Old Norse and Norman French Influences on late Old to early Middle English Texts

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K00685
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02080:English linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Tokyo Woman's Christian University
• Principal Investigator: Ogura Michiko 東京女子大学, 現代教養学部, 研究員 (20128622)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: Medieval English / Old English / Middle English / Latin / Old Norse / Old French / borrowings / syntax

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study focuses on the influences of Old Norse and Old Norman French on Old and Middle English. It is the transitional period when Old Norse and Old Norman French loan words were started to appear in English texts. Old Norse influences were obvious lexically, morphologically, and semantically, while Old Norman French influences came through Latin or directly, and were partly replaced by Central French later. Textual gap is found between Ormulum (c1175) and Cursor Mundi (c1325), and Old Norse borrowings took time to settle down in written texts. Old French loans were accepted especially in religious texts, and the massive influence in Ancrene Riwle (c1230) showed a striking contrast with the limited acceptance in Layamon's Brut (1275). Syntactic influences can be traced in 'impersonal' and 'reflexive constructions, which existed in the three languages and lengthened the features up to the end of medieval English.

Free Research Field

中世英語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究の成果は、英語史を正確に書き、また理解するのに役立つと信じている。近年、やさしい英語史と称して表面的な事象だけを初心者向けに提示したり、著名な学者が用いた例を何度も検証せずに用いたりした研究書が見られるが、実際のテクストに戻って筆者自身の目で確かめる、philological な態度が必要である。例えばOrmulum は宗教詩であるがedition が刷新されるのを150年近く待っているし、Layamon's Brut は年代記とロマンスが混合した頭韻詩であるが、そこで借入語が避けられている理由は半世紀以上議論されている。このような時間をかけた研究こそが、中世の言語研究には必要である。