Contact effects on the technical lexis of Middle English: a semantic hierarchic approach

Abstract

In the context of multilingualism in later medieval Britain, the influx of French terminology into the emerging technical vocabulary of Middle English is likely to have produced synchronous synonyms. For functional reasons, some native terms are expected to be dropped from the language, others to undergo differentiation through semantic shift. A significant proportion of the French borrowings are often seen as having been new technical terms, but earlier historical research on the nature of technical vocabulary in English has not clearly characterized this lexical domain; ways are therefore explored here of identifying technical terminology in this period. Definitions contained in historical dictionaries, principally the Middle English Dictionary, provide the main diagnostic, specificity of meaning. As a case study, borrowings in a technical register are examined using the terms contained in the subdomain ‘Instruments’ within the Middle English vocabulary for Building (extracted from the Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England project) supplemented with lexis from the Historical Thesaurus. Utilizing the components of meaning in the Middle English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary definitions, the lexical items are classified into semantic hierarchies as was done for the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. In addition to dates of first usage, etymological information about the lexical items is included in the semantic hierarchies, allowing analysis of patterns of replacement by borrowed terms at different levels of the lexicon. It is found that the impact of French on the native lexicon in this dataset is most evident at the superordinate and basic levels of the lexicon, where we find almost equal numbers of native and borrowed terms, while at the hyponymic level native terms are in the vast majority. The study provides an insight into the vocabulary of speakers of the Middle English period with a high level of experience and expertise in technical fields and the findings suggest a resistance to borrowed vocabulary not at the lowest section of the social stratum, but rather by the class of skilled workers.

Semantic Shift in Middle English: Farming and Trade As Test Cases

“…This was considered essential to our overall aim of investigating semantic shift in the context of the particular lexical environment of medieval England (cf. Sylvester 2018: 249–50). Many other examples from Farming and Trade were rejected because a second sense appears only after 1500 e.g.…”

“…A 12 Language of origin and level of technicality have been analysed in two other investigations linked to the Technical Language project. The pilot study (Sylvester 2018) analysed thirty-three tool names in BUILDING, there appeared to be a lower concentration of French loanwords at the hyponymic (or more technical) levels than at the superordinate and hypernymic levels. A more thorough analysis was then carried on all French borrowings in the corpus (Sylvester et al 2020) which confirmed these initial findings.…”

Old English-Origin Words in a Set Of Medieval Latin Accounts

“…Through the filter of ML these languages are on more equal grounds, contributing with vernacular material to the lexis of the Durham Account Rolls. Despite the role of French as the default language of communication in the management of estates among the higher officers during this period, 12 English played an important part in conceptualising both basic, hyperonymic, vocabulary (e.g., nallez 'nails' and pan 'a pan') and, more often, technical lexis in the form of "basic-level terms" (Croft and Cruse 2004;Sylvester 2018) or hyponyms. Basic-level terms are further down the semantic hierarchy and, therefore, are semantically more specific than superordinates.…”

On the Latin-Romance continuum in theDurham Account Rolls

“…Early 20th-century scholarship, among others Serjeantson (1935) and Prins (1941), identified a correlation between a considerable number of French-origin loanwords and their technical nature. This assumption was more recently reassessed by Sylvester (2018) in a study of the vocabulary belonging to the "Instruments" semantic subdomain of "Building" in Middle English, part of the Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England project, data which was complemented by the Historical Thesaurus. 36 While everyday occupations such as metal-/ wood-working and building show a penetration of French-origin lexis in a quarter of the domain-specific vocabulary (Sylvester/Marcus/Ingham 2017), in manufacturing sectors there seems to be a higher incidence of native English lexis.…”