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XXI: O.F. (Norman) AOI and AVOI, and English Ahoy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Harry A. Deferrari
Harry A. Deferrari*
Affiliation:
Catholic University of America
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Extract

(Other words treated here are Old French (Norman) a voiz, avois, voi, aei; English avoy, hoy, ahey, hey; Provençal aei; Portuguese eoi; Italian voi.) THE recent systematic analysis of the Chanson de Roland with reference to the exact positions of the word aoi in the Oxford manuscript seems definitely to reveal that that puzzling word is almost exclusively used only when there is some sort of shift in the narrative or a distinct pause or a break in the story.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1936 , pp. 328 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 Grace Frank, “AOI in the Chanson de Roland,” PMLA, xlviii, 629–635.

2 Ibid., 631.

3 T. A. Jenkins, Old French AOI; Language Monographs Published by the Linguistic Society of America, xiv (1933), 11–13.

4 “Excluding the potentially controversial groups iii–v, we find in the manuscript a ratio of 121 laisses without AOI at the end to 160 with AOI at the end, or, including groups III and IV and assuming, as seems reasonable, that when the letters appear after first lines and next to last lines they were intended for last lines, we may count a total of 110 laisses designed to end without AOI as compared with a total of 173 laisses designed to end with AOI.” Grace Frank, op. cit., pp. 630–631.

5 Cf. Schwan-Behrens, Grammaire de l'ancien français (Leipzig, 1923), §106.

6 Ibid., §145.

7 Charles Joret, Du C dans les langues romanes (Paris, 1874), pp. 217–294.

8 Wilhelm Buhle, Das C im Lambspringer Alexius, Oxforder Roland und Londoner Brandan (Greifswald, 1881), p. 28.

9 Ernst Burgass, Darstellung des Dialects im XIII. scl. in den Departements “Seine-Inférieure und Eure (Haute Normandie)” (Halle a.S., 1889), p. 21.

10 Max Strauch, Lateinisches $Obr in der Normannischen Mundart (Halle, 1881).

11 Cf. Schwan-Behrens, op. cit., §§145, 348.

12 The influence of voiz on voiel is mentioned by Schwan-Behrens, op. cit., §140, Rem.

13 Cf. especially Schulzke, Betontes ě+i und ⊖+i in der Normannischen Mundart (Halis Saxonum, 1879), pp. 22–27. Also Meyer-Lübke, Grammaire des langues romanes (Paris, 1890), §190, p. 186.

14 Léon Gautier, La Chanson de Roland, 8th ed. (Tours), p. xxi. See also p. xxv.

15 Romania, xxxix, 135.

16 Cf. Schwan-Behrens, op. cit., §§348, 352.—Interesting in this connection, but not necessary for the explanation of avois, is the remark of Schwan-Behrens that “le français du sud-est connaît comme désinence de la le pers. sing. -ois analogique: amois, gardois etc.”

17 Lines 1665, 4160, 4190.

18 4th ed. (Elberfeld, 1880), cols. 227–230.

19 Op. cit., p. 246.

20 op. cit., p. 28.

21 Op. cit., p. 23.

22 Op. cit., p. 22.

23 Op. cit., p. 31. For his theories concerning the pronunciation of these sounds cf. pp. 27–31.

24 Op. cit., §193. For his theories of pronunciation cf. §§189–193.

25 A copy of this short poem is found in Nunes' Crestomatia Arcaica, 2a. ed. (Lisboa, 1921), pp. 392–393.

26 Cf. Nunes, op. cit., p. 526; also Bell, Portuguese Literature (Oxford, 1922), p. 53.