gothic
Germanic Stress Rule
House of Fame
Indo-European
imperative
indicative
infinitive
instrumental

Kentish
Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English
(Mclntosh, Samuels & Benskin 1986)
Latin
Legend of
Good
Women
Late Old English
The Complaint of Mars (Benson 1987)
masculine
Middle Dutch
Middle English
Middle English Dictionary (Kurath, Kuhn & Lewis
1954-
)
Medieval Latin
Middle Low German
Modern French
northern; nucleus
noun
Northumbrian
neuter
Norman French
nominative
noun phrase
Nuclear Stress Rule
number
onset; object
oblique
XIX

List of abbreviations
OE
OED
OF
OHG
ON
ONF
ONGmc
OSc.
OScand.
OSL
OSw.
past pple
PC
PDE
perf.
pers.
PF
POE
PPl.
pres.
R
Rose
RP
RSR
S
Sc.
Scand.
SE
s

g-
Skt
subj.
SW
Troilus
V; vb
VLat.
W
WGmc
WS
Old English
Oxford English Dictionary
Old French
Old High German
Old Norse
Old Norman French
Old North Germanic
Old Scots
Old Scandinavian
Open Syllable Lengthening
Old Swedish
past participle
Peterborough Chronicle
Present-Day English
perfect
person
The Parliament of Fowls
Proto Old English
Piers Plowman
present

rhyme
Romaunt of
the
Rose
Received Pronunciation
Romance Stress Rule
southern; strong
Scots
Scandinavian
southeastern
singular
Sanskrit
subjunctive; subject
southwestern
Troilus and
Criseyde
verb
Vulgar Latin
weak
West Germanic
West Saxon
XX
List of abbreviations
*, ** a single asterisk precedes forms which are reconstructed or
inferred; double asterisks precede forms which are (claimed
to be) ungrammatical
]>,
5, etc. a description of these Old English characters can be found
on p. 35
A note on references

Since there are several different lineations available for The
Canterbury
Tales we have decided to provide two references for each quotation
from this poem: one is to fragment number and line, e.g. III.845, which
refers to lineation in Benson 1987; and the other is to section and line,
e.g. 2: 819, which refers to the lineation in Blake 1980. The quotation
is taken from the text with the first reference; the second is placed in
square brackets immediately afterwards.
xxi

INTRODUCTION
Norman Blake
1.1 Beginnings of the study of Middle English
Traditionally, the start
of
Middle English
is
dated
in
1066 with the
Norman Conquest and its finish in 1485 with the accession of Henry
VII,
the first Tudor monarch. Both dates are political and historical, and
the events they represent may have an impact on the development of the
English language in the longer term but they are hardly appropriate as
guides
to
the dating of periods
in
it.

In
any case language does not
change as abruptly as such stark dates would suggest and the whole
matter
of
when Middle English began and ended depends
on the
features which are regarded as significant in marking
a
change in the
language. The period is called 'Middle' English because it falls between
Old and Modern English. To most people today Middle English has
seemed closer to Modern than to Old English for a variety of reasons.
Perhaps the most important of these has been the influence of Geoffrey
Chaucer. His reputation as the ' Father of English Poetry' has meant
that many people have some familiarity with Middle English through
his writings. More importantly, his work has been almost constantly
available since Caxton issued the editio
princeps
of
The Canterbury Tales
in
1476.
Each subsequent century has seen
its
great editor
of
Chaucer
(Ruggiers 1984)
and

these editors have kept Chaucer and Middle
English very much in the public eye. The only other author who comes
anywhere near Chaucer
in
this respect
is
Malory, whose
Le
Morte
Dartbur was published several times
in
the sixteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
Both Chaucer and Malory are literary authors and the interest in the
Middle English period which they have generated has been more
connected with literary culture than with language. Interest
in
other
Norman Blake
Middle English writings developed only in the nineteenth century,
partly as a result of the Romantic revolution. Ballads, romances and
prose texts all started to appear at this time. Thomas Ritson and Bishop
Percy were among the first to popularise this type of literature through
their editions, though the work of Sir Walter Scott should not be
underestimated. More academic editions were produced by scholars
such as Sir Frederic Madden, whose 1847 edition of the Brut is still
valuable. However, it has to be said that the Middle English period did
not have the same appeal as the Old English one, partly because of its
nature as a transition period and partly because it does not have the
attraction of the inter-relationship of pagan and Christian cultures. A

period which is in transition does not have a point of focus unless that
is provided by a great author such as Chaucer. But Chaucer was seen
more as the initiator of
a
new age rather than as a typical product of the
Middle English period.
The same attitude prevailed in the study of language. From the
nineteenth century onwards there was great interest in the historical
study of the language which expressed itself through the study of
dialects, the development of phonology and the investigation of
individual texts. Much of this work was done through the study of the
phonology of individual literary texts, and was to that extent
fragmented. A nineteenth-century edition of
a
Middle English work of
literature is likely to contain an exhaustive account of the phonological
features of that text together with some indication of what area of the
country those features point to. It is unlikely to contain any description
of the syntax or any formal analysis of the lexis, though individual
words may well be commented on separately in the commentary.
Sometimes this work was flawed because it did not pay sufficient
attention to the various copies a text could go through or, in the case of
rhyme, what the limits of acceptability were for rhyme in the period. A
difficulty which presented itself to scholars was the greater profusion of
available material as compared with Old English which allowed for the
division of the country into a larger number of dialect and subdialect
areas.
Inevitably a great deal of information was assembled which could
not always be fitted into a manageable pattern. The culmination of this
work was the drawing of isoglosses to isolate various Middle English

dialects in Moore, Meech & Whitehall's
Middle English Dialect
Charac-
teristics and Dialect Boundaries (1935). This study is based on the
examination of
266
texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries and
it proposed the establishment of characteristic features in Middle