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Tales of the 1001 nists: the phonological implications of litteral substitution sets in some thirteenth-century South-West Midland texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2003

MARGARET LAING  and
ROGER LASS
MARGARET LAING
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
ROGER LASS
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Abstract

There are two main strands to this paper. The first is that in Middle English – and early Middle English especially – there are many writing systems that are so complex as to seem disorderly. But a sympathetic and careful interpretation of these systems shows sophisticated underlying order. The second strand is related to the first: early Middle English writing systems are local and may be represented on maps. When complex systems are assigned geographical positions close to each other – and indeed close to where simpler, more economical systems are localized – a picture emerges that can appear haphazard and unlike the dialect continuum we would expect. We refer to this phenomenon as surface nubbliness. This masks the underlying regional dialect continuum we believe to have been present in the spoken language. But knowledge of how these written systems mapped symbol to sound may enable us to uncover a continuum at the level of sound substance.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , November 2003 , pp. 257 - 278
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2003

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Footnotes

A version of this paper was first delivered at the 12th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Glasgow 2002. Michael Benskin, Bob Stockwell, and Peter Kitson made particularly helpful comments. We are also grateful to Keith Williamson for further suggestions and for producing the maps and to Michael Benskin for comments on the written version. We thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board for supporting the work at the Institute of Historical Dialectology, University of Edinburgh, which provided the basis for this paper. We also thank the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Cape Town for generous leave provision and financial support.