| Research Abstract |
The evolution of the entire English vocabulary is explored with particular emphasis on the explication of the relation between a great influx of Latin and French words in the ME period and the syntactic changes of the same period. For this purpose, I compiled an etymology database of English making use of electronic dictionaries of English.
In stead of Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. On Magnetic Tape, which I had planned to use as a main source of the etymological information but was unavailabe, EDR English dictionaries, Concise Oxford dictionary 8th ed. (COD8), and Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary 10th ed. (WC10) were used as the basis for compiling our etymological database. EDR dictionaries turned out to be suitable for a core material since they are complied for use in the field of natural language processing. Material from EDR dictionaries were supplimented with the etymological material from COD8 and WC10.
Along with the compliation of the etymological database, I examined the details of syntactic changes in Middle English. Since microscopic details of syntactic changes are more important for this study than overall tendencies of the syntactic changes, it is necessary to select individual writers that came between Chaucer and Shakespeare and put them under careful syntactic scrutiny. I picked up some writers that are included in Paston Letters.
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