A striking aspect of written Middle English is the extraordinary number of spelling variants for a single word. Much of this spelling diversity is systematic, yet no history of English so far provides a set of etymologies to account for the diachronic and regional variants. Traditional etymologies, as exemplified in the OED, focus on the semantic history of a word; form changes are explained only broadly, mainly with reference to the southern English literary standard.
A Corpus of Narrative Etymologies (CoNE) aims to explicate the evolution of individual words and affixes, from the Germanic input language into the variant forms attested in early Middle English (1150-1325). It uses the corpus of tagged texts presented in LAEME as its data source. CoNE goes beyond existing historical English dictionaries in the systematic presentation of all changes, regardless of dialect, and the explanation of all attested form-types as a set of branching narratives. Underpinning CoNE is a Corpus of Changes (CC), documenting and explaining the linguistic changes referred to in the individual word-histories.
In this paper we begin by introducing CoNE. Then we identify and illustrate two different types of change exemplified in CC: punctual and recycling. A punctual change has a defined ‘beginning’ and ‘end’: e.g. it is clear that velar palatalisation was complete and inactive at the time that i-umlaut took place, since the secondary front vowels from i-umlaut do not cause palatalisation. A recycling change is a type that recurs over the history of a language: e.g loss of vowels or nasals in weak syllables.
The major handbooks (e.g. Brunner 1965, Campbell 1959, Hogg 1992, Hogg & Fulk 2011, Jordan 1968, Luick 1914/40, Wright, J. & Wright, E.M. 1925, Hogg & Fulk 2011) present information in a way that fails to facilitate research questions about change types. CoNE and CC seek to remedy this, as Rhona Alcorn’s paper — A Corpus of Changes: towards a thematic taxonomy — describes and exemplifies.
Brunner, K. 1965. Altenglische Grammatik nach der Angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers. 3rd ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Campbell, A. 1959. Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hogg, R.M. 1992. A Grammar of Old English, Vol. 1: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hogg, R.M & Fulk, R.D. A Grammar of Old English, Vol. 2: Morphology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Jordan, R. 1968. Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik 1, Lautlehre. 3rd ed. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
LAEME = A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English 1150–1325. Compiled by Margaret Laing. Electronic text corpus with accompanying software (Keith Williamson) index of sources and theoretical introduction (with Roger Lass). http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme1/laeme1.html. Edinburgh: ©The University of Edinburgh 2008–.
Luick, K. 1914/1940. Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. 2 vols. Leipzig: Tauchnitz. [Repr. 1964 by Basil Blackwell, Oxford.]
OED = Oxford English Dictionary 3rd edition online at: http://www.oed.com/
Wright, J. & Wright, E.M. 1925. Old English Grammar. 3rd edn. London: Oxford University Press.