Code-Switching in Early English (Topics in English Linguistics)

Code-Switching in Early English Topics in English Linguistics 76 Editors Elizabeth Closs Traugott Bernd Kortmann D...

Author: Herbert Schendl | Laura Wright

245 downloads 2372 Views 1MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Code-Switching in Early English

Topics in English Linguistics 76

Editors

Elizabeth Closs Traugott Bernd Kortmann

De Gruyter Mouton

Code-Switching in Early English edited by

Herbert Schendl Laura Wright

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-025335-1 e-ISBN 978-3-11-025336-8 ISSN 1434-3452 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schendl, Herbert. Code-switching in early English / by Herbert Schendl, Laura Wright. p. cm. – (Topics in English linguistics; 76) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-025335-1 (alk. paper) 1. Code switching (Linguistics) 2. English language – Old English, ca. 450-1100. 3. English language – Middle English, 1100-1500. 4. English language – Variation – Great Britain. I. Title. P115.3.S345 2011 427'.02–dc23 2011032647

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliograﬁe; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin/Boston Cover image: Brian Stablyk/Photographer’s Choice RF/Getty Images Typesetting: Apex CoVantage, LLC Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

Introduction Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Code-switching in early English: Historical background and methodological and theoretical issues Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Beyond boundaries: Code-switching in the leases of Oswald of Worcester Herbert Schendl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls Richard Ingham. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

95

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Death, taxes and property: Some code-switching evidence from Dover, Southampton, and York David Trotter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing Laura Wright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion in medieval and early modern England: A corpus approach to research on historical code-switching Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 “Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie”: Strategies of code-switching in the Middle English translations of Chauliac’s Chirurgia Magna Simon Meecham-Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

vi Contents Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet: Diglossia and footing Ad Putter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature Tim William Machan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Index of Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Index of Subjects and Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

Acknowledgements From an early stage of planning this volume, Elizabeth Traugott has shown great interest in our project and has encouraged us to go ahead with it. She has always been prepared to answer any questions and, from the book proposal to the ﬁnished product, her comments have been invaluable to us. To her and Bernd Kortmann we are grateful for including the volume into the ‘Topics in English Linguistics’ series. We also thank all contributors not only for their papers, but for their commitment and enthusiasm. We are greatly indebted to our external reviewers of the individual chapters, whose expertise and detailed comments have further improved the papers. Birgit Sievert from Mouton de Gruyter has been most helpful from an early stage of the production process, and Ulrike Swientek has guided us efﬁciently through the ﬁnal stages of the production. Christina Gefäll was of great help in the preparation of the manuscript. To all of them, our sincerest thanks.

Introduction Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

This ﬁrst collected volume of papers on historical code-switching presents a range of issues in the study of mixed-language texts from early English. While research on modern spoken bilingual interaction can look back at about four decades of intensive empirical and theoretical endeavour, producing a wealth of empirical studies and a number of theoretical models, research on historical code-switching has a far shorter history. The existence of a substantial body of written mixed-language texts from the history of English, from the medieval to the early modern period, is still not widely known to general and historical linguists. We hope that the present volume will contribute to changing this state of affairs and that it will help to establish historical codeswitching research as a sub-ﬁeld of historical linguistics, with relevance also for medieval and literary studies, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and contact linguistics. In the following section, a brief research survey will be provided to place the individual contributions of this volume discussed in Section 2 into their wider context.

1. Research survey Mixed-language texts have been the topic of linguistically oriented research since the 1990s. The present section will brieﬂy look at some of this research to set the discussion of the contributions of the present volume in the second section in its historical context. The ﬁrst discussions of mixed-language texts from medieval and early modern Britain came from medievalists and literary scholars, who were mainly interested in the literary and stylistic functions of inserted1 foreign 1. We use the terms “insert” and “insertion” here in a theory-neutral sense to refer to the appearance of material from a language B in a text which is (predominantly) in

2 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

language material in what they called “macaronic” texts (for a discussion of the origin and early use of the term see Lazzerini 1982). This term was originally used with rather negative connotations for mixed poems and sermons, but has become established among medievalists as a more neutral term to refer to texts which show a high incidence of what code-switching research generally refers to as intrasentential code-switching, i.e. switching within the clause or sentence, though the term has never been deﬁned in a satisfactory way and clouds the link between such early texts and modern bilingual speech. (For a survey of such earlier studies see Schendl 2002a: 57; for a critical discussion of Wenzel’s deﬁnition of “macaronic sermons” see Schendl, forthcoming a). Increased interest in mixed-language texts is noticeable from the early 1990s onwards, especially furthered by growing research into non-literary texts among medievalists and historical linguists and into bilingualism and code-switching by modern linguists. Among medievalists, Linda E. Voigts’ work on medieval scientiﬁc and medical writing (e.g. 1989a, 1989b, 1996) and Wenzel’s (1994) comprehensive study of macaronic sermons deserve particular mention, including their classiﬁcations of mixed texts in their respective corpora. Both scholars explicitly referred to modern codeswitching research in their analyses, as did Fletcher (1994) in his more general discussion of medieval macaronic writing (see also Fletcher 2009: 50–66). Pioneering linguistic research on medieval mixed-language texts on a larger scale has been carried out from the early 1990s to the present by William Rothwell and David Trotter, both editors of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, and by Laura Wright. All three have particularly focused on non-literary texts with a large amount of inserted material from other languages (for detailed discussion and references see Schendl and Wright, this volume). Studies on medieval literary texts also became increasingly informed by code-switching research, see e.g. Machan (1994) on Piers Plowman, Schendl (1997) on macaronic poems, Diller (1997/98) on medieval drama. A ﬁrst survey on code-switching in medieval and early modern English text types is given in Schendl (1996).

a language A. In a more technical sense, these terms have been used by Muysken (2000), who distinguishes three types of bilingual speech, namely “insertion”, “alternation” and “congruent lexicalization” (Muysken 2000: 3–10), and by Myers-Scotton for material which is “embedded” into a “matrix language” (see also note 2).

Introduction 3

Modern research into present-day code-switching has been classiﬁed into three major approaches, the structural (or grammatical), the sociolinguistic and the psycholinguistic approach (Bullock and Toribio 2009: 14–17), of which the ﬁrst two can be and have been successfully applied to historical data, though the results of such studies may also be of psycholinguistic importance. (For a survey of “linguistic approaches to language-mixing” up to 2000 see Schendl 2002b: 60–66.) Structural studies of early code-switching have so far been limited to the description of syntactic patterns and constraints on switching. Wenzel (1994) provided a detailed surface-oriented description of syntactic switching patterns in his corpus of sermons, where Latin is the matrix language with frequent switches into English.2 The analyses of syntactic patterns in medieval and early modern business accounts by Wright (e.g. 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, forthcoming, etc.) have not only focused on the language of speciﬁc constituents, but also provided the ﬁrst account of the diachronic development of switching patterns in a particular text type. On the basis of a small sample of medieval mixed poems and sermons, Schendl (2000a, b) investigated how far the attested syntactic switching patterns matched the constraints postulated in the early secondary literature, providing some frequency-based comparisons with contemporary syntactic studies. Archan (2000) tested the explanatory power of different syntactic code-switching models, including Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame Model and the Government Model (Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh 1986), comparing a medieval sermon and an early modern medical text. Halmari and Adams (2002) analysed case-assignment in Latin insertions in Piers Plowman using the Government Model. These and a few other syntactic studies constitute a valuable diachronic extension of present-day code-switching research, though they are generally based on small text samples which do not allow generalisations, except for Wright’s work mentioned above. The greater part of research into both present-day and historical codeswitching is within the sociolinguistic approach, including functionalpragmatic studies (see Bullock and Toribio 2009: 16). Contrary to structural analyses, the sociocultural embedding of texts and the social factors inﬂuencing code-choice and code-switching are at the centre of this approach.

2. For the term “matrix language”, which refers to the dominant language into which material from (an)other language(s) is inserted (or embedded) see Myers-Scotton (2002: Section 1.3.).

4 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

So far, research has particularly focused on the micro-level, such as the different motivations and textual functions of switching in speciﬁc texts or text types such as medieval Year Books (Davidson 2005), medieval and early modern medical texts (Hunt 2000; Pahta 2004, 2007; Schendl 2009 [2010]), medieval and early modern letters (Nurmi and Pahta 2004; Schendl 2002b), etc. With late modern English letter-writers, a correlation has been observed between a writer’s various social roles and the use of code-switching (Nurmi and Pahta 2010), also reﬂected in a higher frequency of code-switching when correspondents “have a close relationship” (Pahta and Nurmi 2009: 27). Apart from expressing an individual’s identity, code-switching may also support the construction of identity in bilingual communities (Bullock and Toribio 2009: 16). This latter function seems to account for switching in the macaronic sermons mentioned above (see e.g. Fletcher 1994; Schendl, forthcoming a, etc.). Though a discourse-based approach is less feasible for historical data due to the scarcity of historical mixed dialogues, occurrences of code-switching in drama as well as in letters, which are interactive and to a certain extent dialogic in nature, provide some interesting data (for drama see Diller 1997/98; for letters Schendl 2002a; Nurmi and Pahta 2004; Pahta and Nurmi 2009). The macro-level approach, which analyses code-switching “as a community behavior” (Bullock and Toribio 2009: 16), informs a number of the above sociolinguistic studies at least indirectly, since they are linked to multilingualism and diglossia in medieval Britain, though we still lack a comprehensive macro-linguistic analysis of medieval code-switching. In concluding this survey, it should be pointed out that early codeswitching is not restricted to Britain, but has been attested from Latin antiquity (see Adams 2003) and seems to have been wide-spread in medieval and early modern Europe (see e.g. Stolt 1964; Lazzerini 1971; Lüdi 1985, 1989; Braunmüller and Ferraresi 2003; Schendl 2004; Kämmerer 2006). This however lies outside the scope of this book.

2. The papers Apart from this Introduction, the present volume consists of an introductory chapter by the editors and nine original papers by leading experts in the ﬁeld. These papers, which address very different issues, have been arranged into topically related groups, although there is necessarily some overlap in the

Introduction 5

topics of individual papers and some speciﬁc issues recur in different groups. All papers are based on an empirical analysis of extensive medieval and some early modern data mixing English with one or two other languages, in particular Latin and French, and also address important methodological and theoretical issues.3 They are all informed by a linguistic approach to codeswitching, though some also question the applicability of this theoretical framework to their data. The introductory chapter by Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright discusses the major methodological and theoretical issues of historical code-switching research. The next paper is the only one to analyse code-switching in Old English, a period so far neglected by code-switching research. On the basis of a homogeneous corpus of late Old English administrative texts, namely the leases of Oswald of Worcester, Herbert Schendl provides a comprehensive analysis of code-switching in this predominantly bilingual corpus. The functional and syntactic analyses of code-switching in the leases are placed into the sociohistorical context of the texts. The micro-level approach focuses not only on the textual functions of switching, but also attempts, for the ﬁrst time in historical code-switching research, a Labovian-type of analysis on the basis of a small number of extralinguistic variables. The paper concludes by placing code-switching in the leases within the macro-linguistic context of the increasing use of the vernacular in ofﬁcial documents in late Old English. Like other studies in the volume, this paper shows that even a well-researched text type may receive fresh stimulus when viewed under the aspect of its bilingual character. The two papers of the next group focus on syntactic constraints on codeswitching, a topic with a long research tradition in modern code-switching studies, where the emphasis has shifted from searching for universal constraints to probabilistic ones, i.e. such constraints are now increasingly seen as tendencies rather than categorical rules. The papers by Richard Ingham and by Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz investigate various aspects of such constraints in very different medieval text types, both looking at the

3. Unless otherwise stated in individual contributions, switches are marked in bold for the ﬁrst inserted language, in bold italics for the second inserted language; however, the marking of individual switches by a change of fonts has been omitted in speciﬁc cases by individual authors.

6 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

relation between the occurrence of switches and the Government relations between syntactic categories.4 Richard Ingham focuses on mixed prepositional phrases in lay subsidy rolls from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century which refer to the surname or byname of taxpayers (e.g. Robert a le Brok). He provides evidence for the working of the government principle in such mixed phrases, especially between preposition and deﬁnite article, where he ﬁnds clear constraints on switching between preposition and the determiner head of a nominal constituent. Of particular interest is the author’s hypothesis that such mixed prepositional phrases of bynames and surnames most likely provide at least indirect evidence for spoken bilingualism, especially the use of French in this period. The paper shows the potential of this largely neglected text type for historical code-switching research. The macaronic sermons which form the substantial corpus of the contribution by Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz are a very different text type with a high incidence of intrasentential English switches in a Latin text. Working within a modiﬁed version of the Government Constraint, they test the hypothesis that syntactically peripheral constituents are more likely to be switched than those in Government relations. Their detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses support their claim that many apparent violations of this constraint can be explained by recourse to factors such as a so-called language carrier, which plays a central role in their analysis. Though the constraints found in their corpus are probabilistic, they are not random but linked to the working of the Government Constraint, a view which chimes with results from present-day code-switching data. The next group with papers by David Trotter and Laura Wright is particularly concerned with the question of whether the numerous administrative

4. The notion of Government goes back to Chomsky (1981), but was modiﬁed later several times. For differences between Ingham and Halmari and Regetz’s theoretical framework see their respective papers, especially Ingham, who discusses these differences in some detail. The terminological distinction between Ingham’s “Government Principle” and Halmari and Regetz’s “Government Constraint” reﬂects a certain difference in perspective: while the latter refers to the constraints on code-switching due to Government relations in the tradition of Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986), the former starts from the universal syntactic relation (which was originally mainly applied to monolingual analyses).

Introduction 7

texts which show a high incidence of single foreign lexemes can be described within the framework of code-switching, or whether they constitute a different type of contact-phenomenon, such as the formation of a new mixed code. This question, which has particular theoretical importance, may not be easy to answer and is quite controversial, since it depends on one’s view on the distinctiveness of different languages and the deﬁnition of code. Both Trotter and Wright’s papers focus on the historical pragmatics of the text type (the functional variety dictating the mixed-language structure), both stress the dynamism of language mixing, and both consider variation. David Trotter compares three different administrative and legal text types (accounts, inventories, wills), which nevertheless share a number of similarities, especially the large number of mainly nominal insertions of English and other lexical material into the Latin or Anglo-French matrix language. The analysis of similarities and differences in the switching patterns of these texts (both from a synchronic and a diachronic point of view) brings him to the conclusion that language mixing in such texts is not a static phenomenon but has to be seen as a dynamic process which is closely linked to the shift from one language to another and also as an index of language change in progress. Laura Wright presents data from a hitherto unpublished ﬁfteenth-century London will, and uses it to outline the regularities in medieval mixed-language business writing. This text type mixed Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English from the time of the Norman Conquest to the time of abandonment of the system in the sixteenth century. It varied little country-wide, at a time when the regional dialects were widely divergent and a written standard dialect had yet to evolve. The heyday of this system was the late fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries, and Wright considers some of the ways in which it changed over time, with an excursus on how historical dictionaries currently treat this material. The next group has two contributions addressing areas which have been widely neglected in historical code-switching research, but are also in their infancy in present-day code-switching studies, namely corpus linguistics and translation studies. Much of the most exciting recent work in historical linguistics has been carried out within the framework of corpus linguistics. Since the pioneering compilation of the electronic Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, a large number of general and more specialized historical corpora have been compiled, most recently for research into historical pragmatics (see Fitzmaurice and

8 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Taavitsainen 2007: 9–10). However, there are still no large purpose-built corpora of present-day code-switching and the situation is even worse for historical corpora, where we still have no corpus-based work on a larger scale (see Schendl and Wright, this volume, Section 4.2.2.). The paper by Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi is a step in that direction. It explores the potential of corpus-based research into historical code-switching on the basis of the Helsinki Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, both compiled at the University of Helsinki as – basically monolingual – corpora of the English language. Pahta and Nurmi’s analysis of religious writing in the Middle English and the beginning of the Early Modern English period shows that even general-purpose corpora can serve as data base for a study of “bilingual practices”. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data document a considerable amount of code-switched utterances with a wide range of functions and grammatical patterns, as well as with clear differences between text types. This study illustrates the possible contributions of corpus-linguistic methods for studying textual multilingualism, but also the problems of using general English corpora rather than a purpose-built corpus of code-switched utterances. Many literary and non-literary texts from medieval Britain are translations from classical or French texts, and the inﬂuence of the original on English “reworkings” has been the topic of a large body of research. However, the role of code-switching in translations and its reﬂection of features of the original texts has so far been neglected in the literature on medieval translations. Simon Meecham-Jones addresses this question, looking at the ways in which different translators and/or scribes employed code-switching in different English versions of Chauliac’s Chirurgia Magna not only for stylistic reasons, but also in order to establish a medical and physiological terminology in Middle English. Chauliac’s translation introduced numerous foreign medical terms for the ﬁrst time into Middle English, mostly from Medieval Latin, but also Greek and Arabic. This raises the intriguing question whether these ﬁrst (or early) attestations should be treated as code-switches or borrowings and what the underlying reasons for the extensive use of foreign lexical material may have been. While traditional translation studies are largely about the ability to keep languages separate, this paper discusses the close interaction of different languages and thus provides an incentive for better cooperation between translation studies and code-switching research. The papers of the last group reﬂect the fruitful combination of codeswitching research with studies of a more literary (Ad Putter) and a medievalist orientation (Tim Machan). These papers again demonstrate how even

Introduction 9

widely analysed texts can proﬁt from being re-analysed from the point of view of code-switching phenomena. In his discussion of selected instances of foreign language elements in the works of Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet, Putter demonstrates the fruitful application of recent insights from code-switching research to the bilingual practices of these three medieval poets. Putter shows that both different languages and varieties of one language can be analysed within the same framework, and that the distinction between the two types is often difﬁcult to draw in historical texts. He illustrates that early code-switching was used as one of many strategies to negotiate one’s position not only towards other participants in communication, but also towards one’s own utterances. Machan’s contribution on “the visual pragmatics of code-switching” in late-medieval literary texts addresses an important but little-researched aspect of medieval multilingual practices, namely the interaction between code-switching and visual representation in medieval literary manuscripts. The importance of visual clues in present-day multilingual texts has been pointed out in Mark Sebba’s introduction to a volume on modern written code-switching (Sebba, Mahootian, and Jonsson, forthcoming), and Machan documents that this practice has a long history in written code-switching and is represented in medieval manuscripts by a number of strategies such as ink colour and underlining. However, though these devices are often linked to instances of code-switching, there is no one-to-one correlation between visual elements and switching of languages. This raises interesting questions about what Machan sees as “the rhetorical potential of code-switching” in medieval manuscripts, the boundaries between different languages and the cultural status of different texts. Machan’s approach is based on the analysis of a number of representative manuscripts of some central literary texts from medieval England. The contributions to this volume thus cover a wide range of topics and aspects of early code-switching research, many of which are of interest beyond the immediate topic discussed. It is our hope and conviction that the volume will stimulate further research into these and related areas.

References Adams, James N. 2003 Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Archan, Sabine 2000

Functional and structural aspects of code-switching in Middle English and Early Modern English texts. Unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Vienna. Braunmüller, Kurt and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.) 2003 Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Bullock, Barbara E. and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio 2009 Themes in the study of code-switching. In: Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching, 1–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Davidson, Mary Catherine 2005 Discourse features of code-switching in legal reports in late medieval England. In: Janne Skaffari, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik (eds.), Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, 343–351. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Diller, Hans-Jürgen 1997/98 Code-switching in medieval English drama. Comparative Drama 31: 500–537. Di Sciullo, Anne-Marie, Pieter Muysken and Rajendra Singh 1986 Government and code mixing. Journal of Linguistics 22: 1–24. Fitzmaurice, Susan and Irma Taavitsainen 2007 Introduction. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Susan Fitzmaurice (eds.), Methods in Historical Pragmatics, 1–10. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fletcher, Alan J. 1994 “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini”: A thirteenth-century sermon for Advent and the macaronic style in England. Mediaeval Studies 56: 217–245. Fletcher, Alan J. 2009 Late Medieval Popular Preaching in Britain and Ireland: Texts, Studies, and Interpretations. Turnhout: Brepols. Halmari, Helena and Robert Adams 2002 On the grammar and rhetoric of language mixing in Piers Plowman. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 103: 33–50. Hunt, Tony 2000 Code-switching in medical texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 131–148.

Introduction 11

Kämmerer, Carmen M. 2006 Codeswitching in Predigten des 15. Jahrhunderts: MittellateinFrühneuhochdeutsch, Mittellatein-Altitalienisch/Altspanisch. Berlin: Logos Verlag. Lazzerini, Lucia 1971 ‘Per latinos grossos’: Studio sui sermoni mescidati. Studi di Filologia Italiana 2: 219–339. Lazzerini, Lucia 1982 Aux origines du macaronique. Revue des Langues Romanes 86: 11–33. Lüdi, Georges 1985 Mehrsprachige Rede in Freiburger Ratsmanualen des 15. Jahrhunderts. Vox Romanica 44: 163–188. Lüdi, Georges 1989 Ein historisches Beispiel für Polyglossie: Stadtsprachen in Fribourg/Freiburg i. Ue. im XIV./XV. Jahrhundert. In: Peter H. Nelde (ed.), Historische Sprachkonﬂikte, 37–55. Bonn: Dümmler. Machan, Tim William 1994 Language contact in Piers Plowman. Speculum 69: 359–385. Muysken, Pieter 2000 Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 2002 Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nurmi, Arja and Päivi Pahta 2004 Social stratiﬁcation and patterns of code-switching in early English letters. Multilingua 23: 417–456. Nurmi, Arja and Päivi Pahta 2010 Preacher, scholar, brother, friend: Social roles and code-switching in the writings of Thomas Twining. In: Päivi Pahta, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English, 135–162. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Pahta, Päivi 2004 Code-switching in medieval medical writing. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), Medical and Scientiﬁc Writing in Late Medieval English, 73–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Pahta, Päivi 2007

Flowers, cum multis aliis quae nunc praescribere longum est: On code-switching in Early Modern English medical texts. In: Ute Smit, Stefan Dollinger, Julia Hüttner, Ursula Lutzky and Gunther Kaltenböck (eds.), Tracing English through Time: Explorations in Language Variation, 259–272. Vienna: Braumüller. Pahta, Päivi and Arja Nurmi 2009 Negotiating interpersonal identities in writing: Code-switching practices in Charles Burney’s correspondence. In: Arja Nurmi, Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800), 27–52. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: Benjamins. Schendl, Herbert 1996 Text types and code-switching in medieval and Early Modern English. Vienna English Working Papers 5: 50–62. Schendl, Herbert 1997 ‘To London fro Kent / Sunt predia depopulantes’: Code-switching and medieval English macaronic poems. Vienna English Working Papers 6(1): 52–66. Schendl, Herbert 2000a Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2000b Linguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 77–92. Schendl, Herbert 2002a Code-choice and code-switching in some early ﬁfteenth-century letters. In: Peter J. Lucas and Angela M. Lucas (eds.), Middle English from Tongue to Text, 247–262. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Schendl, Herbert 2002b Mixed-language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 51–78. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2004 English historical code-switching in a European perspective. In: Christine B. Dabelsteen and J. Normann Jørgensen (eds.), Languaging and Language Practices, 188–202. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen.

Introduction 13

Schendl, Herbert 2009 [2010] William Harvey’s Prelectiones Anatomie Universalis (1616): Code-switching in Early Modern English lecture notes. Brno Studies in English 35(2): 185–198. Schendl, Herbert forthcoming Code-switching in late medieval macaronic sermons. In: Judith a Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain: Sources and Analysis. Turnhout: Brepols. Schendl, Herbert forthcoming From text to analysis: Multilingualism and written code-switching b in medieval Britain. In: Mark Sebba, Shahrzad Mahootian and Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-switching in Writing: Approaches to Mixed-language Written Discourse. London: Routledge. Stolt, Birgit 1964 Die Sprachmischung in Luthers Tischreden: Studien zum Problem der Zweisprachigkeit. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Trotter, David A. (ed.) 2000 Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Voigts, Linda E. 1989a The character of the carecter: Ambiguous sigils in scientiﬁc and medical texts. In: Alastair J. Minnis (ed.), Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-medieval Texts and Manuscripts, 91–109. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Voigts, Linda E. 1989b Scientiﬁc and medical books. In: Jeremy Grifﬁths and Derek Pearsall (eds.), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375– 1475, 345–402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Voigts, Linda E. 1996 What’s the word? Bilingualism in late-medieval England. Speculum 71: 813–826. Wenzel, Siegfried 1994 Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wright, Laura 1992 Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380–1480. In: Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 762–770. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

14 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Wright, Laura 1994

Wright, Laura 1995

Wright, Laura 1996 Wright, Laura 1998

Wright, Laura forthcoming

Early Modern London business English. In: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English, 449–465. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. A hypothesis on the structure of macaronic business writing. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Medieval Dialectology, 309–321. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mixed-language business writing: Five hundred years of codeswitching. In: Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language Change: Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 99–118. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mixed-language accounts as sources for linguistic analysis. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.), Multilingualism in Medieval Britain, 1100–1500: Sources and Analysis. Turnhout: Brepols.

Code-switching in early English: Historical background and methodological and theoretical issues Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

1. Introduction The change from one language or variety to another within a stretch of spoken discourse has been very much in the centre of linguistic research in the last few decades. Variously labelled code-switching, code-mixing, bilingual speech etc., this linguistic strategy is widely used in multilingual speech communities all over the world. The large number of empirical studies of this phenomenon in present-day speech communities and the various theoretical models trying to account for it reﬂect the importance of this ﬁeld. However, far less numerous are studies on present-day written code-switching, and what there is mainly deals with switching in literary texts (Callahan 2004), although more recently the focus has extended to other written text types such as internet communication and advertising (see the contributions and references in Sebba, Mahootian, and Jonsson, forthcoming). It has taken a long time for the numerous mixed-language texts from earlier periods of English to be accepted as evidence for historical code-switching and thus worthy of serious linguistic investigation. It is the central thesis of this book that code-switching research should be extended into the historical dimension, hereby establishing historical code-switching as a new sub-ﬁeld of historical linguistics. The present section will address a number of central aspects of historical code-switching research. It begins with an illustration of the widespread negative attitude towards mixed-language texts (Section 2) and moves on to a brief discussion of multilingualism and code-switching in medieval Britain, the role of medieval scribes and the relation between code-switching and text types (Section 3). Section 4 ﬁrst discusses some terminological matters, before moving on to methodological and theoretical issues of historical codeswitching analysis, the role of corpora, the relation between early written and spoken code-switching and the application of modern code-switching theories to earlier data. Finally, it discusses whether all medieval mixed-language

16 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

texts represent instances of code-switching or partly also a new type of mixed code. The chapter ends with a survey of the main results of recent and current research, and suggestions for future work.

2. Negative attitudes towards historical mixed-language texts This new sub-ﬁeld may be new in terms of linguistic study, but it is not in terms of academic commentary. Many historians and medievalists have made observations on mixed-language texts, but usually from a single perspective: that of “broken” or otherwise faulty language. This negative attitude towards early language mixing, especially of the intrasentential type, is also reﬂected in the widely used term “macaronic” (sermons, poems, verses). Apart from its negative connotations (doggerel, albeit learned), the term also dissociates early language mixing from linguistic research into present-day multilingualism and code-switching and rather frames it as an isolated historical phenomenon, not as early evidence of bilingual speech. In other words, early mixed-language texts have been regarded as either representing insufﬁcient linguistic competence or, in the case of mixed-language literary texts, as artiﬁcial (though possibly artistic) language play. An extreme case of the former view is R.W. Chambers’ complaint that legal business after the Norman conquest was ﬁrst conducted in French “and then in no language at all [our emphasis]”, i.e. in “this jargon of ‘Law French’ ”, which he illustrated with the mixed sentence Il jecte un graund brickbat que narrowly mist (Chambers 1932: lxxxii; see Schendl 2002b: 52).1 It is worth looking at some of these criticisms in more detail, because amongst the general opprobrium we ﬁnd some astute observations. Staying with the text type of bureaucratic documents, Gras (1918: 561) writes about a business account of 1509 “The degenerate condition of the Latin, the patois of the custom house, is a striking feature of this document”. In a more recent comment on a similar type of document from 1480–1481, Cobb (1990: xliii) states “The language of the account is what has been called ‘the patois of the custom house’, dog Latin with many English and some French words used for commodities, when there was no Latin equivalent”. The two assumptions

1. However, a similarly negative attitude towards modern code-switched speech was also widespread even among scholars up to the 1970s and can still be found among non-linguists.

Code-switching in early English 17

made here are, ﬁrst that such written texts represent a spoken system, which was a patois, and second that English was used where there was no Latin equivalent. As this volume will show, these assumptions may not be valid. Moran (1976: 45), on the other hand, writes about a trilingual Latin-FrenchEnglish mixed inventory of a printing house that it was “not the work of a clerk [. . .] but possibly of foreign workmen working at the house at the time”, thus blaming foreigners’ lack of linguistic competence, and disregarding English scribes’ well-established multilingualism (see Section 3.1.2.). Comparable statements can be found in Maitland (1903: l, lxxxv, xlii) and Cobb (1961: lvi–lvii) and this list could be extended further. It is hard to think of another subﬁeld in linguistics that has attracted quite so much prejudice and opprobrium, with the exception of Pidgin and Creole studies. Such dismay is directed not only towards the linguistic expression, but actually towards the minds of its users, so that, for example, E.R. Curtius ([1953] 1990: 242–243) claims that the “macaronic epic [. . .] illuminates the intellectual crisis of the period”.2 Far from being stimulated by such claims, up to the 1990s, linguists’ general attitude towards historical mixed texts has been one of neglect and disregard. The few exceptions to this general attitude (see Schendl 2002b: 57, and below) had little inﬂuence on the mainstream views of medievalists and historical linguists, and many of the latter were even unaware of the existence of such a wide range of mixed texts. From the early 1990s onwards, however, a number of scholars began to consider historical mixed texts as an interesting research ﬁeld, constituting the earliest instances of written code-switching, and providing important evidence for the linguistic strategies of medieval and early modern multilinguals. In the last ﬁfteen years, an increasing number of linguistically-oriented papers on historical English code-switching have been presented at conferences and have appeared in print, many of them by contributors to the present volume, and equally we have witnessed an increase in studies on medieval mixed-language texts from medievalists and literary scholars (see Introduction, Section 1). However, the attitude of dismissal continues. As recently as 2009, Gullberg, Indefrey, and Muysken commented that code-switching in “archival material, e.g. trade registers” is “often quite formulaic, and only

2. We would like to thank Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz for providing this quote.

18 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

represent[s] a limited range of constructions” (2009: 23). Quite apart from the fact that such “formulae” and “limited constructions” have their own linguistic histories, it is only when such texts are married up to their scribes (who wrote monolingual texts – for other pragmatic purposes – too) that we get some sense of the linguistic conventions of the day.

3. Medieval multilingualism and code-switching 3.1. Multilingualism in medieval Britain3 3.1.1.

General aspects

Throughout its attested history and irrespective of its political structure, Britain has been a multilingual country, though written evidence is frequently scarce for early stages of speciﬁc languages such as Old Norse and Celtic. Throughout the medieval period, Latin served as the High Language not only of religion, but also in other more or less closely related areas, such as scholarship, education, administration, law and literature, and in some of these domains it remained predominant into the Early Modern period. As a result Latin was in contact, to a greater or lesser degree, with the various vernaculars spoken and written in Britain. The distribution and status of these vernaculars underwent far-reaching changes in medieval times. The dominating vernacular in the Old English period was undoubtedly Old English, which was in close contact with Old Norse in the Danelaw area of the Midlands and – controversially – with Celtic languages in various regions. The exact nature of these linguistic contacts is still unknown and much debated. For the Danelaw area, opinions range between wide-spread bilingualism with code-switching and the development of a Creole or koiné (see, for example, Dawson 2003). For Celtic, views range from almost complete lack of contact to that of the “Celtic hypothesis”: that imperfect learning of English by large numbers of Celtic speakers resulted in extensive syntactic contact phenomena (see Filppula, Klemola, and Paulasto 2008 for examples of possible contact-induced change). However, no written evidence of codeswitching in these contact situations has survived so that we can only speculate on its occurrence.

3. The term multilingualism as used here also includes bilingualism.

Code-switching in early English 19

The incursion and subsequent demise of French can be summarised by the following thumbnail-sketch: prior to 1066, civic documents were written in Old English. By the 1070s they were written in Latin, but a form of Latin that was informed by Anglo-Norman French and Middle English. By 1200 a written form of Anglo-Norman had evolved (earlier, one might note, than on the Continent) and by the late fourteenth century, an orderly mix of the three languages was routinely being used for records-keeping nationwide (see, e.g., Catto 2003; Howlett 1996). All this changed in the ﬁfteenth century when this trilingual system was abandoned and written proto-Standard English commenced, with written Anglo-Norman continuing only vestigially thereafter in legal writing. This much is relatively uncontroversial, but there are still great unknowns about Anglo-Norman. For example, we do not know much about women’s use of the language, or how, when or whether spoken forms percolated across from William I’s mixed and largely illiterate force of troops to the rank and ﬁle of the English countryside (but see Clark 1978; Rothwell, forthcoming). Linguists disagree as to how many generations Anglo-Norman continued in use as a mother-tongue in Britain, and for how long it continued afterwards as a taught language for workaday purposes, just as Latin continued as a taught language for working purposes (see Ingham 2009a, 2009b, this volume). However there is no doubt that AngloNorman continued to exercise considerable inﬂuence on the Middle English word-stock up right unto the point of its demise. In over a hundred scholarly articles and numerous dictionary entries, William Rothwell has painstakingly detailed the ways in which Middle English absorbed Anglo-Norman words, that is, Anglo-Norman words which had been coined in England by English-speakers (see, for example, Rothwell 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001, 2004a, 2004b, 2007, 2009, 2010). Much of the vocabulary found in Rothwell’s articles on British Anglo-Norman is either not found in Continental French of the same period or was used with a different meaning. This shows that Anglo-Norman continued to be productive in Britain from the eleventh to the ﬁfteenth centuries, and must have been in daily spoken usage, albeit towards the latter end of this time-period as an acquired language rather than as a mother-tongue. In a series of recent papers, Richard Ingham has reopened the topic of Anglo-Norman/English bilingualism as a working language acquired in youth as part and parcel of learning to write, that is, being able to write in later medieval Britain meant being able to write Latin and French (Ingham 2006a, 2006b, 2009a, 2009b, forthcoming a, b). In particular, drawing evidence from the Noun Phrase and the Prepositional Phrase, Ingham has shown that in the last few decades of

20 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

the fourteenth century the syntactic system was disrupted, presumably indicating that it was at this point when transmission of Anglo-Norman as a spoken language ceased. Catto (2003) is dedicated to this very issue, and concludes, as the result of a survey of many texts, that the Romance languages were abandoned and written Standard English invented afresh, as it were, by the generation of the 1380s. Trotter (2010) has suggested that subsequent generations (who presumably did not have a spoken reality behind their written Anglo-Norman) evolved away from trilingualism to a new binary system: that of Medieval Latin versus vernacular, where vernacular equated to both Anglo-Norman and late Middle English. These discussions, centring around language usage in late-fourteenth century Britain, are all ongoing and there still remains much descriptive work to be done, in particular in surveying the many mixed-language texts which remain unpublished and unavailable online. 3.1.2. Middle English authors, scribes and mixed-language texts Medieval mixed-language texts are typically not the product of incompetent or non-native authors or scribes, but rather reﬂect the – often very high – multilingual competence of the authors and scribes who wrote or copied them. They often mirror consciously or unconsciously used discourse strategies which express a range of functions, including the multilingual identity of authors, scribes and/or the readership/audience of these texts.4 This is not the place to discuss the complex and changing nature of scribal training and competence, but a few keypoints will be touched on. The scribes of Old English mixed-language charters were very different from the clerics who wrote various types of mixed-language sermons, the writers of mixed-language letters or the authors of mixed-language poems and verse such as Piers Plowman with its hundreds of Latin insertions into the English text. We also have to differentiate between the authors and the scribes who copied such bilingual texts and who were not necessarily linguistically as competent as the original author or intermediate scribes (see Machan, this volume). A different case is the various authors and translators of medical texts, whose respective contributions to a speciﬁc text have often resulted in complex textual histories (see

4. In view of the widely accepted oral nature of medieval written texts, it seems justiﬁed to talk of both the readership and the audience of these texts.

Code-switching in early English 21

Meecham-Jones, this volume). Especially interesting are the professional scribes of the later medieval period, who – on a regular basis – also had to compose monolingual Latin, monolingual Anglo-Norman, and monolingual English texts, for a range of pragmatic purposes. The professional demands of the job were such that medieval scribes had to copy, to compose, to translate, to write monolingually, to write in a mixed-language system, and to match the correct form to the correct content – perhaps all within the course of a working day and perhaps talking to each other as they did so. To take the most well-known scribe of all, Chaucer at least oversaw use of the mixed-language business system in the course of his post as Controller of Customs of the Port of London, composed literary texts in monolingual Middle English, monolingual Anglo-Norman, monolingual Medieval Latin, and translated texts from Anglo-Norman, Latin and Italian. The pragmatic function of the text dictated the form. As scribes switched back and forth between the languages according to their tasks, they ported words from each language into the others. Scribes’ working environments were multilingual, whether that was in a room where several scribes worked collectively, or whether it was within a lone scribe’s head.

3.2. Code-switching and text types The triglossic situation in medieval Britain is reﬂected in the great number of monolingual Latin, French and English texts from different domains, though the use of languages in speciﬁc domains and text types is not categorical and greatly changed over time, with an increasing shift from French (and partly Latin) towards English. The distribution of these three languages in, for example, the Rolls of Parliament (written by clerks of the Royal Chancery) reﬂects this shift of text-type-speciﬁc language choice. Thus, in 1422, 76% of the Rolls were in French, 13% in English, 11% in Latin; by 1444, the percentage of French Rolls had dropped to about 18%, while that of English had risen to 64%, and that of Latin to 18% (see Fisher 1977: note 37). Another possible indication of such shift may be the appearance of mixedlanguage texts in a speciﬁc text type which had previously been more or less monolingual in a particular language (for the relation between language shift and code-switching see Myers-Scotton 1993: 223–224). An example is the semi-ofﬁcial letters, which up to the end of the fourteenth century were typically in French or Latin, with the ﬁrst attested English letters only dating from the end of that century, but with a clear increase of English from the

22 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

end of the second decade of the ﬁfteenth century on. Interestingly, the ﬁrst two letters showing extensive code-switching between French and English date from as early as 1403, i.e. less than two decades after the ﬁrst attested monolingual English letter (Schendl 2002a); from then on code-switching in letters is frequently attested, though it never became the norm. It seems likely that this appearance of code-switching is linked to the beginning of the shift from French to English in semi-ofﬁcial letters. In Schendl (2002b: 70–71) it was hypothesized that there may be a similar link between the increasing vernacularisation of certain text types where Latin had previously dominated and the increasing use of code-switching, such as mixed-language sermons written in Britain (which are particularly frequent from between 1350 and 1450, see Wenzel 1994), and scientiﬁc, especially medical texts, where code-switching became particularly frequent between about 1375 and 1475 (Voigts 1996: 814): according to Pahta and Taavitsainen (2004: 12), a “ﬁrst phase of vernacularisation [in medical texts – eds.] seems to have been largely complete by 1475” (for Old English charters see Schendl 2004b [2005] and this volume). A similar correlation between language shift from French to German and increasing code-switching between the two languages has been found in local administrative documents from Fribourg from the ﬁfteenth century (Lüdi 1985: 165–168). The temporal overlap with monolingual texts typical of language shift in speciﬁc text types is not the only sign of ongoing shift, but needs to be supplemented by a consideration of the increased occurrence of code-switching. There is a large number of text types where code-switching is more or less regularly attested in medieval Britain, often with text-type-speciﬁc differences with regard to syntactic patterns and pragmatic functions. In the Old English period, code-switching is mainly restricted to non-royal charters and a few poems and is predominantly of the intersentential type (Schendl, this volume). Switching is, however, both qualitatively and quantitatively very different in the Middle English period. On the one hand, it occurs in a great number of texts from a wide range of both non-literary and literary text types, in particular in sermons (Wenzel 1994; Fletcher 1994, forthcoming), different subtypes of administrative texts such as accounts, inventories, wills (Wright 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2010, forthcoming a, b, c; Trotter 2000, 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2009, 2010, 2011, forthcoming a, b, c), scientiﬁc and medical texts (Voigts 1989a, 1989b; Pahta 2004), letters (Schendl 2002b), and religious texts (Pahta and Nurmi, this volume). As for literary texts, language mixing is particularly frequent in poems (Archibald 2010; Schendl 2001), and also occurs in drama (Diller

Code-switching in early English 23

1997/98) and longer verse pieces (e.g. Machan 1994). A discussion of the differences in syntactic patterns and pragmatic functions between text types is beyond this chapter, but is illustrated in various contributions to this volume, especially that by Pahta and Nurmi. But it is one of the theses of the present volume that different text types show different conventions of language mixing, and that there were different systems in operation at different dates, which is most obvious in the text type of business accounts and similar administrative and legal texts (Wright, forthcoming c).5

4. Historical code-switching research 4.1. Terminology The mixing of languages within one communicative event (or stretch of discourse/text), be it spoken or written, may have very different forms, which is one of the reasons for the sometimes confusing terminology used in the literature on multilingual modern speech (for recent discussions of terminology see Gardner-Chloros 2009: 10–13; Bullock and Toribio 2009b: 2–5). The most widely-used terms seem to be code-switching and code-mixing, both of which have been used quite differently.6 The present volume will use the term code-switching as a cover-term, alongside the more neutral terms language mixing and mixed-language texts, i.e., the term code-switching will subsume different types of language mixing, “from the insertion of single words to the alternation of languages for larger segments of discourse” (Bullock and Toribio 2009b: 2), or larger segments of texts, thus including what has also been called “intrasentential” and “intersentential” switching (for these terms see Romaine 1995: 122–124). However, the frequent occurrence of different monolingual texts collected in a single manuscript (see Voigts 1996) will not count as instances of code-switching, though such “intertextual” switching “often resembles the situational code-switching typical of diglossia”, and equally constitutes an important testimony for the widespread multilingualism

5. For the role of text types as “catalysts” of linguistic change more generally see Kohnen (2001). 6. For the different spellings of these terms, especially (un)hyphenated and two word spellings, see Gardner-Chloros (2009: Section 1.5.).

24 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

of the literate part of medieval society, reﬂecting “the status of the languages and their domains of use at a given time” (Schendl 2002b: 55). The mixing of different languages, and the mixing of different varieties of one language (dialects, registers, etc.), have much in common from a sociolinguistic, structural and communicative point of view, and the term code-switching has sometimes been applied to both types, though the term “monolingual code-switching” proposed by Romaine (1995: 170–172) has not supplanted the more common term “style shifting” for the latter phenomenon. Ad Putter’s contribution to this volume illustrates that the border between code-switching and style shifting in medieval texts may sometimes be fuzzy and clear borders are difﬁcult to draw. But otherwise the contributions in this volume will focus on the mixing of different languages and disregard the frequent mixing of different Middle English dialects in medieval manuscripts as well as the so-called “Mischsprachen”, which result from the unsystematic scribal “translation” of Middle English texts from one dialect into another in the process of copying, when part of the original dialect features are retained (see Benskin and Laing 1981). A different classiﬁcation of bilingual speech is proposed in Muysken (2000), who uses “language interaction” as a general cover term, while codemixing refers to the use of two languages within one sentence, which can appear as insertion, alternation or congruent lexicalisation (2000: 1–8). The term “code-switching” in Muysken’s terminology is used in a more restricted sense. A long-standing controversy in code-switching research has been the distinction between code-switching and borrowing. While earlier research tended to consider these as two different and discrete phenomena (see, e.g., Appel and Muysken 1987: 172), there is now a growing tendency to see them as situated on a continuum and thus as not being fundamentally different, at least for bilinguals, a view also shared by the editors of this volume (see Romaine 1995: Section 4.6.; Myers-Scotton 1992; Halmari 1997; and, more recently, Gardner-Chloros 2009: 30–33; Matras 2009: 110–114; Duran Eppler 2010: chapter 2). The controversial concept of “nonce borrowing” (see Poplack and Sankoff 1984; Gardner-Chloros 2009: 12) seems, apart from its unclear theoretical status, unsuited for the analysis of older written languages, especially in those cases where we ﬁnd clear evidence for the multilingualism of the author or scribe(s) of a text. The question of distinguishing between borrowing and code-switching in multilingual texts is addressed in contributions to this volume by Meecham-Jones and Trotter.

Code-switching in early English 25

4.2. Some methodological issues 4.2.1. The data Historical code-switching research evidently shares many of the general problems of any historical linguistic discipline, such as the questionable reliability of data, and insufﬁcient information on extralinguistic aspects such as the production, transmission, purpose and audience of texts. Furthermore, the interpretation of the data by the analysing linguist is inﬂuenced by his or her underlying theoretical assumptions, and the inaccessibility of the linguistic competence of the producers of historical texts. Due to the long disregard of mixed-language texts, such texts mostly remain unedited, except when they are of speciﬁc historical, literary or medievalist interest. Consequently, a large number of mixed-language texts are undigitised and thus not easily accessible. Even in the case of existing printed editions, the editors’ interest has been centred on the content of the texts rather than their linguistic form. This resulted in the – often silent – expansion of the regularly-used abbreviations and suspension marks in medieval texts, which, as Wright has repeatedly shown, can play an important role in neutralising the language of a speciﬁc lexical item, and are typical of mixed-language accounts. In spite of this problem, most empirical work on historical code-switching has so far relied on printed editions. Wright’s research, on the other hand, is exclusively based on the transcription and analysis of original manuscripts. Further problems are the almost complete lack of early mixed-language dialogues – exceptions being drama (Diller 1997/98) and the interactive letters (Schendl 2002a; Nurmi and Pahta 2004) – and the sometimes controversial function, purpose and extralinguistic context of some particularly interesting mixed-language texts such as the “macaronic” sermons. Wenzel (1994) claims that these may have been preached in bilingual form and thus would have been very close to speech, representing a text type which is classiﬁed as “written to be spoken” in the Helsinki Corpus. However this view has been vehemently opposed by Fletcher (forthcoming), who regards them as having been intended for reading (for a brief discussion of the spoken or written nature of attested early code-switching see Section 4.3.1.). Finally, there are often long gaps in the existence of mixed-language texts from speciﬁc text types, making the diachronic description of switching in a speciﬁc text type impossible.

26 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

4.2.2.

Corpora

Corpus-linguistic methods have increasingly become the norm for the analysis of monolingual English texts, both historical and modern, and an increasing number of historical electronic corpora have also been tagged for grammatical and (more recently) pragmatic features (see Taavitsainen and Fitzmaurice 2007). Unfortunately, there is still no speciﬁc corpus of early mixed-language texts. The few corpus-based studies on historical code-switching, particularly by Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi, have all been based on existing historical corpora such as the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (Pahta and Nurmi 2006, and this volume), the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (Nurmi and Pahta 2004) or the Corpus of Middle English Medical Texts (Pahta 2004). These are stratiﬁed according to a number of important parameters such as text types, period and some extralinguistic variables, but their concept has been to provide monolingual English corpora, wherein the capture of instances of code-switching are more or less a matter of chance. In spite of the surprisingly frequent occurrence of some types of code-switching in various functions, these corpora consciously exclude all mixed-language texts where English is not the dominant language or where a high incidence of switching occurs, such as, for example, Latin “macaronic” sermons, French letters with switches into English, any of the wide range of mixed-language administrative texts where Latin can be considered as the matrix language, or code-switching in drama and poems. This evidently enormously reduces the representativeness of these corpora for code-switching research and a priori excludes quite a number of syntactic patterns and pragmatic functions from the analysis (see also Pahta and Nurmi, this volume). Only a purpose-built corpus of mixedlanguage texts comprising a large variety of text types with different matrix languages will, in the end, yield representative results. Even for present-day code-switched speech, such corpora are still rare and of relatively small size (see Duran Eppler 2010 for a discussion of the LIPPS project, which aims at compiling a corpus along these lines). Such an enterprise faces, however, even larger problems for early code-switching, especially with regard to the tagging of languages and switch points in mixed-language accounts and similar text types. Here it is often impossible to decide with any certainty when an Anglo-Norman word had entered Middle English for a particular speaker in a speciﬁc context, at a speciﬁc date, partly also because the business mixed-language system of abbreviations and suspensions blended the three languages in a way which makes it impossible to disambiguate (see the

Code-switching in early English 27

contributions by Trotter and by Wright, this volume). As for the tagging of sociolinguistic and pragmatic information, such information is often incomplete or completely lacking.

4.3. Some theoretical issues 4.3.1. Early code-switching: Spoken or written phenomenon? As stated in Section 1, present-day code-switching has predominantly been seen as a feature of spoken language and, accordingly, research has focused on bilingual speech. On the other hand, all direct evidence for code-switching in earlier periods stems necessarily from written sources, which raises the question whether code-switching in these texts should be regarded as a phenomenon of the written medium only, or whether it is in one way or another also a reﬂection of multilingual speech. This is a controversial question and a number of aspects have to be taken into consideration before trying to ﬁnd an answer. One obvious point is that code-switching in multilingual societies is quite common, but is not a necessary result of multilingualism; another is the well-known higher degree of orality of medieval texts as compared to modern ones. Further, the question has to be considered according to text type. For example, with regard to dialogues in medieval drama, most of the code-switching is done by allegorical ﬁgures, whose use of Latin or French reﬂects the general status of these languages (Diller 1997/98). On the other hand, there are instances of code-switching in dialogues in poetic works such as Chaucer (see Putter, this volume), which may well be modelled on speech, though their number seems to be relatively small. The interactive letter text type follows quite strong text-type-speciﬁc conventions, as medieval guides for letter-writing illustrate. As for mixed-language sermons, whether they were ever preached in this way is itself controversial though, on a European scale, there is unambiguous evidence of such bilingual preaching (Kämmerer 2006) – but again, medieval preaching tended to follow quite strong conventions which – as in the case of scholastic sermons also represented by the “macaronic sermons” discussed above – were not necessarily those of natural speech. And inventories, business accounts, etc., are generally highly formulaic, though even these may contain traces of speech. Ingham (2009a, this volume) argues that the rule-governed nature of the switches in data as apparently unyielding as mixed-language tax-lists speaks for their being reﬂections of speech.

28 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

To sum up: we tend to consider early code-switching ﬁrst and foremost as a written phenomenon, that is, none of the medieval text types which shows switching can uncontroversially be seen as offering direct representations of speech. Nevertheless texts may preserve or even consciously use patterns of multilingual speech. Furthermore, early code-switching is not restricted to informal texts, but is found right through the spectrum of text types, from informal to formal. The widespread multilingualism in medieval Britain most likely also resulted in spoken code-switching. How far this can be recovered from early multilingual written texts awaits future research. However, both written and spoken code-switching reﬂect “the skilful manipulation of two language systems for various communicative functions” (Bullock and Toribio 2009b: 4).

4.3.2. Application of modern code-switching theories to older data Existing studies in historical code-switching have – explicitly or implicitly – mainly used modern code-switching theories as their theoretical framework, both for structural and for sociolinguistic studies (e.g. Schendl 2000, 2002b). This may be justiﬁed to some degree with structural studies such as the analysis of possible syntactic constraints on switching as exempliﬁed by Ingham, this volume, and Halmari and Regetz, this volume; both these studies apply the Government Principle/Constraint7 based on Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981), though in different versions, and have arrived at interesting conclusions. However, the applicability of modern syntactic theories to older bilingual data is still insufﬁciently tested. An interesting extension of this type of research would be the application of other grammatical models developed for present-day code-switching to early mixed-language texts. Models to be tested for their applicability to historical data might, for example, be Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Framework (Myers-Scotton and Jake 2009), Optimality Theory (e.g. Bhatt 1997) or Word Grammar (see Duran Eppler 2010), but additional work within the framework of generative grammar is also desirable (see MacSwan 2009 for modern code-switching research within this paradigm). Such research would also be relevant to modern code-switching research, since it would test the

7. For these terms see Introduction, note 4.

Code-switching in early English 29

validity of these theories, some of which more or less claim universal or at least language-independent validity. The usefulness of modern theoretical models is less obvious with regard to functional-pragmatic analyses of historical mixed-language data, both on the micro- and macro-level. Early code-switching data is in two respects removed from the data on which modern code-switching theories have been built: they are in a different medium, namely writing, and they are remote in time. Furthermore, the dimension of diachronic change has also to be taken into account. There has recently been increasing criticism of the application of modern code-switching theories exclusively based on spoken language to written data and the need for a theory of written code-switching has been repeatedly emphasized (see especially Sebba, Mahootian, and Jonsson, forthcoming). Among the aspects which differ between the written and the spoken medium is the possibility of visual representation such as use of colour, images, letter size, etc. in written code-switching (an aspect also relevant for historical code-switching) versus suprasegmentals, gestures and facial expression in bilingual speech (see Machan, this volume, for a discussion of mise-en-page, and also Wright, this volume, for the importance of medieval abbreviation and suspension marks in visually blending two or more languages). With regard to the historical and diachronic dimension, we also have to take the changing cultural, rhetorical and textual conventions of earlier societies into account, especially as the sociohistorical contexts of these texts are insufﬁciently known. It is our contention that historical code-switched data has something new to bring to the ﬁeld of multilingual studies, and that it can contribute a perspective necessarily lacking from studies of modern code-switched speech. This is description of change over time – not just the crude outline (such as the Anglo-Norman language replacing Old English in written documents from the thirteenth century, and then later itself being replaced by Early Modern English in the ﬁfteenth century), but a nuanced, decade-by-decade (and in some archives, year-by-year) account of new constructions entering the system and either sitting alongside or causing older constructions to become less used and, eventually, abandoned. Such dynamism in language usage over time is, of course, evidence of a productive, living system, as opposed to a “dead” or ﬁxed written language of record. This kind of long-term perspective can be taken because some archives, notably those of the perpetual institutions, have very long runs of documents, stretching over many generations of speakers and writers, whereas modern studies tend to be limited by the

30 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

life-span of the individual speaker, or in the case of studies by region, three generations at most. Data from such long-running archives also give a diachronic dimension to the study of structural constraints, which is indispensable for testing codeswitching theories with a more or less universal claim. Since code-switching is now generally seen as conforming “to the constraints of both language systems” (Bullock and Toribio 2009b: 15; see also Duran Eppler 2010), such analyses have to be based on the structural properties of all the languages involved in code-switching. This, however, poses problems since the grammars of Middle English, Medieval Latin and Medieval French are relatively ill-described with regard to their different varieties, and code-switched data poses theoretical problems for historical dictionaries of those languages (see Wright, this volume). Last but not least, intrasentential code-switching seems to be restricted to a relatively small number of historical text types, such as sermons, poems, letters, some kinds of legal texts and accounts, the latter with very speciﬁc switching patterns, though this claim remains to be conﬁrmed on the basis of electronic corpora.

4.4. Code-switching or new mixed code? The wide range of multilingual texts with often very different structural patterns and sociolinguistic functions has inevitably led to the question – also discussed in present-day code-switching research – whether all such texts should be described as instances of code-switching. Following the deﬁnition adopted in Section 4.1., code-switching presupposes the existence of two or more different, but discrete (and distinguishable) languages. In many medieval mixed-language texts (including a number discussed in this volume), this seems to be uncontroversial, such as the Old English mixed-language leases (Schendl, this volume), while in other cases it is less evident (see Trotter, this volume; Wright, this volume). In these latter cases it might be justiﬁable to ask whether such medieval texts represent a new type of code. The discussion is partly linked to the deﬁnition of the term “code”, which originally comes from communication technology, where it had a very speciﬁc meaning, but is now widely used in certain ﬁelds of linguistics “as a neutral umbrella term for languages, dialects, styles/registers, etc. and partly usurps the place of the more usual ‘catch-all’ term variety to cover the different sub-division of ‘language’ ” (Gardner-Chloros 2009: 11). In his edition and analysis of a corpus of late-medieval macaronic sermons, which show a high incidence

Code-switching in early English 31

of – apparently random – intrasentential switches from Latin into English, Wenzel (1994) raised the question of whether such sermons represented “an attempt to create a mixed language made for special bilingual audiences [. . .] suited for delivery from the pulpit” (1994: 127), comparing it to the “aureate diction [. . .] used by some contemporary poets”. He rejected this interpretation, as he found no linguistic features or patterns to support such a hypothesis and the two languages, Latin and English, appear as discrete and distinguishable entities. The analysis of sermons from the same manuscript by Halmari and Regetz (this volume) conﬁrms that such sermons can be satisfactorily analysed as intrasentential code-switching. The question is, however, more relevant for the large number of medieval civic, administrative and commercial texts. Due to the extensive trading of foreign commodities in London during the medieval period such texts typically include vocabulary from further aﬁeld; notably the Scandinavian languages and Middle Dutch/Middle Low German, and European languages such as Italian and Spanish, but also Arabic and other languages from distant parts. Much of such word-stock was mediated through Anglo-Norman. To give an example, the type of richly embroidered cloth known as baudekin, ultimately from an Arabic form Baghdadi ‘(cloth) of Baghdad’, passed into Italian baldacco, was then adopted into Anglo-Norman where forms with and without /l/-vocalisation are found such as baldekin, baudequin (see the Anglo-Norman Dictionary under baldekin), and then passed from AngloNorman into Middle English. As commodities emanating from a particular place were exported and traded in numerous other trading centres, this gave rise to simultaneous borrowings for the name of that item in various languages, begging the question as to whether such forms are best regarded as borrowings, or whether they brought something of their original language (or code) with them, for example in pronunciation, or in cultural connotations – and if so, for how long; or whether it is better to regard them not as part of the word-stock of individual languages at all, but as “international” words. David Trotter’s research on the Middle English lexicon in such mixed-language texts (of his many publications in this ﬁeld we highlight here his seminal paper, 2003b) has been questioning the division of this kind of medieval vocabulary into the categories “Anglo-Norman”, “Medieval Latin”, “Gascon”, “Provençal”, etc. He has demonstrated how roots crossed and re-crossed language and dialect boundaries, as medieval speakers physically moved and accommodated to new speech-environments, and switched language system according to the task in hand. As mentioned brieﬂy in Section 3.1.1., Trotter (2010) questions the ternarity of ﬁfteenth-century Anglo-Norman/Medieval

32 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Latin/Middle English, and suggests it had become a binary system, contrasting Medieval Latin on the one hand with what he labels “vernacular”, that is, Middle English and Anglo-Norman on the other. This is a radical and provocative way of viewing writing in medieval Britain and results from accepting mixed-language texts as an integral system, rather than regarding them as faulty monolingual Latin or French. Ingham (2009a), reﬁning this postulation, suggests that such a binary model works better for the ﬁfteenth century than it does for preceding ones. Wright also argues that the particular kind of language mixing found in medieval business accounts transcended language boundaries and effectively created a new system. In this text type there are frequent switches between the vernacular and the Latin form of a word, providing a kind of international gloss, which falsiﬁes the claim that a scribe inserted an English word when he did not know the Latin equivalent. Her descriptive work analyses the rules that underpin the conventions of these medieval mixed business text type, and charts variation and change diachronically. Wright observes that this text type was relatively stable from the beginning of the Anglo-Norman administration until the late fourteenth century, with a very gradual increase in the Middle English component as time went on (limited to nouns, compound nouns and roots of verbs over this period), but in the late fourteenth century–ing forms began to surface in English, and there was also an increase in adjectival constituents of the Noun Phrase. In the early ﬁfteenth century this system greatly changed, moving from syntheticity towards greater analyticity and use of small particles (such as le and la), and it is over this century that the system became ﬁnally abandoned and replaced by proto-Standard English. The social dimension has yet to be fully worked out, but it looks as though the poorer, lower-status bodies abandoned it ﬁrst, and the richer, more powerful (and more conservative) institutions hung on to it longest. Over its active lifetime – 1066 to the late ﬁfteenth century – the mixed-language system acted as a standard, at a time when Middle English was regionally extremely variable, to the extent that intelligibility was compromised. In the conclusion of his contribution to this volume, Trotter explicitly doubts the “existence of separate languages and a consciousness of their boundaries” for this kind of word-stock, thereby rejecting the appropriateness of the term code-switching for such instances. However, in a recent paper Schendl (forthcoming b) argues that even such texts should be subsumed under a wide deﬁnition of code-switching as used in this chapter and favours a continuum of different types of switching, some of which may be clearly linked to speciﬁc text types, into which borrowing could be integrated as well. Nevertheless,

Code-switching in early English 33

despite our emphasis here on language mixing (switching, borrowing), it should be borne in mind that scribes could and did write in monolingual Anglo-Norman and monolingual Medieval Latin when they had occasion to do so and thus certainly had a notion of these as separate languages.

5. Results so far and outlook What might be considered the current starting-point for future research? We sum up our understanding of the present position as follows: – During the medieval period, written code-switching (at ﬁrst between Medieval Latin and Old English, and then after 1066 between those languages and Anglo-Norman) was both a normal phenomenon within the British Isles, and Europe-wide (see Stolt 1964; Lüdi 1985; Lazzerini 1971; Kämmerer 2006; Bergmann 2003; Braunmüller and Ferraresi 2003; Nesse 2003, 2008; for a brief survey with examples see Schendl 2004a). Codeswitching is found, in different ways and different styles, in a huge variety of text types. These included the many kinds of texts to do with the law, civic bureaucracy, administration, court procedure and judgements, ordinances and proclamations from royal and civic bodies, wills and testimonies; scientiﬁc texts, including medical translations and quasi-translations, technical works to do with the physical world, anatomy, astronomy and botany; religious writing of various kinds, including in particular the sermons known as “macaronic” ; literature, including drama, verse, and song; business writing of all types but especially accounts, inventories, journals and day-books, and those text types which were concerned with education, often including glossing and other types of multilingual commentary. After 1066, we suggest that the challenge is actually the reverse of multilingualism: to ﬁnd a medieval text type which consistently maintained monolingual purity. – From about 1250 to the late fourteenth century, insular Anglo-Norman became notably distinct from that of France, and was a working language within the British Isles (by which we mean it was acquired in youth and used daily by those who wrote and spoke it). Because it was in daily use it changed over time, and shows the kind of variation expected of living languages. In terms of derivational morphology, Anglo-Norman hybridised with both Medieval Latin and Middle English to produce new word-forms. In terms of new meanings, its word-stock developed by means of semantic

34 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

extension and borrowing from and into Middle English – the kind of creation common to spoken languages. In terms of syntax, insular AngloNorman seems to have largely kept pace with developments in continental French up until the late fourteenth century, when it began to diverge considerably, suggesting that this was really its point of abandonment in Britain as a primary working language. – From the beginning of the Anglo-Norman administration until the late ﬁfteenth century, a rule-governed mixed-language system was used for the text type of accounts and inventories. This text type was used in many walks of life, and as time went on, more and more English was incorporated, ﬁrstly in the noun and verb-root slot, and later into that of Noun Phrase modiﬁer position too. At the point of the demise or tip into language death of this system, English is found in closed-class function words, but not before (this “tip” period lasted for about a hundred years, from the late fourteenth to the late ﬁfteenth centuries, happening at different times and in different ways in the writings of different institutions and individuals – abruptly in some, gradually over a long period in others). Both the Romance and the English form of a word tended to be used in close proximity, so that the running text incorporated glosses as it went. Language-speciﬁc morphology was visually backgrounded by heavy use of the medieval abbreviation and suspension system. The medieval business mixed-language text type seems to have been Europe-wide, mixing Latin with local vernaculars, and so would have facilitated international trading. These ﬁndings have yet to be reﬁned, are most certainly open to criticism, and might even be rejected outright as corpus evidence changes the picture. Desiderata for the future include: – The amassing of searchable electronic corpora of historical code-switched writing of various text types. – Fuller descriptions of monolingual Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin in their regional manifestations. – A European-wide approach – although this book focuses on early English, the phenomenon of code-switching did not respect territorial boundaries. – A sensitivity to diachronic change, including layering, grammaticalisation, semantic change over place and time, and the comings and goings of constructions, as the code-switching practices in a particular text type of, say, the twelfth century were not necessarily those of the ﬁfteenth century.

Code-switching in early English 35

– Exploitation of what must surely be a most precious resource, data-runs of a single text type over several hundred years, showing how systems shifted (or did not shift) from generation to generation, and marrying up of such shifts to relevant historical facts in an attempt to uncover cause and effect. – Full inclusion of all medieval material extant, including writing dismissed by some as too formulaic, faulty, hard to classify, or otherwise unattractive (typically, the kind of tax-lists so rewardingly studied by Ingham, this volume); the kind of translations that seem to be neither one language nor the other as analysed by Meecham-Jones (this volume); the accounts studied by Wright (sometimes dismissed as “mere” inventory-style); the “international” vocabulary identiﬁed by Trotter, material usually considered to be so mainly monolingual that the code-switched part has been under-studied, as in Schendl (this volume), or details usually regarded as marginalia both literally and ﬁguratively, as studied by Machan (this volume). We contend that when such writing takes centre stage, code-switching emerges as a medieval norm. – In-depth analysis of this highly relevant mixed-language data both from the structural and the sociolinguistic point of view, using or adapting modern linguistic theories which were developed and used for the analysis of present-day code-switching. The same applies to sociolinguistic and pragmatic approaches. – Finally, historical mixed-language data may also provide new arguments in the linguistic and psycholinguistic discussion on the nature of the storage of grammatical systems and subsystems in the multilingual brain. We hope that the emphasis in this book on code-switching as a medieval written activity will stimulate a change in consciousness on the part of historians of the English language towards acceptance and analysis, rather than dismissal, and also provide stimuli for modern code-switching research and sociohistorical linguistics.

References Appel, René and Pieter Muysken 1987 Language Contact and Bilingualism. London: Edward Arnold. Archibald, Elizabeth 2010 Macaronic poetry. In: Corinne Saunders (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Poetry, 277–288. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

36 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Benskin, Michael and Margaret Laing 1981 Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English manuscripts. In: Michael Benskin and Michael L. Samuels (eds.), So Meny People Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, 55–106. Edinburgh: The Editors. Bergmann, Rolf (ed.) 2003 Volkssprachig-lateinische Mischtexte und Textensembles in der althochdeutschen, altsächsischen und altenglischen Überlieferung. Heidelberg: Winter. Bhatt, Rakesh M. 1997 Code-switching, constraints, and optimal grammars. Lingua 102: 223–252. Braunmüller, Kurt and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.) 2003 Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Bullock, Barbara E. and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.) 2009a The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bullock, Barbara E. and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio 2009b Themes in the study of code-switching. In: Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), 1–17. Callahan, Laura 2004 Spanish/English Codeswitching in a Written Corpus. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins. Catto, Jeremy 2003 Written English: The making of the language 1370–1400. Past & Present 179: 24–59. Chambers, Raymond W. 1932 The continuity of English prose from Alfred to More and his school. In: Elsie V. Hitchcock (ed.), The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore, Knight, sometymes Lord High Chancellor of England, xlv–clxxiv. (Early English Text Society, O.S. 186) London: Early English Text Society. Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Clark, Cecily 1978 Women’s names in post-conquest England: Observations and speculations. Speculum 53: 223–251. Cobb, Henry S. (ed.) 1961 The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439–1440. Southampton: Southampton University Press.

Code-switching in early English 37

Cobb, Henry S. (ed.) 1990 The Overseas Trade of London Exchequer Customs Accounts 1480–1481. (London Record Society, 27) London: London Record Society. Curtius, Ernst Robert [1953] 1990 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Transl. by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press. Dawson, Hope C. 2003 Deﬁning the outcome of language contact: Old English and Old Norse. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 57, Summer: 40–57. Diller, Hans-Jürgen 1997/98 Code-switching in medieval English drama. Comparative Drama 31: 506–537. Duran Eppler, Eva 2010 Emigranto: The Syntax of German-English Code-switching. Vienna: Braumüller. Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola and Heli Paulasto 2008 English and Celtic in Contact. London/New York: Routledge. Fisher, John H. 1977 Chancery and the emergence of standard written English in the ﬁfteenth century. Speculum 52: 870–899. Fitzmaurice, Susan and Irma Taavitsainen 2007 Introduction. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Susan Fitzmaurice (eds.), Methods in Historical Pragmatics, 1–10. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fletcher, Alan J. 1994 “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini”: A thirteenth-century sermon for Advent and the macaronic style in England. Mediaeval Studies 56: 217–245. Fletcher, Alan J. forthcoming Written versus spoken macaronic discourse in late medieval England: The view from a pulpit. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.). Gardner-Chloros, Penelope 2009 Code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gras, Norman Scott Brien (ed.) 1918 The Early English Customs System. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press. Gregory, Stewart and David A. Trotter (eds.) 1997 De mot en mot: Aspects of Medieval Linguistics. Essays in Honour of William Rothwell. Cardiff: Modern Humanities Research Association/University of Wales Press.

38 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Gullberg, Marianne, Peter Indefrey and Pieter Muysken 2009 Research techniques for the study of code-switching. In: Barbara E. Bullok and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), 21–39. Halmari, Helena 1997 Government and Codeswitching: Explaining American Finnish. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Howlett, David 1996 The English Origins of Old French Literature. Dublin: Four Courts. Ingham, Richard 2006a Syntactic change in Anglo-Norman and continental French chronicles: Was there a ‘Middle’ Anglo-Norman? Journal of French Language Studies 16(1): 26–49. Ingham, Richard 2006b The status of French in medieval England: Evidence from the use of object pronoun syntax. Vox Romanica 65: 1–22. Ingham, Richard 2009a Mixing languages on the manor. Medium Ævum 78: 80–97. Ingham, Richard 2009b The persistence of Anglo-Norman 1230–1362: A linguistic perspective. In: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.), 44–54. Ingham, Richard (ed.) 2010 The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts. Woodbridge: Boydell. Ingham, Richard forthcoming Language-mixing in medieval Latin documents: Vernacular articles and nouns. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.). a Ingham, Richard forthcoming The decline of bilingual competence in French in medieval England: Evidence from the PROME database. In: S. Lehmann (ed.), b Proceedings of HISON 2009. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Jefferson, Judith and Ad Putter (eds.) forthcoming Multilingualism in Medieval Britain: Sources and Analysis. Turnhout: Brepols. Kämmerer, Carmen M. 2006 Codeswitching in Predigten des 15. Jahrhunderts: MittellateinFrühneuhochdeutsch, Mittellatein-Altitalienisch/Altspanisch. Berlin: Logos Verlag. Kohnen, Thomas 2001 Text types as catalysts for language change: The example of the Adverbial First Participle Construction. In: Hans-Jürgen Diller and

Code-switching in early English 39

Manfred Görlach (eds.), Towards a History of English as a History of Genres, 111–124. Heidelberg: Winter. Lazzerini, Lucia 1971 ‘Per latinos grossos’: Studio sui sermoni mescidati. Studi di Filologia Italiana 2: 219–339. Lüdi, Georges 1985 Mehrsprachige Rede in Freiburger Ratsmanualen des 15. Jahrhunderts. Vox Romanica 44: 163–188. Machan, Tim William 1994 Language contact in Piers Plowman. Speculum 69: 359–385. MacSwan, Jeff 2009 Generative approaches to code-switching. In: Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), 309–335. Maitland, Frederic William (ed.) 1903 Year Books of Edward II, A.D. 1307–9 (Publications of the Selden Society, 17) London: B. Quaritch. Matras, Yaron 2009 Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moran, James 1976 Wynkyn de Worde, Father of Fleet Street. London: Wynkyn de Worde Society. Muysken, Pieter 2000 Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1992 Comparing code-switching and borrowing. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 13: 19–39. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993 Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol and Janice Jake 2009 A universal model of code-switching and bilingual language processing and production. In: Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), 336–357. Nesse, Agnete 2003 Written and spoken languages in Bergen in the Hansa era. In: Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.), 61–84. Nesse, Agnete 2008 Bilingual texts from a bilingual city. In: Geir Atle Ersland and Marco Trebbi (eds.), Neue Studien zum Archiv und zur Sprache

40 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

der Hanseaten, 47–64. Bergen: Museum Vest, Det Hanseatiske Museum. Nurmi, Arja and Päivi Pahta 2004 Social stratiﬁcation and patterns of code-switching in early English letters. Multilingua 23: 417–456. Pahta, Päivi 2004 Code-switching in medieval medical writing. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), 73–99. Pahta, Päivi and Arja Nurmi 2006 Code-switching in the Helsinki Corpus: A thousand years of multilingual practices. In: Nikolaus Ritt, Herbert Schendl, Christiane Dalton-Puffer and Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), Medieval English and its Heritage: Structure, Meaning and Mechanisms of Change, 203–220. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Pahta, Päivi and Irma Taavitsainen 2004 Vernacularisation of scientiﬁc and medical writing in its sociohistorical context. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), 1–22. Poplack, Shana and David Sankoff 1984 Borrowing: The synchrony of integration. Linguistics 22: 99–135. Romaine, Suzanne 1995 Bilingualism (2nd ed.) Oxford/Cambridge, M.A.: Blackwell. Rothwell, William 1991 The missing link in English etymology: Anglo French. Medium Ævum 60: 173–196. Rothwell, William 1992 The French vocabulary in the archive of the London Grocers’ Company. Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 102: 23–41. Rothwell, William 1994 The trilingual England of Geoffrey Chaucer. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16: 45–67. Rothwell, William 1996 The Anglo-French element in the vulgar register of Late Middle English. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 97: 423–436. Rothwell, William (in co-operation with Lisa Jefferson) 1997 Society and lexis: A study of the Anglo-French vocabulary in the ﬁfteenth-century accounts of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 107: 273–301. Rothwell, William 1998a Arrivals and departures: The adoption of French terminology into Middle English. English Studies 79: 144–165.

Code-switching in early English 41

Rothwell, William 1998b Anglo-Norman at the (green)grocer’s. French Studies 52: 1–16. Rothwell, William 2000 Aspects of lexical and morphosyntactical mixing in the languages of medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 213–232. Rothwell, William 2001 English and French in England after 1362. English Studies 82: 539–559. Rothwell, William 2004a Henry of Lancaster and Geoffrey Chaucer: Anglo-French and Middle English in fourteenth-century England. Modern Language Review 99: 313–327. Rothwell, William 2004b A mere quibble? Multilingualism and English etymology. English Studies 85: 177–188. Rothwell, William 2007 Synonymity and semantic variability in Medieval French and Middle English. Modern Language Review 102: 363–380. Rothwell, William 2009 Soil and toil: English and French in the English countryside during the later Middle Ages. English Studies 89: 1–24. Rothwell, William 2010 ‘Strange’, ‘foreign’, and ‘alien’: The semantic history of three quasi-synonyms in a trilingual medieval England. Modern Language Review 105: 1–19. Rothwell, William forthcoming Language and society in post-conquest England: Farming and ﬁshing. Modern Language Review. Schendl, Herbert 2000 Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2001 Code-switching in medieval English poetry. In: Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger (eds.), Language Contact in the History of English, 305–335. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Schendl, Herbert 2002a Code-choice and code-switching in some early ﬁfteenth-century letters. In: Peter J. Lucas and Angela M. Lucas (eds.), Middle English from Tongue to Text, 247–262. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

42 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Schendl, Herbert 2002b Mixed-language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 51–78. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2004a English historical code-switching in a European perspective. In: Christine B. Dabelsteen and J. Normann Jørgensen (eds.), Languaging and Language Practices, 188–202. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen. Schendl, Herbert 2004b Hec sunt prata to wassingwellan: Aspects of code-switching in Old English charters. Vienna English Working Papers 13(2): 52–68. (also published on-line in Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics 5 [2005]) Schendl, Herbert forthcoming Code-switching in late medieval macaronic sermons. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.). a Schendl, Herbert forthcoming Multilingualism and code-switching as mechanisms of contactinduced lexical change in late Middle English. In: Daniel Schreier b and Marianne Hundt (eds.). Schreier, Daniel and Marianne Hundt (eds.) forthcoming English as a Contact Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sebba, Mark, Shahrzad Mahootian and Carla Jonsson (eds.) forthcoming Language Mixing and Code-switching in Writing: Approaches to Mixed-language Written Discourse. London: Routledge. Stolt, Birgit 1964 Die Sprachmischung in Luthers Tischreden: Studien zum Problem der Zweisprachigkeit. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta (eds.) Medical and Scientiﬁc Writing in Late Medieval English. Cam2004 bridge: Cambridge University Press. Trotter, David A. (ed.) 2000 Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Trotter, David 2003 Oceano vox: You never know where a ship comes from. On multilingualism and language-mixing in medieval Britain. In: Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.), 15–33. Trotter, David 2006a Language contact, multilingualism, and the evidence problem. In: Ursula Schaefer (ed.), The Beginnings of Standardization:

Code-switching in early English 43

Language and Culture in Fourteenth-century England, 73–90. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Trotter, David 2006b

Trotter, David 2009

Trotter, David 2010 Trotter, David 2011

Si le français n’y peut aller: Villers-Cotterêts and mixed-language documents from the Pyrenees. In: David J. Cowling (ed.), Conceptions of Europe in Renaissance France: A Festschrift for Keith Cameron, 77–97. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ‘Stuffed Latin’: Vernacular evidence in Latin documents. In: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.), 153–163. Bridging the gap: The (socio)linguistic evidence of some medieval English bridge accounts. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 52–63. (Socio)linguistic realities of cross-channel communications in the thirteenth century. In: Janet Burton, Frédérique Lachaud and Phillip Schoﬁeld (eds.), Thirteenth Century England XIII: Proceedings of the Paris Conference 2009, 117–131. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer.

Trotter, David forthcoming Intra-textual multilingualism and diaphasic/diastratic variation in Anglo-Norman. In: Elizabeth Tyler (ed.), Conceptualizing Multia lingualism in England, 800–1250. Amsterdam: Brepols. Trotter, David forthcoming Italian merchants in London and Paris: Evidence of language contact in the Gallerani accounts, 1305–08. In: Dominique Lagorgette b and Tim Pooley (eds.), Studies in Honour of Professor R. Anthony (Tony) Lodge. Chambéry: Presses Universitaires de Savoie. Trotter, David forthcoming Il sount aliens: Marchands étrangers et contact linguistique en Anc gleterre au Moyen Âge. In: Wolfgang Schweickard, Anja Overbeck and Harald Völker (eds.), Festschrift für Günter Holtus. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Voigts, Linda E. 1989a The character of the carecter: Ambiguous sigils in scientiﬁc and medical texts. In: Alastair J. Minnis (ed.), Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-medieval Texts and Manuscripts, 91–109. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Voigts, Linda E. 1989b Scientiﬁc and medical books. In: Jeremy Grifﬁths and Derek Pearsall (eds.), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, 345–402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

44 Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright

Voigts, Linda E. 1996 What’s the word? Bilingualism in late-medieval England. Speculum 71: 813–826. Wenzel, Siegfried 1994 Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.), Language and Culture in Medi2009 eval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500. York: York Medieval Press and Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. Wright, Laura 1992 Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380–1480. In: Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 762–770. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1995a A hypothesis on the structure of macaronic business writing. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Medieval Dialectology, 309–321. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1995b Middle English -ende and -ing: A possible route to grammaticalization. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Linguistic Change under Contact Conditions, 365–382. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1996 Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wright, Laura 1998 Mixed-language business writing: Five hundred years of codeswitching. In: Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language Change: Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 99–118. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 2000 Bills, accounts, inventories: Everyday trilingual activities in the business world of later medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 149–156. Wright, Laura 2001 The role of international and national trade in the standardisation of English. In: Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño, Begoña Crespo Garcia, Emma Lezcano Gonzalez and Begoña Simal Gonzalez (eds.), Re-interpretations of English: Essays on Language, Linguistics and Philology (I), 189–207. A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña.

Code-switching in early English 45

Wright, Laura 2002a Wright, Laura 2002b

Wright, Laura 2010

Wright, Laura forthcoming a Wright, Laura forthcoming b Wright, Laura forthcoming c

Code-intermediate phenomena in medieval mixed-language business texts. Language Sciences 24: 471–489. Standard English and the lexicon: Why so many different spellings? In: Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch (eds.), Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-linguistic Factors, 181–200. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. A pilot study on the singular deﬁnite articles le and la in ﬁfteenthcentury London mixed-language business writing. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 130–142. Mixed-language accounts as sources for linguistic analysis. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.). The contact origins of Standard English. In: Daniel Schreier and Marianne Hundt (eds.). On synchronic variation and diachronic change in British medieval mixed-language business documents. In: Merja Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen and Inge Særheim (eds.), Language Contact and Development around the North Sea. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Beyond boundaries: Code-switching in the leases of Oswald of Worcester Herbert Schendl

1. Introduction Research on code-switching in medieval Britain has centred on the Middle English period, whose complex multilingualism has produced a vast number of multilingual texts. On the other hand, little research has been done for the Old English period, partly due to the view that the mixing of languages is hardly found in Old English. This view is reﬂected in the claim that “when Anglo-Saxons wrote English they wrote English, and when they wrote Latin they wrote Latin. They did not contaminate their Latin with English.” (Howlett 1997: 89). Apart from the fact that language mixing does not “contaminate” either of the languages, this claim does not stand closer investigation (Schendl 2004). It is true that the number of mixed-language texts from the Old English period is much smaller than from the Middle English one. There was even a tendency to use different scripts for Old English and Latin, which points to a conscious use of the two languages.1 But this does not affect the linguistic importance of Old English mixed-language texts as the earliest evidence for written codeswitching from the history of English. However, contrary to the Middle English period, this bilingual discourse strategy is mainly restricted to one speciﬁc type of Old English legal/administrative texts, the so-called charters.2 This paper

1. This visual aspect has not been analysed here, but see Machan, this volume, on the visual pragmatics of code-switching in Middle English manuscripts. 2. For a preliminary survey on code-switching in Old English charters see Schendl (2004). There are, however, some other instances of mixed-language texts from the Old English period, most notably two macaronic poems (for The Phoenix see Milfull 2003: 481–485). Interlinear glosses and manuscript collections with different monolingual texts in Latin and Old English lie outside the topic of my paper, since they do not represent code-switching (see Milfull 2003).

48 Herbert Schendl

will look at code-choice and code-switching in a well-deﬁned corpus of charters, namely the leases issued by Oswald of Worcester in the second half of the tenth century. The interest of this corpus does not only lie in the frequent occurrence of code-switching, but also in the fact that the extralinguistic context of these leases is fairly well established. Whether this extralinguistic information will help in the analysis of code-choice and switching will also be investigated in the present study.

2. Extralinguistic background 2.1.

Oswald of Worcester

The main source for the life of Oswald, bishop of Worcester (961–992) and archbishop of York (971–992), is the hagiographic Vita S. Oswaldi, written by one of his pupils around the end of the ﬁrst millennium. Important information on Oswald’s running of ofﬁce has also been derived from the numerous documents from the archives of Worcester and the closely linked monastery of Ramsey, including the leases of the present corpus. Coming from an aristocratic Anglo-Scandinavian background, Oswald advanced quickly in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. After some years at Fleury, one of the leading Benedictine centres of the time, he returned to England in 958 and was appointed bishop to the see of Worcester in 961 (Bullough 1996: 7–8). This was the beginning of a career as one of the most inﬂuential churchmen of his time, who, together with Æthelwold of Winchester and Dunstan of Canterbury, is regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Benedictine Reform (Gneuss [1996] 1972: 70–71; Lapidge 1999: 348).3 The Benedictine Reform had far-reaching religious and political consequences for Anglo-Saxon England, but it was also of considerable importance for the development of the Old English literary standard language in Winchester and its subsequent spread throughout England (Gneuss [1996] 1972). Oswald was inﬂuential in the founding and re-founding of a number of reformed monasteries, but there has been some doubt about his effectiveness in reforming the cathedral clergy of Worcester and he seems to have been more cautious in

3. All three were venerated as saints at a time when no formal canonization procedure was necessary. For an up-to-date discussion of Oswald’s life and inﬂuence see the contributions in Brooks and Cubitt (1996) and Lapidge (1999).

Beyond boundaries 49

his reforms than Æthelwold of Winchester (Bullough 1996: 13–15; Sawyer 1975: 88–93; Lapidge 1999: 348). Oswald had a very good education, which would have included a good training in Latin (Lapidge 1999: 348) but his status as a scholar is doubtful (Bullough 1996: 20) and, different from Æthelwold of Winchester, nothing is known of his having had a special interest in language (see Gneuss 1972: 73). One of the best documented activities in his career is his extensive leasing of land in Worcestershire and beyond, usually for the term of three lives (see Section 2.3.). This was evidently part of a conscious policy of networking intended to strengthen Worcester’s political and spiritual position (Bullough 1996; King 1996; Wareham 1996). Apart from his spiritual ambitions, Oswald exerted an important inﬂuence on the economic development of Worcester (Brooks and Cubitt 1996; Lapidge 1999: 348), having “a keen awareness of the political realities of the day” (Bullough 1996: 22). Other important occurrences in Oswald’s career such as his travels to Rome and Germany and his role as archbishop of York are not relevant to our topic, but show that his activities extended beyond Worcester and even beyond England. 2.2. The Anglo-Saxon charter Charters are rather short legal documents typically recording a grant or lease of land or of certain privileges to individuals or religious institutions. Of the various existing sub-classiﬁcations of charters, the rather wide one proposed by Whitelock (1979: 376) will be adopted here. Whitelock uses the term charter as a superordinate term, with a further subdivision into royal charters and private (non-royal) charters; the royal charter in turn is subdivided into the diploma (or charter in a narrow sense) and the writ.4 Non-royal charters, which also include leases, often follow the structure of royal ones rather closely. Most royal charters have a distinctive structure, with an invocation, followed by the proem (i.e., preamble), a dispositive section (with immunity clause, statement of powers, etc.), the sanction, the boundary clause, the dating clause, and the witness list (for a complete list see Keynes 1999: 99, though not all of these elements always occur). The writ, on the other hand, 4. Keynes (1999: 99–100), on the other hand, uses the term charter only for documents issued by the king, i.e. for the royal charter or diploma, while others deﬁne the term even wider to include a range of legal documents including wills.

50 Herbert Schendl

is a less structured “letter on administrative business to which a seal was appended” (Harmer 1952: 1), showing the names of sender and addressee of the letter in its opening clause (see also Whitelock 1979: 380; Keynes 1999: 100). A large number of writs and charters have survived from the Anglo-Saxon period, dating from the last quarter of the seventh century up to the Norman Conquest, with a concentration around the middle of the tenth century.5 Only a small part of these are originals, most are later copies generally preserved in medieval cartularies, i.e. later compilations of documents. Furthermore, there is quite a number of certain or possible later forgeries (Kelly 1990: 39–40). While the linguistic value of forgeries may be doubtful, the later copies generally show a high degree of linguistic reliability, as a comparison of surviving single-sheet originals with later copies shows (Kitson 1995: 49). As for the language of charters, the royal diploma is a formal document generally written in Latin (though some language mixing with the vernacular is attested in earlier documents, see Kelly 1990: 56; Schendl 2004); the writ, however, is exclusively written in the Old English vernacular, which is typically also used for other legal texts such as wills and leases (Kelly 1990: 56).6 This coexistence of Latin and the vernacular in different types of legal and administrative texts cannot be explained by insufﬁcient command of Latin only, but is also due to the fact that “[t]he use of English had several functional advantages”, such as “its accessibility to a wider public” (Kelly 1990: 56). By the tenth century, “English had a respected place as an alternative literary and documentary language” (Kelly 1990: 51) and the extant manuscripts extensively testify this written bilingualism of the literate part of Anglo-Saxon society.7 However, bilingualism is not always a matter of either/or, of using one language or the other, but can equally be a matter of both/and, as impressively

5. There are diverging numbers given in the literature, which is partly due to different deﬁnitions of the term: Clanchy (1993: 1) speaks of about 2,000 writs and charters, Kelly (1990: 39) of “some 1,500”, and Keynes (1999: 99) of over 1,000 (royal) charters. 6. Keynes (1999: 100) claims that the typical royal charter “was addressed in Latin to posterity, deﬁning the estate and establishing its privileged status, whereas the writ was addressed in vernacular to contemporaries”; however, this does not take into account the leases of Oswald, which were issued with explicit consent of the king and established the lease for “three lives”. 7. The Latin term literatus only referred to someone who was literate in Latin, while someone only literate in Old English would have been illiteratus.

Beyond boundaries 51

demonstrated by the wide-spread use of code-switching in bilingual communities throughout history. The leases issued by Oswald provide convincing evidence that this strategy was also consciously used by clerical scribes of the late tenth century. 2.3. The data: Oswald’s leases The corpus of the present study are 76 leases issued by Oswald at Worcester between 962 and 991 granting land to a range of individuals, including members of the Worcester clergy, of Oswald’s own extended family and a variety of, often inﬂuential, laypersons. The large majority of these leases have survived as early copies in the so-called Liber Wigorniensis, a cartulary produced not later than 1016, i.e., within 25 years of Oswald’s death. It forms the ﬁrst part of manuscript BL Cotton Tiberius A. xiii (cf. Ker 1948: 71; King 1996: 100, n. 2), a section of the manuscript which has been described as being of “high quality” (Ker 1948: 72).8 We will therefore take the Liber Wigorniensis as a reliable source for the study of code-switching in Oswald’s leases and assume that the copying process has not changed the original switching patterns to any large degree. In view of the early date of the cartulary, we can furthermore assume that the linguistic competence of its copyist(s) was more or less contemporary to that of the original scribes, who were also members of the community of Worcester.9 A few charters have also survived in an abbreviated form in two other short manuscripts, Cotton Nero E.i, pt. 2, ff. 181–184, and MS Add. 46204: According to Ker (1948: 66–67), Nero E.i, is a “very poor copy” of Tiberius A.xiii and its texts “are worthless” so that they will only be occasionally referred to.

8. This conclusion is partly based on the comparison of a surviving single-leaf original charter with its copy in the cartulary in question. For a detailed description of BL Cotton Tiberius A. xiii see Ker (1948). Oswald’s leases are listed in Sawyer (1968) as numbers S 1297 to S 1375. Of these, the following are not leases in the strict sense and have therefore not been included in the corpus: S 1368, a Latin letter to King Edgar; S 1371, a declaration of a granted lease; S 1375, an abbreviated version of S 1344 in a different manuscript. 9. Certain or possible later additions to the leases, such as a clause naming the second “life”, i.e. beneﬁciary of the lease, have not been included in our analysis; these are always in the vernacular; equally, the vernacular place names and locations given or repeated in the margin or rubric have not been included.

52 Herbert Schendl

The only complete edition of the Liber Wigorniensis is still Hearne (1723), though all leases have been edited individually in various later collections, especially in Birch (1885–1899), Kemble (1839–1848) and Robertson (1956).10 Only two leases, S 1326 and S 1347, have survived as originals (King 1996: 102) but the vast majority of the remaining 74 leases, namely 70, have been classiﬁed as “authentic”, while the authenticity of the remaining four, i.e. Sawyer’s numbers 1321, 1329, 1333, 1341 is somewhat controversial, see their entries in the Electronic Sawyer; however, since these do not show any peculiarities in language choice they have been included in the following analysis. As already mentioned, the structure of Oswald’s leases generally follows that of the royal charter, having, e.g. proem, dispositive section, sanction, boundary clause, dating clause and witness list (cf. King 1996: 102, and Section 2.2.), though quite a number have a simpler structure. In general, the leases were granted with the explicit permission of the king and the cathedral clergy, partly also with that of the “ealdorman” of Mercia. Their length varies from a few lines to some rather lengthy documents. In sum, Oswald’s leases constitute an exceptionally homogeneous corpus of late tenth century legal and administrative texts, which is ideally suited for a study of late Old English code-switching; particularly since we have detailed information on a number of important extralinguistic factors relating to the leases. They were all issued (i) in the name of the same person, (arch) bishop Oswald, (ii) at the same place, Worcester, (iii) for the same purpose, namely the leasing of land for a limited period of time; (iv) the scribes of the leases were undoubtedly members of the Worcester clergy or “familia” (though the scribes of the individual charters are not known), and so most likely were the witnesses (Sawyer 1975: 87); (v) the identity of the beneﬁciaries of the leases has been established to some extent (see Sections 5.2., 5.3.).

3. Code-choice and code-switching in Oswald’s leases This section will survey the patterns of language use in the individual leases, with a particular focus on language mixing. Sawyer’s comprehensive description of Old English charters (1968) and its revised online version, the

10. For up-to-date information on the manuscripts, printed editions including references to the best edition for each document (which has been used for our analysis), as well as existing commentaries on individual charters see the revised online edition of Sawyer (1968), the Electronic Sawyer.

Beyond boundaries 53

Electronic Sawyer, provide brief information on the language(s) of the individual charters, using labels such as Latin or Latin with English, etc. This information served as a ﬁrst basis for a classiﬁcation into (i) monolingual leases in either Latin or English; (ii) bilingual leases. On the basis of the dominant language, the latter were further subdivided into either Latin with English or English with Latin, with vernacular boundary clauses (or bounds) as a further parameter (for boundary clauses see Sections 3.2., 4.1.1.).11 This results in the following attested ﬁve subtypes of bilingual leases: (i) Latin with English, (ii) Latin with English bounds, (iii) Latin with English and English bounds, (iv) English with Latin, (v) English with Latin and English bounds. A closer analysis of the individual leases revealed a number of inconsistencies and mistakes in Sawyer’s labelling, only some of which were corrected in the Electronic Sawyer. Thus the language of S 1305 is given by Sawyer as “English with [English] bounds”, which disregards the Latin dating clause and the Latin announcement of the witness list at the end of the charter, i.e., the correct label for S 1305 is English with Latin and English bounds, see example (1).12 (1)

Ðis synd þa landgemæra to Þordune ondlong amman broces [. . .] Ðonne is ealles þæs landes .III. hida þe Oswald bisceop bocað Æþelstane his ðegne on þa gerad wyrce þæt he wyrce þæt þæt land seo unforworht into þære halgan stowe. Anno dominicae incarnationis .DCCCC. LXIII. scriptum est . Hec carta his testibus consentientibus quorum inferius nomina notantur. (S 1305, Robertson, no. 36) ‘These are the boundaries at Thorne, along the Amman brook [. . .] Therefore all of this land is 3 hides which Bishop Oswald grants by charter to his thegn

11. The term dominant language refers to the language of the majority of the main structural parts of the lease and is not used in the sense of matrix language. For a discussion of matrix vs embedded language see, e.g., Romaine (1995: 145–149), Myers-Scotton (1993); for the concepts of language alternation vs insertion see Muysken (2000: chapters 3 and 4). 12. Sawyer’s numbering will be preceded by a capital S except in tables; B before a number refers to the numbering in Birch’s edition (1885–1899), K to Kemble’s (1848). Furthermore, code-switches from the dominant language will be marked by bold print, all other marking in the examples follows the editions used, which accounts for some inconsistencies in the use of capitals and italics especially in names. Unless otherwise stated, translations are by the author; both my own translations and those taken from printed editions are sometimes rather free to convey the intended meaning and are not intended as glosses.

54 Herbert Schendl Æthelstan, on condition that whatever he does, the estate shall return unforfeited to the holy foundation. In the year 963 of the incarnation of our Lord this charter was written with the consent of the witnesses whose names are recorded below.’ (Translation based on Robertson)

Even more surprising is the following inaccurate language label, which reﬂects the widespread disregard of code-switching in older texts. Lease S 1324 is labelled in both editions of Sawyer as “Latin”, though it shows an interesting switch into the vernacular (see Section 4.2.2.2.). (2)

Ego OSWOLD [. . .] terram aliquam juris nostri id est . IIIIor . mansas ÆT SAPERE TÚN swa Alhstan hit hæfde . concedo EADRICO ministro meo (S 1324, B 1239) ‘I, Oswald [. . .] grant a certain estate of our jurisdiction, namely four mansae [‘hides’] at Saberton previously held by Ealhstan to Eadric, my minister’

There is also a case where the wrong designation “Latin with English bounds” in Sawyer (1968) is replaced by the even less accurate description “Latin” in the Electronic Sawyer (S 1311, quoted under [10]), though this is a clear case of Latin with English, see also Hart (1975: no. 60). However, in a number of cases the classiﬁcation of language use depends on basic decisions made by the analyst, such as the treatment of the frequent vernacular name forms in a Latin context. Here the following decision has been made after careful consideration and partly for pragmatic reasons (see also Sections 4.1.5., 4.2.2.1.): Single Old English names in a Latin context, such as cuidam viro. BYRHTRIC nuncupato ‘to a certain man called BYRHTRIC’ (S 1328) and in loco quem BYRHTA WELLE vocitant soliculæ ‘in the place which the inhabitants call Brightwell’ (S 1328) have not been classiﬁed as switches following the general procedure in code-switching research, irrespective of whether they are morphologically simple or complex. Prepositional forms of vernacular place names of the type qui dicitur æt uptune ‘which is called at Upton’ (S 1357), on the other hand, are classiﬁed as code-switches; leases where such prepositional place names are the only vernacular element in an otherwise Latin text will thus be classiﬁed as Latin with English (as against Sawyer’s “Latin”), but will be marked with an asterisk in Table 1 (see Appendix). Another borderline case is the frequent bilingual sanction clause, which occurs both after a preceding Latin sentence or, as in the following example, in an English-dominant lease:

Beyond boundaries 55 (3)

on þy seofoþan geare þæs þe Oswald bisceop to folgaðe feng. Sancta Maria . 7 sanctus Michahel . cum sancto Petro 7 eallum Godes halgum gemiltien þis haldendum . (S 1309; Robertson, no. 42) ‘in the seventh year after Bishop Oswald succeeded to ofﬁce. St Mary and St Michael, with St Peter and [with] all the saints of God, may be merciful towards those who observe this.’

Though this is a formulaic expression, it has been classiﬁed as bilingual, i.e., as showing a switch (see Sections 4.1.3., 4.2.2.2.). Three leases where this is the only Latin material in a vernacular text have therefore been classiﬁed as English with Latin (as against Sawyer’s “English”), but are marked with an asterisk in Table 1. The linguistic format of the witness lists has not been taken into account for this classiﬁcation but will be brieﬂy discussed in 4.2.2.1. The following sections will illustrate the different categories of language use, with a full survey of types given in Table 1 in the Appendix.

3.1. 3.1.1.

Monolingual leases Monolingual Latin

There are 9 fully monolingual Latin leases and another 9 where the only vernacular material are prepositional place names of the type æt uptune (see above). This is a surprisingly low percentage of monolingual Latin documents, especially when we consider that Oswald’s leases rather closely follow the form and structure of the royal diploma, which was generally in Latin by the tenth century, except for the boundary clause, see 2.2. above. 3.1.2.

Monolingual English

With only two instances, fully monolingual English leases are extremely rare. This is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Anglo-Saxon writ, another non-royal document granting land, was exclusively written in the vernacular (Keynes 1999: 100 and Section 2.2. above). Three leases which Sawyer classiﬁes as “English” have the formulaic bilingual sanction clause Sancta Maria 7 sanctus Michahel cum sancto Petro and have therefore been classiﬁed

56 Herbert Schendl

as English with Latin (see example 3), but are marked with an asterisk in Table 1.

3.2.

Bilingual leases

With 65 instances, i.e. about 85%, linguistically mixed leases strongly predominate in the corpus, though the types and extent of switching vary greatly. Some typical structural and textual elements in the leases are more or less frequently subject to code-switching, most importantly the boundary clause (bounds), a central subtext of many charters which speciﬁes the boundaries of the granted land (see Jenkyns 1999: 97–99; for its historical development Kelly 1990: 46). By the tenth century boundary clauses are generally in the vernacular and they are exclusively so in Oswald’s leases, irrespective of the language of the remaining parts of the document.13 Such boundary clauses are even sometimes found in manuscripts on their own, without the original charter text, see e.g. S 1314. The special status of boundary clauses warrants their treatment as a separate textual element or subtext, for which the scribe of the lease did not have any linguistic choice (see also Section 4.1.1.). 3.2.1. Latin with English bounds In this group, the bounds form the only vernacular element in an otherwise Latin document. The boundary clause is generally found in the middle of the lease, but may also occur at its end. Its length varies considerably, with (4) showing a rather short, but otherwise typical example; see also example (19). (4)

Sit autem terra ista libera omni regi nisi aeclesiastici censi id est duos modios de mundo grano et nichil foras ad poenam. Þis synd þa lond gemæru to beonetlæge ærust of sæuerne on bæle onlong bæle on siht forð of siht forð on bærbroc of bær broce on þa aldan dic onlong dices on hiort burnan ondlong hiort burnan neoþan to

13. The frequent occurrence of vernacular boundary clauses in Latin charters has often been discussed, see, e.g. Hooke (1990), Kitson (1995), Jenkyns (1999) but, to my knowledge, not as part of a study on Old English code-switching, except in Schendl (2004).

Beyond boundaries 57 heafne hrycge þæt swa norð rihð eft on bæle on þa dic onlong ðære díc in doferic ondlong doferices on sæuerne ondlong sæuerne eft on bæle. Anno dominicae incarnationis . DCCCCLXII . scriptum est haec carta (S 1301, B 1087) ‘This land is to be free of all dues except church dues that is, two bushels of clean grain; and no ﬁne to go outside the estate. These are the land boundaries to Bentley: ﬁrst from (the) Severn to (the) bæle [the Ball Brook] along (the) bæle to (the) sihtforð [name of stream], from (the) sihtforð to (the) bærbroc, from (the) bærbroc to the old dyke, along (the) dyke to hart bourne, along below hart bourne to hawk ridge so that thus due north again to (the) bæle to the dyke along the dyke to (the) doferic [Shrawley Brook], along (the) doferic to (the) Severn, along the Severn again to (the) bæle [Ball Brook]. In the year 962 of the incarnation, this charter was written’ (Translation of boundary clause Hooke 1990: 248–250)

3.2.2. Latin with English In this rather frequent type, the switched vernacular elements in a Latin text range from the rare single word to phrases, sentences or groups of sentences, except for vernacular boundary clauses. (5)

quibus etiam ex hac uita migratis rus predictum cum omnibus utensilibus ad usum primatis ecclesie˛ dei in weogerne ceastre restituatur immunis . þonne is þæs londes þridde half hid þe oswold arcebisceop selð cynelme his þegne to bóc londe swa he hit him ær hæfde toforlæten to læn londe ægþær ge on earð londe ge on hom londe . (S 1347, Earle 1888: 207–209) ‘after their having departed from this life, the aforesaid estate shall with all things return intact to the use of the bishop of God’s church in Worcester. Therefore this is this land’s two and a half hides which archbishop Oswald assigns to Cynelm his thegn as bookland as he had earlier leased it to him as loanland, consisting of both ploughland and meadowland.’ (Translation partly based on Hooke 1990: 307)

3.2.3. Latin with English and English bounds This equally frequent type is a combination of those illustrated in 3.2.1. and 3.2.2., i.e., apart from the vernacular bounds there are additional switches from Latin into the vernacular in the predominating Latin text, see e.g. S 1307 in (9).

58 Herbert Schendl

3.2.4. English with Latin With only four instances this type, like predominantly vernacular leases in general, is rare; in three of these the only Latin elements occur in the bilingual sanction clause (see example 3). Example (6) shows two further intersentential switches into Latin (see Section 4.1.). (6)

Ic Oswald [. . .] landes sumne dæl [. . .] sumum men þam is Æþelm nama mid eallum þingum þe þærto belimpað . freolice his dæg forgeaf [. . .] Sit autem terra ista libera omni regi nisi e˛cclesiastici censi. Ðonne is ealles þæs landes þridde healf hid þe Oswald bisceop bocað Æþelme . mid his hlafordes leafe þriora manna dæg [. . .] Anno dominice˛ incarnationis .DCCCCLXII. Scripta . hæc carta his testibus consentientibus quorum inferius nomina notantur. (S 1299, Robertson, no. 34) ‘I, Oswald [. . .] have freely granted a certain piece of land [. . .] to a certain man whose name is Æthelm, with all the things which belong to it, for his lifetime [. . .] And that estate shall be free from everything except church dues. Therefore all of this land is 2½ hides which Bishop Oswald grants by charter to Æthelm, with his lord’s leave, for three lives [. . .] In the year of the incarnation of our Lord 962 this charter was written with the consent of those witnesses whose names are recorded below.’ (Translation based on Robertson)

3.2.5. English with Latin and English bounds With only ﬁve instances, this last type has about the same low frequency as the previous one, see e.g. example (14). In general, the assignment of a lease to one of the above categories is unproblematic, except for S 1363. Here we ﬁnd a rather balanced amount of Latin and English even in the structurally relevant parts of the lease. After careful analysis we have followed the classiﬁcation of both Sawyer (1968) and the Electronic Sawyer as Latin with English. Before a more detailed functional-pragmatic and syntactic analysis of codeswitching in the leases will be provided in Section 4, a complete, though rather short bilingual lease with different types of code-switching will be quoted under (7) to give a fuller picture of multiple switching within a single document. (7)

Albuscente hac consentiente . EADGARO . basileo . Aelfhere . que Merciorum . Ego Oswold . largiﬂua dei clementia antistites . Quandam rusculi

Beyond boundaries 59 partem .III. scilicet mansas tribus tamen in locis diuisam cui uocabulum est . æt Eanulfestune . oþer healf hid 7 æt Uferan Strætforda on þære gesyndredan hide þone oþerne æcer 7 æt Fachanleage þone þriddan æcer feldlandes . 7 healfne þone wudu on easthealfe þæs weges 7 þone æt þære eorðbyrig . 7 on easthealfe Afene eahta æceras mædwa 7 forne gean biccenclife .XII. æceras mædwa 7 þreo æcras benorðan Afene to myllnstealle . EADRICO . meo compatri . æternaliter concessi . et post uitĊ suĊ terminum duorum derelinquat cleronomo eorumque uitĊ ﬁnito curriculo ad usum primatis in Wiogornaceastre redeat immunis. Þonne is ealles þæs landes þreo hida þe Oswald biscop bocað Eadrice his þegne on þa gerad wyrce þæt he wyrce þæt þæt land seo unforworht into þære halgan stowe twe‘g’ra monna dæg æfter him. Anno dominicae incarnationis DCCCC. LXVI. Scripta est hec carta his testibus consentientibus quorum inferius nomina notantur. + Ego Oswald eps. hanc consentientionem signo crucis xpi conﬁrmo. [18 witnesses, of the form: Ego + OE personal name + abbreviated Latin status] (S 1310, Robertson, no. 43) ‘With the approval and consent of King Edgar and of Ælfhere of the Mercians, I, Oswald, bishop by the bountiful goodness of God, have granted for all time to Eadric, my fellow sponsor, a certain piece of land, namely 3 hides, divided between three places called ‘at’ Alveston 1½ hides, and every other acre in the divided hide at Upper Stratford, and every third acre of open land at Fachanleah, and half the wood on the east side of the road, and that at the earthwork, and eight acres of meadow on the east side of the Avon, and 12 acres of meadow opposite Biccenclif, and three acres north of the Avon as a site for a mill. And at the end of his life he shall leave it to two heirs, and when the course of their life is ended, it shall return intact for the use of the Bishop of Worcester. Therefore all of this land is three hides which Bishop Oswald grants by charter to Eadric, his thegn, on condition that whatever he does, the estate shall return unforfeited to the holy foundation at the end of two lives after his. In the year of the incarnation of the Lord 966 this charter was written with the consent of the witnesses whose names are recorded below. I, Oswald, bishop conﬁrm this agreement with the sign of Christ’s cross.’ (Translation based on Robertson)

3.3. Survey of language choice in Oswald’s leases As Table 1 in the Appendix shows, language choice and combination of languages in the leases varies considerably. Only 11 of the 76 documents are

60 Herbert Schendl

fully monolingual (9 Latin, 2 Old English), while the overwhelming majority of 65 show one or more instances of code-switching. In other words, one or the other type of code-switching is the norm rather than the exception in Oswald’s leases, and switching is not restricted to a single function, such as the vernacular boundary clause, which occurs in 32 Latin-dominant leases. This modiﬁes King’s claim that “[t]he majority of the leases [by Oswald] are in Latin with Old English boundary clauses” (1996: 102); furthermore, Table 1 shows that code-switching clearly extends “beyond boundaries”, since in 48 Latin-dominant leases we ﬁnd vernacular switches of varying length which are not part of a boundary clause, while in 9 English-dominant leases Latin switches occur. However, it is true that in the great majority of 65 charters Latin is the only or the dominant language, while only 11 leases have English as the only or the dominant language.

4. Linguistic analysis of code-switching in Oswald’s leases This section will start with a functional-pragmatic analysis of the switched elements (Section 4.1.), followed by a surface-oriented syntactic analysis of switching patterns in the corpus (Section 4.2.). In each of the subsections of 4.1. and 4.2. we will ﬁrst consider vernacular switches in predominantly Latin charters, since these constitute the clear majority, followed by a discussion of Latin switches in vernacular texts where relevant.

4.1. Functional-pragmatic aspects of switching As mentioned in 2.2., Oswald’s leases tend to follow the structure of royal charters rather closely. Some of the typical structural elements are more likely to be switched than others or show a preference in regard to language choice, though switching is not restricted to these. 4.1.1.

Boundary clause

All boundary clauses in the leases are, as generally by that period, monolingual vernacular subtexts, both in vernacular and in otherwise fully or predominantly Latin documents, see 3.2., 3.3. and the short examples under (4) and (19). They begin with an introductory sentence of the type Ðis synd

Beyond boundaries 61

þa land gemæra(n)/gemæru to/æt [. . .] ‘These are the land boundaries to/at [. . .]’, or a variant of this. In six instances, however, this vernacular opening clause is preceded by a more or less synonymous Latin sentence, see (8):14 (8)

His metis prefatum rus hinc inde giratur . Ðis synd ða land gemæran to oddungga lea . (S 1297, B 1108) ‘The aforesaid estate is surrounded from here to there by these boundaries. These are the land boundaries to Oddingley.’ (Translation Hooke 1990: 251)

4.1.2. Limitations and speciﬁcation of lease A quarter of the Latin-dominant bilingual leases includes a vernacular sentence beginning with something like Ðonne is ealles þæs landes [. . .] ‘Therefore all of this land is [. . .]’. In half of these cases, this sentence directly follows the vernacular boundary clause and is in turn followed by the Latin dating clause and/or Latin announcement of witnesses (see example [9], also S 1304, S 1314, etc.). In the leases without a boundary clause, the sentence constitutes a switch from the preceding Latin main text of the charter (see [10] and also S 1318, etc.). A principal function of this structural element, sometimes called “limitations” (King 1996: 102) is to provide a summary of the preceding Latin part of the lease, since it tends to repeat the names of granter and beneﬁciary, the limitation of the lease to three lives, and partly also the name of the location as well as the size of the property. However, in quite a few instances additional information on or speciﬁcation of the lease is provided in the passage as well, as in S 1347 (quoted under [5]), where the change from “loan-land” to “book-land” is new information, or in (10) below, where the new information relates to the nature and location of the two hides of land (“one and a half hides of shareland and half a hide on the island”).

14. This repetition may possibly reﬂect the fact that there were more or less prefabricated models for Latin charters into which the bounds and other speciﬁc information were inserted. This assumption is supported by the fact that in S 1333 we ﬁnd this Latin sentence without any following bounds, though S 1333 has been judged “suspicious” (Sawyer 1975: 92, 228, n.29, n.30). For similar instances in other, partly earlier charters see Schendl (2004).

62 Herbert Schendl (9) Ðis syndon þa land gemæru þe ymb be lycgceað teodeces læge . timan hyl of timan hylle on widan dene [. . .] Ðonne is ealles þæs landes . IIII . æt Teodeces læge . I . æt Æps læge . IIII . þa Oswald bisceop bocað Wulfrice . þreora manna dæg on þæ gerad weorce þæt he weorce þæt þæt land seo un for worht into þære halgan stowe. Anno dominice incarnationis . DCCCCLXIII . Scripta est hac cartula is testibus consentientibus q‘u’orum inferius notantur. (S 1307, B 1111) ‘These are the land boundaries which surround Teodeces læge: Timan hill; from Timan hill to the wide valley [. . .] Therefore all of this land is 4 [hides], 1 at Teodeces læge, 4 at Aspley, which bishop Oswald grants Wulfric for three lives on condition that whatever he does, the estate shall return unforfeited to the holy foundation. In the year of the incarnation of the Lord. DCCCCLXIII. this charter was written with the consent of those witnesses whose names are recorded below.’ (10) Ego OSVVOLD [. . .] Quandam ruris particulam quod a gnosticis . ÆT CLIFFORDA . appellatur . II . videlicet mansas cuidam ministro meo nomine . WIHTELM . cum omnibus ad illud rite pertinentibus perpetua largitus sum hereditat . et post vitæ suæ terminum duobus tantum heredibus immunem derelinquat . Quibus defunctis aecclesiæ Dei in Wiogorna ceastre restituatur. Ðonne is þæs landes ealles þe Oswald biscop bocað Wihtelme his þegne on þa ge rad wyrce þæt he wyrce þæt þæt land sy un for worht into þære halgan stowe þreora manna dæg oþer healf hid ge dal landes 7 healf hid on þære ege. Anno dominicae incarnationis . DCCCCLXVI (S 1311, B 1181) ‘I, Oswald [. . .] have granted in eternal inheritance a certain portion of land, which by the knowledgeable is called at Clifford, namely 2 hides to a certain minister of mine by name of Wihtelm with all rights belonging to it, and after the end of his life he is to leave it unburdened to two heirs only. When they are dead it is to be restored to the church of God in Worcester. Therefore this is all the land which bishop Oswald grants by charter to his thegn on the condition that whatever he does, the estate shall return unforfeited to the holy foundation after three lives and one and a half hides of shareland and half a hide on the island. In the year of the incarnation of the Lord . DCCCCLXVI’

The limitations introduced by Ðonne is ealles þæs landes are also found in two predominantly vernacular leases, where the sentence paraphrases the

Beyond boundaries 63

information previously given in Old English. This supports the assumption that a main function of this sentence in the leases in general is the summarization of the main information, and not the rendering of Latin information into the vernacular for the beneﬁt of beneﬁciaries literate in English but not in Latin as proposed by Kelly (1990: 50), though this may have been an additional and welcome function. In example (11), this summary follows directly after the boundaries and only contains information already given in the previous vernacular text. It is in turn followed by a switch into the Latin dating clause, the only Latin element in this lease. For S 1299 see (6). (11) Ðonne is ealles þæs landes .III. hida þe Oswald bisceop bocað Æþelstane his ðegne on þa gerad wyrce þæt he wyrce þæt þæt land seo unforworht into þære halgan stowe. (S 1305, Robertson, no. 36) ‘Therefore all of this land is 3 hides which Bishop Oswald grants by charter to his thegn Æthelstan, on condition that whatever he does, the estate shall return unforfeited to the holy foundation.’ (Translation based on Robertson)

However, a switched sentence specifying further rights, conditions or objects of the lease may also have a different form and position; in (12) it is the speciﬁcation of the location of a meadow and its lease for three lives, which is inserted between two Latin passages; in (13) the switched sentence speciﬁes the obligation for ploughing and sowing land and the right for a certain amount of wood; in two further instances, this switch starts after (or is triggered by) the locative prepositional phrase, see examples (2) and (7). (12) quandam ruris particulam . V . videlicet mansas quod solito vocitatur nomine CROMMAN cum omnibus ad se rite pertinentibus [. . .] Eac we him writað þa mædue æt pirig forda an suð halue þæs weges swa seo niwe díc hit all hymbutan beligeð his dæge 7 æfter twæm yrfweardum swilcan swilce he seolf wille. His metis prefatum rus hinc inde giratur. Ðis syndon þara . V . hida land gemæru æt cromban (S 1322, B 1235) ‘a certain small portion of an estate, namely 5 hides, which is called by the usual name Croome, with all things rightly belonging to it, [. . .] Also we bestow on him the meadow at Perry Ford on the south side of the way as the new dyke [runs] all around it for his life and thereafter to two heirs of his own choosing.

64 Herbert Schendl The aforesaid estate is surrounded from here to there by these boundaries. These are the land boundaries of the 5 hides of land at Croome’ (Translation based on Hooke 1990: 274–275) (13) cuidam ministro meo nomine . Ælfric . perpetua largitus sum heredidate et post uite sue˛ terminum duobus tantum heredibus immunem derelinquat [. . .] On þæt gerad þe he ælce geare of þam lande geerige twegen æceras 7 þæron his circsceat gesawe 7 þæt eft geripe 7 in gebringe . 7 ic an him ælce geare on minum wudu .XII. foþre wudas butan ceape . (S 1303, Robertson, no. 35) ‘to one of my thegns, named Ælfric; a certain piece of land as a perpetual inheritance and after the end of his life he shall leave it unburdened to two heirs at most [. . .] On condition that every year he shall plough two acres of the land and sow his church–dues there, and afterwards reap it and bring it in. And I grant him every year 12 fothers of wood in my wood without payment.’ (Translation Robertson)

On the other hand, in some of the English-dominant leases, the freedom from and obligation for speciﬁc services are speciﬁed by a Latin sentence starting with Sit autem terra illa/ista libera, which is always (part of ) a switch from the vernacular into Latin and back again, see (14), and S 1299, quoted under (6), etc. (14) of þæm grafe suðweard beastan þæm wulfseaðe andlang þære stige þæt eft to calawan hylle to þære díc foreweardan. Sit autem terra illa libera ab omni secularis rei neg[o]tio preter pontis et arcis restaurationem et contra hostes expeditionem. Sancta Maria 7 sanctus Michahel cum sancto Petro 7 allum Godes halgum gemiltien þis halde[n]dum . (S 1369, Robertson, no. 61 ) ‘from the grove southward to the east of the wolfpit, thereafter along the path back to the bare hill in front of the dyke. This estate, moreover, shall be free from every duty of a secular nature except the repair of bridges and fortiﬁcations and military service against enemies. St Mary and St Michael, with St Peter and all the saints of God, have mercy on those who uphold this.’ (Translation Robertson)

In the following Latin-dominant lease, the distribution of the two languages is the exact reverse from that found in (14), i.e. we have a switch from Latin into the equivalent vernacular sentence si hyt ælces þinges freoh buton (which

Beyond boundaries 65

is, however, also used in a vernacular context in the English-dominant lease S 1309): (15) et post vitæ suæ terminum duobus tantum heredibus immunem derelinquat quibus defunctis æcclesiæ Dei in WIOGORNA CEASTRA restituatur . Si hyt ælces þinges freoh buton ferd fore 7 wal geweorce 7 brycgeweorce . Sancta Maria 7 sanctæ Michahel cum sancto Petro 7 eallum Godes halgum gemildsige þis healdendum . (S 1313, B 1203) ‘and after the end of his life he may give it also to two heirs, after whose death it shall return to God’s church in Worcester. It shall be free of all things except for military service and the construction of walls and of bridges. St Mary and St Michael, with St Peter and all the saints of God, have mercy on those who uphold this.’

4.1.3.

Sanction clause

A frequent feature found in 18 leases (11 Latin-dominant, 7 English-dominant) is a formulaic bilingual sanction clause starting with the Latin phrase Sancta Maria 7 Sanctus Michael cum Sancto Petro and then switching into the vernacular for describing the spiritual sanctions for the violation of the terms of the lease (for the syntactic analysis see 4.2.2.2.). The sanction clause can be inserted after a Latin or a vernacular passage and may equally be followed by a vernacular or a Latin one, resulting in various switching patterns (see, e.g., S 1312, S 1313, S 1342, S 1355, etc.). In predominantly English leases, the Latin part of the sanction clause invariably introduces a code-switch from the vernacular into the Latin formulaic phrase, which is sometimes the only Latin element in the document (see Table 1). (16) Sancta Maria 7 Sanctus Michael cum sancto Petro 7 allum Godes halgum gemiltsien ðis haldendum gif hwa butan gewyrhtum hit abrecan wille God hine to ryhtere bote gecerre . gif he ðonne nelle hæbbe him wið God gemæne on ðam ytemestan dæge ðyses lifes . Hii sunt testes [. . .] (S 1315, B 1204) ‘St Mary and St Michael, with St Peter and all the saints of God, be merciful to those who observe this. If anyone without reason wants to break it, may God turn him to due amendment. If he will not do this, he shall have to account for it to God on the last day of this life. These are the witnesses [ . . . ]’

66 Herbert Schendl

4.1.4.

Dating clause

In the vast majority of Latin-dominant leases, the date is given in Latin either in the opening clause or as a separate dating clause at the end of the lease. However, in about 10% of the leases, all more or less of the same type (see Section 5.4.), the initial Latin date is repeated later in a switched vernacular dating clause, which sometimes begins a longer vernacular passage interrupted only by the bilingual sanction clause, see the complete lease under (19). In two of the English leases, however, it is a switched Latin dating clause combined with the announcement of witnesses which ends a predominantly vernacular lease, see (1) for S 1305, and (6) for S 1299. 4.1.5.

Names

Names are undoubtedly among the communicatively most salient linguistic elements of a lease: place names refer to the location of the property concerned, but also to other textually relevant locations; personal names identify the beneﬁciaries of the lease and the persons of authority involved in the legal transaction, such as its granter and the person(s) agreeing to the lease. In vernacular linguistic contexts, these names are invariably given in their Old English forms, while in Latin contexts there is some variation between the predominating unintegrated vernacular forms and the rarer cases of Latinisation, i.e. the integration of a name into Latin morphology. This attested variation in name forms is a further reﬂection of the bilingual nature of the leases and thus deserves closer attention. The following sections will discuss some functional aspects of names, while morphosyntactic aspects will be focussed on in Section 4.2.2.1. Place names referring to the location of the leased property or otherwise directly related to the lease regularly appear in their vernacular form, both in a vernacular and a Latin linguistic context.15 Single-word place names such as Wulfrintun, Upton, Stoce, but also separately written compounds or syntactic groups of the type Byrhta welle, Degiles ford have – in accordance with established practice – not been classiﬁed as switches; they are established labels which

15. The only exception is found in S 1367, unam largior curtam, in civitate weogernensi ‘one messuage in the city of Worcester’, a Latinised form which has to be seen in the context of a number of other instances of the Latinate form of Worcester as the town of the issuing authority, see the examples under (17.b).

Beyond boundaries 67

do not require any multilingual competence and their classiﬁcation as switches would greatly reduce the explanatory power of the concept of code-switching. Linguistically more interesting are locative prepositional phrases of the type æt uptune ‘at Upton’. Such locative phrases occur in a variety of syntactic constructions and will be discussed in detail in Section 4.2.2.1. Some variation is found in the linguistic form of the name of Worcester, which is in the vast majority of cases referred to by the vernacular form Weogorna ceastre (in various spellings) both in vernacular and Latin contexts. In two instances, however, the vernacular form wiogorna collocates with a Latin noun such as monasterio, see (17.a), though more frequently the Latin adjectival form weogernensi(s) is used in collocation with a Latin noun, see (17.b): (17)

a.

in Wiogorna monasterio (S 1348, K 645); in Wiogorna castello (S 1359, K 671)

b. in Wiogornensi monasterio (S 1345, K 637); in ciuitate Weogernensi (S 1367, K 679), Weogornensis aecclesiae (S 1351, K 653), etc.

Like single place names, unintegrated vernacular personal names in Latin contexts have not been regarded as code-switches, though their vast majority are morphologically complex and transparent forms such as Æþelstan ‘precious stone’. The attested variation between morphologically integrated and unintegrated vernacular names in Latin contexts, however, deserves closer investigation, but will be discussed in Section 4.2.2.1. since it is at least partly syntactically conditioned. But it clearly reﬂects the bilingualism of the scribes and their evident awareness of the use of two different languages. The morphological integration of the citation form (nominative) of personal names in a Latin context is mainly restricted to Oswald’s name, which often appears in its Latinised form Oswaldus. This Latinisation may be pragmatically conditioned and seems to be related to Oswald’s elevated social status in the church hierarchy, an assumption which is supported by the fact that the single occurrence of the name of Oswald’s predecessor, Coenwaldus (S 1344) is equally Latinised.16 The unintegrated vernacular form Oswald, however, predominates over the integrated form Oswaldus

16. There are two instances of morphological integration of names in the witness list of S 1344 (winsinus, ælfwinus), while hundreds of other witness names are in the vernacular form.

68 Herbert Schendl

by almost 2:1, with only 26 leases showing one or two instances of the Latinised form. The following extract illustrates the attested variation in name forms (underlined by the author) within a single document: the ﬁrst occurrence of Oswald’s name is the morphologically integrated form Oswaldus, the second the unintegrated vernacular form Oswald, even though both appear in an identical linguistic context (Ego Oswaldus/Oswald archiepiscopus). The name of the beneﬁciary of the lease, Leofward, is morphologically integrated in the ﬁrst occurrence (Leofwardo), but unintegrated in the second (Leofward ) (see 4.2.2.1. for further discussion). As for place names, we ﬁnd the vernacular locative phrase to Pirigtune (see also 4.2.2.1.), and the unintegrated vernacular forms Goldhora and Wiogorna ceastre, the latter depending on the language-indeterminate preposition in. (18) ego Osuualdus archiepiscopus, [. . .] quae sita est in Wiogurnaceastre, terram. V. manentium, ubi ruriculi Goldhora dicunt, Leofwardo ﬁdeli meo homini, tradendo concedo, sibi dies suos perfruendum; [. . . .] et semper possessor terrae illius reddat tributum aecclesiasticum, quod circ-sceat dicitur to Pirigtune, [. . .] sin autem, sit terra in potestate illius aecclesiae. Ipse etiam Leofward mihi tradidit decem libras, ut sibi suoque haeredi eo liberius possideatur; [. . .] +Ego Osuuald archiepiscopus hanc meam donationem propria manu conﬁrmo et subscribo. (S 1354, K 661) ‘I, Oswald, archbishop [. . .] which is situated in Worcester, grant ﬁve hides of land, where it is called Goldhora by the countrymen, to Leofward, my loyal man, for him to enjoy during his days, [. . .] and the owner of this land shall always give the church tribute which is called circ-sceat to [the church of ] Pyrton, [. . .] otherwise, this land shall be in the power of that church. And this same Leofward gave me ten pounds, so that he and his heirs may possess this [land] freely; [. . .] I, Oswald, archbishop conﬁrm and sign this my donation with my own hand.’

To round up this section on functional-pragmatic aspects, a short lease will be quoted in full, which illustrates most of the functions of vernacular switches discussed in Section 4.1. (vernacular bounds, sanction clause, dating clause, announcement of witnesses, various name forms including a locative prepositional phrase). (19) Ego oswald ergo xpi krismate pre˛sul judicatu(s) dominicae incarnationis anno .dcccclxix. annuente anglorum .EADGARO. ælfhereque merciorum comite necno[n] et familiae wiogernensis ecclesie˛ quandam ruris particulam unam

Beyond boundaries 69 uidelicet mansam in loco qui celebri a soliculis nuncupatur. æt hwitanhlince. uocabulo cuidam ministro meo nomine .brihtmær. perpetua largitus sum hereditate et post uite˛ sue˛ terminum duobus tantum heredibus immunem derelinquat quibus defunctis ecclesie˛ dei in wiogorna ceastre restituatur. Þis wæs gedón ymbe .ix. hund wintra 7 .ix. 7 sixtig on þy .x.an geare þæs þe oswald bisceop to folgoþe fenge. Sanctae mariae 7 sanctus michahel cum sancto petro 7 allum godes halgum gemiltien þis haldendum. gief hwa buton gwrihtum hit abrecan wille hæbbe him wið god gemæne buton he to dæd bote gecyrre amen. Ðis synd þa land gemære to hwitan hlince of portan mære ond long sices innan þone suð broc andlang broces innan ceolmes gemære andlang þæs gemæres innan þa stræt andlang stræte in þa oðer dic andlang þære dic in here grafun þurh here grafun æft in portan mære. Her is seo hond seten. (S 1320, Hooke 1990: 6) ‘I, Oswald, therefore, ordained bishop with the chrism of Christ, in the year of the incarnation of our Lord 969, with the consent of Edgar, [king] of the English, and of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of the Mercians, and likewise of the community of the Church of Worcester, have granted to a certain thegn of mine, named Brihtmær, a certain small portion of an estate in perpetual inheritance, namely one mansa (hide), in the famous place which is called by the inhabitants at Whitlinge, and after the end of his life he may leave it unburdened to just two heirs, after whose death it must be restored to the church of God at Worcester. This was done in the year 969 in the tenth year after Bishop Oswald succeeded to ofﬁce. May St Mary and St Michael, with St Peter and all the saints of God, be merciful towards those who uphold this; if anyone against justice tries to breach this, he shall have to account for it to God unless he turns to making amends. Amen. These are the land boundaries to Whitlinge: from Porta’s mere along (the) watercourse into the south brook, along (the) brook into Ceolm’s boundary, along the boundary into the road, along (the) road into the other dyke, along the dyke to here grove, through here grove again to Porta’s mere. Here are the signatures.’ (Translation Hooke 1990: 7)

4.2.

Syntactic analysis

This section will provide a surface-oriented syntactic analysis of switching patterns in the corpus using the traditional classiﬁcation into (i) intersentential switches, i.e. switches between sentences or independent clauses, and (ii) intrasentential switches, deﬁned as switches between or within sentence

70 Herbert Schendl

constituents, including dependent (embedded) clauses.17 Intersentential switching involves syntactically rather independent units, while the matching of the syntactic rules of different languages is more complex in intrasentential switching (cf. Poplack 1980: 581). As in the discussion of functional-pragmatic aspects, I will focus on vernacular switches in Latin-dominant leases; examples of Latin switches in English-dominant leases will be explicitly marked. 4.2.1.

Intersentential switching

Intersentential switches are by far the most frequent switching type in Oswald’s leases. In the majority of cases, Latin passages alternate with shorter ones of Old English in the corpus. With longer vernacular stretches, especially those consisting of the often extensive boundary clauses preceded and/or followed by further vernacular elements, an internal structuring into distinctive individual sentences is sometimes problematic, yet not relevant for our purposes. But in general, syntactically independent units within the vernacular switch are obvious and often coincide with functional units, see e.g. example (19).18 There are, however, also quite a number of intersentential switches consisting of a single sentence, such as the vernacular dating clause illustrated in (19) (see also 4.1.4.), or the sentence specifying the freedom from and the obligation for speciﬁc services as in S 1313, see (15). On the other hand, in the English-dominant leases intersentential switching into Latin is restricted to two types of single sentences: ﬁrstly, the sentence Sit autem terra illa/ista libera expressing the restriction of services (5 instances, see e.g. examples (6), (14) and Section 4.1.2.); this particular sentence also frequently occurs in Latin charters in a Latin context; secondly, a Latin dating clause with the announcement of witnesses (2 instances, see examples (1) and (6) and 4.1.4.).

17. Deﬁnitions of inter- and intrasentential switching vary with different authors, especially in regard to the status of embedded clauses. Emblematic or tagswitches, such as you know, isn’t it, which are typical of spoken language, do not occur in the rather formal, partly formulaic leases. For the extensive literature on syntactic switching see, e.g., Bullock and Toribio (2009), Muysken (1995, 2000), Romaine (1995). 18. On the problem of delimiting the unit sentence in Old English see, e.g., Mitchell (1985: §§ 1685–1688, 1879–1882).

Beyond boundaries 71

4.2.2.

Intrasentential switching

Intrasentential switching has a high frequency in modern spoken codeswitching and also predominates in many Middle English mixed-language texts (see Schendl 2000a, b) but is rare in Oswald’s leases both in regard to different syntactic types and to the number of tokens for each type.19 The most striking feature in the mixed leases is the almost complete absence of single-word switches from either language. Thus, the controversial question of how to distinguish between borrowing or switching does not play a role for the present corpus (for vernacular name forms see the next section). 4.2.2.1. Single-word and two-word switches There is only one occurrence of a single common noun inserted in a Latin sentence, namely the legal term circ sceat ‘church money, tax’, see (18) above, which is “ﬂagged” by the Latin phrase quod [. . .] dicitur, thus marking it as a switch into Old English, a strategy which is also found in Oswald’s letter to king Edgar, S 1368. A different single-word switch concerns the term for Oswald’s status in a Latin sentence expressing his consent to the lease, which precedes the witness list. In the syntactic frame (Ego) Oswald [status] consensi ‘(I) Oswald [status] agree’, his status is sometimes given in the switched vernacular form bisceop (e.g. S 1316), but more frequently in its Latin form episcopus (S 1318, 1322, etc.). A syntactically different type are single terms denoting the status of witnesses in the witness list proper, since these are not embedded in any syntactic frame, but follow the vernacular personal names in the lists. In a few leases Oswald’s name appears as the ﬁrst witness followed by the vernacular title bisceop, while the status of the other witnesses of the same document is in Latin, such as Eadgar presbiter (S 1313; also S 1317). In the vast majority of Latin-dominant leases, all status designations are in Latin, either in their full or in an abbreviated form. However, in S 1315 the status of all thirteen witnesses is given in the vernacular form, e.g.

19. For a brief discussion of its occurrence in Old English charters see Schendl (2004). For a detailed syntactic analysis of Medieval Latin-English mixed sermons within a Government model of code-switching see Halmari and Regetz, this volume.

72 Herbert Schendl

mæssepreost, clerc, the latter evidently an integrated Latin loan. Since the last sentence of the text immediately preceding the witness list is in Latin, one might regard the witness list in S 1315 as constituting a switch into the vernacular, see (20).20 (20)

Hii sunt testes hujes reconciliationis quorum infra nomina notantur. +Wulfric mæssepreost +Aelfred clerc [. . .] (S 1315, B 1204) ‘These are the witnesses of this restauration whose names are indicated below.’

In the English-dominant leases, Latin status designations equally predominate, including the designation primus for the ﬁrst witness (S 1362, 1366), the only exception being S 1326, which shows vernacular status designations. In Section 4.1.5. I emphasized the central communicative role of both personal and place names in the leases. Though single vernacular personal names in Latin contexts have not been classiﬁed as code-switches, we ﬁnd some interesting, partly morphosyntactically conditioned variation between integrated and unintegrated vernacular forms. In the vast majority of cases, the beneﬁciary’s name appears in the vernacular form in a Latin context when used as the citation form (nominative); this frequently occurs in Latin constructions of the type: Noun Phrase dative (designing status etc. of grantee) + vernacular name + utenti nomine/vocitamine (or variants of this phrase), generally preceded or followed by a verb of giving or granting, see the examples under (21). (21)

a.

cuidam tribuo militi Ælfweard utenti nomine (S 1341, K 625) ‘to a certain miles, with the usual name Ælfweard’

b. concessi [. . .] meo ﬁdeli artiﬁci Wulfhelm utenti uocitamine (S 1344, K 634) ‘I have granted [. . .] to my loyal artifex, commonly named Wulfhelm’

However, in a small number of Latin contexts similar to those illustrated under (21), the personal name shows the Latin dative inﬂection, being evi-

20. The renewal of this lease for the son of the original beneﬁciary in S 1355 is largely identical in wording with S 1315 but it changes the language of the witness status into Latin.

Beyond boundaries 73

dently attracted by the preceding Latin dative forms of the noun phrase, such as uno ﬁdele meo, ministro meo, etc.: (22)

a. uni ﬁdeli meo, qui a gnosticis noto Ælfuueardo nuncupatur uocabulo (S 1330, K 614) ‘to my loyal man, who is called by those acquainted with him Ælfweard’ b. ministro meo nomine ÆÞELWEARDO (S 1317, B 1236) ‘to my minister with the name Æþelweard’ c. tibi fratri meo OSULFO (S 1370, B 1139)21 ‘to you my brother Osulf ’

While cases like those in (22) are rare, the Latin dative form is regularly used when the name depends directly on the verb of granting, also when followed by an appositive noun phrase indicating the beneﬁciary’s relation to Oswald, see (23): (23)

a. dabo: CYNEÞEGNO : aliquam partem terre juris mei (S 1297, B 1108)22 ‘I give to Cyneþegn a certain estate of my jurisdiction’ b. concedo WULFGARO ministro meo (S 1316, B 1207) ‘I grant to Wulfgar, my minister’

This morphological integration of inﬂected vernacular names into Latin applies both to the names of beneﬁciaries and of persons of authority, such as in the frequent references to King Edgar (Eadgari, Eadgaro). The situation is very different with vernacular place names referring to the location of the leased property. As pointed out in 4.1.5., simple and compound place names such as Upton or Degiles ford in a Latin context have not been classified as switches. They occur in their vernacular form

21. However, in a later vernacular passage in the same lease, Oswald bisceop his breðer Osulf þreora manna dæg ‘bishop Oswald to his brother Osulf for three lives’, we have the uninﬂected (nominative) vernacular form Osulf after the dative form his breðer: 22. Equally, in a later vernacular passage in the same lease, the inﬂected dative vernacular form occurs: Osuuold bisceop bocað Cyneþegne þrinde healf hid ‘Bishop Oswald grants by charter to Cyneþegn two and a half hides’. The same applies to the second example under (23) with bocað Wulfgare.

74 Herbert Schendl

both in vernacular contexts and in a variety of Latin syntactic constructions, such as in loco nuncupatur norðtun ‘in the place called Norton’ (S 1359), ubi æsctun ‘where [it is called] Ashton’ (S 1365); in some instances, such as those quoted under (24), the name is preceded by a phrase that might look like a flagging device marking the switch into the vernacular. (24)

a. ubi ruriculi Goldhora dicunt (S 1354, K 661) ‘which the country people call Golder’ b. in loco qui celebri a solicolis nuncupatur . CUNGLE . vocabolo (S 1298, B 1091) ‘at the place which is called by the inhabitants by the well-known name of Cungle’

However, equivalent vernacular phrases in a number of vernacular leases or vernacular contexts have to be interpreted as general statements about the local name, not about its language, see (25), and S 1299, S 1332, etc.; therefore it is rather doubtful whether cases like those under (24) can indeed be regarded as instances of ﬂagging. (25)

þe fram cuþum mannum Hindehlep is gehaten (S 1309, Robertson, no. 42) ‘which is called by those familiar with it Hindlip’

Linguistically more interesting are vernacular place names of the type æt uptune ‘at Upton’, i.e. in locative prepositional phrases. These occur in a variety of Latin constructions, which may affect their syntactic status and possibly also their status as switches. More than 60% of the roughly 90 place names referring to leased property in a Latin context belong to this type.23 In a small number of instances, such vernacular locative phrases are syntactically fully integrated into the Latin clause and thus without any doubt constitute code-switches from Latin into the vernacular, see (26):

23. These ﬁgures do not include place names in the margins or rubrics of the manuscripts nor those in a vernacular context. Place names of the form at+name have a long history in English and have sometimes survived in modern English place names like Attercliffe, Attington, etc. (my thanks to my co-editor for providing me with these examples).

Beyond boundaries 75 (26)

a. terram aliquam [. . .] id est duas mansas . ÆT ICENANTÚNE concedo WULFGARO ministro meo (S 1316, B 1207)24 ‘some land [. . .] namely two hides at Itchington I grant to Wulfgar, my minister’ b. ego Oswaldus [. . .] aliquam telluris partem æt Bynnyncgwyrðe cuidam tribuo militi Ælfwearð utenti nomine (S 1341, K 625) ‘I, Oswald [. . .] give some portion of land at Bengeworth to a certain miles, commonly named Ælfweard’

My claim that vernacular locative æt-phrases which are syntactically integrated into a Latin construction constitute code-switches is further supported by two similar types of constructions. The ﬁrst is illustrated by the switched prepositional phrases with on and to in (27). The on-phrases (on Upwic/Bradanlæge) under (27.a) refer to location and are semantically equivalent to the locative æt-phrases discussed above; the two locative to-phrases in (27.b) on the other hand, metonymically refer to Pyrton as the goal (or beneﬁciary) of the money and harvest. Both these types demonstrate that the scribes not only used prefabricated prepositional chunks, but sometimes also adapted the vernacular preposition to the Latin syntactic context. It should be mentioned that such switched prepositional phrases only occur with place names. (27) a. II . videlicet mansas [. . .] cum omnibus illud rite pertinentibus quattuorque vascula ad coctionem salis on Úpwíc et silvam necessariam on Bradanlæge ad illam præparationem salis pertinentis (S 1301, B 1087) ‘namely 2 hides [. . .] with all things rightly belonging to it and four small vessels at Upwich for the cooking of salt and wood at Bradley necessary for that preparation of salt’ (Translation Hooke 1990: 248) b. et semper possessor terrae illius reddat tributum aecclesiasticum, quod circ-sceat dicitur, to Pirigtune, et omni anno unus ager inde aretur to Pirigtune, (S 1354, K 661) ‘and the owner of this land shall always pay church tribute, which is called church-scot, to [the church of ] Pyrton, and every year [the produce of ] one acre to be paid to Pyrton,’

24. Not surprisingly, the same type of locative prepositional construction frequently occurs in vernacular contexts, see example (34), where æt eanulfestune and æt bluntesige are also syntactically integrated in the vernacular clause.

76 Herbert Schendl

The second type is represented by a single instance where the equivalent locative phrase ad suðham ‘at Southam’ consists of the Latin preposition ad governing the vernacular place-name suðham (see, however, the following vernacular phrase æt muctune):25 (28) terram quattuor manentium duobus in locis consistentem ad SUÐHAM duas . necnon et in alio loco duas ubi nuncupatur ÆT MUCTÚNE.26 (S 1308, B 1166) ‘land of four hides existing in two places two at Southam, and besides two in another place where it is called at Mitton.’ (Translation Hooke 1990: 154)

Though the prepositional phrase æt muctune in (28) has the same structure as the examples in (26) and (27), it is not syntactically integrated as a prepositional phrase in the Latin construction but is rather equivalent to the single-word place names illustrated under (24). This type is frequent in a variety of constructions, such as qui dicitur æt uptune ‘which is called at Upton (S 1357), qui vocatur æt bisceopes stoce ‘which is called at Stoke Bishop’ (S 1346), etc. The semantic and functional equivalence of such syntactically unintegrated locative prepositional phrases with single-word place names is supported by a number of facts. The strongest evidence is that the same location, namely Tiddington in Alveston, is referred to differently in two leases in a similar Latin construction: while S 1318 has the prepositional phrase with æt, S 1334 uses the single-word form, see (29.a, b). (29)

a. terram aliquam juris nostri id est mansas . VII . in loco qui dicitur ÆT TIDINCTUNE concedo ÆÞELEARDO (S 1318, B 1232) ‘a certain estate of our jurisdiction, namely 7 hides in the place which is called at Tiddington I grant to Ætheleard’

25. Though this is the only case in Oswald’s leases, the construction is also found in other charters, e.g. a grant by Cynewulf from 778, see Schendl (2004: 61). For switching within prepositional phrases denoting personal names and by-names in the medieval lay subsidy rolls see Ingham, this volume. Ingham’s analysis is carried out within a Government model of code-switching, see also Halmari and Regetz, this volume. 26. This reading with ad from the Tiberius manuscript is given in all editions of the lease, most recently in Hooke (1990); however, in the rubric of this lease we ﬁnd Æt suðham 7 muctune. The “bad” Nero manuscript, on the other hand, has æt suðham. II . 7 æt muctune, . II in the main text and suðham 7 muctune in the rubric.

Beyond boundaries 77 b.

III. uidelicet mansas quod solito uocitatur nomine Tidingctun, cum omnibus ad se rite pertinentibus, (S 1334, K 617) ‘namely 3 hides, which is called by the usual name Tiddington, with all things rightly belonging to it’

Further support for this equivalence are cases such as (30), where the singleword form PENEDOC and the prepositional phrase ÆT DYDINC COTAN are syntactically co-ordinated in one Latin construction, while in the following vernacular context both these locations are referred to by identical, syntactically integrated and co-ordinated prepositional phrases (II . æt penedoc 7 . I . æt dydinc cotan): (30)

III . scilicet mansas duobus tamen in locis divisam cui vocabulum est . PENEDOC . 7 ÆT DYDINC COTAN [. . .] Ðis synd þære twegra hida land gemæra æt penedoc [. . .] and seo þridde hind æt dydinc cotan [. . .] Ðonne is ealles þæs landes þreo hida . II . æt penedoc 7 . I . æt dydinc cotan þe Oswald bisceop bocað Hehstane (S 1314, B 1208) ‘namely 3 hides divided, however, in two places, whose name is Pendock and ‘at’ Didcot [. . .] These are the two land boundaries of the two hides at Pendock [. . .] and that of the third hide at Didcot [. . .] Therefore all of this land is three hides, 2 at Pencock and 1 at Didcot which bishop Oswald gives to Hehstan’ (Translation based on Hooke 1990: 264–265)

Finally, example (31) shows both the syntactically integrated and the nonintegrated use of the same two co-ordinated locative prepositional phrases referring to the same two locations within a few lines: (31)

duas mansas æt BRADANBEORH 7 æt HOLENFESTEN . germano meo OSULFO [. . .] libens impertior. [. . .] Nam clerici ejus urbis camptu tres mansas ÆT SPECLEA pro illa quæ dicitur æt BRADANBEORH 7 æt HOLENFESTEN receperunt (S 1315, B 1204) ‘two hides at Bradanbeorh and at Holdfast to my brother Osulf [. . .] I willingly bestow. [. . .] For the clerks of that town have received three hides at Spetchley in exchange for that which is called at Bradanbeorh and at Holdfast’ (Translation based on Hooke 1990: 150)

This double syntactic function of the same type of vernacular locative phrases in Latin contexts seems at ﬁrst sight difﬁcult to account for, even

78 Herbert Schendl

more so when co-occurring in the same document. I would propose to classify both types as code-switches and to explain the syntactically unintegrated citation form of the type qui dicitur æt uptune ‘which is called at Upton’ (S 1357) as phrasal “chunks” imported as a unit from Old English into Latin. The frequent use of such locative prepositional phrases in the vernacular contexts of the boundary clauses (see e.g. example 32), but also most likely when talking about or memorising the location of the granted estate in the process of drawing up the document would have facilitated the importation of such “ready-made chunks” as equivalents to the single-word name.27 (32)

quandam ruris particulam, quinque uidelicet mansas quod solito uocitatur nomine æt Tidelminctune, cum omnibus ad se rite pertinentibus, [. . .] Ðis syndon ðara .v. hida landgemære æt Tidelminctune ærest on sture ond long sture ongean stream (S 1330, K 614) ‘a certain small part of an estate, namely, ﬁve mansæ, which is called by the usual name “at” Tidmington with all things rightly belonging to it, [. . .] These are the land boundaries of the 5 hides at Tidmington: First to (the) Stour; along (the) Stour against the stream’ (Translation Hooke 1999: 87–88)

4.2.2.2. Longer intrasentential switches There are only a few longer intrasentential switches in the corpus, but some of these demonstrate that the linguistic skills of the scribes in producing bilingual documents clearly go beyond using prefabricated textual models (see Section 5.4.). In two instances, vernacular locative prepositional phrases of the type discussed above seem to “trigger” further vernacular material. This is the case in (33), the only instance of a switched adverbial clause (swa Alhstan hit hæfde) as well as in S 1310, quoted under (7), where an extensive vernacular speciﬁcation of the estate follows the vernacular prepositional name æt Eanulfestune ‘at Alveston’.

27. The concept of switched chunks imported from one older language into another has been proposed in Ingham (2009) to account for the regular appearance of the originally French article le in combination with English nouns in medieval administrative Latin texts; though Ingham’s examples are of a different type, the concept seems to be applicable here as well.

Beyond boundaries 79 (33)

Ego OSWOLD [. . .] terram aliquam juris nostri id est . IIIIor . mansas ÆT SAPERE TÚN swa Alhstan hit hæfde . concedo EADRICO ministro meo28 (S 1324, B 1239) ‘I, Oswald [. . .] grant a certain estate of our jurisdiction, namely 4 hides at Saberton as Ealhstan had it previously to Eadric, my minister’

A switch within a complex noun phrase occurs once in the corpus. The Latin noun phrase tres videlicet mansas is co-ordinated with two similarly complex Old English noun phrases by the (possibly triggering) language-indeterminate abbreviated conjunction “7” (for et or and). (34) quandam rurusculi partem, tres uidelicet, mansas et dimidiam. in loco. quem illius terrae soliculae Cloptun uocitant, 7 .vi. æcras mædwan for ongean ða mylne æt Eanulfes tune 7 healfe mylene æt Bluntesige into Cloptune, libenti concedo animo, cum omnibus ad eum utilitatibus rite pertinentibus, [. . .] Eadrico, meo uidelicet ministro, (S 1358, K 666) ‘a certain share of a small estate, namely three and a half hides, in the place which the inhabitants of this land call Clopton, and 6 acres of meadow opposite the mill at Alveston and half the mill at Bluntesige to Clopton, I gladly grant with all rights belonging to it, [. . .] to Eadric, my minister,’ (Translation based on Hooke 1999: 54)

The next example concerns the formulaic bilingual sanction clause (see 4.1.3.), which is frequently attested in both Latin- and Englishdominant leases. In all 18 instances, the switch occurs after the Latin prepositional phrase cum sancto Petro, which is co-ordinated by the language-indeterminate abbreviation “7” with the following vernacular phrase eallum Godes halgum; the latter phrase can be analysed in two ways, namely either as being governed by the Latin preposition cum (and thus being syntactically closely linked with the Latin part) or possibly as representing the Old English instrumental case. (35)

Sancta Maria 7 sanctus Michahel cum sancto Petro 7 eallum Godes halgum gemiltsien þis healdendum gief hwa buton gewyrhtum hit awendan wille God adilgie his noman of lifes bocum (S 1326, Robertson, no. 46)

28. In spite of this unambiguous switch S 1324 is described as Latin in both editions of Sawyer!

80 Herbert Schendl ‘St Mary and St Michael, with St Peter and [with] all the saints of God, be merciful to those who uphold this. If anyone, without due cause, attempts to change it, God shall blot out his name from the books of life’(Translation Robertson)

The last example (36) of intrasentential switching is from manuscript Cotton Nero E.i. Though this is a poor copy of Tiberius A.xiii (see 2.3.), this example illustrates how its scribe deliberately changed a code-switch found in his model in the course of producing this abbreviated copy, replacing the original intersentential switch specifying the required services (Si hyt ælces þinges freoh) by an intrasentential switch consisting of an adverbial prepositional phrase (on þæt ge rad ) postmodiﬁed by a þæt-clause which speciﬁes the condition for the return of the lease. This is further proof of the productive use of code-switching at this period, though both versions use partly formulaic elements for their vernacular switches. (For the Tiberius version of the lease see example 15 above.) (36) Ego OSUUOLD [. . .] quandam ruris particulam . VI. manentes . æt STOCE . cuidam ministro meo nomine EADMÆR libenter concedo . et post vitæ suæ terminum duobus tantum heredibus derelinquat . quibus defunctis . æcclesiæ Weogernensi inmunis restituatur . on þæt ge rad wyrce þæt he wyrce . þæt þæt land sy unforworht . into þære halgan stowe . (S 1313, B 1202) ‘I Oswald [. . .] gladly grant a certain piece of land, six hides at Stoke, to a certain minister of mine called Eadmær, and after the end of his life he may leave it to two heirs, after whose death it shall return intact to God’s church in Worcester on condition that whatever he does, the estate shall return unforfeited to the holy foundation.’

4.3. Summary of Section 4 Section 4 has provided a detailed analysis of the functional and syntactic dimension of code-switching in the leases, which “displays something of the linguistic attitude of the scribes who drafted them” (Kelly 1990: 50). The functional-pragmatic analysis has shown some tendencies for using the vernacular for certain structural elements in Latin-dominant leases: the vernacular is obligatory for the boundary clause, typical of the second part of the bilingual sanction clause, and not unusual with speciﬁcations and limitations

Beyond boundaries 81

as well as with the dating clause. Though some of these elements provide core information on the terms of the lease, this does not apply to all vernacular elements, so that an explanation of vernacular switches purely in terms of their greater intelligibility for the beneﬁciaries does not seem to be justiﬁed. The majority of personal and place names are also in the vernacular, but only locative prepositional phrases have been classiﬁed as switches. In Englishdominant leases, Latin insertions are restricted to the dating clause, partly with the witness announcement, the restriction of services, and, as in Latin leases, the bilingual sanction clause, though the number of instances is too small to give a clear picture. As for syntactic switching patterns, intersentential code-switching clearly predominates in Oswald’s leases, not only in the frequent boundary clauses, but also in stretches of one and two other sentences. The predominating intrasentential switching pattern is represented by two types of locative prepositional phrases. But there are also a handful of other intrasentential switches, which provide evidence that this syntactic switching pattern is not ruled out in the leases. Overall, the range of switching is quite large in the Latin-dominant leases, but is much more restricted in English-dominant ones.

5. Extralinguistic variables and code-choice After the functional and syntactic analyses in Section 4, the present one will investigate whether code-choice and the occurrence of code-switching correlate with a small number of extralinguistic factors, in particular the year of issue, gender and the status of the beneﬁciaries as well as their personal relation with Oswald, all of which can be considered as social variables in a wider sense. Such a micro-level sociolinguistic approach meets a number of challenges and limitations for texts from the Old English period, since we frequently lack the relevant extralinguistic information. However, the accessible information on the extralinguistic setting of the leases makes an attempt at analysing its code-choice and code-switching along these lines a worthwhile undertaking. As brieﬂy pointed out in Section 2.3., Oswald’s leases form a homogeneous corpus, with quite a lot of information available on the above-mentioned variables. Furthermore, some factors relevant for such a micro-level analysis are constant for all 76 leases, in particular Oswald as the granter of the leases (though not their particular scribes), Worcester as the place of issue and the purpose of the documents, namely the leasing of land.

82 Herbert Schendl

5.1. The variable time Oswald’s leases were issued over a period of almost thirty years (962 to 991). During this time span, the Benedictine Reform, the establishment of reformed monasteries and the spread of the Old English literary standard language made considerable progress in the West-Saxon kingdom. Thus, a change in the language used for the leases and/or a change in the amount of code-switching during this period might be a possible scenario. However, the dates for the various categories of language use as given in the Electronic Sawyer show that these different categories are fairly equally spread over the whole period. Though the only two fully vernacular leases date from the last two years of Oswald’s ofﬁce, predominantly English leases date back to the beginning and ﬁrst part of Oswald’s ofﬁce (e.g. 962, 963, 977). Furthermore, we ﬁnd fully Latin as well as mixed leases throughout the whole period. Thus, the temporal variable does not have any clear inﬂuence on language choice and switching in the leases, especially since the number of English(-dominant) leases is too small to yield any signiﬁcant results.

5.2. The variable gender of tenant With only two leases granted to women, one predominantly in Latin, the other in English, no inﬂuence of the variable gender on language choice is detectable. Lease S 1349 is granted to the matron Wulfﬂæd and is in Latin except for one vernacular prepositional place name; lease S 1309, which is in English except for the bilingual sanction clause, names Ælfhild, possibly a relative of Oswald’s (see King 1996: 110), as its beneﬁciary. Furthermore, S 1348 granted jointly to Eadwig, a kinsman of Oswald, and his wife Wulfgifu is in Latin with English bounds.

5.3. The variable status of tenants The beneﬁciaries of Oswald’s leases “fall into three categories: laymen, St Oswald’s family and members of the cathedral clergy” (King 1996: 103). Recent research has gathered important information on the identity and status of many of these (see King 1996 and Wareham 1996), though we frequently

Beyond boundaries 83

lack speciﬁc information on the individuals.29 The present section will regard these three categories of tenants as constituting the variable status of tenants and will correlate them with the categories of language use. Further attention will be paid to individuals having been granted a number of leases to discover any possible patterns in these. In a ﬁrst step, a possible correlation between any of the above-mentioned three groups of beneﬁciaries and the individual categories of language use as given in Table 1 was investigated, in a second step the leases were regrouped into monolingual Latin or English as against bilingual leases. In a further step, the type Latin with English bounds was treated as a separate subcategory, since by the second half of the tenth century, there was evidently no longer any choice for the language of the boundary clause (see Section 3.2.). It has to be said right at the beginning that the hope to discover a clear correlation between the three groups of beneﬁciaries and language patterns has not been fulﬁlled, i.e., neither the categories of language use given in Table 1 nor their above-mentioned regrouping has shown any clear correlation with the three categories of tenants. There are, however, a few tendencies which could very tentatively be interpreted as correlating with the variable status. The ﬁrst is the surprising fact that eight out of nine leases issued to members of the cathedral clergy are bilingual, either being Latin with English (5) or English with Latin (3), all but one additionally having English bounds; only a single lease is monolingual Latin (S 1302). In other words, the percentage of bilingual leases for the cathedral clergy does not differ much from that for the whole corpus (c 89% vs 86%) and the same is true of Latin leases (c 11% for the clergy, c 12% for the whole corpus; however if we include those cases with only a vernacular locative phrase in an otherwise Latin text, the percentage for the whole corpus doubles to c 22%). Furthermore, one third of the leases for the clergy are English-dominant, while English-dominant leases only constitute about 12% of the total corpus, a ﬁgure which rises to less than 15% if we include monolingual English leases. Thus, a ﬁrst hypothesis that there might be a higher occurrence of Latin documents issued to members of the clergy has been falsiﬁed by the analysis, while English-dominant bilingual leases have a relatively high occurrence.

29. In a small number of cases, King (1996) and Wareham (1996) disagree on the kinship relations between Oswald and certain individuals, a fact which has been taken into account in my analysis.

84 Herbert Schendl

As for the overall receivers of Latin leases, it may be surprising that the only two leases issued to craftsmen (S 1344, 1365) are monolingual Latin and one of the two leases to women (S 1349, to Wulfﬂæd, matron, see Section 5.2.) is in Latin with a single vernacular locative phrase, though these three individuals could be expected to be rather less educated than the cathedral clergy. The remaining seven monolingual Latin leases are issued to a variety of individuals and no clear tendency to the status of their beneﬁciaries has been found.30 Looking at cases where an individual received more than one lease, there seems to be a slight tendency to have one dominating language pattern, though the number of leases per person is generally too small to yield reliable results. Thus, two brothers of Oswald, Osulf and Æthelstan (see King 1996: 108–109), both described as “warriors” (Wareham 1996: 56), each received three leases. In Osulf’s case, all three were fully bilingual (S 1315, 1326, 1370), with one being English with Latin, the other two Latin with English (and English bounds); this is rather similar to the pattern found with Cynelm, another possible kinsman of Oswald (King 1996: 110), who received three bilingual leases of the pattern Latin with English (and English bounds) (S 1300, S 1322, S 1347). In the case of Oswald’s second brother, Æthelstan, on the other hand, we have a favouring of Latin, with one lease being fully Latin, one Latin with a single vernacular locative prepositional phrase, and the third in Latin with English bounds (S 1308, 1340, 1343).31 A similar distribution as in Æthelstan’s leases occurs in the leases granted to two other kinsmen of Oswald, Eadwig (see King 1996: 110; S 1348, S 1360) and Gardulf (King 1996: 109; S 1345, S 1361); with each individual, one lease is Latin or Latin with a single vernacular locative phrase, the other Latin with English bounds. Thus, we see a slight tendency to prefer certain language patterns for the leases of some of Oswald’s kinsmen, but not for the group as a whole. The only member of the cathedral clergy to receive more than one lease is the priest Wulfgar with four leases (S 1327, 1342, 1352, 1372), all of them

30. This result basically remains the same if we include under monolingual Latin the eight leases whose only vernacular material is a locative prepositional phrase. 31. There is another Æthelstan receiving leases S 1305 and 1331, who, according to King (1996, note 58), is a different person, while Wareham (1996: 55–56) thinks him to be identical with the former. The language pattern in these two leases differs and does not conform to that of Oswald’s brother Æthelstan.

Beyond boundaries 85

fully bilingual: three Latin with English and English bounds, one English with Latin and English bounds. There are two lay tenants receiving more than two leases; of these, the thegn Eadric seems to have been “particularly close to Oswald” (King 1996: 105), receiving ﬁve leases; four of which are Latin with English (and English bounds) (S 1310, 1334, 1350, 1358), one is in English (1366). Similarly, the four leases received by Æthelweard, variously called miles, minister and ﬁdeli, show a balanced distribution of the patterns Latin with English (and English bounds) and Latin with English bounds. To sum up, there is no clear inﬂuence of the variable status of tenants on the pattern of language use in the leases, though the clear predominance of bilingual leases for members of the clergy was unexpected. There are certain patterns with some of the individuals who received several leases, but these do not correlate with those of their whole group and the number of leases is too small to allow any reliable conclusion.

5.4.

Prefabricated leases

It has sometimes been pointed out that Oswald’s leases tend to be highly formulaic and that it looks as if there were a number of prefabricated forms or models into which the information for a speciﬁc lease was inserted as occasion arose. Since this could have had some inﬂuence on the patterns of language use, an attempt was made to group leases according to their structure and typical wording, especially in their more formulaic introductory section. It has turned out that quite a few of the 76 leases can be attributed to a small number of textual types, though others do not ﬁt into any clear group. However, the different tokens of individual types show – sometimes quite extensive – variation, particularly regarding the nature and extent of vernacular switches, but also partly in the more formulaic Latin parts. This will be brieﬂy illustrated by looking at two such textual types, which we will term Type A and Type B, both being Latin-dominant. Type A starts with the Latin date, always followed by the sentence Ego Oswald superni rectoris fultus juvamine praesul, cum licentia eadgari, regis Anglorum. This type is attested in 15 tokens dating from 962 to 985 and shows all the language patterns listed in Table 1 for Latin-dominant leases, i.e. Latin (S 1302), Latin with English (S 1347), Latin with English bounds (S 1319, 1323), Latin with English and English bounds (S 1321, 1322). The length and functions of the English switches vary, representing a number of the cases

86 Herbert Schendl

discussed in Section 4, with the vernacular text passage being e.g. interrupted by a switch back into Latin in S 1322. But even the Latin formulaic passages show some variation in various leases of Type A, e.g. ac consentu ælfhere ducis Merciorum (S 1319) vs ac ælfheri ducis Merciorum (S 1302); quibus etiam defunctis, rus predictum (S 1302) vs quibus etiam ex hac vita migratis, rus predictum (S 1319), while in some instances the Latin part was shortened (e.g. S 1325). In other words, even though there is enough similarity between these 15 leases to warrant their grouping into one textual type, the clear variation found in both the Latin and the vernacular parts of these tokens and more generally, in regard to the language patterns used, document that conscious changes were often made by the scribes either to adapt each individual lease to the requirements of the case or just to introduce stylistic changes. The situation is almost identical with the 13 leases of Type B, which starts with Ego Oswald largo Christi carismate præsul dictates, followed by the dating clause. This type was equally used for a considerable time (962–980); it shows the same variety of language patterns and similar modiﬁcations in the Latin and the vernacular passages as illustrated for Type A (e.g. S 1298, 1303, 1313, 1342, etc.). Thus we can deﬁnitely exclude that the use of speciﬁc prefabricated models of leases was the major or only factor for the occurrence and nature of code-switching in Oswald’s leases, even though some similarities in switching patterns do occur within such textual types. How far the choice of one particular type of lease was due to the leader of the community is not recoverable with any certainty. Sawyer (1975: 87) states that “[t]he order in which the witnesses were listed was certainly signiﬁcant and the leader of the community was generally named ﬁrst, but copyists have sometimes muddled the order and it is therefore unsafe, at present, to base detailed arguments on the arrangements of the [witness lists]”. This, together with the fact that eight leases do not have any witness list (Sawyer 1975: 87) does not allow any conclusions about a possible inﬂuence of this factor on the type of lease and even less so on patterns of language use.

6. Why code-switching? In Section 2.2. I pointed out that both Latin and Old English were regularly used in administrative and legal texts by the tenth century, with differences in distribution according to text type, with royal charters invariably in Latin (except for the boundary clause), while writs were always and leases frequently in the vernacular (see also Kelly 1990: 56). A detailed analysis of

Beyond boundaries 87

Oswald’s leases has, however, shown that their vast majority is bilingual and uses code-switching as a strategy in a large variety of functions and patterns. This brings us to one of the most intriguing challenges in code-switching research, namely to ﬁnd a macro-level explanation for switching which goes beyond the micro-level functional explanations of individual switches. Modern code-switching research has emphasized the important communicative information which code-switched utterances carry over and above such lower level functions of individual switches. As a particular mode of bilingual discourse, code-switching has been found to express multiple group membership, dual linguistic and cultural identities of speakers, and to help establish in-group feeling in speciﬁc communicative situations (see Poplack 1980). Such more general functions of code-switching as a particular mode of discourse have also been found in historical code-switching research, for instance in the late medieval macaronic sermons. These scholastic Latin sermons with frequent switches into English seem to have been addressed to a bilingual clerical readership to fulﬁl just this function of establishing in-group membership of this highly educated, bilingual group (see Schendl, forthcoming). This explanation does, however, not seem to apply in the same way to the bilingual leases, since the beneﬁciaries of these leases were, as discussed above, a rather heterogeneous group in regard to social status and can hardly be seen as forming one particular socio-cultural group. However, there may, after all, be some similarity in regard to the general function of code-switching in the sermons and the leases. As pointed out in Section 2.1., Oswald’s extensive leasing of land was part of a very conscious policy of networking intended to secure Worcester’s political and spiritual inﬂuence. I hypothesize that the bilingualism of the leases intentionally combined the authority of Latin as the language of the church and of royal charters with the equally well-established character of the vernacular as the language of documents closer to the layperson, thus linguistically building a bridge between two social and political spheres: on the one hand, Oswald’s and Worcester’s ecclesiastical authority (supported by the king’s explicit consent), on the other hand, the world of secular society, whose allegiance Oswald’s leasing policy was trying to secure. (This would also include the clerical beneﬁciaries of leases, who were equally granted secular goods in spite of their ecclesiastical status.) This abstract general function of combining political and spiritual authority with the reaching out to future tenants “triggers the decision to use code-switching in the ﬁrst place, thus providing an abstract

88 Herbert Schendl

frame for code-switched discourse” (Schendl, forthcoming). But there is also the more concrete level of producing concrete textual utterances, and at this level different stylistic and functional aspects come into play, which establish tendencies for the switching of certain structural elements (see 4.1.). This may well have included the wider intelligibility of the vernacular for the beneﬁciaries of the leases, especially in regard to central structural elements, but the aspect of intelligibility alone does not sufﬁciently explain the use of code-switching, since monolingual vernacular documents already were a possible choice for non-royal documents in Oswald’s time. However, such “lower level” functions do not in any meaningful way “explain” the switch “nor do they constitute constraints or enable any predictions about switching patterns” (Schendl, forthcoming). If we distinguish these two levels we arrive at a more differentiated functional analysis of code-switching in the leases. However, the whole question should also be seen in the context of the historical development of the text type charter. It has been observed with a number of text types that the appearance of code-switching is evidently linked to the beginning or increasing vernacularisation of a particular text type.32 As Kelly (1990: 46) states,“[f ]rom at least the beginning of the ninth century onwards, Latin diplomas came to be supplemented by an extensive range of documents in English or in a mixture of Latin and English [my emphasis]”, and “by the later Anglo-Saxon period the royal administration and the upper reaches of society were using [. . .] vernacular writing, on a routine basis” (Kelly 1990: 62).33 The regular use of code-switching in Oswald’s leases over a period of about thirty years has also to be seen in the light of this increased status of the vernacular, even though the use of Latin still added authority to an ofﬁcial text. This is particularly evident in Oswald’s English-dominant leases, which only use a very small amount of Latin, such as the dating clause, the bilingual sanction clause, or a single sentence stating that the estate was free from all services except church dues. But even this “small Latin” seems to have sufﬁced to elevate the status of the vernacular text and to increase its authority and was used exactly for this purpose.

32. See, e.g., Schendl (2002, and forthcoming); Schendl and Wright, this volume, 3.2. 33. For a discussion of lay literacy in Anglo-Saxon society see, e.g., Kelly (1990), Keynes (1990), Gretsch (1994), with further references.

Beyond boundaries 89

7. Conclusion The present paper has shown that code-switching was consciously and systematically employed in some legal and administrative texts in the Anglo-Saxon period. The functional and syntactic analyses of the bilingual documents have revealed some clear patterns and functions in the use of code-switching. In addition to the micro-level analysis, the macro-level analysis of the status and functions of Latin and Old English in the late tenth century has yielded further insights into the more general function of switching in the leases, namely to combine the authority of Latin as the language of the church and of royal administration with the wider appeal of the vernacular, including but not restricted to its intelligibility for the layperson, thus bridging the gap between these two social spheres as well as the two languages. Only such a combination of the macro- and the micro-level approach enables deeper insight into the functions of code-switching in the Anglo-Saxon period.

1297, 1300, 1301, 1303, 1304, 1306, 1307, 1314, 1319, 1321, 1323, 1325, 1329, 1330, 1335, 1340, 1346, 1347, 1348, 1351, 1353, 1356, 1361

1298, 1302, 1299, 1309, 1308, 1311, 1326, 1332, 1324, 1328, 1362, 1366 1331, 1333, 1341, 1343, 1344, 1345, 1349, 1354, 1357, 1359, 1360, 1364, 1365

*only “Scancta Maria . . .”

1299, 1305, 1309*, 1326*, 1332*

English with English with (English) Latin (4) bounds (0)

1297, 1300, 1301*, 1305, 1362, 1303, 1304, 1307, 1372, 1373, 1314, 1317, 1320, 1374 1321, 1322, 1327, 1329, 1330*, 1335*, 1337, 1338, 1339, 1342, 1346*, 1350, 1352, 1356, 1370

Latin with English and English bounds (24)

* locative PP *locative PP only only

1308*, 1310, 1311, 1312, 1313, 1315, 1316, 1318, 1324, 1331*, 1333*, 1334, 1336, 1341*, 1345*, 1347,2 1349*, 1353*, 1354, 1355, 1357*, 1358, 1363, 1367

Latin with English (24)

1305, 1369, 1372, 1373, 1374,

English with Latin and English bounds (5)

Those cases in which our classiﬁcation differs from that given in the Electronic Sawyer are indicated by bold print for additions to a category and by crossing out for items removed from a speciﬁc group. The numbers in round brackets give the absolute frequency of each type. The four-digit numbers in each column refer to the charter numbering in the Electronic Sawyer. 2 S 1347 is classiﬁed here as Latin with English, since the boundaries are written in a different hand on the dorse, see the Comments for S 1347 in the Electronic Sawyer.

1

Latin with English bounds (8)

Language choice and language mixing in Oswald’s leases1

English (2)

Latin (9)

Table 1.

Appendix

Beyond boundaries 91

References Birch, Walter de Gray 1885–1899 Cartularium Saxonicum. (3 vols. and index) London: Whiting and Co. Brooks, Nicholas (ed.) 1982 Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval Britain. London/New York: Leicester University Press. Brooks, Nicholas and Catherine Cubitt (eds.) 1996 St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Inﬂuence. London/New York: Leicester University Press. Bullock, Barbara E. and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.) 2009 The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bullough, Donald 1996 St Oswald: Monk, bishop and archbishop. In: Brooks and Cubitt (eds.), 1–22. Clanchy, Michael T. 1993 From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307. (2nd ed.) Malden, M.A./Oxford: Blackwell. Darlington, R. R. (ed.) 1968 The Cartulary of Worcester Cathedral Priory (Register I). (Publications Pipe Roll Society, new series 38) London. Earle, John 1888 A Hand-Book to the Land-Charters, and other Saxonic Documents. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gneuss, Helmut 1972 The origin of Standard Old English and Æthelwold’s school at Winchester. Anglo-Saxon England 1: 63–83 (reprinted with addenda in: Helmut Gneuss. 1996. Language and History in Early England. Aldershot: Variorum). Gretsch, Mechthild 1994 The language of the ‘Fonthill Letter’. Anglo-Saxon England 23: 57–102. Harmer, Florence E. (ed.) 1952 Anglo-Saxon Writs. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hart, Cyril Roy 1975 The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Hearne, Thomas (ed.) 1723 Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiæ Wigorniensis. (2 vols.) Oxford. Hooke, Della 1990 Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon Charter-bounds. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.

92 Herbert Schendl

Hooke, Della 1999 Warwickshire Anglo-Saxon Charter Bounds. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. Howlett, David 1997 A polyglot glossary of the twelfth century. In: Gregory Stewart and David A. Trotter (eds.), De Mot en Mot: Aspects of Medieval Linguistics. Essays in Honour of William Rothwell, 81–91. Cardiff: University of Wales Press/ Modern Humanities Research Association. Ingham, Richard 2009 Mixing languages on the Manor. Medium Ævum 78: 80–97. Jenkyns, Joy 1999 Charter bounds. In: Lapidge et al., 97–99. Kelly, Susan 1990 Anglo-Saxon lay society and the written word. In: Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), 36–62. Kemble, John Mitchell 1839–1848 Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici. (6 vols.) London. Ker, Neil Ripley 1948 Hemming’s Cartulary: A description of the two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii. In: Richard William Hunt, William Abel Pantin and Richard William Southern (eds.), Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, 49–75. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Keynes, Simon 1990 Royal government and the written word in late Anglo-Saxon England. In: Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), 226–257. Keynes, Simon 1999 Charters and writs. In: Lapidge et al., 99–100. King, Vanessa 1996 St Oswald’s tenants. In: Brooks and Cubitt (eds.), 100–116. Kitson, Peter 1995 The nature of Old English dialect distributions, mainly as exhibited in charter boundaries: Part I. Vocabulary. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Medieval Dialectology, 43–135. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lapidge, Michael 1999 Oswald. In: Lapidge et al., 348–349. Lapidge, Michael, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg (eds.) 1999 The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell. McKitterick, Rosamond (ed.) 1990 The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Beyond boundaries 93

Milfull, Inge B. 2003 Formen und Inhalte lateinisch-altenglischer Textensembles und Mischtexte: Durham Cathedral B. III. 32 und ‘The Phoenix’. In: Rolf Bergmann (ed.), Volkssprachig-lateinische Mischtexte und Textensembles in der althochdeutschen, altsächsischen und altenglischen Überlieferung, 467–491. Heidelberg: Winter. Mitchell, Bruce 1985 Old English Syntax. (2 vols.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Muysken, Pieter 1995 Code-switching and grammatical theory. In: Lesley Milroy and Pieter Muysken (eds.), One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching, 177–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muysken, Pieter 2000 Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993 Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Poplack, Shana 1980 Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en Espanol: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18: 581–618. Robertson, Agnes J. (ed.) 1956 Anglo-Saxon Charters. (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Romaine, Suzanne 1995 Bilingualism. (2nd ed.) Oxford/Cambridge, M.A.: Blackwell. Sawyer, Peter H. 1968 Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography. London: Ofﬁces of the Royal Historical Society. Revised online edition The Electronic Sawyer, ed. Susan Kelly. Sawyer, Peter H. 1975 Charters of the reform movement: The Worcester archive. In: David Parsons (ed.), Tenth-century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and Regularis Concordia, 84–93, 228. London/Chichester: Phillimore. Schendl, Herbert 2000a Linguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, 77–92. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Schendl, Herbert 2000b Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen

94 Herbert Schendl

(eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2002 Mixed-language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 51–78. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2004 Hec sunt prata to wassingwellan: Aspects of code-switching in Old English charters. Vienna English Working Papers 13(2): 52–68. Schendl, Herbert forthcoming Code-switching in late medieval macaronic sermons. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain: Sources and Analysis. Turnhout: Brepols. Stenton, Frank M. 1955 The Latin Charters of the Anglo-Saxon Period. Oxford: Clarendon. Wareham, Andrew 1996 St Oswald’s family and kin. In: Brooks and Cubitt (eds.), 46–63. Whitelock, Dorothy 1979 English Historical Documents c. 500–1042. (2nd ed.) London/New York: Eyre Methuen and Oxford University Press.

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls Richard Ingham

1. Introduction Language choice in medieval England, especially regarding English and French, has been a subject of sustained debate over the years (Legge 1980; Kibbee 1991; Rothwell 2001), focusing on the respective roles of the two vernaculars. Although in the immediate aftermath of 1066 English speakers and French speakers formed two very distinct populations, by the later twelfth century English and Normans were no longer socio-linguistically demarcated (Short 1980). Following extensive intermarriage, the social elite had generally learned both languages, while descendants of the pre-1066 native population among the literate classes, especially tonsured clerks, administrators, and scribes, had acquired French via the educational system, which used French as a medium language. Amongst the higher social strata, therefore, a situation of bilingualism obtained. How long this lasted is open to debate, but there seems no need to disagree with Rothwell (2001), who argued for the extensive use of French among the higher social groups during the fourteenth century. Written use of French is amply documented for this period, but whether it formed a spoken register in everyday use among bilinguals is much harder to gauge (see Kristol 2000, who argued that French was a written register by that time). Putter (this volume) notes the continued use of French proverbs in Langland, which may perhaps suggest the persistence of an oral culture in that language. In contemporary bilingual communities, it is normal for speakers of two languages to code-switch amongst each other, especially in informal spoken mode, and one must wonder whether the same was the case in later medieval England. Although, of course, no transcripts of conversation from this period exist, one may ﬁnd evidence of code-switching in what Wright (2002) has called mixed-language texts, that is, accounts and other documents, which show widespread use of English lexis in a mainly Latin document. Such

96 Richard Ingham

texts become quite common in the later fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries. In several text types, we even encounter strings of words in three languages, in particular where a French deﬁnite article and an English noun occur in a Latin sentence. These have been interpreted by Ingham (2009) as embedding fragments of code-switching between the two vernaculars within a Latin sentence structure, e.g.: (1)

quod omnes ville inter [. . .] Sechithe brigge et le draghbrigge de Southlenna debent et onerantur reparare pontem del Suthbretache de Southlenna in longitudine trium rodarum scilicet a le draghth usque ad communem viam. ‘that all towns between [. . .] S. Bridge and the drawbridge of South Lynn shall repair and are liable for repairing S. Bridge of South Lynn to the length of three rods, that is, from the drawbridge to the common way.’(Kings Lynn 1325, 1: 58)

Here we see the English words draghbrigge and draghth (both meaning ‘drawbridge’) each preceded by the French deﬁnite article le, in the middle of a Latin text. In the present study, the occurrence and distribution of the French deﬁnite article and its English counterpart in Latin documents are investigated for evidence of the constrained use of code-switching. Language mixing in contemporary languages is far from random (Poplack 1980; MyersScotton 1997), and for past states of language it may also be asked whether code-switching between the two vernaculars took place in ways that testify to constraining principles at work. We shall consider one such constraint that has been proposed in the literature on code-switching: the government principle, which will be investigated in the form of prepositions governing their complement. The issue will be whether, in medieval documents showing language mixing, a switch took place after a preposition. This, according to Muysken (2008: 172), is not often reported in studies of spoken code-switching in the contemporary period. Government is a syntactic relationship between a head constituent such as a verb and the constituent that it governs, its complement. We adhere to the formulation of government adopted in Chomsky (1981: 162–163), according to which governors belong to the syntactic categories Verb, Noun, Adjective and Preposition.1 Government plays a central role in syntactic relations. In a

1. Chomsky’s (1981) characterisation of government also included government by tensed INFL, but this is irrelevant to the concerns of this study.

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

97

language such as Latin, for example, the case form of an object nominal will be determined by the choice of governing verb, and will normally be in the accusative case. The same principle operates where particular prepositions select particular case forms. Traditionally, it is the head noun in a nominal constituent that is supposed to be governed, and other elements modifying the head will take the same case forms under agreement. In recent decades, the nature of nominal government has been recast somewhat in generative syntactic theory. It was proposed by Abney (1987) that the head of a nominal is not the noun, but the determiner (D) so that the nominal is now referred to as a DP (Determiner Phrase). Since pronouns are categorised as Determiner items, this uniﬁes the nature of nominal structure (Radford 1997): a nominal is always a Determiner Phrase, and in the case of a pronoun it is a Determiner Phrase containing only a Determiner element. A full nominal has a Noun Phrase as the complement of the Determiner head. The structure of a nominal such as a man from London is thus: (2)

[ DP D a [ NP man [ PP from London]]]

For present purposes, the signiﬁcance of this revision is that it affects the government relationship: under the Determiner Phrase hypothesis, the head of the constituent that is governed by the preposition to in a sentence such as I spoke to a man from London becomes the determiner a, rather than the noun man.2 The consequence for the analysis of code-switching is that the government principle constraint on code-switching will now prevent code-switching between the preposition and the Determiner head, the head of the governed phrase; as a functional category, Determiner does not govern its complement Noun Phrase, so code-switching will be possible between the Determiner and the Noun head of that Noun Phrase, and a fortiori between the Preposition and the Noun.3

2. In earlier periods, especially in Old English, the presence of a Determiner category could be considered questionable; however, as pointed out by Denison (2006: 289), the development of articles in Middle English provides “the strongest justiﬁcation for a category D”, and it will be assumed that same argument applies to medieval French, in which the distribution of articles was very similar, and in which, as in English by the period to be studied, demonstratives and articles were entirely distinct. 3. Halmari and Regetz (this volume) found that 55% of Prepositional Phrases involving code-switching in their data had the Preposition and the Noun Phrase in

98 Richard Ingham

While some form of the principle of government is a relatively universally acknowledged grammatical notion, its use in code-switching analysis is more debatable. Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986) claimed that a speaker will tend to avoid switching between a governing head and the constituent governed. However, Romaine (1995: 138) argued that this principle is violated in Punjabi-English code-switching, where Punjabi postpositions commonly appear with English nouns that they govern, e.g. family de nal (‘in/with family’). Nevertheless, Halmari and Regetz (this volume) demonstrate that government by a preposition functioned as a constraining principle of code-switching in nominal expressions in the medieval sermons they studied. Switches between Latin and English, such as pro istam mischef ‘on this mischief’, took place after a determining element such as istam, functioning as the head of the Determiner Phrase, and not between the preposition and the determining element. In terms of Minimalist syntax, the features of the case-assigner and the case-marked expression need to be checked in the syntactic derivation of a sentence, and they need to match for language.4 Although the government constraint thus cannot be claimed to be an absolute universal of code-switching (Muysken 1995), it nevertheless seems to operate very commonly in code-switching environments, and may have constituted a principle followed by French-English bilinguals in medieval England. This is the hypothesis that we shall explore in the study, in relation to the uses of prepositions and articles in certain medieval English tax documents, to be discussed in Section 3 below. The assumption will be made that code-switching within an utterance, as a general phenomenon in bilingual discourse, is subject to some constraints, though their precise nature may vary across particular languages and contexts, and that we may ﬁnd indications of

different languages, with no “language carrier” (Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh 1986) associating the language of the Preposition and the Noun Phrase, e.g.: (i) et totus populus passit sauelich inter illos sine drede or disese. ( = example 36 in Halmari and Regetz, this volume) ‘and all the people passed safely between them without fear or distress.’ This outcome is in line with the theoretical position adopted here. 4. Halmari and Regetz (this volume) assume that in code-switched text syntactic elements possess a “language feature”, which requires checking.

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

99

such constraints in the choices made, or avoided, in written documents of the period.5

2. Code-switching in medieval documents Features of code-switching in medieval texts have been studied by Wright (2002), Davidson (2005) and Schendl (1997), in a number of genres. Wright’s work focuses on language choices in late medieval documents such as accounts and argues that the use of abbreviations on Latin words to some extent rendered the language afﬁliation of such items indeterminate, thus making it easier to switch between languages. Davidson (2005) showed that switches from French to Latin in the medieval Law Year Books served the function of comment and clariﬁcation of material reported as spoken in the hearing. The bulk of this type of code-switching occurred between sentences. Schendl (1997) studied how writers of macaronic poems ﬁtted expressions from more than one language into rhyming verse, although this does not testify to ordinary usage among bilingual speakers who were competent in both vernaculars. An essential question as regards the evidential value of mixed-language texts is whether scribes were writing down language use as it ﬁgured in bilingual discourse, or whether they were making arbitrary uses of English words and French words to suit their immediate convenience when drawing up documents.6 One answer is as proposed by Trotter (2007, 2010) that the French deﬁnite article in a Latin text was generally used as a language-switching

5. Much debate is found in the code-switching literature as to the nature of constraints on code-switching, in which a tendency is discernible to assume that if there are languages in which a proposed constraint is not followed, then it is not a genuine constraint. However, it does not seem inadmissible to conclude from empirical observation that a constraint operates in contact scenarios involving particular languages or groups of related languages, whether or not it holds universally. 6. As pointed out by a reviewer, code-switching in written texts could in principle operate differently from code-switching in spoken texts. However, there is no reason to suppose that is so, other than perhaps the larger amount of intersentential code-switching which we might ﬁnd in planned (written) discourse rather than in unplanned (spoken) discourse, on the basis of Davidson’s (2005) study of the Law Year Books.

100 Richard Ingham

marker, serving to indicate that the following lexical item was vernacular, not Latin, e.g.: (3) Item in ferro empto ad ligandum le Stokkys ponderanti xxxv libras and in iron buy PPT to tie GER the stocks weigh PRESPT 35 pounds ‘And for iron bought for tying the stocks, weighing 35 lbs’(1399–1400; Trotter 2010: 57)

Here the word stokkys is argued to be ﬂagged as “vernacular” by the presence of the French article le. As shown by Trotter, and also by Wright (2010), le plus an English noun continued to appear in Latin accounts long after it is plausible to imagine French being used for ordinary spoken purposes in England, so an account in terms of scribal convention rather than bilingual code-switching practice is conceivable. However, Ingham (2009) accepted Trotter’s analysis for ﬁfteenth century occurrences of the phenomenon, but argued that before then the French deﬁnite article behaved as a part of code-switched discourse, functioning as a genuine deﬁnite determiner for the embedded-language noun, as shown by its grammatically restricted distribution. Adopting the matrix language notion common in code-switching analysis (e.g. Myers-Scotton 1997) Ingham argued that, as a grammatical item, le would have featured in the matrix French spoken discourse of medieval land-management professionals, into which English nouns and probably other expressions would have been regularly inserted. For example, le draghth in (1) formed a chunk of French-to-English codeswitching excerpted from matrix language French discourse, and is then inserted into the matrix Latin of the extant written text. Modern multilingual practice indeed offers comparable examples of such multiple language mixing, where a small chunk of code-switched discourse is in turn embedded in a matrix third language, cf. the following utterances spoken by a Moroccan in Francophone Canada: (4) a. Ila bghitu ntlaqaw ghadda je vais être au mall. (Redouane 2005: 1926) ‘If you want us to meet tomorrow I will be at the mall.’ b. Ghadda ghannamshi le mall. (Redouane 2005: 1926) ‘I will go to the mall.’

As Redouane shows, such speakers converse switching between French and Arabic with an admixture of global English words, such as mall, which in

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

101

(4)a occurs in a matrix language French clause. In (4)b, the matrix language of the clause is Arabic, and it contains a piece of embedded French-English code-switching, le mall, in much the same way that in (1) matrix Latin contains pieces of French-English code-switching. So there would seem to be a parallel between modern and medieval usage as regards the embedded codeswitching analysis developed by Ingham (2009). The medieval mixed-language data observed by Trotter (2007), Ingham (2009) and Wright (2010) used data from nominal expressions that were frequently governed by Latin prepositions, e.g. pro le salthous, circa le hockday, ad le ripgos (Ingham 2009: 89–90). No examples were reported in these texts of unambiguously English or French prepositions such as at and en.7 It raises the question of whether code-switching would be observed in such texts if vernacular prepositions were used. If the embedded code-switching approach is correct, and furthermore if a preposition governs a determiner head of a nominal, the government constraint ought to preclude code-switching between vernacular prepositions and determiners. On the other hand, if mixedlanguage documents are not reﬂections of ordinary bilingual language use, code-switching between vernacular preposition and determiners ought to have been freely available. This hypothesis is pursued in the present study as a way of testing the claim that code-switching is being practised in the use of vernacular language items, not scribal convention. Data sources fulﬁlling the criterion that use was made of vernacular prepositions and determiners in reasonable numbers were accordingly sought.

3. The lay subsidy rolls Lusignan (2004) has referred to French in England at this time as “the King’s language”, in the sense that its written use was encouraged by the royal government, and from the later thirteenth century onwards a good deal of central administrative written business began to be conducted in French, but the majority of the time ofﬁcial records, especially those pertaining to central government ﬁnances, continued to be kept in Latin. Among these were records of tax assessment, which included the records of a royal tax periodically imposed on the populace that was known as the lay subsidy. It was collected locally until 1334 (Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook 1998) by subtaxers 7. That is, to the exclusion of in and de, ambiguous between Latin and a vernacular language.

102 Richard Ingham

appointed by the central government ofﬁcials. The subtaxers’ role was to assess the value of the movable property belonging to inhabitants of the various hundreds in the county for which they were responsible. They drew up a list in duplicate, keeping their own copy, and sending the other to the central government ofﬁcials. The lists show the amounts each taxpayer had to pay, calculated on the basis of the value of their movable goods as determined by subtaxers’ visits to their household. The subsidy rolls, therefore embody information produced at local level. As was almost inevitable in a society in which more than one language was used by the educated classes, such documents reﬂected the presence of the vernaculars, in the notation of proper names of ordinary people. Whereas earlier medieval records, such as the Pipe Rolls, had tended to Latinise all personal names, the late thirteenth-century and early fourteenth-century lay subsidy rolls present thousands of entries including items in either of the two vernaculars. They display almost ubiquitous language mixing on a very large scale, in the dozens of rolls that have been preserved since the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The given names were almost always recorded in Latin, normally in abbreviated form. They followed the Latin preposition de ‘from’, since the named individual was the source from whom the tax was due. The surnames, sometimes known as by-names, may appear in Latin, French or English, as in the following examples from Worcestershire villages in the 1280 tax return: (5)

a.

Latin de Galfrido Molendinario (Alvechurch 29) ‘from Wilfrid Miller’ De Simone Venatore (Hertlebury 31) ‘from Simon Hunter’

b.

French de Willielmo le Mareschal (Westmoncote 69) ‘from William Smith’ De Ricardo le Petit (Fladebury 37) ‘From Richard Little’

c.

English De Waltero Horsmon (Herverton 73) De Thoma Blakeberd (Aldington 83)

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

103

French occupational terms, e.g. le Mareschal (‘smith’) were very common as surnames, but English ones such as Horsman, became increasingly numerous in the fourteenth century.8 The lay subsidy rolls, then, often switch out of Latin into the vernaculars for the surnames, so that code-switching took place within the entry, from Latin to French in (5)b, and Latin to English in (5)c. For present purposes the by-names of immediate interest were those containing a vernacular preposition denoting a locative relation, such as French en and English on, as in these examples, both from the same Rutland village in the 1296 subsidy roll: (6)

[de Hugone] en le Wro; [de Juliana] onyehil. (Glaston, Rutland, 1296) ‘[from Hugo] in the corner’ ‘[from Juliana] on the hill’

The lay subsidy rolls thus exemplify the text type referred to by Wright (2002) and Trotter (2010) as “mixed-language documents”. As such, they offer interesting insights into language choice and language use in the later medieval period, in particular as regards the co-existence of English and French. They provide a window on individual language preferences, since the vernacular data they incorporate presumably originated in some form of oral interaction with the people designated, and their choice of language may have been recorded in their by-name. This makes the subsidy rolls potentially interesting as a way of indicating linguistic usage among sections of the English population who otherwise leave no record for posterity of their language use. We shall ﬁrst sketch how the subsidy rolls themselves came to be drawn up, and then return to the question of how the source information may have been obtained.

4. Interpreting the lay subsidy rolls Although we are reasonably well-informed from contemporary sources as to the circumstances in which these texts were created, caution is in order in interpreting the lay subsidy roll data. Just how far the by-name therein reproduces the individual householder’s oral naming of himself or herself to the subtaxer cannot be determined. It is true that the subtaxers were required to visit householders’ habitations in order to assess the value of their movable goods, so they could not simply add names to their records from their own 8. The Rutland roll has relatively few clearly English by-names other than locational expressions, but we ﬁnd Dikeman, Kerkeman, Miccle, etc.

104 Richard Ingham

local knowledge of people, or by asking around. Therefore, when visiting where a taxpayer lived, they presumably elicited his/her name at the same time.9 Now, many of the by-names are in Latin, and few if any lay people would have used a Latin by-name as their own choice. This means that the subtaxers must in these cases at least, such as Molendinarius and Venator in (5)a above, have recorded the by-name in another language than the one used by the householder for self-identiﬁcation. The orthodox assumption among authorities on the linguistic situation in later medieval England has in recent decades been that by the end of the thirteenth century English was more or less everyone’s native tongue, and that French was not used as a vernacular for ordinary communication (Berndt 1972; Kristol 2000). If so, it might be supposed that where the lay subsidy rolls use French by-names, as with the use of Latin, this is some kind of clerical device (Adams 2003: 389), not a reﬂection of the language spoken by or about the householder. But that would be to assume precisely what is at issue. Rothwell (1998), referring speciﬁcally to the lay subsidy rolls studied by Postles (1995), noted that these documents contain numerous personal attribute by-names in French that are likely to have arisen from everyday usage, such as Queordelyon, and Duredent. Rothwell likewise cited by-names from Coventry from roughly the same period, such as Peissable, Grauntpé, Barbedaveral, and Croulebois. Similarly, the thirteenth century rolls studied in the present article have Porteioye (Rutland 1296), Semblepain (Dowgate 1292 London), Passe Avant (Worcester, 63), Le Vaillant (Sussex 1296) and Tyreboys (Worcester, 92). For Rothwell, personal attribute by-names such as these “are not creations of the scribe, but genuine names by which the persons concerned were known in the [locality]” (Rothwell 1998: 161). If so, the subsidy lists have preserved evidence of some vernacular use of French by fairly ordinary individuals. A rather unconvincing alternative would be to suppose that in the local community English versions of these by-names were in use, but the clerk chose to gallicise them.10 There is no 9. It may be that locality surnames such as those in (6) served as a way for the taxation ofﬁcials collecting the payment to identify the places where the individuals in question were to be found, if the householder offered no other by-name. 10. Another possibility is that they were not nicknames of the individuals on the lists, but had been inherited from an earlier generation. If so, and English people went on using an earlier generation’s nicknames one might expect these French nicknames to have continued as surnames for a great deal longer. We do not know if this was the case.

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

105

reason to make this assumption: we know from Richter (1979) that around Hereford in the early fourteenth century, for example, there was a very substantial minority of lay people who responded to a canonisation enquiry and who preferred to give an oral deposition in French rather than in English.11 On the same basis, some of the respondents could very well have used French in providing their names to the subtaxers collecting the lay subsidy, in which case the rolls would record their responses in the form they gave it. Then, if the surname happened to include a preposition and a locality noun, it may be that the form we have, with or without code-switching, reﬂects what they said.

5. Primary sources and methodology Published editions of lay subsidy rolls from the following areas were analysed: Worcestershire 1275, London 1292, Sussex 1296, Rutland 1296/1297, Gloucestershire 1327, Worcestershire 1327, Staffordshire 1327–1332, and Yorkshire 1327. These eight collections, were searched manually or electronically12 for all prepositional phrases headed by unambiguously French or English prepositions that governed a nominal including a deﬁnite article, either English or French, e.g. aboue the towne, a la mere. In these contexts, the following prepositions were identiﬁed, in a variety of spellings: above, by, of, on, up, over, beneath and beyond (English) and en, sur and a (French). Contracted forms such as French al and English atte (both meaning ‘at the’) were disregarded, since as such they offered no opportunity for switching between languages. The requirement that the preposition be indisputably from one language or another was essential in order for the research issue to be pursued.13 Both in and de are ambiguous: English in is a homograph of Latin in and was

11. Short (2010) extrapolates from the proportion of respondents choosing to respond in French that there were approximately a million speakers of French in England in the early fourteenth century. 12. The Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Yorkshire subsidy rolls were read in published editions, the others electronically, using British History Online. 13. The same is true for the determiner items involved, which in practice posed no problem as there are no such ambiguities in the case of English and French deﬁnite articles.

106 Richard Ingham

therefore excluded. For French, the most frequent candidate preposition, de, was likewise ruled out as a homograph of Latin de. By-names taking the form of a prepositional phrase were without exception locational in character, i.e. the noun referred to a place of some kind, in keeping, no doubt, with the function of the by-name from the subtaxers’ point of view of identifying the location where the householder lived. They occurred relatively infrequently by comparison with the thousands of by-names listed in the eight rolls that were analysed, where place-of-origin and occupational types formed the bulk of the entries. Nevertheless they occurred in all of the eight documents, and thus constituted a widespread minority pattern.

6. Results and discussion The eight lay subsidy rolls examined show the expected mixture of languages. The 91 vernacular instances of locality surnames collected from these lay subsidy roll texts almost all respect as requirement that an unambiguously English preposition be followed by the English determiner, and an unambiguously French preposition be followed by the French determiner. The results are tabulated in Table 1: Table 1. Distribution of prepositions and articles, English and French English Prep ⫹ English art

65

English Prep ⫹ French art 1

French Prep ⫹ French art

25

French Prep ⫹ English art

Total

90

0 1

Since in these documents the amount of language mixing in general is so high, the virtually exceptionless character of the results in Table 1 is striking. There is an extremely strong constraint against code-switching between the preposition and the article, and in favour of same-language observance, illustrated in: (7) [de Johanne] beghondthetoun (Gloucs 47, 1327) ‘from John beyond the town’ [de Roberto] under the tre (Cubblesdon, Staffs 1327) (8) [de Galfr’ ] a la fontayne (London, Dowgate ward 1292) ‘from G. at the fountain’

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

107

[de Johanne] en le Wro (Glaston, Rutland 1296) ‘from John in the corner’

English nouns most often designated the location, but whether the article was also English depended on the language of the preposition, e.g.: (9)

[de Rog’o] on the Grene (Longeruge, Staffs 1327) [de Ada] sur le Grene (Talynton Staffs 1332) ‘from Ada on the green’

(10)

[de Rob’to] Bythebrok (Aston and Burveston, Staffs 1332) [de Roberto] a le Brok (Morcott, Rutland 1296) ‘from Robert by the brook’

(11)

[De Luca] Bythewode (Henherst, Sussex 1296) [Gilberto] a la wode (Hulleberrewe, Worcs, 88, c.1275) ‘from William by the wood’

That is, when grene, broc and wode were used with a French preposition they took a French article, while with an English preposition they took an English article. This constraint did not operate between prepositions and nouns: French prepositions such as à and sur commonly appeared with English nouns, e.g.: (12)

Henry a la grene (Uppingham, Rutland 1297) Robert a le Brok (Morcott, Rutland 1297) Ric’o sur le Heth (Hatherdon, Staffs 1332) Joh’e sur le Grene (Horninglowe, Staffs 1327)

Latin prepositions usually took a Latin noun without an intervening vernacular article, e.g.: (13)

Robert super montem (Empingham, Rutland 1297) ‘Robert on the hill’ William ad aquam (Exton, Rutland 1297) ‘William at the water’

This was true only as long as the noun was also Latin, however. If it was English, the French article was used:

108 Richard Ingham (14)

Johe’ super le Croft (Ambrighton et Weston, Staffs 1327) ‘John on the croft (piece of land)’

This is the embedded code-switching pattern seen above in (1), where a French article plus English noun combination constituted an embedded language island in a Latin text. It seems, then, that the language afﬁliation of the preposition and of the noun is decisive. If they both come from the same language, the determiner slot between them must be lexicalised as an item from that language. This principle would be violated by unattested sequences such as the following: (15)

*Super le montem, *super the montem, *on le hill, *sur the mont

Such sequences are not found, with the single exception of [de Ada] on le hul (Staffs, 1327). The above pattern was generally followed when the preposition was uniquely identiﬁable with one language. However, the preposition in appeared commonly with either English or French articles, e.g.: (16)

a.

Geoffrey in þe pit (Normanton, Rutland 1297) Emma in le Pit (Ketton, Rutland 1297)

b. de Thoma in the porte (Worveye Worcs, c. 1275) ‘from Thomas in the gate’ de Henrico in le thurne (Hanley, Worcs, c. 1275) ‘from Henry in the thorn tree’

In appears to be of indeterminate status, so the language of the deﬁnite article following it is not ﬁxed. This is in line with Wright’s (2002) claim that language-ambiguous items offered useful ﬂexibility to the compiler of late medieval documents. Sometimes deﬁnite articles can be found in by-names where there is no preceding preposition, e.g.: (17)

De Phillippo le Welle (Worcs 63) ‘from Philip the well’ de Willielmo le Broc (Gloucester 81) ‘from William the brook’ De Waltero le Tour (Gloucester 53)

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

109

‘from William the tower’ [de Guillelmo] le Longe (Morcott, Rutland 1296) ‘from William the tall’

Here, the article is in French, immediately following the Latin given-name. Sometimes it occurred in English in the same position, e.g.: (18)

[de Guillelmo] þe Longe (Langham, Rutland 1296)

It can be seen that there was no constraint as such against switching into a deﬁnite article in either vernacular after a Latin word. In (17)–(18), the French or English deﬁnite articles are part of constituents postmodifying the preceding noun and are not governed by a preposition or other governor. The parallelism between a French and an English deﬁnite article following a Latin expression indicates additionally that, contrary to Trotter (2010), le did not at this period function as a textual device to mark a code-switch, but as a determiner.14 The data we analysed, then, present a picture of relative freedom in language choice in the by-name sequence, whereby a switch before a deﬁnite article was possible unless it was governed by a preposition. Then, the determiner (though not necessarily the noun) almost always remained in the language of the preposition. These ﬁndings on prepositional phrases add to, and are consistent with, the position reported by Trotter, Wright and Ingham’s research discussed above, in which vernacular prepositions were not reported in mixed-language accounts.

7. Summary and conclusions Our investigation of prepositional phrases used as locational by-names in a sample of the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls has shown an interesting pattern of constrained variation in language choice. This subtype of by-name

14. Indeed, if Trotter’s characterization of le as an indication of a switch were taken literally, we would expect to see le inserted preceding a switch to an English prepositional phrase, but this never occurs. As in the thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury data examined by Ingham (2009), the French deﬁnite article stands only where an article is syntactically and semantically appropriate.

110 Richard Ingham

was recorded in a form sensitive to the language of the preposition. Taking ﬁrst the unambiguous cases, if the preposition was unambiguously Latin, and so was the noun, a vernacular deﬁnite article never appeared. In other words, a preposition + noun combination in Latin was always treated as an uninterruptable unit. If the language status of the preposition was unclear, no such restriction operated: in could be followed either by le or by the determining a vernacular noun. Our main interest in the entries, however, lay in the opportunity they give us to study the use of the vernaculars. Here, the data showed the co-existence of regularity and variability, on a linguistically principled basis. If the preposition was unambiguously English, it was regularly followed by an English deﬁnite article, if French by a French deﬁnite article. Thus the language identity of a preposition constrained the immediately following context, in both vernaculars. This uniform behaviour contrasts strongly with variable choices made at two other points in the name-sequence: after the initial Latinised given name, and after a French deﬁnite article, either English or French items were routinely found. The fact that this differential pattern shows linguistic conditioning is signiﬁcant. Clerks compiling the rolls were clearly not shifting in and out of languages at random. This contrasted with the unconstrained variation found with the preposition in. As its afﬁliation was indeterminate, it was not bound by the constraint affecting prepositions with determinate language membership. This result appears to bear out the ﬁndings of Wright (2002) that scribes exploited indeterminacy in language afﬁliation to give themselves freedom of manoeuvre in choice of wording, since where language afﬁliation was determinate, no such freedom was found. The constrained use of the deﬁnite articles in these texts is comparable to the known code-switching practices of bilingual speakers. The compilers of the documents approached the task of writing them from the perspective of bilinguals, insofar as the constraints they observed were similar in nature to those of a bilingual speaker who practises code-switching in a modern setting. The latter operates with a tacit recognition of what may and what may not be a switch point; so it seems did the lay subsidy roll writers. The possibility that they could observe constraints on code-switching in written mode, as evidenced in these texts, but did not do so in spoken mode seems unlikely, especially given the pervasive orality of medieval literacy (Saenger 1982). A further point that needs to be made is that Latin, as a High Language reserved for formal use, would not have ﬁgured as the matrix language in informal code-switching. Hence the code-switching variability observed after a Latin preposition, as compared with the regularity of code-switching

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

111

avoidance after unambiguously French or English prepositions, is not unexpected. The constrained nature of code-switching observed in the presence of a vernacular preposition comports well with the notion of a government constraint on code-switching as proposed by Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986), to the effect that a switch point should not arise between a governor and a governed category. Speciﬁcally, a Preposition will govern a Determiner Phrase, and therefore an item functioning as Determiner must not switch away from the language of the Preposition. However, a Preposition does not govern the Noun Phrase, so the Noun is not required to belong to the same language as the Preposition. While not quite absolute, the constraint accounts for almost all the vernacular preposition-plus-article data collected, as contrasted with the freedom of code-switching elsewhere in the data. We thus arrive at a characterisation of the vernacular preposition plus article sequences in these texts as embedded language islands, that is, chunks of vernacular languages embedded in the matrix Latin employed for the tax records. The article-plus-noun sequences studied by Ingham (2009), Trotter (2010) and Wright (2010) showed multiple embedding – an English noun embedded within French, as shown by a French deﬁnite article, and then the resultant combination embedded within the matrix Latin. In the by-names in the lay subsidy rolls, the key difference is that vernacular prepositions can be used, and when they are, the article belongs to the same vernacular language as the Preposition: there is no multiple embedding in such cases. The present research has investigated only a small number out of the many tax lists of the medieval period in which surnames in the form of prepositional phrases are recorded. Its ﬁndings should therefore remain provisional until a more comprehensive survey can be undertaken. However, similar patterns were observed across documents from a wide range of geographical locations ranging from Yorkshire to Sussex, and from London to Rutland, and there seems a good chance that the usage of tax ofﬁcials sampled here was not sharply different in other areas. The language choices beyond the text that they seem to reﬂect were apparently those of a community of language users with well-established conventions as regards mixing languages. Scribes, as educated individuals would at that period have known French as well as English: it is thus a fair assumption that as bilinguals they might well have practised code-switching, in a constrained fashion. Whether the same is true of the local residents whose names they were recording must, however, remain a matter for conjecture in the present state of our knowledge.

112 Richard Ingham

References Abney, Steven 1987 The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, M.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Adams, James N. 2003 Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berndt, Rolf 1972 The period of the ﬁnal decline of French in medieval England (14th and early 15th centuries). Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 20: 341–369. British History Online 2010 University of London and History of Parliament Trust: http://www .british-history.ac.uk/. Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Clanchy, Michael T. 1993 From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307. (2nd ed.) Malden, M.A./Oxford: Blackwell. Davidson, Mary Catherine 2005 Discourse features of code-switching in legal reports in late medieval England. In: Janne Skaffari, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik (eds.), Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, 343–351. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Denison, David 2006 Category change and gradience in the determiner system. In: Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the History of English, 279–304. Oxford: Blackwell. Di Sciullo, Anne-Marie, Pieter Muysken and Rajendra Singh 1986 Government and code mixing. Journal of Linguistics 22: 1–24. Ingham, Richard 2009 Mixing languages on the manor. Medium Ævum 78: 80–97. Ingham, Richard (ed.) 2010 The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts. York and Woodbridge: York Medieval Press and Boydell and Brewer. Jurkowski, Maureen, Carrie L. Smith and David Crook 1998 Lay Taxes in England and Wales, 1188–1688. Kew: PRO Publications. Kibbee, Douglas A. 1991 For to Speke Frenche Trewely: The French Language in England, 1000–1600: Its Status, Description and Instruction. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls

113

Kristol, Andreas M. 2000 L’intellectuel ‘anglo-normand’ face à la pluralité des langues: le témoignage implicite du MS Oxford, Magdalen Lat. 188. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 37–52. Legge, Mary Dominica 1980 Anglo-Norman as a spoken language. Anglo-Norman Studies 2: 108–117. Lusignan, Serge 2004 La Langue des Rois au Moyen Age. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Muysken, Pieter 1995 Code switching and grammatical theory. In: Lesley Milroy and Pieter Muysken (eds.), One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching, 177–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muysken, Pieter 2008 Functional Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993 Duelling Languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Poplack, Shana 1980 Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en Espagnol: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18: 581–618. Postles, David 1995 Noms de personnes en langue française dans l’Angleterre du Moyen Âge. Le Moyen Âge 101: 7–21. Radford, Andrew 1997 Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Redouane, Rabia 2005 Linguistic constraints on codeswitching and codemixing of bilingual Moroccan Arabic-French speakers in Canada. In: James Cohen, Kara T. McAlister, Kellie Rolstad and Jeff MacSwan (eds.), ISB4: Proceedings of the 4 th International Symposium on Bilingualism , 1921–1933. Somerville, M.A.: Cascadilla Press. Richter, Michael 1979 Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Hiersemann. Romaine, Suzanne 1995 Bilingualism. (2nd ed.) Oxford/Cambridge, M.A.: Blackwell. Rothwell, William 1998 Arrivals and departures: The adoption of French terminology into Middle English. English Studies 79: 144–165.

114 Richard Ingham

Rothwell, William 2001 English and French in England after 1362. English Studies 82: 539–559. Saenger, Paul 1982 Silent reading: Its impact on late medieval script and society. Viator 13: 367–414. Schendl, Herbert 1997 ‘To London fro Kent/Sunt predia depopulantes’: Code-switching and medieval English macaronic poems. Vienna English Working Papers 6(1): 52–66. Schendl, Herbert 2000 Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Short, Ian 1980 On bilingualism in Anglo-Norman England. Romance Philology 33: 467–479. Short, Ian 2010 L’Anglo-normand au siècle de Chaucer: Un regain de statistiques. In: Claire Kappler and Suzanne Thiolier-Méjean (eds.), Le Plurilinguisme au Moyen Age, 67–77. Paris: L’Harmattan. Trotter, David A. (ed.) 2000 Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Trotter, David 2007 Building bridges in Anglo-Norman: The lexical evidence. Paper given at the symposium on Middle English and Anglo-Norman, University of Central England, February 2007. Trotter, David 2010 Bridging the gap: The (socio)linguistic evidence of some medieval English bridge accounts. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 52–62. Wright, Laura 2000 Bills, accounts, inventories: Everyday trilingual activities in the business world of later medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 149–156. Wright, Laura 2002 Code-intermediate phenomena in medieval mixed-language business texts. Language Sciences 24: 471–489. Wright, Laura 2010 A pilot study on the singular deﬁnite articles le and la in ﬁfteenthcentury London mixed-language business writing. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 130–142.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz1

1. Introduction Medieval England was a highly multilingual society with English, French, Latin, Scandinavian, and Celtic languages used on a regular basis (e.g., Lockwood 1975). Aspects of this multilinguality are directly reﬂected also in macaronic sermons (e.g., Lass 1987: 58–59), where Latin and Middle English are intertwined in intriguing patterns. Several medieval genres evidence this phenomenon, as shown by recent studies, including other chapters in this volume. Pahta (2000, 2004) and Hunt (2000) have studied language mixing in medieval medical texts; Wright (1992, 1994, 2000, this volume) notes the “macaronic structure” of the language in medieval and Early Modern English London business documents; and Crespo and Moskowich (2006) investigate Latin in vernacular scientiﬁc texts. Ingham (this volume) looks at the mixing of English and French in a yet different genre: lay subsidy rolls. Macaronic texts engage in what in today’s literature is often called codeswitching, the mixing of two or more languages, where usually one is the language that provides the frame for the text, the ‘matrix language’, to use Myers-Scotton’s (1993a) term. In the macaronic sermons that we study here, Latin is the matrix language, with English as the ‘embedded language’ (again, Myers-Scotton’s term). Early contributions to the study of macaronic scholarly sermons, the topic of this chapter, have been made by Owst ([1933] 1961, [1926] 1965). More recent studies on the genre of sermons include the seminal work by Wenzel (1994, 2005); this is work that Voigts (1996: 813) accurately refers to as

1. We are grateful for the insightful comments provided by Robert Adams, Brandon Cooper, and D. Gary Miller during the writing of this chapter. We also thank the editors of this volume, an anonymous reviewer, and the series editor for their helpful and extremely valid feedback. However, we take full responsibility for all the remaining faults and shortcomings.

116 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

“magisterial”. Another valuable scholarly contribution to the ﬁeld has recently been made by Horner (2006), who edited and translated a collection of macaronic sermons, many of which are the same on which Wenzel based his earlier analyses (see also Horner 1978, 1989, 1990). Haines (1972, 1975, 1976), Hudson (1988), Iglesias-Rábade (1996), and Johnson (2001) have also contributed important work on bilingual medieval sermons. Schendl’s studies (2000a, 2000b, 2002, forthcoming) on code-switching from linguistic and speciﬁcally syntactic perspectives are important in legitimizing medieval macaronic texts as targets of linguistic research. Our research question is partially the same as that posed by Schendl: we are curious to see whether from the apparent randomness of the language mixing in medieval macaronic sermons any patterns will arise – or not. Siegfried Wenzel (1994: 5) writes: “[T]he term macaronic has been adopted by modern English writers and is being applied to any kind of verse that mixes English and Latin (or French) in different structural forms and for a variety of rhetorical purposes”. Our main interest in this article is in the different structural forms that the mixing of languages in macaronic sermons takes. We will examine the grammatical patterning of Latin and Middle English in the corpus of sermons compiled by Wenzel (1994) and Horner (2006). The goal is to determine whether in the seeming randomness of language choice – see example (1) below – there might be some underlying grammatical patterns that could be revealed by an analysis of the grammatical positions where the mixed English elements appear. We will conﬁrm what others (e.g., Eppler 1994, 1999, 2009; Gardner-Chloros and Edwards 2004; Muysken 2000; Schendl 2000b, forthcoming; Wright, this volume) have proposed before: instead of being universal, the principles governing code-switching patterns are probabilistic; rather than being categorical and predictable, they are tendencies. Our analysis will, however, reveal a frequency hierarchy of switching sites, and the paper’s contribution derives from its being based on a larger text corpus of medieval macaronic sermons than earlier studies. These macaronic sermons can also be seen as a valuable tool in the process of evaluating which of the recently proposed code-switching theories are applicable to explain the patterns of language mixing in this genre, far removed in time from the language on which today’s code-switching theories are based.

2. Late medieval macaronic sermons In his detailed study, Wenzel (1994) includes 43 sermons. These are scholastic sermons, consisting altogether of 224,630 words (Table 1). The main

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

117

language in all of these macaronic sermons is Latin: 88.6 percent (N = 199,090) of all the words are Latin words. However, all sermons include English words, phrases, and/or sentences. Out of the total number of words, the English words comprise 11.4 percent, or 25,540 words altogether (Table 1). These macaronic sermons differ from many other contemporary text types: in contrast to data in some other chapters in this volume (Trotter and Wright), the language assignment into either Latin or English is fairly straightforward. We acknowledge, however, the difﬁculty of unambiguous language assignment in many other texts, and make reference to this difﬁculty within this chapter as well, especially in terms of determining the language of the preposition in, as well as proper names, which can, in principle, “belong” to any language. The fact remains that in the genre of macaronic sermons, the languages are not integrated to the extent they are for instance in business documents (see Wright, this volume). The sermons vary in their length from only 1,594 words (Wenzel’s Sermon O-17) to 17,393 words (Wenzel’s Sermon L-1). The average length of the sermons is 5,224 words. The percentage of English words per Latin sermon varies also quite a bit, from the low 2.3 percent (W-068: 138 English words per 6,088 Latin words) to the high 33.1 percent (Q-20: 1,755 English words per 5,302 Latin words). In his monograph, Wenzel (1994) includes the full texts of only three sermons; Horner, on the other hand, in his 2006 edition and translation, includes the full texts of twenty-three macaronic sermons, which overlap with the ones which Wenzel characterizes as fully macaronic (including switched c elements; see below). Horner, however, has not committed himself to analyzing the proportions of Latin to English in the texts that he has translated and edited; in other words, he does not speciﬁcally mark the switched elements.2

Table 1. The distribution of Latin and English words in Wenzel’s (1994: 347–348) corpus (N = 43 sermons) Latin words English words Total words

199,090 (88.6%) 25,540 (11.4%) 224,630 (100%)

2. This type of work has been undertaken by Holly Johnson at Mississippi State University (Johnson, personal communication, May 2009).

118 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

These macaronic sermons are intriguing, most obviously because they mix two distinct languages. In earlier research on these sermons, scholars focused on their content: theological issues, didacticism, the Lollard controversy, and the literary devices of the sermons (see, e.g., Horner 1989 and Haines 1972). In this chapter, we, however, will focus strictly on the grammatical aspects of the mixing of Latin and Middle English. The two languages are entangled with each other with no apparent grammatical awkwardness – but in patterns that look completely random.3 The excerpt in (1) below is a representative example. The source is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 649, ff. 40v-48 (O-07), as edited by Wenzel (1994: 268–307); see also Horner (2006: 180–209): (1) Domini, specialis vinea patris celestis quam Christus suus ﬁlius nutriuit et diu custodiuit est et per virtutem Spiritus Sancti [blank] ﬁdem and goode beleue est nostrum fertile regnum. Deus de sua misericordia istud seruet, quia recte vt in materiali vinea, si vites sint fertiles and likinge, rami invtiles absciduntur in tempore, alii fertiles ar prouynyd and nurchid furd, \et/ pro fractura þai ar raisid vp et vnita to stif stacus, sic in nostra spirituali vinea, regno scilicet, si vites, idest magni domini spirituales et temporales, erunt fertiles et referent fructus honoris Deo et proﬁcui regno, oportet vt abscidas omnes ram[o]s vnthrifti, ramos superbie et gule, extorcionis et auaricie, et omnes ramos mortalis peccati. Þes nedith most be cutte away si vites debeant vigere, quia vbicumque aliquod istorum crescit, humor gracie qui esset chef fode vitis totaliter destruitur. Virtu[tem] que esset in þe cop and springe huut in ﬂores et fructus attrahunt in terram; cordialem amorem quem homo haberet in Deo suo, contemplacionem, altam deuocionem quam haberet in anima versus ipsum, mortalia peccata dun fro him and beset hit on ﬂeschly lustis, on vanitis and falsnes istius mundi, sic quod sit vitis neuer so plentiuus, be þou neuer so virtuous ne so holi in lyuynge, if it haponn aliquem istorum ramorum crescere super istam, vertit ipsam in lubruscam et sterilescere facit a virtutibus. Ideo in isto sacro tempore abscindite istos execratos ramos. Nunc est tempus scindendi spirituales vites, to puttyn away omnia peccata. Ideo [non solum] gouernors set omnes homines repe[n]te de vestris viciis et corde conteramini et conﬁtemini vestris spiritualibus patribus. Accipite acutum cultellum penitencie in manibus vestris and cuttes of omnes ramos peccati. Non vnus relinquatur. (Wenzel 1994: 270)

3. The sermons carry a striking resemblance to modern-day bilingual e-mail correspondence and other bilingual computer-mediated discourse (e.g., Hinrichs 2006). Schendl (forthcoming) has pointed out the worth of studying the potential similarities between the “functions and patterns of medieval mixed sermons” and “those found in modern multilingual communication”.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

119

‘Sirs, the special vineyard of the heavenly father, which Christ, his son, has nourished and guarded for a long time and through the power of the Holy Spirit, faith and good belief, is our fertile realm – may God in his mercy keep it. For right as in a material vineyard, if the vines are to be fertile and pleasing, useless branches are cut off in time, other fertile ones are propagated and nursed along, and to protect them against breaking, they are raised up and tied to strong staves, so in our spiritual vineyard, that is, in our realm, if the vines – that is, the great lords spiritual and temporal – are to be fertile and bring fruit to the honor of God and the proﬁt of the realm, it is necessary that one cut off all useless branches, the branches of pride and gluttony, of extortion and avarice, and all the branches of deadly sin. These must needs be cut away if the vines are to grow strong, for wherever any of these grow, the sap of grace, which ought to be the chief food of the vine, is totally destroyed. They draw the sap that ought to be in the top and spring forth into blossoms and fruit, to earth. Deadly sins draw the heart’s love that man should have for his God, contemplation, and the high devotion man should have in his soul toward God away from him and set it on carnal pleasures, on the vanities and falseness of this world, so that, be the vine ever so fruitful, be you ever so virtuous or so holy in living, if it happens that any of these branches grows on the vine, it turns it into deadwood and makes it sterile in virtues. Hence, in this holy season, cut off these cursed branches! Now is the time to prune the spiritual vines, to put away all sins. Therefore, not only you governors but all men, repent of your vices, be contrite of heart, and confess to your spiritual fathers. Take the sharp knife of penance into your hands and cut off all branches of sin. Not a single one should be left.’ (Transl. by Wenzel 1994: 271)

The sermon in (1) from MS Bodley 649 carries the title De celo querebant (‘They sought from heaven’). This sermon is slightly longer than the average sermon (6,605 words). It includes 1,225 English words, which means that the percentage of English words in the sermon is 18.5 higher than the average yet not among the highest for English insertions. Wenzel (1994) divides the English elements in the otherwise Latin sermons into three different kinds: a, b, and c elements. This division is illustrated below: Wenzel’s taxonomy (1994: 17, 22): a elements:

glosses, technical terms, translations, sayings, quotations

b elements: English words, phrases, clauses, and paragraphs serving as divisions, subdivisions, or distinctions in the sermon (essential for the rhetorical structure of scholastic sermons)

120 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz c elements: “[T]he writer’s thought moves forward without glossing, quoting, translating, or announcing a coming development, but it does so in a way that switches back and forth between Latin and English in the middle of the sentences. The English material in this passage thus forms syntactically integrated parts of bilingual prose sentences” (1994: 22).

According to Wenzel, it is the use of c elements that makes the sermon macaronic. A elements and b elements, even though also coming from English, have more transparent pragmatic or textual functions; in other words, their presence can be explained more easily because of their rhetorical roles. The mixing of a and b elements in macaronic sermons is not random. It is the c elements whose functions are oblique. They may have been triggered by the linguistic context (e.g., a cognate lexical item) (Clyne 1967, 1987) or may have been caused by a partial lexical or conceptual gap, where a word from English expresses the intended meaning better (e.g., Martin and Virtaranta 1993: 166; Myers-Scotton and Jake 1995). Stylistic considerations (alliteration, rhyme, repetition) may have led to switching, or switching may have been an audience-engaging strategy (for discourse-related motivations behind code-switching, see, e.g., Auer 1995; Gumperz 1982: 69–99; Hatch 1976; Wei 2003, among others). It is also a possibility that the mixing of English c elements into these otherwise Latin-based sermons represents the exact same phenomenon that Myers-Scotton (1993b) in reference to spoken code-switching refers to as “codeswitching as unmarked choice” – when in a bilingual speech community it is the expectation on everyone’s part that both languages will be used within the same speech situation. As Poplack (1980: 614) points out, in some instances of code-switching, there is “no need to require any social motivation”. It is interesting to speculate about the possible reasons behind the language choices in these bilingual sermons, which likely date back to the early part of the ﬁfteenth century. However, our purpose in this article is not to hypothesize or assign any social, psychological, or rhetorical motivations for switching from Latin into English but rather to look at its formal aspects. We will focus on the ﬁrst ten macaronic sermons in Horner (2006), which also include English words other than glosses, translations, or quotations (Wenzel’s a elements) or English elements used for the rhetorical purpose of dividing the sermon into its structural segments (Wenzel’s b elements). In other words, our focus will be on Wenzel’s c elements. These surviving medieval macaronic sermons, which in departing from the monolingual use of Latin reﬂect a more informal register, are valuable

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

121

reﬂections of “actual preaching” (Wenzel 2005: 19). Through them, it may be possible to get closer to an understanding of the spoken language-use patterns of medieval England, where mixing of codes must have been quite common. For similar inferences of societal language mixing, based on the language-mixing patterns in mixed-language texts, see also Ingham’s chapter in this volume.

3. The research hypotheses Because the rhetorical functions of c elements are not obvious, Wenzel has described their grammatical forms. He writes: “all eight traditional word classes are represented” as mixed elements, as well as all syntactic units from single words to entire sentences (Wenzel 1994: 83). Wenzel’s work, however, is mostly descriptive, and beyond description there is less work on the grammatical aspects of how Latin and English combine together in these bilingual texts. The goal of this paper is to continue the work of Herbert Schendl, who in his writings has addressed many of the same research questions that we are examining. In our project, however, we are looking at a larger data sample than previous studies. Analyzing a substantial text corpus of medieval codeswitching, we want to provide support to the widely adopted view among code-switching researchers that code-switching follows probabilistic rather than categorical tendencies (Eppler 1994, 1999, 2009; Gardner-Chloros and Edwards 2004; Muysken 2000; Schendl 2000b, forthcoming). In this article we attempt to uncover and explain the grammatical tendencies, if any, that may determine the distribution of the mixed English elements across the possible syntactic positions. We want to underscore that we do not believe that the modiﬁed Government Constraint (Halmari 1993) based on Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986) accounts for the entire data; however, we will show that government relations (involving both caseassignment and agreement relations) are far from irrelevant to the mixing patterns in medieval sermons. Ingham (this volume) uses the term “government principle”, and his chapter, focusing solely on the relationship between the case-assigning preposition and its determiner phrase (DP) complement, provides similar support for the importance of government relations. The questions that we pose are the following: – does switching happen more often in peripheral syntactic positions, i.e., when no case-assignment or agreement relation is involved; or, conversely, – does switching happen less often in non-peripheral syntactic positions?

122 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

Because these questions are intimately tied with the notions of complement (syntactically non-peripheral) vs. adjunct (syntactically peripheral), our approach takes syntax as its starting point. Hence, instead of a description, which has already been given by Wenzel (1994), we attempt a syntax-based explanation of the distribution of switching according to the syntactic positions of the switched elements.4 Herbert Schendl’s goal in his article titled Syntactic constraints on codeswitching in medieval English texts (Schendl 2000b) is similar. He looked at 478 language switches – half of them in macaronic poems, and half (239) in the macaronic sermon De celo querebant. These were the ﬁrst 239 switches in that sermon, the total number of switches being 379, according to Wenzel’s count (1994: 347). Schendl’s purpose was to see which of the code-switching constraints proposed in the literature work and which do not. Schendl (2000b) focused on the following proposed constraints: Poplack’s (1980) Free Morpheme and Equivalence Constraints; Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh’s (1986) Government Constraint; and Myers-Scotton’s (1993a, 2002) Matrix Language Frame model. Even though we do not necessarily agree with all the details of Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame model or her more recent 4M-model (see, e.g., Myers-Scotton and Jake 2000; Myers-Scotton 2002: 194–195), we will use her concepts of matrix vs. embedded language to refer to Latin vs. Middle English, respectively. This distinction is most relevant for the macaronic sermons in MS Bodley 649 because Latin is almost unambiguously used as a matrix language. Poplack’s (1980, 1981) Free Morpheme Constraint does not apply to most of our data because word-internal switching is fairly rare in macaronic sermons. In our discussion, we will also rely on Backus’ “chunks”-model (see, e.g. Backus 1999). Schendl (2000b) argues that the modern syntactic constraints proposed for code-switching apply to most of his data but not the whole corpus. He notes that none of the constraints covers all the cases, even though Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame model (1993a, 2002) seems to work best. Schendl is especially doubtful of Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh’s (1986) Government Constraint. Archan (2000) has looked at functional and structural aspects of switching, analyzing 70 switches in the sermon Amore langueo (Oxford, Balliol College, MS 149, ff. 31-38v) and 95 switches in an Early Modern English medical lecture, Venter inferior – altogether 165 switches. According to

4. Halmari and Adams (2002) have taken a similar approach to a macaronic text of a different genre: Piers Plowman. See also Archan (2000).

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

123

Archan’s counts, the Government Constraint explains only thirty-ﬁve percent of the switches in her data of macaronic sermons (Archan 2000: 136–137). According to Schendl (2000b: 81), constraints are, at the most, “probabilistic rather than categorical”. We agree with Schendl and will attempt to specify which switching sites are more likely and which are less likely in our corpus of macaronic sermons. Strong support will be provided for the hypothesis expressed earlier by, i.a., Treffers-Daller (1994, 1995), Halmari (1993, 1997), Myers-Scotton (1993a), and Muysken (2000): government relations are not irrelevant in explaining the higher frequency of switching in non-governed, syntactically peripheral positions. In this article, we want to show that, in the default case, the mixed elements in macaronic sermons show a strong tendency to follow patterns. We hypothesize the following: – Switches at the clausal boundary are the most common sites for switching from Latin to English, merely because those switches are not subject to the constraints of intrasentential syntax. – Switches within clauses should show a hierarchy based on the adjunctcomplement distinction for the reason that adjuncts are generally outside intrasentential subcategorization frames or case-assignment and agreement relations (see Bentahila and Davies (1983) for subcategorization; Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986) and Halmari (1993, 1997) for government relations). Figure (1) is a concrete example from Wenzel’s Sermo O-07. It illustrates the gist of the hypothesis that this paper continues to explore. The preposition (P), the head of a maximal projection PP (prepositional phrase), is marked for Latin. It assigns case to its complement, the determiner phrase (DP).5

5. Even though this article is mostly theory-neutral, we have chosen to use the term determiner phrase, according to the principles laid out in Chomsky (1986), for what in traditional treatises of syntax is often referred to as noun phrase. Determiners are non-governing functional heads that have noun phrase complements. The rationale behind the adoption of the term determiner phrase will become clear with our discussion of abstract language-carrying elements in Section 5.2. Ingham’s chapter (this volume) follows the same practice adopting the determiner phrase (DP). Denison (2006) provides well-argued justiﬁcation for the category DP.

124 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

According to Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986), the highest element within this maximal projection needs to be in the same language as the language of the element that assigns case to the maximal projection. This, in lay terms, incorporates the switched elements into the overall ﬂow of language, without allowing the change of language to disrupt this ﬂow. As long as the case is in the same language as the element that assigns this case, other constituents may be switched. Myers-Scotton (1993a, 2002) rephrases this same principle by arguing that system morphemes (such as the determiner and the case morpheme in this example) come from the matrix language (here Latin). Ingham’s chapter (this volume) provides strong and extensive support for this hypothesis, even though he does not formulate his argument in exactly the same way as we do (e.g., in terms of determiners as language-carrying elements). Our proposal for the tendencies of Latin and Middle English mixing will be closest to that of Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986). Within the prepositional phrase ad istam mischef, the Latin preposition ad assigns case to its determiner phrase complement istam mischef. The noun mischef within this determiner phrase can be switched because istam, the highest element within the maximal projection determiner phrase, functions as a Latin language carrier. The language feature of the determiner is projected up to the maximal projection (determiner phrase), marking the whole determiner phrase as Latin, despite the fact that it includes an English head noun mischef within the noun phrase. While the determiner phrase gets its case from the preposition, the noun phrase is not assigned case because determiners do not act as case-assigners. Note that the Latin preposition ad assigns the overt Latin accusative case to istam. The determiner phrase is hence properly case-marked for Latin, and the noun phrase mischef can come from English. The features of the case-assigner and the case should be checked in the derivation, and they need to match for the language feature. Ingham (this volume) arrives at the same prediction, albeit via different theoretical reasoning. According to him, a governing preposition and the head of its complement should be in the same language (Ingham’s government principle); this is why it is important for Ingham to resort to the notion of the determiner phrase: the language of the determiner (the head of the determiner phrase) matches the language of the governing preposition. The noun may be switched, because, according to Ingham, the noun is not governed by the preposition. We, on the other hand, believe that the preposition governs its

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

125

pro amore Dei habeatis oculum ad istam mischef 6 ‘for the love of God set your eye on this mischief’ (Horner 2006: 182–183, Sermo VII.lines 65–66)7

PP P Latin

ad

DP Latin

DET Latin

NP

istam

N' N English mischef

Figure 1. Case-assigning preposition (P) and determiner (DET) as language carrier. The ﬁgure is based on Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh’s (1986: 5, 21–23) model.

entire complement determiner phrase (how else would the noun phrase get case because determiners are not governors?), but the noun itself can come from another language if the determiner phrase includes a language-carrying element to match the language of its governing preposition. We, thus, resort to the notion of language carriers; determiners and case-markers often function as language carriers. Note that when an element does not assign case, the principle speciﬁed here and illustrated by Figure (1) above does not apply. Accordingly, clauses, 6. Poplack (1980, 1981) would not even consider a one-word switch such as mischef a code-switch; she would classify it as a borrowing, outside code-switching constraints. For justiﬁcations for including one-word switches as code-switches, see Halmari (1997, Chapter 7). 7. All subsequent examples come from Horner (2006) and will be cited parenthetically according to sermon and line number.

126 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

adjunct phrases, and appositives should be switched freely. The following switches (2–4), typical for macaronic sermons, illustrate each of these cases of easily switchable elements: (2) A switched clause: suum corpus et anima reuiuebantur and rose fro deth to lyue. (VII.189) ‘his body and soul came back to life and rose from death to life.’ (3) A switched adjunct phrase: nullus habet saporem in her talkinge, nullus conﬁdit in eis. (VII.312) ‘no one takes any pleasure in their talking, no one has conﬁdence in them.’ (4) A switched appositive: sculpsit in illo signum tauri, þe signe of þe bole, articulum sue acerbe passionis (VII.180) ‘he carved in it the sign of Taurus, the sign of the bull, the article of his bitter passion’

The clause in (2) and the phrases in (3–4) are peripheral to intrasentential syntagmatic relations; these are full constituents that can be easily deleted without distorting the grammaticality of the sentence. Hence, we predict that they are easily switchable constituents.

4. Data and methodology Our data from macaronic sermons provides evidence for tight syntagmatic relations between a case-assigner and the case assigned. These case-assignment relations are so tight that switching languages between case-assigner and the case assigned is rare. To show this, and thus complement the work of others interested in the syntax of code-switching, we analyze all the Latin-toEnglish switching sites in ten sermons in Oxford, MS Bodley 649, as edited by Horner (2006: 25–293). In the appendix of his 1994 book, Wenzel gives the counts of total words, English words, and the number of switches for the sermons he has analyzed; these include the ten at the center of this project. The established sigils for these sermons are O-1 through O-10. The data in Table 2 are based on Wenzel’s counts.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

127

Table 2. Distribution of Latin vs. English in Sermons O-1 through O-10, based on Wenzel (1994: 347) Base/Matrix language Latin words English words Total words Switches

Latin N

%

50,226

87.8

6,955

12.2

57,181

100.0

1,928

i

i

Wenzel (1994: 347) reports 1,965 switches for these ten sermons. The difference between Wenzel’s count and ours (thirty-seven switches) represents less than two percent of the overall number of switches and is likely to be the result of slightly different ways of identifying what counts as a separate switch.

As typical for MS Bodley 649, the matrix language (to use Myers-Scotton’s 1993a, 2002 terminology) is Latin. This observation is supported by the fact that the majority of words (87.8 percent) is in Latin. 12.2 percent of the words are in English, and, considering the total number of words (57,181) and the number of switches (1,928), there is a switch into English per every thirty Latin words. The average length of the switches into English is 3.6 words. The following example illustrates typical intrasentential switches in the ten sermons that we have analyzed: (5)

Si docebis aperte plebem tuam, hewe not supra caput tuum, ne capias altas materias que trascendunt ingenium tuum, ne forte þou trippe beside þe truthe. (X.170–172) ‘If you will teach your people publicly, hew not above your head, lest you take on high matters that transcend your understanding, lest perhaps you trip over the truth.’8

Because we believe that the English insertions follow certain grammatical patterns, or, the alternation of Latin and English elements is not random, we 8. In the examples throughout this article, Middle English appears in boldface. The examples come from Horner (2006), and the present-day English translations are mostly his. (The editors have suggested, and we have accepted, a few small changes to Horner’s translations.)

128 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

have focused on identifying the grammatical switching sites for every one of the 1,928 switches that we have identiﬁed. The methodology we used has been the following: both authors independently read the ten sermons from Oxford, MS Bodley 649, O-1 through O-10, in the collection edited and translated by Horner (2006) and identiﬁed the switches from Latin into Middle English. Each of the identiﬁed switches was compared, rare discrepancies were discussed, and, when necessary, Latin dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the Middle English Dictionary were consulted. Most of the inserted English elements are constituents (i.e., sentences, clauses, or phrases); however, we have not quantiﬁed this. Neither have we looked at the “right-side” switch, where a switch from Middle English back into Latin takes place; this is part of a future project.9 Table 3 summarizes our data. The switches fell into nine clear categories, listed here in the order of frequency: adjunct switches, including modiﬁers and appositives (N = 506), switches at clausal boundary (N = 390), switches involving verb phrases (N = 284), switches of conjoined elements starting with a coordinating conjunction (N = 203), switches of subject and object complements (N = 157), those involving direct object complement (N = 142), prepositional objects (N = 125), subjects (N = 87), and indirect objects (N = 3). In addition to these switching sites involving traditional grammatical categories, there were anomalous or miscellaneous switches that did not fall into any of the above classes (e.g., a sole determiner).10 9. The following excerpt shows that switching from English back into Latin tends to happen at major constituent boundaries; switching back in the middle of a constituent is not typical: Si sis sengul man uel mulier, istum ﬂorem oportet te habere, þou most be chast in bodi and soule, in verbo dicto et omni opere. Et si sis in matrimonio, oportet istum eciam habere, oportet vt [. . .] adulterio, and trulich seruare mundiciam ad quam es bound to. (IV.314–317) ‘If you are a single man or woman, you must have this ﬂower, you must be chaste in body and soul, in spoken word and every deed. And if you are married, you must also have this, you must be [free] from adultery, and truly preserve the purity to which you are bound.’ Many switches back into Latin from Middle English seem to take place also at clausal boundaries. This all, however, awaits quantiﬁcation and detailed analysis. 10. The utmost rarity of sole determiner switches provides strong support for Ingham’s thesis in this volume: the language of the determiner matches the language of the preposition.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

129

Table 3. Switching sites in Sermons O-1 through O-10 in Horner (2006) (N = 1,928) Switching site

N

%

Adjuncts (including modiﬁers and appositives)

506

26.2

Clauses

390

20.2

Verb phrases

284

14.7

Coordinating conjunctions

203

10.5

Complements (subj. & obj.)

157

8.1

Direct objects

142

7.4

Objects of preposition

125

6.5

Subjects

87

4.5

Anomalous

17

0.9

Miscellaneous

14

0.7

Indirect objects

3

0.2

1,928

99.9

Total

5. Discussion Table 4 repeats the information from Table 3; however, here we have divided the 1,928 switches into two sections: those that involve peripheral syntactic positions and are “non-problematic” for our hypothesis, and those that involve positions that are not isolated from the core sentence syntax and thus are “potentially problematic”. We believe that switching in the ﬁrst-mentioned syntactic junctures is “easier” because grammatical considerations do not enter the picture. Of the eleven syntactic positions that we list in Table 3, ﬁve (adjuncts, clauses, coordinating conjunctions, subject and object complements, and indirect objects) involve these peripheral syntactic junctures. In addition, most of the miscellaneous switches are syntactically non-problematic. We will ﬁrst discuss the syntactically non-problematic switches (Section 5.1.). In Section 5.2., we will tackle the potentially problematic switches, showing that many of those, with closer scrutiny, are not problematic. The patterning of problematic vs. non-problematic switches will provide some support to the principle (but not all the details) of Di Sciullo, Muysken, and

130 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz Table 4. The distribution of “non-problematic” (N = 1,273) vs. “problematic” (N = 655) switches Switching site

N

Percentage of total switches (N = 1,928)

“Non-problematic” Adjuncts (including modiﬁers and appositives)

506

26.2

Clauses

390

20.2

Coordinating conjunctions

203

10.5

157

8.1

Miscellaneous

14

0.7

Indirect objects

3

0.2

1,273

66.0

Verb phrases

284

14.7

Direct objects

142

7.4

Objects of preposition

125

6.5

Complements (subject & object)

“Potentially problematic”

Subjects

87

4.5

Anomalous

17

0.9

655

34.0

1,928

100.0

All switches

Singh’s (1986) government constraint. However, similarly to Ingham (this volume), we do not propose government as an absolute constraint. Rather we do argue that it is more probable that switching takes place in syntactically peripheral positions. 5.1. Switches in peripheral syntactic positions There are ﬁve categories of switching sites that do not pose a problem for our research hypotheses because these switches coincide with peripheral

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

131

syntactic junctures. These are the following: (1) switches of adjuncts (including adverbial and adjectival modiﬁers plus appositives), (2) switches at the clause boundary, (3) coordinating conjunctions, (4) subject and object complements, and (5) indirect objects. In addition to the switches belonging to these ﬁve categories, there are 14 miscellaneous switches that belong to the group of non-problematic switches as well. We will discuss and illustrate each category below. 5.1.1. Switching of adjuncts As adjunct switches, we include adverbial modiﬁers, adjectival modiﬁers, and appositives. These are all peripheral to the core syntax of the sentence. Adjunct switches constitute the largest category of all the intrasentential (i.e., sentence- or clause-internal) switches in our data.11 There were 506 adjunct switches (26.2 percent of the data) in the ten sermons. The fact that over a quarter of all switches involve adjuncts supports our hypothesis, according to which switching happens frequently in peripheral syntactic positions. Adverbial modiﬁers lie outside syntagmatic relations: they do not get case from an outside case-assigner, nor are they involved in agreement relations with other clausal elements. (6)

confortat ipsam in sikenes (II.61–62) ‘comforts her in illness’

(7)

et omnes partes corporis diu languebant in soroo and sekenes (VII.448–449) ‘and since all parts of the body languished for a long time in sorrow and sickness’

These two examples (6–7) involve prepositional phrases in sikenes and in soroo and sekenes. These prepositional phrases are both headed by the preposition in. Any discussion as to whether the preposition in is Latin or English will lead to unconvincing results (cf. Archan 2000: 92). Ingham (this volume) takes the sensible approach and excludes all switches including prepositions with ambiguous language assignment from his detailed analysis. In an

11. Myers-Scotton (e.g., Myers-Scotton and Jake 2000) refers to these switches as switches within an IP (inﬂectional phrase).

132 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

admittedly circular logic, we have counted the preposition in as Latin when it is followed by a Latin determiner phrase, and as English, if an English determiner phrase follows, as in examples (6–7) above. Because Ingham’s ﬁndings, nevertheless, align with ours, we believe that our results have not been skewed by the inclusion of the preposition in, despite its ambiguous language assignment. In the category of adjuncts we also list adjectival modiﬁers. With adjectival modiﬁers we mean all those phrases that modify a noun head. These include not only adjectives but also prepositional phrases, participials, and relative clauses. Almost one third (N = 158) of adjunct switches involved a modiﬁer of a noun. This ﬁgure accounts for 8.2 percent of all the switches in our data. In (8), the prepositional phrase of ruth and compassioun is a postmodiﬁer for the head noun porta, and in (9), the verb phrase to blowid doun acts as a post-modiﬁer for punctus. (8) intra ciuitatem, tu auare, per portam of ruth and compassioun (II.111–112) ‘enter the city, you greedy one, through the gate of care and compassion’ (9) modicus ventus Wallie est in puncto to blowid doun (IX.70–71) ‘a slight wind from Wales is on the point of blowing it down’

Adjectival modiﬁers are grammatically optional elements, whose language choice does not seem to be determined by the matrix language of the clause. Myers-Scotton (e.g., 1993a) would call these embedded language islands; in our framework, the notion of embedded language island is not needed. Appositives are also included in this category of peripheral switching. Example (10) includes an appositive involving a switch to English: (10)

quomodo iste latro þe fend inferni decepit istum hominem. (IV.494–495) ‘how this thief the ﬁend of hell deceived this man.’

A typical rhetorical feature of code-switching is reiteration (Gumperz 1982). The switched appositives in macaronic sermons follow this rhetorical pattern. Ingham’s (this volume) examples (17) and (18) provide further evidence for the ease of switching for appositive constituents. 5.1.2.

Clausal switches

Clausal switches are the second largest category of switches in our data. 390 switches happen at the clausal boundary. This type of switch was the most

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

133

frequent also in Schendl’s (this volume) data from Old English language mixing. This is one ﬁfth, or 20.2 percent, of the total number of switches. As English clauses, we have deﬁned all such English elements that include an English subject and a predicating verb, including imperative clauses with an English verb and an understood subject. (11) non desidero te perdere, y bowt þe dere and scalt be as welcome as euer þou were. (I.375–376) ‘I do not desire to lose thee; I bought thee dear and thou shall be as welcome as ever thou were.’ (12) Þou most supplante and forsake al maner vices, non ore set corde. (IV.112–113) ‘You must supplant and forsake every kind of vice, not just by word but in the heart.’

Both of the above examples (11–12) include Latin and English elements; the English elements are complete independent clauses. English proverbial expressions, embedded in Latin text on both sides yet completely in English, have also been included in our counts of clausal switches. These are Wenzel’s a elements.12 For example, the following has been counted as a clausal switch, even though it includes a Latin adjunct anglice ‘in English’: (13) Anglice, A my ti werrour and a wy t Kepes his halle armed bri t. Lego (VI.1–4) ‘In English, A mighty warrior and wight Keeps his hall armed bright I read’

12. Note that we do not distinguish between Wenzel’s a, b, and c elements in our counts or our discussion because this classiﬁcation – albeit important for the characterization of the type of sermons – is done mostly on a textual and rhetorical, and not strictly syntactic, basis.

134 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

It is not surprising that the sentence boundary is a common switching site. This site is unconstrained by sentence-internal syntactic dependencies. 5.1.3. Switching of coordinating conjunctions Coordinating conjunctions combine two equal syntactic categories and are outside case-assignment and agreement relations; i.e., they are in that sense peripheral to clausal and phrasal syntax. Switching can, and does, take place frequently either before or after the coordinating conjunction. As conjunction switches, we counted the switches that started with an English coordinating conjunction, most typically and or or. These switches account for 203 (10.5 percent) of all the switches. Examples (14–16) illustrate this: (14) Ista est pulcra arbor and a likinge. (III.18–19) ‘This is a beautiful and pleasing tree.’ (15) Surrexit and went outward of þe chapelle ad mergendum uel ad suspendendum se. (VIII.303–304) ‘He rose and went out of the chapel to drown or hang himself.’ (16) sine timore or desese (V.83) ‘without fear or disease’

5.1.4. Switches of subject and object complements Altogether, 151 subject complements and 6 object complements were switched. Together these switches constituted 8.1 percent of all switches. See examples (17–19). (17)

si parcas, dicent quod es a chut and a nygard. (IV.357–358) ‘if you are sparing, they will say that you are a fool and a niggard.’

(18)

Ideo tu qui diu fuisti prisoner diaboli (VII.506) ‘So, you who for a long time were prisoner of the devil’

These types of switches are not problematic for our framework because they involve copular (or, linking) verbs, which are, contrary to transitive verbs,

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

135

not case-assigners. This phenomenon is explained in the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1986) as follows: the determiner phrase in the subject complement position gets the case from the subject determiner phrase under checking and not under government by the verb. Object complements behave like subject complements; see example (19): (19)

vocabunt te a waster (IV.57) ‘they will call you a waster’

5.1.5. Switching of indirect objects/thematic roles of beneﬁciaries and recipients The thematic role of beneﬁciary or recipient is often not expressed; therefore, indirect object switches appear rarely in the sermons. Our data include only three. This is less than one percent of the total: (20)

imperator omnipotens concessit cartam ﬁdei, libertatis ﬁdem, to alle seke and sory to help hom a demoniaca seruitute (III.72–73) ‘the all-powerful emperor gave a charter of faith, the faith of liberty, to all the sick and sorrowful to help free them from the slavery of the devil’

(21) set plane vt offendisti referes þi gostly fadur. (IV.109) ‘but you must tell your spiritual father plainly as you have offended.’

Even though an indirect object is part of the subcategorization frame of ditransitive verbs, it can still be seen as an independent constituent and can be claimed to behave syntactically in a similar manner to adjuncts. We believe the indirect object is not as “closely connected” to its transitive verb as the direct object, and its syntactic behavior is more like that of an adjunct. 5.1.6. Miscellaneous peripheral switches: Interjections In this ﬁnal category of non-problematic switches, we include those additional, miscellaneous, switches which are outside the core syntagmatic relations. These are mostly interjections. The number of these switches is 14, corresponding to 0.7 percent of all the switches. (22) is an example of an isolated exclamatory noun phrase, used in a manner similar to an interjection:

136 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz (22)

A gret comford! (V.124) ‘A great comfort!’

English elements that are part of a formulaic invocation that does not constitute a clause were counted as miscellaneous switches. See the ﬁrst switch in example (23), a formulaic invocation: (23)

Þe help and þe comfort Domini nostri Christi intercessione sue gloriose matris and of al þe blesset company celi, etc. (IV.2–3) ‘The help and comfort of our Lord Jesus Christ through the intercession of his glorious mother and of all the blessed company of heaven, etc.’

5.2. Switches of syntactically non-peripheral elements and the role of the language carrier In this section, we will discuss the switches in those syntactic positions that may be problematic for our hypothesis. These are switches that appear in syntactically non-peripheral positions, such as the following: (1) verb phrase, which is in syntactic relations with the subject determiner phrase, (2) direct object, which gets its case from the transitive verb, (3) object of preposition, which is assigned case by its prepositional head, and (4) the subject determiner phrase, which gets its nominative case in agreement with the functional elements within the verb phrase.13 Prepositions, transitive verbs, and the verbal inﬂection are intimately involved in case-assignment and agreement relations (see, e.g., Chomsky 1986) and can thus be expected to – if not constrain – at least hinder the ease of switching from one language to another. One third (34 percent, N = 655) of all the switches (N = 1,928) appear in non-peripheral syntactic positions (see second half of Table 4 above, “Potentially problematic” switching sites). The question that we are interested in answering is the following: how many of these potentially problematic switches provide true counter-evidence against our hypothesis, according to which switching in non-peripheral syntactic positions should be rare? Clearly, if every third switch happens in a syntactically non-peripheral position, these switches cannot be called rare. In this section,

13. In this paper, we attempt to be theory-neutral with respect to the various developments of formal syntax (see Chomsky 1986, 1995, 2000).

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

137

Table 5. “Potentially problematic” switches, with and without a language-carrying element (“Lq”), in sermons 1–10 (N = 655). (The percentages are in parentheses.) “Potentially problematic”

w/Lq

(%)

w/o Lq

Verb phrase

38

(13)

246

Direct object

47

(33)

Object of preposition

56

Subject Anomalous Total

(%)

N

(%)

(87)

284

(100)

95

(67)

142

(100)

(45)

69

(55)

125

(100)

47

(54)

40

(46)

87

(100)

0

(0)

17

(100)

17

(100)

188

(29)

467

(71)

655

(100)

we will discuss these switches, showing that, after all, many of them do not pose problems. This is because some of them are incorporated into the Latin syntactic frames within which they appear by means of a Latin element – either a function or a content morpheme. We call these “bridging” elements, following Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh (1986), language carriers (for short, “Lq”). Examples and explanations below in each section will clarify this notion. Of the 34 percent of all the switches that are potentially problematic, Table 5 illustrates the ones that have so-called language-carrying elements and the ones that lack these elements. Of the 655 potentially problematic switches, 188 (29 percent) have language-carrying elements, which “bridge” the switch to the syntax in which this switch is embedded. In other words, these languagecarrying elements license the switch from Latin to English. We propose that the 188 switches in non-peripheral positions which have Latin language-carrying elements are not problems for the hypothesis supported in this article. This leaves us with 467 switches with no languagecarrying elements that remain problematic. In other words, 24 percent of all the switches are not compatible with the hypothesis that we support. We will discuss examples of both types (switches with and without language carriers) in the sections below. 5.2.1. Switching of verb phrases If switching were to happen at the boundary between the subject determiner phrase and the verb phrase, that would be problematic for our hypothesis

138 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

because the verbal inﬂection assigns the nominative case of the subject determiner phrase; therefore, switching between languages across this boundary should be less likely. However, we ﬁnd a great number (284) of switches at this very syntactic boundary. In fact, switching the verb phrase is the third largest category in our data, with 14.7 percent of all the switches happening here. There are altogether 284 switches from Latin into English that involve a verb phrase. Out of these, only 38 (13 percent) adhere to our prediction that the verb phrases include a language-carrying Latin morpheme or morphemes. Examples (24–25) illustrate one possible language carrier, the auxiliary verb potere: (24)

quod vasa possunt come in and vetayl hit in tempore necessitatis (II.11–12) ‘so that ships can come in and supply it in time of need’

(25) Tales seyncrelis student die ac nocte quomodo poterunt vndo proximos suos (V.238–239) ‘Day and night such little saints are eager to see how they can undo their neighbors’

In both of these examples, the auxiliary potere functions as a bridge between the Latin subject determiner phrase and the verb phrase. The Latin inﬂection is realized as afﬁxed to the auxiliary potere, thus “tying” the Latin subject determiner phrase to the verb phrase that includes a Middle English main verb. Because the auxiliary, together with its inﬂectional morphology, is in Latin, it marks the entire verb phrase as Latin. However, most of the verb phrase switches (N = 246, or 13 percent of our entire data) do not follow this pattern. They remain problematic for our hypothesis. (26)

prouincie populus enbataylet hem in tanta multitudine (I.478) ‘the people of the province fought him in such numbers’

(27)

Iste Anthiocus hathe sowdid plures homines (VI.48–49) ‘This Antiochus has enlisted many men’

Example (26) is truly problematic because the critical part of the verb phrase, the main verb enbataylet and the direct object hem come from Middle English even though the entire subject determiner phrase is in Latin. We do not

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

139

want to argue that the adjunct in tanta multitudine is a language carrier in this sentence because, even though it modiﬁes the verb, it is not as tightly connected to it as, for instance, the auxiliary potere in examples (24–25) above. Example (27) is problematic because the main verb sowdid and its auxiliary hathe are in English; therefore, the inﬂection is in English, but the subject determiner phrase, to which this inﬂection assigns nominative case, is in Latin. There is a mismatch between the case and the case assigner. What might be an explanation here is the fact that the head noun within the subject determiner phrase, Anthiocus, is a proper noun. We have followed convention and have not counted proper nouns as belonging unambiguously to any language. Here Anthiocus can trigger the switch from Latin to English because its language assignment is ambiguous (Clyne 1967, 1987, Pahta 2004; see also Archan 2000: 90, as well as Schendl, this volume, and Ingham, this volume). Note that when the entire verb phrase is in English but the subject determiner phrase includes a language-carrying element, there is no problem for our hypothesis. In example (28), the determiner þis functions as an English language carrier. Its language feature percolates up to the maximal projection (subject determiner phrase) and marks the entire determiner phrase English, with the consequence that the language of the subject determiner phrase and the language of the verb phrase match. (28)

Þis rex failith craft (VII.401) ‘This king lacks skill’

5.2.2. Switches of direct object determiner phrases Switches within those determiner phrases that function as direct objects are the next largest category with 142 switches (7.4 percent of all switches) in this syntactic position. These phrases get their case from a Latin transitive verb, and hence the expectation is that this determiner phrase should be marked for Latin to match the case-assigning Latin verb. 47 out of the 142 switches of this kind adhere to this expectation. In example (29), the transitive verb ponunt ‘[they] put’ assigns the accusative case to its object determiner phrase omnem welth. We can see that the case is accusative because the English head noun welth is preceded by the Latin language-carrying determiner in the accusative case: omnem. This Latin determiner omnem marks the entire determiner phrase as Latin, to

140 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

match the Latin case-assigning verb. The head noun welth can then come from English: (29)

Omnem welth ponunt in a wombe ioy (IX.172–173) ‘They put all their wealth into the stomach’s pleasure’

The fact remains, however, that most switches involving direct object determiner phrases do not include a language-carrying element. They are, thus, problems for our argument. Only 47 out of 142 object switches include a language carrier. Twice as many (95) do not have this element that would “tie” the object to its case-assigning verb. The following two examples illustrate this: (30)

Et sicut riuus decurrens per ciuitatem abluit þo vnclennes (II.61) ‘And just as a stream running through the city washes away the ﬁlth’

(31) Et sicut latomus faciendo circulum capit a cumpas (VII.167) ‘And just as a mason when making a circle takes a compass’

In these two examples, there is nothing in the direct objects which would indicate that the case is Latin accusative, despite the fact that the caseassigning verbs abluit and capit are in Latin. However, because by the time of Middle English, object phrases did not show overt English accusative morphology either, in a mixed sentence like this, how would it be possible to determine what the language of the abstract case is? Is it English because the determiner phrase is English, or is it Latin because the transitive verb is Latin? We might venture a proposal, which is difﬁcult to prove, hypothesizing that the case of these direct objects is in fact Latin, albeit abstract (cf. Treffers-Daller 1995). The following example shows that it is possible to have Latin case attached to an English word: (32)

emenda tuum clockum (I.197–198) ‘change your clock’

The Latin transitive verb emenda assigns the Latin accusative case to its direct object. Here, both the determiner tuum (which is clearly what we call a language-carrying element) and the English word clock show overt Latin case, as indicated by the sufﬁx -um. This is evidence that the Latin transitive

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

141

verb does assign Latin case. When we do not see an overt Latin case ending attached to an English direct object, the case is still assigned by the Latin verb. Because by this time English has developed typologically into a language which, instead of overt case, has abstract case (i.e., no case endings), we can with some conﬁdence hypothesize that some English determiner phrases carry abstract Latin case. “Hybrid” words like clockum in our data are extremely rare.14 5.2.3. Switches of prepositional objects Ingham’s chapter in this volume, focusing on 91 prepositional phrases, shows the overwhelming tendency that prepositions and the determiners within prepositional complements come from the same language. We have looked at all prepositional phrases, whether they include determiners or not. In our data, out of the 125 switches involving prepositional objects, 56 contain a language-carrying element, whereas 69 do not. Therefore, more than half of these switches remain problematic from the point of view of our hypothesis, according to which the determiner phrase that is the object of a Latin preposition should include a Latin element. Let us ﬁrst look at the switches that contain these Latin bridging elements: 14. There seems to be an aversion on the part of the Bodley 649 author toward combining Latin sufﬁxes with English roots. This aversion could, in principle, be interpreted as support for Poplack’s (1980, 1981) Free Morpheme Constraint: mixing should not happen within a word. However, while these types of switches (i.e., between a free and a bound morpheme) are rare, they do occur (cf. Wright 1994, 2000). Copious evidence against Poplack’s Free Morpheme Constraint comes from a range of code-switched language pairs. It is beyond the scope of the present paper to hypothesize the reasons for the relative rarity of word-internal switches in macaronic sermons. Let it sufﬁce to point out that language-carrying elements (like the determiner tuum here) often show the overt case and thus make the marking of the case with the bound sufﬁx on the head noun redundant. In Poplack’s framework, clockum would be a “nonce borrowing” because it does not adhere to her Free Morpheme Constraint (according to which there should be no switching between a free and a bound morpheme); in our framework, it is a code-switch just as all the other English words in the sermons, and the -um-ending gets its explanation as a language carrier, together with tuum. (For an argument against the notion of nonce borrowing as an explanatory factor, see, e.g., Halmari 1997: 180–181.)

142 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz (33)

In istum ioyful hil (IV.102) ‘On this joyful hill’

If the preposition in is Latin in example (33) (see discussion above), it assigns Latin case to its complement determiner phrase. The Latin determiner in the determiner phrase istum ioyful hil shows the Latin accusative case sufﬁx. This Latin determiner then licenses the switch of ioyful hil into Middle English. (34)

Þus pro help and saluacion vs omnes, istas vias abiit Iesus (IX.92) ‘Thus for the help and salvation of all of us, by these paths Jesus has gone away’

In example (34), the modiﬁer omnes acts as language-carrying element, tying the Latin preposition pro to the otherwise English complement. The language carrier would not necessarily have to be a determiner. An adjective could also function in this role, as in example (35): (35)

de bridel maligne of mysrule and surfet (II.212–213) ‘from the wicked bridle of misrule and overindulgence’

Here, the adjective maligne, if interpreted to be Latin, would bridge the English object of preposition and the Latin preposition de. While there are no Latin case sufﬁxes visible in (35) indicating the language of the prepositional object, we presume that the Latin language carriers mark the language of the prepositional object as Latin. Examples (34–35) show that both determiners and adjectival modiﬁers can function in the role of a language-carrying element. On the other hand, maligne in example (35) is language-indeterminate; it can be an English adjective as well, as indicated in the Middle English Dictionary, which lists quotations for this adjective in English texts from the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries (Middle English Dictionary online). Words that are ambiguous are typical “triggers” for code-switching (Clyne 1967). Because this word is ambiguous in terms of its language assignment, it can function as a language-carrying element (see also example (40) below).15

15. We owe this insight to Herbert Schendl.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

143

Examples (36–37) below, however, belong to the 55 percent of prepositional objects that do not include language-carrying elements – even ambiguous ones. The phrases drede or disese and lethy bowes show no indication of being Latin, despite the fact that we presume the Latin prepositions sine and ex to assign Latin case to their respective complements. (36)

et totus populus passit sauelich inter illos sine drede or disese. (IV.212–213) ‘and all the people passed safely between them without fear or distress.’

(37) Iste nidus non fuit ex lethy bowes nec modicis ramulis [. . .] (IX.12–13) ‘This nest was made not of leafy boughs or small twigs [. . .]’

We argue, albeit tentatively, that because drede or disese in (36) is an alliterating formulaic expression, including two abstract nouns, a Latin language-carrying element is not needed. (For the switchability of so-called “chunks”, see Backus 1999.) In (37), the English object of preposition lethy bowes is a plural determiner phrase. Abstract nouns and plurals can appear without determiners, which would be overt language carriers (see also Treffers-Daller 1995). Because there is no visible determiner, it is impossible to know whether the language-carrying element is in English or in Latin. We hypothesize that it is in Latin. If there were to be an English determiner within the prepositional object, that would be a blatant counter-example to our argument. We do not ﬁnd these in our data. Ingham’s (this volume) results show the same. Note also that the co-ordinated Latin prepositional object, nec modicis ramulis is similarly dependent from ex and can thus be seen as a language carrier. 5.2.4. Switches of the subject determiner phrase 87 subject determiner phrases include English elements. This translates into 4.5 percent of all the switches. The tensed verb gives the subject determiner phrase its nominative case under what is sometimes referred to as speciﬁerhead agreement (Chomsky 1986). Hence, the subject determiner phrase is expected to be marked for Latin if the tensed verb is in Latin, and is, therefore, expected to show a Latin language carrier if there are English elements within the subject determiner phrase. In our discussion of switched verb phrases above, example (28) illustrated this. Example (38) reﬂects the same phenomenon:

144 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz (38)

tuum clock false vadit (I.195) ‘your clock moves falsely’

The verb vadit is in Latin. The Latin determiner tuum is a language carrier, which bridges the language of the verb and the language of the subject. The head noun clock can, therefore, come from English. The entire subject determiner phrase is marked as Latin for the language feature.16 In example (39) the Latin verb est is matched for the language feature by the Latin elements huius corone, possessive modiﬁer for grond. These elements thus act as language carriers. Note that it is not always the determiner that functions in this role. (39)

Þe grond huius corone est aurum et argentum (VIII.37) ‘The ground of this crown is gold and silver’

(40) seems to provide a similar counter-example as (27) above. It appears that the subject determiner phrase Þe regal Frauncie does not include a Latin language-carrying element to match the Latin tensed verb est: both the determiner Þe and the head noun regal come from English. However, the possessive modiﬁer in this subject phrase is a proper noun Frauncie. As pointed out above, proper nouns are ambiguous for their language feature (see also Ingham, this volume). Frauncie can, in fact, be either English or Latin; if Latin, it functions as a language-carrying element.17 (40)

Þe regal Frauncie nullius est valoris ad hoc. (III.378–379) ‘The royal treasure of France is of no value compared to this.’

(41) provides a genuine counter-example. The entire subject determiner phrase, including the determiner and the head noun, is in English: (41) Tandem a dyuer exuit se vestibus (X.427–428) ‘Finally a diver took off his clothes’

16. Note that the gender of the English word clock is indicated to be the Latin neuter, based possibly (but not necessarily) on the fact that the corresponding Latin word for clock (horologium) is neuter. Gender assignment of code-switched elements is an interesting issue; however, we will not address it further in this paper. 17. We want to thank Herbert Schendl for this observation.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

145

Unless we hypothesize that a dyuer is a “chunk” (Backus 1999), consisting of a determiner and noun, and that, despite the English determiner, the determiner phrase is nevertheless case-marked for “invisible” Latin nominative case, we have a problem. Admittedly, our hypothesis is merely probabilistic. Example (42) is also problematic because the verb languebat is completely in Latin and the subject determiner phrase woful man is completely in English. Note, however, that the switch from the English subject into the Latin verb does not happen directly; a temporal adjunct diu ‘long’ intervenes; the subject and the ﬁnite verb are not adjacent. Distance often facilitates code-switching. In a sense, this adjunct diu “metaphorically” breaks the syntagmatic tie between the subject and the verb, thus maybe facilitating the switch between these intimately intertwined sentence elements. This example also shows instances of two other adjunct phrase constituents, the Latin isto modo and the English sore sikinge and gronynge, alternating with the other-language constituents: (42)

Isto modo woful man diu languebat sore sikinge and gronynge (V.278) ‘In this way woeful man long languished sighing sorely and groaning’

Even though we ﬁnd counter-examples for our hypotheses about (1) the frequent occurrence of syntactically peripheral switching and (2) the role of the language-carrying element as a “bridge” for non-peripheral switching, a holistic look at intrasentential language alternation seems to suggest that switching mostly involves complete constituents. For instance, in example (42) above, the switching sites coincide with major constituent boundaries: Latin adjunct phrase (isto modo) + English subject determiner phrase (woful man) + Latin adjunct phrase (diu) + Latin main verb (languebat) + English adjunct phrase (sore sikinge and gronynge). Note that switches such as *Isto way woful vir, where the English elements would come from adjacent yet separate phrasal constituents, are not attested. We must conclude that the importance of constituent structure is a likely part of the explanation of the patterning between Latin and English elements in macaronic sermons. 5.2.5. Anomalous switches There are 17 switches that we cannot classify as belonging to any of the above categories. These are mostly switches of single prepositions: (43)

ipsum sagittat þoru ignea sagitta luxurie (V.106–107) ‘he shot with the ﬁery arrow of lust’

146 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz (44)

asperius bellis of Peyteris et Hispanie. (I.28–29) ‘ﬁercer than the battles of Poitiers and Spain.’

These switches that involve a sole preposition remain truly inexplicable. In (44), however, the proper name can again be seen as belonging to either language and thus as mediating and facilitating the transition from English of to the unambiguously Latin et.

6. Conclusion It is a well-known fact that by the time the Latin-English macaronic sermons, analyzed by Wenzel and Horner, were written, English had changed from a more inﬂected language into a much more analytic language. The time when the macaronic sermons were written was a time of intense linguistic change, and the intensive language contact that English engaged in after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had an accelerating effect on this process of change which, of course, had already started in Anglo-Saxon England under the inﬂuence of Old Norse. During this time, English gradually developed the so-called abstract case system. Today’s English does not rely on overt case-marking except in some pronoun paradigms, and already by Middle English, most of the Old English inﬂections had disappeared. Latin, on the other hand, relies heavily on overt case-marking. Using case systems as an obvious example of overt differences between languages, Chomsky (2000: 11) argues that “appearance may be misleading, and in fact [. . .] these systems vary much less than appears to be the case from the surface forms”. The bilingual sentences that show Latin case, realized in Latin language-carrying elements in otherwise English phrases in complement positions, are proof that the entire phrase has received a case despite the fact that the English words do not show overt case endings (cf. the theory of Case Filter, Chomsky 1986). The ten macaronic sermons that we have analyzed provide evidence that peripheral syntactic positions (e.g., adjuncts, modiﬁers, subject complements, etc.) are likely places for switching from Latin to English. Another frequent site for switching is the clausal boundary, which, of course, is not regulated by sentence-internal syntagmatic relations. There is an implicational hierarchy (Myers-Scotton 1993a) and a strong tendency according to which English elements are likeliest to appear in otherwise Latin frame sentences: language-switching is far less likely between phrases that are in

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

147

a close syntactic relation (a complement relation) to each other. It turns out that the language-mixing patterns in late medieval macaronic sermons, even though seemingly random, do follow strong grammatical tendencies, not unlike those that apply to present-day spoken bilingual speech. In earlier work (Halmari 1993, 1997), it was argued that grammatical caseassignment relations determine where code-switching is not likely to happen and, should it happen, what morpho-syntactic conditions prevail. Case requirements should be met, and Latin language carriers showing overt Latin case endings are proof that Latin case, indeed, has been assigned to a phrase containing English elements, thus marking the whole phrase as Latin. However, when analyzing real-language data, the picture is not as neat as the theorist would like it to be. We are still confronted with a sizable number of counter-examples – in fact, 24 percent, or 467 out of all the analyzed switches, remain somewhat problematic for our hypothesis. Most of the problems involve verb phrases. Our ﬁnal example (45) illustrates both instances that are explained within our framework and those that are not: (45)

ordinauit ista duo: aquam contricionis to wasche away al ﬁlth peccati and vnclennes, et bri tnes clare confessionis to receyue lumen gracie et bonitatis. (VII.385–387) ‘he established two things: the water of contrition to wash away all ﬁlth of sin and uncleannes, and the brightness of clear confession to receive the light of grace and goodness.’

Example (45) shows switching, characteristic of the ten sermons that we have analyzed. The language moves back and forth between Latin and Middle English. The phrase to wasche away al ﬁlth peccati and vnclennes is a modiﬁer to the noun aquam. Modiﬁers are easily switchable elements, and this switch is not problematic for our proposal. Within this switch, there is a switch back to Latin: the modiﬁer of the English word ﬁlth is the mixed-language modifying phrase peccati and vnclennes. This modifying phrase includes the switch and vnclennes, which involves a coordinating conjunction – not a problem either. The next switch bri tnes is part of a direct object of the transitive verb ordinauit, but the direct object determiner phrase also contains Latin elements, the modiﬁer phrase clare confessionis, which we interpret to be a language carrier. The ﬁnal switch to receyue itself is not a problem, because we interpret to receive as an adjunct; however, the direct object of receyue is completely in Latin: lumen gracie et bonitatis. Even though we have not analyzed switches back to Latin and reserve this for future research, we do

148 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

acknowledge that this does not adhere to the main hypothesis put forth in this article. It may very well be that what is critical in the switching between Latin and English in macaronic sermons is the phrasal constituent boundary. This would perhaps provide a more comprehensive explanation. We remain open to suggestions of how to account for all remaining anomalies. The investigation of the ten sermons conﬁrms the following: the relation between the case-assigner and case-assignee is a strong syntagmatic dependency, which leads to fairly consistent patterns in bilingual sentences. Even though this paper does not provide answers to all questions posed about medieval language switching and even though Middle English insertions in macaronic sermons often seem random, when these switches are analyzed within the framework of principles of syntagmatic dependencies, the randomness – to a very large extent – disappears.

References Archan, Sabine 2000 Functional and structural aspects of code-switching in Middle English and Early Modern English texts. Unpublished M. A. dissertation, University of Vienna. Auer, Peter 1995 The pragmatics of code-switching: A sequential approach. In: Lesley Milroy and Pieter Muysken (eds.), One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching, 115–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Backus, Ad 1999 Evidence for lexical chunks in insertional codeswitching. In: Bernt Brendemoen, Elizabeth Lanza and Else Ryen (eds.), Language Encounters Across Time and Space, 93–109. Oslo: Novus Press. Bentahila, Abdelai and Eirlys E. Davies 1983 The syntax of Arabic-French code-switching. Lingua 59: 301–330. Chomsky, Noam 1986 Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York: Praeger. Chomsky, Noam 1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, M.A.: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Chomsky, Noam 2000 New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

149

Clyne, Michael 1967 Transference and Triggering: Observations on the Language Assimilation of Postwar German-Speaking Migrants in Australia. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Clyne, Michael 1987 Constraints on code-switching: How universal are they? Linguistics 25: 739–764. Crespo, Begoña and Isabel Moskowich 2006 Latin forms in vernacular scientiﬁc writing: Code-switching or borrowing? In: Roderick W. McConchie, Olga Timofeeva, Heli Tissari and Tanja Säily (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 2005 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX), 51–59. Somerville, M.A.: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Denison, David 2006 Category change and gradience in the determiner system. In: Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the History of English, 279–304. Oxford: Blackwell. Di Sciullo, Anne-Marie, Pieter Muysken and Rajendra Singh 1986 Government and code-mixing. Journal of Linguistics 22: 1–24. Eppler, Eva M. 1994 Code-switching in ‘Emigranto’. Vienna English Working Papers 3(2): 75–93. Eppler, Eva M. 1999 Emigranto data: A ‘dependency’ approach to code-mixing. Actas do 1 simposio internacional sobre o bilingüismo. 625–663. http://webs. uvigo.es/ssl/actas1997/ (Accessed September 26, 2010) Eppler, Eva M. 2009 Syntactic variation in German-English code-mixing. In: Stavroula Tsiplakou, Marilena Karyolemou and Pavlos Pavlou (eds.), Language Variation – European Perspectives II: Selected Papers from the 4th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, 91–102. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Gardner-Chloros, Penelope and Malcolm Edwards 2004 Assumptions behind grammatical approaches to code-switching: When the blueprint is a red herring. Transactions of the Philological Society 102(1): 103–129. Gumperz, John J. 1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haines, Roy M. 1972 ‘Wilde wittes and wilfulnes’: John Swetstock’s attack on those ‘poyswunmongeres,’ the Lollards. In: G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (eds.), Popular Belief and Practice: Papers Read at the Ninth Summer Meeting and the Tenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History

150 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

Society, 143–153. (Studies in Church History 8) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haines, Roy M. 1975 Church, society and politics in the early ﬁfteenth century as viewed from an English pulpit. In: Derek Baker (ed.), Church, Society and Politics: Papers Read at the Thirteenth Summer Meeting and the Fourteenth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, 143–157. (Studies in Church History 12) Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Haines, Roy M. 1976 ‘Our Master Mariner, our Sovereign Lord’: A contemporary preacher’s view of King Henry V. Mediaeval Studies 38: 85–96. Halmari, Helena 1993 Structural relations and Finnish-English code switching. Linguistics 31(6): 1043–1068. Halmari, Helena 1997 Government and Codeswitching: Explaining American Finnish. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Halmari, Helena and Robert Adams 2002 On the grammar and rhetoric of language mixing in Piers Plowman. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 103: 33–50. Hatch, Evelyn 1976 Studies in language switching and mixing. In: William Charles McCormack and Stephen A. Wurm (eds.), Language and Man: Anthropological Issues, 201–214. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Hinrichs, Lars 2006 Codeswitching on the Web: English and Jamaican Creole in E-mail Communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Horner, Patrick J. 1978 A sermon on the anniversary of the death of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Traditio 34: 381–401. Horner, Patrick J. 1989 Benedictines and preaching in ﬁfteenth-century England: The evidence of two Bodleian Library manuscripts. Revue Benedictine 99: 313–332. Horner, Patrick J. 1990 ‘The king taught us the lesson’: Benedictine support for Henry V’s suppression of the Lollards. Mediaeval Studies 52: 190–220. Horner, Patrick J. 2006 A Macaronic Sermon Collection from Late Medieval England: Oxford MS Bodley 649. Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

151

Hudson, Anne 1988 The Premature Reformation: Wyclifﬁte Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon. Hunt, Tony 2000 Code-switching in medical texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 131–147. Iglesias-Rábade, Luis 1996 The multi-lingual pulpit in England (1100–1500). Neophilologus 80: 479–492. Johnson, Holly 2001 Preaching the passion: Good Friday sermons in late medieval England. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lass, Roger 1987 The Shape of English: Structure and History. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. Lockwood, William B. 1975 Languages of the British Isles Past and Present. London: André Deutsch. Martin, Maisa and Pertti Virtaranta 1993 Siirtolaisten käsityksiä äidinkielestään ja englannista [Immigrants’ opinions of their mother tongue and English]. In: Pertti Virtaranta, Hannele Jönsson-Korhola, Maisa Martin and Maija Kainulainen (eds.), Amerikansuomi [American Finnish], 159–167. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Middle English Dictionary Online: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/. Muysken, Pieter 2000 Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993a Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993b Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 2002 Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol and Janice L. Jake 1995 Matching lemmas in a bilingual language competence and production model: Evidence from intrasentential code switching. Linguistics 33: 981–1024.

152 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz

Myers-Scotton, Carol and Janice L. Jake 2000 Testing the 4-M model: An introduction. International Journal of Bilingualism 4(1): 1–8. Owst, Gerald R. [1933] Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England: A Neglected Chapter in 1961 the History of English Letters and of the English People. (2nd rev. ed.) Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Owst, Gerald R. [1926] Preaching in Medieval England: An Introduction to Sermon Manu1965 scripts of the Period c. 1350–1450. New York: Russell and Russell. Pahta, Päivi 2000 The multilingual context of Middle English medical writing. ESSE 5 conference, Helsinki, August 2000. Pahta, Päivi 2004 Code-switching in medieval medical writing. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), Medical and Scientiﬁc Writing in Late Medieval English, 73–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poplack, Shana 1980 “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en Español”: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18: 581–618. Poplack, Shana 1981 Syntactic structure and social function of codeswitching. In: Richard P. Duran (ed.), Latino Language and Communicative Behavior, 169–184. Norwood, N. J.: Ablex. Schendl, Herbert 2000a Linguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 77–92. Schendl, Herbert 2000b Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2002 Mixed-language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 51–78. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert forthcoming Code-switching in late medieval macaronic sermons. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain: Sources and Analysis. Turnhout: Brepols.

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649

153

Treffers-Daller, Jeanine 1994 Mixing Two Languages: French-Dutch Contact in a Comparative Perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Treffers-Daller, Jeanine 1995 Codeswitching between a case-assigner and its complement: The case of Turkish-German prepositional phrases. In: Summer School CodeSwitching and Language Contact, 14–17 September 1994, 253–263. Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy. Trotter, David A. (ed.) 2000 Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Voigts, Linda E. 1996 What’s the word? Bilingualism in late-medieval England. Speculum 71: 813–826. Wei, Jennifer M. Y. 2003 Codeswitching in campaigning discourse: The case of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. Language and Linguistics 4(1): 139–165. Wenzel, Siegfried 1994 Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wenzel, Siegfried 2005 Latin Sermon Collections from Later Medieval England: Orthodox Preaching in the Age of Wyclif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Laura 1992 Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380–1480. In: Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 762–770. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1994 Early Modern London business English. In: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English, 449–465. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 2000 Bills, accounts, inventories: Everyday trilingual activities in the business world of later medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 149–156.

Death, taxes and property: Some code-switching evidence from Dover, Southampton, and York David Trotter 1. Introduction Death and taxes, as the morbid repeatedly remind us, are the two things that are unavoidable. To these, property (to be left in a will or inventoried before one’s demise) may be added as part of a depressing triumvirate responsible for helping to keep the legal profession and the world’s papermakers in work. These three aspects of life and death between them generate a fair proportion of medieval and later records. This paper will examine three sources in which they are so recorded: two inventories drawn up by or at the behest of the constables of Dover Castle (1344, in Latin; 1361, in Anglo-French); the Local Port Books of Southampton (1435–1436), recording customs duties paid (and hence, goods imported); and a selection of wills from York (1316–1491), published as Testamenta Eboracensia by the Surtees Society. These are all basically historical sources, and all have been drawn on – albeit a little unevenly – for the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (supplying in total some 450 citations). None has been properly analysed from a code-switching perspective; all (as we shall see) raise some questions about the applicability of such an approach and (by extension) about its overall usefulness in the examination of medieval mixed-language documents. The text type of all three documentary sources is similar, and ranges from the wills from York to the formal accounts of the Southampton Port Books and to the inventories from Dover. The texts have been studied from printed editions, which has some advantages most notably the fact that it becomes possible to examine a more substantial quantity of material. This is important if hypotheses of more general applicability are to be examined. At the same time, the role of editors in interpreting (and above perhaps in standardizing) should not be underestimated: the expansion of manuscript contractions can entail decisions about which language to attribute a word to, and the pragmatic decision to expand all comparable contracted forms to conform to the

156 David Trotter

form written in full (if available) probably introduces a level of homogeneity which is anachronistic. Having said that, at least two of the texts studied, the Dover Castle inventories (Way 1854) and York wills (Raine 1836, 1855, 1864) apparently print abbreviations unexpanded: “j. tuellam de serico cum capit’ de velveto pro patena tenenda” (Way 1854: 382) [‘1 silk napkin with a velvet end-piece for holding the Eucharist platter’]; “meam optimam togam de scarleto cum furrura de funes et j. nigram chimbre furr’ cum calaber” (Raine 1836, 1855, 1864: ii, 99) [‘my best scarlet gown with marten fur and a black upper robe lined with dark squirrel-fur’]. Nevertheless, in what follows, the likelihood of an editorial contribution has to be borne in mind. All the documents on which this study is based are broadly administrative and commercial records from towns which were not only prominent trading centres but also places which were in immediate contact with people from other countries (France and the Low Countries in particular). All three sources have material in the two main matrix languages or languages of record of medieval England (Latin and Anglo-French), and all have a signiﬁcant number of nouns because of the nature of the documents. Since nouns are by far the most likely unit to be affected by the process of code-switching, this (together with the variation in matrix language) makes the sources particularly conducive to an analysis of this sort. A comparison between the documents will attempt to determine whether this is in fact code-switching at all, and whether there is sufﬁcient evidence of motivated intrasentential change from one language to another, or whether these are instead simply mixed-language documents in which the “mixing” means that there is really only one code (and thus no switching). Finally, the study will explore further the hypothesis (explored in a very different context in Trotter 2006a) that the deployment of language-mixing in medieval England is a dynamic process, contributing to and part of language change (as well as promoting and facilitating the shift from one language to another), rather than a static phenomenon. It is an active element in diachronic language movement as well as an index of a change in progress. In this, of course, medieval England is not as unique as is sometimes thought. Comparable documents survive from the Low Countries, northern Germany, Gascony, Switzerland, and so on (Braunmüller and Ferraresi 2003; Coutant 1994; Lüdi 1985; Trotter 1997, 1998, 2003a, 2006b; Vitali 2003; Wright 1997). England has received particular attention (Davidson 2003; Hunt 1991, 2000; Ingham 2006a, 2006b, 2009, this volume; Rothwell 1980, 1999, 2000; Schendl 2000; Trotter 2003b, 2003c, 2006a; Wright 2002, this volume), but there is no immediate reason to assume

Death, taxes and property 157

that the patterns found there are entirely atypical of a Europe-wide pattern. However, both the extensive documentary base, and the amount of modern scholarship, make England an especially rich environment in which to analyse the phenomenon of the mixed-language document. This is all the more valuable if, in fact, it transpires that the situation in England is replicated (mutatis mutandis) elsewhere, so that the results of the analysis of English materials become of use to scholarship concerning other countries too. Self-evidently, documents from the Middle Ages tell us next to nothing about spoken realities. But that is simply an operational hazard when attempting to engage in any historical linguistics, and texts of this type are no better or worse than any others. The risk (which arises in part because of the quantity of research on modern, spoken code-switching practices) lies in conﬂating written and spoken evidence. The latter we lack entirely; the former is abundant. It cannot automatically be assumed that the ﬁndings of code-switching studies of spoken data can be transferred to written texts. A second danger, perhaps more insidious, is to assume, usually implicitly, that what is perceived as separate now (after centuries of standardization and monolingualism) was regarded as separate or indeed separable in the Middle Ages. The fact that for a modern user, French and English are completely distinct, does not mean that in the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth centuries, AngloFrench and Middle English would necessarily have been so regarded by contemporaries. Therefore, a problem (to which I have already alluded) lies in the use of code-switching itself, as a conceptual framework for the analysis of mixed-language documents from the Middle Ages. What we normally understand by the term implies certain things: bilingual speakers or writers, and consciousness of two separate codes. To the extent that code-switching implies not only multilingualism, but an awareness of the boundaries of the two (or more) languages concerned, this may suggest that as an approach to medieval written evidence, this concept has its limitations. Codes can only be switched between, when they are genuinely separate in the mind of the user (Wardhaugh 2010: 98–112). The operation entails “various levels of control over language-processing” (Matras 2009: 105) which, in turn, presupposes that these are conscious, and that there is, precisely, an awareness of “language alternation” (Matras 2009: 105). If the languages are not consciously distinguished, or even if we simply do not have any evidence that they were, then something different is going on. Language-mixing may actually preclude code-switching (and indeed the concept of borrowing) since a genuinely mixed-language document is in effect creating a new language in which the constituent elements are no longer distinct.

158 David Trotter

2. From Latin to not so modern French: Dover Castle (1344/1361) Two short but lexically rich documents from Dover Castle (Way 1854) exemplify the complexities arising from the use of several languages at once in England. It may be wrong to consider this type of document as evidence of “multilingualism” save at the level of the coexistence of different languages in society. These texts do not necessarily demonstrate the reality of individual multilingualism on the part of the writer, usually taken as a prerequisite for code-switching as normally understood. The Dover documents, only seventeen years apart, and in both cases written during a period which did not see major shifts in choice of language use (unlike, say, the 1430s), are inventories of what was in the castle. The ﬁrst is in Latin, the second in Anglo-French. The exact relationship between the two documents is not wholly clear: in places, the 1361 text appears to have made use of its predecessor, at times it is independent, perhaps simply because not all items were found on the premises that had been there in 1344. Different constables were in post and that alone may explain different language choices. Nevertheless, the broad sequence of the texts is the same – the contents of the same building are being described in both and the sequence of rooms whose contents are inventoried is about the same. In both documents, however, there is ample evidence of language-mixing and where the two “versions” coincide in listing the same items, a comparison is possible between the practice of a scribe writing a Latin-matrix document, and his successor writing in Anglo-French. The pattern is by no means simple. In the excerpts below (where the Anglo-French text has been juxtaposed to the Latin “equivalent”) changes of language are in bold and correspondences between the two documents are underlined.1

1. In the texts on pages 159–174, there are further words which are attested in both French and English when these MSS were written, which have not been enboldened here.

Death, taxes and property 159 Example (1):

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

In CAPELLA; j. cupam argenteam deauratam cum j. coopertorio pro corpore Christi imponendo, j. coopertorium de serico, nodat’ ad pendendum ultra dictam cupam, iiij. calices, quorum j. deaurata, ij. turribilia argentea, j. parvum vas ad modum navis ad incensum imponendum, quinque corporalia, xij. baudekyns quorum sex debiles et nullius valoris, ix. pannos de serico veteres et putrefactos, j. casulam, j. tunicam cum almatica (l. dalmatica), j. capam chori de rubeo samito. j. casulam de purpre samito, j. casulam baudekyn. Item, alias sex casulas de cerico cum ij. capis chori de cerico, j. capam Baudekyn, j. tunicam cum almatica (l. dalmatica) de cerico veterem, viij. albas quarum iiij.valde debiles, iiij. amictas, iiij. stolas, iiij. fanons, vij. tuellas pro altar’, ij. manutergia, j. tuellam de serico cum capit’ de velveto pro patena tenenda, ij. missalia, j. portofor’, j. antiphanar’, j. librum contientem legend’ et antiphanar’ sanctorum, ij. gradalia cum troper’, iij. spalteria (l. psalteria) quorum j. debile, ij. tropera, j. processionale debile, j. pheretrum coopertum cum platis argent’ pro reliquiis imponendis, ij. pelvis argenteos, j. auriculare vetus de serico, j. vetus coopertorium ad ponendum super sacrarium, nullius valoris, xxvij. bursas de serico et samito, xix. bursas de panno lineo in dicto feretro et extra, cum reliquiis, j. candelabrum de cupro deaurato, iiij. candelabra de ferro, j. velum quadragesimale debile, j. pixidem argenteum, j. pixidum eburneum, iiij. superpelicia debilia, ij. cistas ad imponenda omnia supradicta, ij. lectoria de ferro, ij. cathedras de ferro, j. perticam de ferro pro cereis superponendis, j. cruciﬁxum de cupro ﬁxum super unum baculum processionale, et ij. scalas. Item, in AULA; quinque tabulas dormientes, j. tabulam vocatam coppebord, iij. tabulas mobiles, ij. longas bordas, iiij. longas formulas, vj. parvas formulas, quinque tristellas, j. skren ante caminum in camera, j. doleum vacuum pro elemosina imponenda, j. barelle pro armaturis rollandis, j. candelabrum ferreum ﬁxum in muro cum quinque ﬂoris ferri, et ij. scalas. Item, in MARESCH’; j. par de boefs, iij. paria fergiarum. Item, in PISTRINA; ij. algeas ad pastum. Item, in BRACINA; ij. fornaces de plumbo. Item, in COQUINA; iiij. dressoria, ij. plumbe ﬁxe in fornace, j. mortarium ﬁxum in terra, j. bukette magnum ferro ligatum pro petris tractandis usque ad turrim. Item, in DOMO FONTIS infra Dungone; j. bukette debile cum j. cathena de ferro, j. magnum cable ad aquam hauriendam. Item, in FABRICA; ij. maides, ij. bicorn’, iij. martellos magnos, iij. martellos parvos, ij. tenaces magnas, quinque tenaces parvas, ij. instrumenta ad ferrum cindendum, iiijor. instrumenta ferrea ad claves inﬁciendos, ij. paria ﬂaborum, j. folour de ferro, j. mola de petra versatilis, pro ferro acuendo, et ij. ligamina de ferro pro j. buketto (Way 1854: 382)

Example (2): DEINS LA EGLISE; j. coupe de coper endorré, j. 60 coverture pur coverer la dit coupe de sai, j. buste de yvore pur le corps nostre seigneur, deinz la dit coupe, iiij. chalicez dont ij. endorrez, ij. ensensers d’argent, j. petit vessel d’argent fait en maner d’un neef, j. esquiler d’argent peisant iiij. d. iiij. corporeaux, vij. 65 baudekyns, j. chesible, ij. aubes, ij. stoles, ij. fanons, ij. copes, ij. tuncles, touz d’un colour, du don’ le Roi, j. chesible q’est apellé Cardokes mantel, j. paire de vestementes de velvet rouge ove raies d’or ov tot l’apparelle, j. autre vestiment de samite rouge dount 70 les parures n’acordeint peint’ a la chesible, ij. amys, j. aube, iiij. surplis, v. tuelles pur l’autier, ij. autres tuelles pour le lavatoe, j. tuelle de say ove chif de velvet ove quele la patene serra tenuz, ij. missales febles, j. grael, j. porthors feble, j. antifoner feble, j. 75 legender, j. antifoner des seinz febles, j. troper, ij. saltiers, j. autre troper, j. fretre coveré de plates d’argent pur les reliques, ij. basyns d’argent, xxv. bourses de say et de samite, xviij. bourses de lienge drape in le dit fertre et dehors ove reliques, j. 80 chaundeler de coper endorré, ij. chaundelers de feer, j. bust d’argent, ij. cofrez pur eins metre les avantditz choses, ij. lectournes de feer, ij. chaiers de feer, j. perche de feer pur les serges surmettre, j. crusiﬁx de coper ﬁchez sur un bastone, ij. escheiles. 85

90 En la SAL; v. tables dormauntz, j. table appellé cupbord, v. tables meofebles dount ij. longes, iiij. longes fourmes, vj. petitez fourmes, v. trestelles, j. 95 skryne pur le chymené, j. tonelle pur les asmoignes einsmettre.

En MERSCHALC’; j. paire de beofs, iiij. paire de 100 Gyves. En la PISTRINE; ij. trowes pur past. En BRACERIE; j. fornays de plome. En la QUISINE; iiij. dressours, ij. plombes ﬁchez, j. fornais gros, j. morter ﬁché en terre. 105 En meson de la FONTAINE; j. boket lié du feer ov j. cheyne et j. cable feble et poruz, j. boket lié de feer, pur pieres traher tanque a tour. En la FORGE; ij. andefeltes de fer, j. andefelte debrusé, j. bikore, iij. slegges, iiij. hameres, vj. paires tanges dount deux 110 grosses, iiij. pensons febles, iij. nailetoules pur clause en icels faire, iij. paire bulghes dount une novell, j. peer moler, ij. fusels de feer a icele, j. paire de wynches as mesme la peer, j. trow de peer pur ewe, j. hurthestaf de feer, j. cottyngyre, j. markyngyre, 115 une cable vels et pour[i]z (Way 1854: 384)

160 David Trotter ‘In the CHAPEL, 1 gilded silver cup with a cover for the giving of the body of Christ, 1 cover of embroidered silk, to hang over the said cup; 4 chalices, 1 of them gilded, 2 silver thuribles, 1 small vase in the form of a ship for sprinkling incense, ﬁve corporals, 12 brocade cloths of which 6 are worn and of no value, 9 lengths of old and rotten silk, 1 chasuble, 1 tunic with a dalmatica, 1 chorister’s cap of red samite, 1 chasuble of purple samite, 1 brocade chasuble. Item, a further 6 silken chasubles with 2 chorister’s caps in silk, 1 brocade cap, 1 tunic with an old silk dalmatica, 8 albs of which 4 are more or less worn out, 4 amicts, 4 stoles, 4 maniples, 7 altarcloths, 2 napkins, 1 silk napkin with a velvet endpiece for holding the Eucharist platter, 2 missals, 1 breviary, 1 antiphonary, 1 book containing legends and antiphonaries of the saints, 1 graduals with tropers, 1 psalters of which one is worn out, 2 tropers, 1 worn-out processional, 1 covered bier with silver plates for carrying relics, 2 silver basins, 1 old silk pillow, 1 old cover to place over the piscina, of no value, 27 silk and samite purses, 19 purses of linen cloth for the said bier and other purposes, with relics, 1 candle-stick of gilded copper, 4 iron candle-sticks, 1 worn-out quadragesimal veil, 1 silver pixis, 1 ivory pixis, 4 worn-out surplices, 2 chests to contain all the above, 2 iron lecterns, 2 iron chairs, 1 iron candleholder, 1 copper cruciﬁx ﬁxed on a processional staff, and 2 ladders. Item, in the HALL: ﬁve standing tables, 1 table called a cupboard, 2 moveable tables, 2 long tables, 4 long benches, 6 small benches, ﬁve trestles, 1 ﬁre-screen for the bedroom, 1 empty barrel for receiving alms, 1 barrel for rolling armour, 1 iron candle-stick ﬁxed to the wall with ﬁve ﬂoral decorations in iron, and 2 ladders. Item, in the STABLE: 1 pair of pillory yokes, 3 pairs of fetters. Item, in the BAKERY: 2 troughs for making dough. Item, in the BREWERY: 2 lead [?] ovens. Item, in the KITCHEN: 4 dressers, 2 lead troughs ﬁxed in the oven, 1 mortar ﬁxed to the ground, 1 large iron-bound bucket for hoisting stones to the tower. Item, in the WELL-HOUSE below the keep: 1 worn-out bucket with an iron chain, 1 heavy cable for raising water. Item, in the FORGE: 2 anvils, 2 pitchforks, 3 big hammers, 3 small hammers, 2 large tongs, ﬁve small tongs, 2 tools for splitting iron, 4 iron tools for making nails, 2 pairs of bellows, 1 iron bellows, 1 rotating mill-stone for sharpening iron, and 2 iron bands for a bucket.’

‘IN THE CHURCH: 1 cup of gilt copper, 1 silk cover to cover the said cup, 1 ivory casket for the body of Our Lord, in the said cup, 4 chalices of which 2 are gilt, 2 silver censers, 1 small silver vessel made in the form of a ship, 1 silver spoon weighing 4 d., 4 corporals, 7 brocade cloths, 1 chasuble, 2 albs, 2 stoles, 2 maniples, 2 copes, 2 tunicles, all of one colour, donated by the King, 1 chasuble called cardok mantle, 1 pair of red velvet vestments with gold stripes and all the apparel, 1 other red samite vestment whose bands did not match the chasuble, 2 amicts, 1 alb, 4 surplices, 5 napkins for the altar, 2 other napkins for the wash-room, 1 silk napkin with a velvet end-piece with which the Eucharist platter will be held, 2 worn-out missals, 1 gradual, 1 worn-out breviary, 1 worn-out antiphonary, 1 legendary, a worn-out saints’ antiphonary, 1 troper, 2 psalters, 1 other troper, 1 bier covered with silver plates for the relics, 2 silver basins, 25 silk and samite purses, 18 linen purses on the said bier and apart from it with relics, 1 gilt copper candle-stick, 2 iron candle-stick, 1 silver box, 2 coffers to put all the aforementioned things in, 2 iron lecterns, 2 iron chairs, 1 iron rod to put the candles up with, 1 copper cruciﬁx on a staff, 2 ladders.

In the HALL: 5 standing tables, 1 table called a cupboard, 5 moveable tables of which 2 are long, 4 long benches, 6 small benches, 5 trestles, 1 screen for the ﬁre-place, 1 barrel for putting alms in.

In the STABLE: 1 pair of pillory yokes, 4 pairs of fetters. In the BAKERY: 2 troughs for dough, 1 lead furnace. In the BREWERY: 1 lead oven. In the KITCHEN: 4 dressers, 2 ﬁxed lead [bowls in the oven], 1 large oven, 1 mortar ﬁxed to the ground. In the WELL-HOUSE: 1 iron-bound bucket with a chain and a worn-out and corroded cable, 1 ironbound bucket for hoisting stones up to the tower. In the FORGE: 2 iron anvils, 1 broken anvil, 1 pitchfork, 3 sledgehammers, 4 hammers, 6 pairs of tongs of which 2 large pairs, 4 worn-out pincers, 3 nail-tools for making nails with them, 4 pairs of leather buckets, of which 1 new; 1 mill-stone, 2 iron spindles for same, 1 pair of winches for the same stone, 1 stone trough for water, 1 iron crowbar, 1 cutting-iron, 1 branding-iron, 1 old, worn-out cable.’

Death, taxes and property 161

Evidently, the correspondences between the two documents are insufﬁcient to allow a comprehensive analysis, but some points do nevertheless emerge. The Latin text of 1344 uses a number of words of indeterminate origin (i.e., if they are by then Middle English, then they nevertheless come ultimately from Anglo-French): bordas (l. 36)2; barelle (l. 39); bukette (l. 48; in l. 56, re-latinized by the appending of a Latin inﬂectional ending to give ablative buketto); cable (l. 49); folour (l. 54). It is not possible to state categorically whether words like these are Middle English or Anglo-French. Baudekyn (ll. 7, 11, 12) exempliﬁes the problem. Of French (Anglo-French) origin, it is attested from c. 1330 in Middle English texts (MED sub baudekin n. [1]).3 Its status in 1344 is thus uncertain. Maides (l. 50) seems to be Middle English (although neither the Oxford English Dictionary nor the Middle English Dictionary substantiates the editor’s contention that by analogy with the Anglo-French text, it means ‘anvils’ (see Way 1854: 382 n.4), as are coppebord (l. 35) and skren (l. 37). The boefs in the bilingual expression j. par de boefs (l. 42) are Anglo-French. Tristellas (l. 37) is an Anglo-French word which has been latinized (like buketto, and probably like Dungone, l. 47, if the ﬁnal-e is construed as a ﬂexional marker rather than as an orthographic addition). Algeas (l. 43), likewise, is an Anglo-French word, auge, which has been retroconverted into Latin instead of a more classical alveus (cf. DMLBS 2 algea, which derives it from Old French). The 1361 Anglo-French text operates, inevitably, rather differently, with recourse to Middle English as a language from which terms are drawn. This is most striking in the closing section (ll. 104–114), where the tools involved are all listed with Middle English names. Insofar as they are mentioned at all in the 1344 Latin text, most of these implements are described in Latin. But in the section devoted to the stables (in Maresch’, l. 41; en Merschalc’, l. 96) the iij. paria fergiarum (l. 42) are rendered as iiij. pair de Gyves

2. Of which the Oxford English Dictionary (board n.) says: “A word or agglomeration of words of complicated history, representing two originally distinct ns., already blended in OE., and subsequently reinforced in ME. by French uses of one of them, and possibly by Scandinavian uses of one or both. [. . .] In the ME. period, and subsequently, the French use of the word has in return greatly inﬂuenced the Eng., so that certain modern uses and phrases of board are really from French. It is also possible that the development in ME. was in some points [. . .] due to Scandinavian uses”. 3. Medieval Latin baldekinus (DMLBS s.v.) is formed on the Anglo-Norman/French word.

162 David Trotter

(ll. 98–99), and ij. algeas ad pastum (ll. 42–43) emerge as ij. trowes pur past (l. 99). Where the Latin uses latinized Anglo-French ( fergiarum, algeas), the Anglo-French uses Middle English ( gyves,4 trowes). This is consonant with the sociolinguistic relationship between the languages, where Latin self-evidently has the highest status, and Middle English the lowest, so that a document in Latin will borrow from Anglo-French, and an Anglo-French version will thus default to Middle English for lexical acquisitions. On occasions, apparently, Middle English supplies a noun for both the Latin and Anglo-French versions: j. skren ante caminum in camera (ll. 37–38) seems to have been transposed into j. skryne pur le chymené (ll. 92–93), the two versions both deploying a Middle English term for the main item, the screen. Elsewhere, the Latin text’s monolingual candelabrum de cupro deaurato (l. 27) comes out in the Anglo-French version as chaundeler de coper endorré (l. 78). Both documents, ﬁnally, reveal a certain awareness of linguistic difference: j. tabulam vocatam coppebord (ll. 34–35) is directly rendered by j. table appellé cupbord (ll. 90–91). Why this particular term should (in both documents) have prompted the writers to gloss it in this way, is unclear. In both versions of the inventory, the impression is that words from an apparently different language are unproblematic and hence go unremarked, and remain unmarked. The most likely conclusion is that the writers of both texts had lexical items from two or more languages at their disposal (which is not the same as saying that the writers were in the accepted sense of the words bilingual or trilingual). The incorporation into the Anglo-French text of signiﬁcant amounts of Middle English is indicative of the extent to which by the mid-fourteenth century, the two languages had effectively started to overlap and merge. This is language-mixing, not (or not necessarily) multilingualism. Bilinguals are an obvious conduit for lexical transfer (cf. Vidos 1960, 1965), but it is not essential to be a bilingual in order to use words from another language. And this does raise the question of whether, if there is no conscious awareness of dealing with genuinely separate languages, we can really talk about code-switching between the vernaculars at all. Of course, if Latin (in all cases a learnt rather than a mother tongue) is the matrix language, there must have been an awareness that it was different and separate.

4. The only instance of this word in Godefroy (5: 283b) is from an Anglo-Norman source, the Chroniques de London, Dictionnaire Étymologique de l’Ancien Français’s, ChronLondA (as usual, Godefroy does not indicate that the text is insular).

Death, taxes and property 163

3. Matters alien: Local Port Books of Southampton (1435–1436) Southampton, as a safe deep-water port, was a major trade destination, particularly popular amongst masters of larger ships, and particularly frequented by Italian (especially) Genoese ships. It carried a signiﬁcant percentage of the woad, wool, and cloth trade of medieval England (Fryde 1974, 1976). The Port Books (Foster 1963), which record some at least of this trafﬁc, through the details which they provide of customs and other charges levied on merchandise are a mine of information for historians and lexicographers alike (Rothwell 1999). There are two parts to the book: that for locals, the Common Book, and that for the “aliens”, who are, in this context, Italians. From internal evidence, the editor identiﬁes the author of virtually the whole book as Robert Florys, the bailiff and collector of customs (Foster 1963: x). Florys (whose name is variously spelt in different historical sources as Florys, Florise, Florice, possibly Florans) left a will in 1443 in which he mentions a kinsman, Thomas Florys of Guernsey (Chapman 1912–1915, 2: 137).5 Nothing in any of the known records concerning him indicates that he was himself of Italian extraction. The form of the customs account book is exempliﬁed by this entry for 1 December 1435 (Foster 1963: 86): (3) Issant le premer jour de Decembre par j carrake, patron Jacob Morrisse: Le dit patron

ii draps di.

Cust vd.

Baptiste Flisco

vi barel d’estein en verge

Cust. iis. xd.

poisant iii Ml iiii C

Pont. vid.

i balet cont. viii draps

Cust. xvid. Pont. ob.

i fouther de ploumb

Cust. vid. Pont. iid.

5. ‘Item do et lego Thome Florice, cognato meo, ﬁlio Thome Florice de Guernesey duo tenementa mea cum omnibus suis pertinenciis’ (Foster 1963: x–xi) [‘Item, I give and bequeath to Thomas Florys, my kinsman, son of Thomas Florys of Guernsey two of my tenements with everything pertaining thereto’]. Florys appears as a witness in a number of documents in the Black Book of Southampton, where his will is also published. If it is the same person, he is cited (as Robert Floryse) as a coroner in a murder case in Southampton in the Patent Rolls in 1438 (CPR 16 Hen. VI, Henry VI, 3: 171).

164 David Trotter Baptiste de Flisco

ix rondel xiiii terciens xvii bout de resins de courance,

Cran liiiis. iid.

poisant net xxvi Ml val. CC li. xiiis. iiiid. Christofre Querin

di. barel de clou a lathe, val.

Cust. iiiid.

xxvis. viiid. Jacob Lombard

iii barel de vin

Cust. id. ob.

Thomas Palyagno

i bout de vin

Cust. cran. iiiid.

Entre les galees de Venisse Cornelyus Petis

i chesiple de bourd d’alixandre,

Cust. iiid.

val. xxs. George de Hasche

pur habredach, val. iii li.

Cust. ixd.

Algret de Veroce

pur habredach, val. iii li.

Cust. xd.

& son compaygnons

vis. viiid.

Alixandre Dudo &

pur habredach, val. v li.

Cust. xvd.

Ml dos de grey, val. viii li.

Cust. iis.

& son compaignons

son conpaignons John Medicus

‘Outgoing 1st December in a carrack, skipper Jacob Morrisse: Said skipper Baptiste Flisco

2½ lengths of cloth

customs due 5d.

6 barrels of tin in bars

customs due 2s. 10d.

weight 3,400 [lbs.?]

pontage 6d.

1 bale containing 8 lengths of cloth

customs due 16d. pontage ½d

1 fother of lead

customs due 6d., pontage 2d.

Baptiste de Flisco

9 roundels 14 thirds of a tun 17 butts of raisins from Corinth, net weight 26,000 [lbs.?], value £200 13s.4d.

cranage 54s. 2d.

Christofre Querin

½ barrel of lath-nails, value 26s. 8d.

customs due 4d.

Jacob Lombard

3 barrels of wine

customs due 1½d.

Thomas Palyagno

1 butt of wine

customs due & cranage 4d.

Incoming: galleys from Venice Cornelyus Petis

1 chasuble of striped Egyptian silk, value 20s.

customs due 3d.

Death, taxes and property 165 George de Hasche and his companion

for haberdashery, value £3

customs due 9d.

for haberdashery, value £3 6s. 8d.

customs due 10d.

and his companion

for haberdashery, value £5

customs due 15d.

John Medicus

1000 back skins of grey squirrels, value £8

customs due 2s.’

Algret de Veroce and his companion Alixandre Dudo

The matrix language of the document is thus Anglo-French, with Middle English elements:6 for measures ( fouther, a unit of weight corresponding approximately to a modern ton) and for goods (habredach ‘haberdashery’, grey ‘grey [squirrel] fur’). This arrangement is common enough and not surprising – were it not for the fact that the goods subject to customs, pontage and cranage were on foreign ships with evidently foreign masters. This implies, at some stage, some familiarity of the various parties with each other’s systems and possibly languages. Elsewhere in the records (4 January 1436), the process is seemingly modiﬁed, with the introduction of Italianisms into the Anglo-French text, in an entry for a Venetian carrack (Foster 1963: 91):

(4) Entre le iiii jour de Janver i carrake de Venisse, patron Andree Masse: Baptiste Flisco

ii bales cont. xxii draps

Ancrage iiis. iiiid.

Cust. iiis. viiid. Pont. iid.

Andree Spinol

iii balet cont. xx draps

Cust. iiis. iiiid.

Christofre Catan

ix pece de plumb cont. ii fouthre Cust. xiid. Pont. iiiid. ob.

Pont. id. ob.

iii barel d’estein en verge

Cust. xviiid.

poisant xviii C

Pont. iiid.

xxvii bales i balet cont.

Cust iii li. iis. iiiid.

iiiClxxiiii draps

6. There is one isolated complete sentence in Middle English at the foot of p. 1, albeit in another hand (Foster 1963: xvi).

166 David Trotter iii fangot cont. ii draps vi

Andree Pisen

Cust. iiiid. ob.

verg.

Pont. iis. iiiid.

i barel de ginzibre vert,

Cust. ixd.

poisant l li., val. iii li. i barel de triacle, poisant

Cust. iiiid.

C. val. xxvis. viiid. i barel de cotegnate, poisant

Custom iid.

C., val. xiiis. iiiid. ‘Incoming: 4th January, a carrack from Venice, skipper Andree Masse Baptiste Flisco

anchorage dues 3s. 3d. 2 bales containing 22 lengths of cloth

customs due 3s. 8d., pontage 2d.

Andre Spinol

3 bales containing 20 lengths of cloth

customs due 3s. 4d., pontage1½d.

Christofre Catan

9 pieces of lead, containing 2 fothers

customs due 12d., pontage 4½d.

3 barrels of tin in bars, weight 18 hundred lbs.

customs due 18d., pontage 3d.

27 bales and one small bale containing 374 lengths of cloth

customs due £3 2s. 4d.

3 bundles containing 2 lengths of cloth, 6 yards Andree Pisen

customs due 4½d., pontage 2s. 4d.

1 barrel of green ginger, weight 1 lb., value £3

customs due 9d.

1 barrel of treacle, weight 100 lbs., value 26s. 8d.

customs due 4d.

1 barrel of quince marmalade, weight 100 lbs., value 13s. 4d.

customs due 2d.’

Side-by-side with the Middle English words fouthre and (probably) barel and the unusual (because unabbreviated) custom, are two Italian words, iii fangot cont. ii draps vi verg. and then i barel de cotegnate, poisant C, val.

Death, taxes and property 167

xiiis. iiid. (Foster 1963: 90). Fangot is at the very least an Italianized version of fagot ( fangotto) and cotegnate ‘quince marmelade’ is certainly Italian. The Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (22: 1606a) has the Occitan form codonat from fourteenth-century Provence, and coudoignac from 1393, cotignac from 1550 in French, but the form cotegnate points ﬁrmly towards Italian (TLIO cotognato). Indeed, curiously enough, the only attestations of it are in a set of Italian merchants’ accounts from England, the Gallerani records (cf. Trotter, forthcoming a). Cotogna (the fruit) is better documented, from Bonvesin onwards (TLIO, s.v.). The Italianism sporta ‘basket’ appears on several occasions as sport in both the Common and Alien Book (cf. Foster 1963: 133, glossary, s.v.), as does the Italian measure sarma, in the form of sarme, surprisingly perhaps in the Common Book: iiii sarmes de cendres, val. xxs. (Foster 1963: 48; cf. xii). Sporta is relatively straightforward. The Common Book occurrence looks like a one-off: the “James” of Southampton carries (inter alia) i sport de suchre pot [‘a sport of inferior sugar’] (Foster 1963: 66). Most of the occurrences of sport, a derivative of Latin SPoˇRTA, are in lists of goods measured in this way, on Italian ships, in the Alien Book (Foster 1963: 94, 96, 98, 106, 108). The word does appear to be an Italianism, deﬁned by Battaglia (s.v.) as a “misura di capacità, in partic. per merci trasportati per mare” [‘volume measure, particularly used of goods transported by sea’].7 That it should feature in records of Italian cargoes is not surprising. There is also a related problem of sportin: viii sportin de resin [‘8 sportins of raisins’] (Foster 1963: 108).8 The word occurs twice in a list within the Alien Book but the exact provenance of the ship is not clear from the information provided. It looks like a diminutive of sport but the expected form *sportino seems largely absent in (or unattested in documents thus far examined in) Italian. Sardinian has isportinu (Wagner 1952: 53) but the likelihood that there should be reﬂexes in Sardinian and in an Anglo-French customs account in Southampton (but nowhere else) does not seem high. Elsewhere in

7. Dizionario etimologico italiano notes: “panromanze occidentale, ma non francese” [pan-Romance, in the west, but not French], a comment modiﬁed a little by the Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (12: 213a): “Das frühe vorkommen in texten wie Marco Polo und Martino da Canale könnte auch auf eine entlehnung aus dem it. schliessen lassen” [‘The early appearance in texts such as Marco Polo and Martino da Canale could point to a borrowing from It[alian]’]. 8. And also in Studer (1913: 49): iiij sport ij sportin de almand.

168 David Trotter

Romance, Catalan esportí is attested from the mid-ﬁfteenth century onwards (DCVB s.v.).9 In the absence of a plausible Italian cognate, should we assume that the word, in the Southampton accounts, is of Catalan provenance? Or might it be more reasonable to conclude that there was a not fully documented (because substantially oral) Mediterranean trading language which drew on the lexis of all available languages, so that the then exported word is not (or not inseparably) linked to any notionally speciﬁc language? Sarme is also troublesome. It is absent from Godefroy, Tobler-Lommatzsch, and Martin’s Dictionnaire du Moyen Français.10 The Southampton manuscript actually reads “iiij s ˜ mes de cendres” with the entirely conventional abbreviation being read here as -ar-. But there is no obvious reason to question the editor’s interpretation (serme, the other possibility, would make little sense).11 The Anglo-Norman-Dictionary quotes the Southampton text with a suggested legitur (“l. saime”), i.e., equates the word and the form with Middle English seam (OED’s seam n.2, ‘the amount of a horse-load’). Seam is from medieval Latin salma, itself a derivative of Greek sagma, the etymon also of Italian salma (and French somme, as in bête de somme, ‘packanimal’). But in all probability, the word in the Southampton book is indeed Italian, and more speciﬁcally, it appears to be Neapolitan. The Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 7511 suggests that the form sarma is Calabrian, Neapolitan, and Sicilian; the Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (11: 66a) states: “aneap. sarma, ‘ein holzmass’ [. . .], siz. ‘wein-, getreide-, holzmass’ ” [Old Neapolitan sarma, ‘a measure for wood’; Sicilian, ‘measure for wine, grain, wood’]. The Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana deﬁnes it as “misura italiana di capacità per aridi e liquidi (salma nel lat. mediev. di Roma nel 1166)” [‘Italian volume measure for dry and liquid goods (salma in medieval Latin in Rome in 1166)’]. The Dizionario etimologico italiano

9. The source is Spill o Libre de les Dones by Mestre Jaeme Roig (1401–1478). Edición crítica con las variantes de todas las publicadas y las del Ms. de la Vaticana, prólogo, estudios y comentarios por Roque Chabás (Barcelona: 1905). I am very grateful to Rodney Sampson (Bristol) for re-orienting me towards Catalan and Occitan at a point in this investigation when I had probably become ﬁxated by the Italian connection. 10. The cognate som(m)e is of course well documented in all three dictionaries. 11. I am very grateful to Susan Hill, archivist in the Southampton Archives, for kindly photographing this page of the Port Books (SC5/4/3 p.21) as well as that where the word comyt unambiguously features (SC5/4/3 p.10).

Death, taxes and property 169

observes sub salma: “A Napoli la sarma [1452] era una misura di 16 tomoli” [‘in Naples the sarma [1452] was a measure equivalent to 16 tomoli’] (tomoli is an Arabic loan, which raises other and fascinating questions); a Vocabolario siciliano etimologico by Michele Pasqualino (1789) draws on an unidentiﬁed Latin manuscript for the same deﬁnition, sub sarma. Foster (1963: 49 n.1) notes merely that “The sarma was a measure of capacity, cognate with the Italian salma or sarma”. The sole quotation in the lengthy article in Battaglia sub salma in which the form sarma (in fact, ssarma) surfaces, is Neapolitan; and rhotacization of pre-consonantal l from u ( parma = palma) is indeed a characteristic of Neapolitan (Ledgeway 2009: 106). The Lessico etimologico italiano’s (unpublished) attestations for sarme are apparently all from southern Italy and the various senses include measures for wine and oil, and for wood and grain. Max Pﬁster, the editor of the Lessico etimologico italiano, advises that the word surfaces in the ﬁfteenth century, and is southern/Angevin.12 As an Italian reﬂex of the etymon sagma, then, sarma is fairly straightforward. It is from the south, and seems to be associated especially with Naples and Sicily; it is relatively rare; and it seems to be a ﬁfteenth-century form; it also seems to be associated with the Angevin presence in those areas. What is a little puzzling is why the word (which does not feature in Hope 1971) should be used in a record not of an Italian vessel but of an English ship from Southwick, in Sussex. It is absent from Prior’s study of English weights and measures (Prior 1924) and this – with all the weaknesses that are inherent in the argument e silentio – perhaps suggests that it was not all that common. It seems reasonable to say that it was, at any rate, not naturalized in medieval England as a measure. One possible explanation for the in some ways surprising occurrence of sarme is that it may have been spread in the Atlantic and the Channel through the Angevin presence in Naples. This hypothesis is reinforced by the presence of the form salme in Boüard’s edition of Angevin documents from Naples (Boüard 1933–1935; cf. Nobel 1979: 223). The word

12. I am extremely grateful to Professor Max Pﬁster for his help in this regard. He comments (private communication, 06.10.09): “Das Wort scheint süditalienischen Ursprungs zu sein (Anjou) und taucht seit dem 15. Jh. auf. Ganz vereinzelt gibt es auch ligurische Belege (moderne Belege)” [‘The word appears to be of southern Italian origin (Anjou) and surfaces from the ﬁfteenth century onwards. There are also very sporadic Ligurian attestations (modern attestations)’].

170 David Trotter

(salme but not sarme) is there used of grain, wood, wine, lime, and sand (these last, both for construction).13 An alternative explanation is that Florys, accustomed to dealing with Italian cargoes (perhaps in Italian, or at any rate using Italian terminology), had inadvertently deployed (in recording the cargo of an English ship) an Italian term. Foster mentions two other Italianisms in the Southampton book: comyt, in the sense of ‘overseer’ (“Entre le comyt de la galee”, 26 [‘Entering: the galley overseer’]), and dos(se) (Foster 1963: glossary, s.v.). Comyt has also been veriﬁed against a photograph of the MS and there is no possible doubt that this word is comyt.14 The word is attested (as comito, and variants) throughout Italy as “comandante di una galea” in the Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini (sub còmito), and (less certainly) dos/dosse, meaning ‘fur from the back of an animal’ and (it is claimed) coming from the Italian dossi (Foster 1963: glossary, s.v.). Comyt is one of a number of forms of this word attested in French texts from the thirteenth century onwards, starting with the William of Tyre continuations (Fennis 1995, 1: 588–592; cf. Gdf, 9: 130c; TL 2: 611, but with later attestations only in both dictionaries). Particularly pertinent to our purposes is the repeated appearance of the word in the records of the Rouen Clos des Galées (Chazelas 1977–1978, glossary): for example, as comitre (VI; dated 1337) or comite (XXVII, 471; dated 1341–1342). Fifty years ago, Vidos perceptively observed that the Clos des Galées was “le lieu de rencontre des constructeurs, armateurs, charpentiers, maîtres de hache, calfats et marins français et méridionaux, surtout génois, de 1294 à 1419”

13. Grain (Boüard 1933–1935, 1: 67); wood (1: 121); wine (2: 42–43); lime (2: 226); sand (2: 226). I am grateful also to Pierre Nobel for his comments on this word, and for sending me a copy of the relevant page of his (unpublished) thesis. Documents from the Aragonese kings of Sicily at the end of the thirteenth century include salma in what I take to be Aragonese, but this is presumably simply an incorporation of the Sicilian measure into the calculation, rather than a real manifestation of the word in Aragonese (La Mantia 1918: 461 [from 1290]). Within the Iberian peninsula, salma appears (at ﬁrst as a gloss for sagma, in Isidore XVI, 5, but not with the sense of ‘unit of measure’ [cf. FEW 11: 65b]). I am very grateful to Adriano Vincentelli for invaluable assistance in locating documentary evidence, and indeed for his help (linguistic and intellectual) with this study as a whole. I should also like to thank William Rothwell and (indirectly) Paola Benincà (Padua) for useful comments on the problems addressed here. 14. See note 11, supra.

Death, taxes and property 171

[‘the meeting-place of French and Mediterranean, especially Genovese, shipwrights, owners, carpenters, adze workers, caulkers and sailors, from 1294 to 1419’] (Vidos 1960: 4).15 Sandahl (1958: 84 n.2), moreover, comments that the language of the Compte du Clos des Galées “has many afﬁnities, especially regarding the technical terms, with that of the AN. and L. accounts kept in England”, which is perhaps unsurprising. Comito does not feature amongst the half-dozen “Mediterranean words” in English nautical terminology listed by Sandahl (1951: 23; 1982: 5), but maybe it should. None of these words are mentioned in the study of Italianisms in English by Klaus Dietz (2005). For dos/dosse, the existence of dos in exactly this sense in French, from the Livre des mestiers c. 1268 onwards (Gdf, 9: 411a), together with the use in British medieval Latin of the equivalent dorsum from 1252 (DMLBS s.v.), suggest that this may just be Anglo-French and that it is not necessary to look to Italian. A perhaps slightly different phenomenon occurs a few pages earlier, with a record of “i casset de suchre candy, val. xls.” [‘a chest of sugar-candy, value 40s.’] (Foster 1963: 84). Both the constituent elements of this compound noun are ultimately Arabic sukkar, ‘sugar’, and qandƯ ‘cane-sugar’. Sucre candi in French (from the thirteenth century, FEW 19: 83a) seems to be attested before it is found in Italian (early fourteenth century: TLIO sub candi). In 1435 it would, in Anglo-French, hardly still be perceived as a “loanword” from Arabic, and by 1420, it had been acquired by Middle English too (cf. OED; MED), which reinforces the point that it had become part of the vernacular in England. The Arabic origin would certainly have been long lost. Modern children certainly do not care where their sugar-candy comes from or what the original language of the name was. On the other hand, the lath-nails (for attaching laths e.g. in a roof ) are described as clou a lathe. This compound is a calque: the ultimate etymon of lathe (modern French latte; cf. FEW 23: 6b) is Germanic, and it is found in both Old English and in French (though perhaps as a Germanic element) from Wace (1160–1174) onwards (TLFi). In fact, in Anglo-French sources

15. Wansbrough (1996: 165) identiﬁes the same phenomenon in the (rather earlier) Ottoman chancelleries: “The nautical lexicon exhibits of course a borrowed technology whose agents were (mostly) identiﬁable Greek and Italian mariners/ engineers recruited to Ottoman service [. . .]. The jargon facilitated naval projects, whether ship-building or warfare.” Trade would likewise have depended on similar processes.

172 David Trotter

more generally, the wide range of speciﬁc types of nail do typically get named in Middle English, no doubt because that was the language of the men who would be using them. They belong to the category of technical vocabulary, and remain in the language of the workmen. Thus, for example, “En ix paners achaté pur porters de clench et autres clowes – xij d.” [‘For 9 baskets bought for carrying clench-nails and other nails’] PRO E101/25/32, m.3 (AND sub clench); “En clenchingnail [. . .] a la nief et au bat” [‘For clench-nails [. . .] for the ship and boat’] PRO E/101/25/32 m 3 (AND sub clenchingnail); “En .D. de spikingnail et .D. de hachenail [. . .] En tingelnail [. . .]” [‘For 50 spike-nails and 50 hack-nails [. . .] For tingle-nails [. . .]’] Sandahl Sea i 145 (PRO E101/612/31 m.2); “xijm de menue bordnail; vjmdciiijxx x de hackenail; ijmiiijclx lathnail” [’12,000 small board-nails; 6,690 hack-nails; 2,460 lathnails’] RLiR 58 485 (AND sub hachenail). In this context, the Southampton compound clou a lathe would make sense as a mixture of the generic (AngloFrench) clou and the speciﬁc (English) lathe (cf. “ij barels de lathenail” [‘2 barrels of lath-nails’] Port Bks 34, AND sub lathenail ). In the main, though, and despite the clear provenance of most of the ships whose cargoes it records, the Alien Book is not dissimilar from the local one. Middle English terms are frequent: “i pipot de wormsed” [‘a small cask of wormseed’] (Foster 1963: 82), “Ml ii cxl bawestaves” [‘1,240 bow-staves’] (Foster 1963: 84), “i barel de hering” [‘1 barrel of herrings’] (Foster 1963: 88). This is so in the section in which two of the Italianisms discussed above ( fangot, cotegnate) are found. The same pattern of recourse to Middle English is (predictably) endemic in the local book: “ii douzeine de bennok” [‘2 dozen bannock-cakes’]; “ii quernestones” [‘2 quern-stones’]; “vi barel de hering; M1 de bakstone” [‘6 barrels of herrings; 1,000 baking-stones [ﬂat stone used as a griddle]’] (Foster 1963: 2); “xvii C di. de haake; i last de hering sor” [‘1,750 lbs. of hake; a load of smoked herrings’] (Foster 1963: 6); “iii douzeine de chorling fel” [‘3 dozen shearling skins’]16 (Foster 1963: 14), and so on. Identifying and recording ﬁsh, types of stone, or skins in Middle English would have been an obvious and automatic reﬂex. The fact that the matrix language in a syntactically very simplistic and indeed formulaic document was another language (Anglo-French) is largely irrelevant. Anglo-French is used simply because it is one of the languages of record, even if (by the 1430s) it was falling out of use. The editor plausibly suggests

16. A shearling is a sheep that has been shorn only once. Possibly correct to cherling?

Death, taxes and property 173

that it is used in the Southampton book at least in part because it was the maritime language of the Channel and beyond (Foster 1963: xii; cf. Trotter 2003b, 2011; Kowaleski 2007, 2009). But familiar objects are recorded using the term which the writer knew best, with scant concern for any overly tidy separation of allegedly different languages. The use of languages other than Middle English is a little different. Deployment of odd words from Italian does not necessarily imply that Florys had much grasp of the language from which he took them: after all, British holiday-makers in France will quite happily extol the virtues of local saucisson and the location of their gîte without being able to say anything about either in French, and British wine-merchants blithely sell bottles of Rioja without much command of the language of Cervantes. None of this is evidence of a signiﬁcant level of linguistic competence in the foreign language, still less of multilingualism. Possibly the clerk who noted for customs records the products carried by Italian ships simply wrote down what they told him they were transporting. If they told him the fruit pulp was cotognato, then that was sufﬁcient to allow him to record the arrival of the produce, its value, and the amount of dues payable. Since these charges appear to have largely a function of value (at least in the case of some types of goods), so that the tariff was a sort of value-added tax, the main point may have been what the commercial value was, not what the goods actually were.17 Given Southampton’s historical connections with Italian merchants, and given the relative proximity of French and Italian, it is not altogether surprising that Italianisms should occur in these documents, but their presence nevertheless remains an important indication of the extent of language contact which arose in the course of medieval trade, and of the way in which this process was both facilitated and necessitated by real communicative situations. 17. Customs dues in the Southampton Alien Book seem to average around 3d. in the pound, on the basis of those cargoes for which a value is given. In the case of the Venetian carrack carrying cotegnate, i.e. quince marmalade (Foster 1963: 90) the same rate appears to apply to ginger and treacle; Jacob Morrisse’s carrack quoted above (Foster 1963: 86) had varied items on board but virtually everything (nails, haberdashery, furs) seems to have been charged at the same rate by value of the goods. The only exception is the resins de courance (‘currants’) which appear to attract roughly twice the rate of duty. Accounts like these are of course notoriously difﬁcult to decipher and interpret, and the use of Roman numerals can lead to misreadings by medieval scribes and modern editors (e.g. v misread as ij, vj as iij, or vice versa).

174 David Trotter

4. Code-switching in a binary system? Examples from Testamenta Eboracensia II (1426–1444) A third and somewhat different example comes from a set of wills from York, published in the mid-nineteenth century (Raine 1836, 1855, 1864). Here death and property neatly coincide. Below are excerpts from the 1444 will of John Brompton, a rich merchant of Beverley, north of Hull. His will occupies a number of pages in the Surtees Society edition. (5) Item lego eidem, j. saltsaler argenti coopertum; j. novam murram cum dim. dos. cocliarium argenti cum nodis deauratis ponderantium vj. unc. dim. vij d. ob.; j. lectum de arras werke cum yemagine Beatæ Mariæ et trium Regum. Item j. coverlet de blodio cum capitibus damarum viridibus cum alio coopertorio rubeo habente 5 in lystyng volucras et albas ollas. Item j. par linthiaminum duplicum. Item lego eidem dimidium dos. de pewdre vessell de London. cum j. de iiij. pelvibus countrefeetes cum lavacro de Brigges vel facto London. et cum secunda pelvi lat. de semfactura. Item do et lego eidem ollam meam enneam optimam ponderantem vj. dos. iij li. cum alia olla ennea ponderante xiiij li., meam optimam 10 patellam enneam tripedem cum duabus auribus ponderantem xx li.; j. chawfer de auricalco cum lavacro pendente emptum de Willelmo Dighton. Item lego eidem dim. dos. qwissyngges clothes cum gaytes de arras werke cum duobus banqquers rubeis et nigris. Item lego eidem meam optimam togam de scarleto cum furrura de funes et j. nigram chimbre furr’ cum calaber. Item lego 15 eidem duas togas de ultimis sectis mercatorum cum capucio meo optimo de scarlet et j. cappe de scarlet. Item lego eidem Nicholao j. mappam de twille continentem vj. ulnas cum j. manutergio de twille continente x ulnas. Item eidem j. veru ferreum optimum de iiij. majoribus et veru optimum de iiij. minoribus. Item j. cathedram magnam de Flaunders worke cum j. longa formula 20 de ﬁrre cum duabus brevioribus. Item lego eidem j. cisternam ad ordium stantem in le stipehouse cum una nova archa de Flaunderse factura stantem in magna camera. Item lego eidem Nicholao j. standyng counter existentem in aula juxta introitum a le parlur [. . .] Item lego eidem j. ollam enneam pond. xxij. lib. cum j. patella ennea vocata friyngpan pond. viij. lib. et cum uno goosse 25 pan de ferro faurecornered. [. . .] Item lego eidem optimum bordetbed in le withdrawyng chaumbre cum curtens pendentibus circa idem. Item lego eidem j. lectum plumarium cum le bolster existentem in le forchaumbre [. . .] (Raine 1855: 99, 101). ‘Item, I bequeath to the same, 1 salt-cellar with silver cover; a new mazer with half a dozen silver spoons with gilt bosses weighing 61/2 ounces 71/2?; a bed of Arras style with an image of the Blessed Virgin and the Three Kings. Item, a coverlet of blue cloth with heads of green does together with another

Death, taxes and property 175 red bedcover having eider ducks on the border and white pots. Item one pair of double bed sheets. Item I bequeath to the same half a dozen pewter vessels made in London with one of four counterfeit basins with a ewer from Brigges or made in London and with a second wide basin half-decorated. Item I give and bequeath to the same my best bronze cooking-pot weighing six dozen and four pounds with another pot weighing fourteen pounds, my best tree-legged bronze cauldron with two handles, weighing twenty pounds; a brass/bronze/copper alloy vessel for heating water with a ewer hanging from it, bought from William Digton. Item I bequeath to the same half a dozen cushion cloths with deep bowls of Arras manufacture with two red and black tapestry covers. Item I bequeath to the same my best scarlet gown with marten fur and a black upper robe lined with dark squirrel-fur. Item I bequeath to the same two gowns of the latest merchants’ suits with a hood my best scarlet one and a scarlet cap. Item I bequeath to the same Nicholas a tablecloth of twill containing seven ells with a towel of twill containing ten ells. Item to the same a best iron throwing-spear of four of the biggest [?] and a best throwing-spear of four of the smallest [?]. Item a large chair made in Flanders with a long bench of pine with two shorter ones. Item I bequeath to the same a cistern stand barley in, in the malthouse, with a new casket of Flanders manufacture standing in the main bedroom. Item I bequeath to the same Nicholas a standing counter extant in the hall next to the entrance to the parlour. [. . .] Item I bequeath to the same a bronze pot weighing twentytwo pounds with a bronze pan called a frying-pan weighing eight pounds and with a four-cornered iron goose-pan. [. . .] Item I bequeath to the same my best bedstead in the drawing room with curtains hanging around it. Item I bequeath to the same a feather bed with the accompanying bolster in the antechamber.’

In a Latin matrix-language text, the incidence of Anglo-French and Middle English words (in bold in the text) is striking and the way in which they are deployed is revealing. They are unmarked and (or so it seems) unconsciously incorporated. What this looks like is not a writer who is actively jumping between languages, which he perceives as distinct, but a writer who happens to have a range of lexical items, which happen to be from different languages, at his disposal. His Latin (of necessity not his ﬁrst language) is supplemented by vernacular items. They range from simplex words for objects (coverlet, ‘coverlet’, l. 3; chawfer, ‘vessel for heating water’, l. 10; banqquers, ‘covering for a bench or chair’, l. 12; cappe, l. 16; curtens, l. 26; funes, ‘marten’, l.14 [AND fwyne]; chimbre l. 14 [OED chimer1, etymology uncertain, cf. later French chamarre]) to compounds (qwissyngges clothes, ‘cushion covers’, l. 12; goosse pan, l. 24) and descriptive phrases (de arras werke, ‘tapestry’, l. 12; de Flaunders worke, l. 19; de Flaunderse factura, l. 21 [both ‘in Flemish

176 David Trotter

style’]; le withdrawyng chaumbre, l. 25). Some of these already involve (over and above the fact that they are vernacular terms in a Latin text) languagemixing between Latin and the vernacular (de Flaunderse factura) or between the vernaculars. The vast majority of these words are, or now appear to be, English; at the same time, a signiﬁcant percentage of these all were originally Anglo-French. Within the text, too, there are multilingual compounds (cf. Rothwell 2000), for example nova archa de Flaunderse factura (l. 21), in le withdrawyng chaumbre (l. 26), in le forchaumbre (l. 27), or faurecornered ‘four-cornered’ (l. 25); in the latter phrase, the position of the Middle English participial adjective is determined by Latin syntax. In addition, however, to the prevalence of both Anglo-French and Middle English words scattered throughout even these short excerpts, there is one further factor which calls for discussion. This is the introduction of the Anglo-French deﬁnite article le (which in French encodes the information article, masculine and singular) as a means of signalling the introduction of a vernacular word or phrase which is not necessarily Anglo-French. There are a number of examples of this phenomenon in the last sentences of the above extract (ll. 21–27, underlined in the text). This is something which arises also in the case of a considerable number of English place names, and which prompted the hypothesis that what we are here dealing with is a marker used to indicate simply movement from Latin to the vernacular, irrespective of which vernacular it is (Trotter 2010, cf. Wright 2010). In all the place names which I have looked at, it is invariably an English word which is introduced by an Anglo-French deﬁnite article. The system (if that is what it is) is not limited to place names. I found much the same in two sets of bridge accounts, in the Leicester Borough Records BR III/1/48: Expenses of the West Bridge (Mayor’s Account 1365/66, Bateson 1904–1906, 2: 140) and the accounts of the Bridge Wardens of Rochester (1398–1479, Becker 1930): (6)

(L) Et ij d tamen in sceynture pro le archa supponenda18 quam in stipendiis diversorum pro lapides colligendas ibidem in aqua ad dictum opus (1365– 1366; Bateson 1904–1906: ii 140) ‘And 2d. both for the stone band supporting the arch and for the wages of various [workers] to collect stones in the water for the said work’

18. Ed. reads “archam supponendam”.

Death, taxes and property 177 (7)

(R) Item in ferro empto ad ligandum le19 Stokkys ponderanti xxxv libras cum clave ante facta precium le clavis ijd., vjs ijd., cum clave (1399–1400; Becker 1930: 94) ‘Item for iron bought to bind the stock weighing 35 lbs. with a key made previously, price for the key 2d., 6s. 2d., with the key’

(8)

(R) Et soluti Johanni Cartere pro M. assheler ab eo empto pro le Eastbrest ad ﬁnem pontis [. . .] viiij li. xvjs viijd. [. . .] Item pro xxij pedibus de vawsour20 xviijs iiijd. (1430–1431; Becker 1930: 75) ‘And paid over to John Carter for 1000 ashlar stones bought from him for the eastern breast at the end of the bridge [. . .] £8 16s. 8d. [. . .] Item for 22 feet of wedge-shaped stone 18s. 4d.’

(9)

(R) Et de xxs. solutis Johanni Hassok pro le Stoling21 Capelle [i.e., the Bridge Chapel on the river-bank] predicte ultra iijs iiijd. datos per capellanos (1443– 1444; Becker 1930: 20) ‘And for 20s. paid to John Hassok for the adorning of the aforesaid chapel over and above 3s. 4d. given by the chaplains.’

(10) (R) Et de vs. solutis a lez verymen22 ibidem pro regardo23 per batellagio meo pro diversas vices ij annos (1444–1445; Becker 1930: 104) ‘And 5s. paid to the ferry-men there for payment for my boat-hire on several occasions over two years’ (11) (R) Et de vjd. solutis pro le clapysing24 unius libri (1449–1450; Becker 1930: 26) ‘And 6s. paid for the furnishing of a book with clasps’

19. Or: lé = les? 20. MED vousour, cf. AND vousure, ‘wedge-shaped stone [for building an arch]’. 21. Gerund of the (rare) MED stǀlen (one quotation only of the trans. verb from 1475, which this one antedates), a derivative of stǀle, itself of A-F origin. ‘For the adorning of the chapel’. 22. The form is not listed sub MED feri-man, but under the simplex feri, the spelling verie is listed. 23. Clearly a calque of A-N regard (AND s.v.). 24. ‘Furnishing [a book] with clasps’: MED clasping, although all the quotations there have the form clapsyng.

178 David Trotter (12) (R) Et de xiiij li. iijs iijd. solutis xviijcim hominibus conductis ad trahendum le Ram25 pro afﬁrmatione pilarum videlicet cuilibet eorum per lviij tides et dimidium quilibet capit per le Tyde iijd. [. . .] Et de ijs viijd. solutis pro ix herdell’26 emptis pro scafoldes pro le Ram (1457–1458; Becker 1930: 82) ‘And £14 3s. 3d. paid to to 18 men employed to raise the Ram [pile-driver] for the reinforcement of the piles viz. to each of them across 58 tides and a half each of them being paid per tide 3d. [. . .] And 2s. 8d. paid for 9 hurdles bought for scaffolds for the Ram.’

In each case here, a prepositional or adverbial phrase inserts a deﬁnite article (sg. le or pl. lé/lez) into a Latin phrase: following a Latin preposition ( pro, per, ad) or exceptionally, an Anglo-French one (a), the article being itself followed by a word which can be Latin (archa: the abbreviation may be meant to be decoded as Anglo-French/Middle English -e), but is more usually Middle English (stokkys, eastbrest, stoling, verymen, clapysing, ram, tyde). Wright (2010: 136) has observed that “the deﬁnite article le [. . .] blocked a following Latin sufﬁx” i.e. prevents the addition of a Latin inﬂection. Another type seems to be le clavis in (7) where an apparently Latin form attracts the article le. Further investigation of the York wills suggests that the practice is widespread throughout these documents: (13) unum maser novum, et le steyned hallyng pertinentam ad aulam de Spaldyngton (Test. Ebor. II.11) ‘a new mazer, and the coloured tapestry belonging to the hall in Spaldyngton’ (14) unam cistam de Flandria quae stat in le chapell chaumbre (Test. Ebor. II.12) ‘a chest from Flanders which stands in the chamber of the chapel’ (15) omnia instrumenta et necessaria shopae meae ad le meltynghouse et ad countor meum spectantia (Test. Ebor. II.16) ‘all tools and necessary items pertaining to my shop at the melting-house and my counter’ (16) Willelmi fratri meo unum lavacrum cum le synkestane (Test. Ebor. II.23) ‘to William my brother a ewer with the stone basin’

25. ‘Pile-driver’, one of the senses listed in MED ram. 26. MED hirdel, with this sense (i.e., ‘hurdles’ used in the construction of scaffolding).

Death, taxes and property 179 (17) unam parvam zonam argenti et deauratam cum le corse de viridi et albo (Test. Ebor. II.34) ‘a small silver belt, gilt with the length of silk material in green and white’ (18) unum coopertorium cum le tapete de ares werk (Test. Ebor. II.34) ‘a cover with the tapestry of Arras cloth’ (19) dimidium de qqysshyns, costors et banquers de grone in le parlor (Test. Ebor. II.39) ‘half the green cushions, ornamental hangings and couch-covers in the parlour’ (20) Item lego le belman iiij. d. (Test. Ebor. II.43) ‘Item I bequeath to the town-crier 4d.’ (21) unam peciam argenti coopertam, stantem super pedem, annameld on le pomell (Test. Ebor. II.44) ‘an item of covered silverware standing on a foot, enamelled on the pommel’ (22) unum ewer argenti cum le spowte (Test. Ebor. II.47) ‘a silver ewer with the pouring-lip’ (23) unam peciam planam argenti coopertam cum uno chapellet de hawthorn et le knopp deaurato (Test. Ebor. II.47) ‘a ﬂat silver plate covered with a hawthorn wreath and the knob gilded’ (24) unam zonam ornatam cum octo barres et tribus teryngbarres argenti deauratis, et in le tusshewe swannes albas, unum lectum plumalem cum le bolster (Test. Ebor. II.48) ‘a belt decorated with eight bars and three silver gilt decorated bars and in the rich fabric white swans, a feather bed with the bolster’ (25) et ymagine Dominae nostrae in le pendaunt ejusdem (Test. Ebor. II.48) ‘and an image of Our Lady on the pendant of it’ (26) unam tuellam quatuor ulnarum longitudinis minus le nale (Test. Ebor. II.49) ‘a towel four ells long less 21/4 inches’ (27) optimum meum gladium cum le chape de argento (Test. Ebor. II.63) ‘my best sword with the silver sheath’ (28) cooperta argenti et deaurati et cum coffris meis, cum toto le stuff intra eosdem (Test. Ebor. II.67) ‘a silver gilt cover and with my coffers, with all the stuff in the same’

180 David Trotter (29) gloves de plaite et pannce de plaite, cum le leggeharnes eisdem pertinente (Test. Ebor. II.70) ‘gloves made of plate and belly-armour of plate, with the leg-harness belonging to them’ (30) unum ciphum argenti et deauratum vocatum le Tun (Test. Ebor. II.73) ‘a silver vessel, gilt, called the tun’ (31) unam togam nigram penulatam cum le gray (Test. Ebor. II.83) ‘a black gown lined with grey fur’ (32) T.H., skynner, arcum meum cum le grene batt et vij. sagittas pacockfederde (Test. Ebor. II.85) ‘T.H., skinner, my bow with the green club and seven feathers with peacockfeather ﬂights’ (33) Item lego eidem j. lectum plumarum cum le bolster existentem in le waterhous chaumbre (Test. Ebor. II.102) ‘Item I bequeath to the same a feather bed with its bolster, at present in the wash-house chamber’ (34) Item lego eidem j. standyng chountre in le waterhouse chaumbre cum j. pruce kiste in eadem (Test. Ebor. II.102) ‘Item I bequeath to the same one standing counter in the wash-house chamber with a spruce chest in the same’ (35) cum j. pulvinar et le bolster super lectum secundarium in le parloure (Test. Ebor. II.104) ‘with one pillow and the bolster on the secondary bed in the parlour’ (36) Ecclesie meae de Arnecliffe le alterclathes pertinentes uni vestimento de burde alexandree (Test. Ebor. II.34) ‘to my church of Arnecliff the altar-cloths belonging to a vestment of Egyptian brocade cloth’ (37) omnia vasa lignea, cultellos et candelabra in le pantry, botre et coquina, et omnia utensilia in ley (l. le ) bakehouse et brewhouse (Test. Ebor. II.38–39) ‘all wooden pots, knives and candel-sticks in the pantry, buttery and kitchen, and all utensils in the bakery and brewery’

One clear category of instances of this phenomenon appears to be to designate a location, that is, places within a building (for example, 13, 14, 15, and

Death, taxes and property 181

so forth). But that is not the only case. A signiﬁcant number of manifestations of the usage concern items which are actually Middle English words (16, 21, 28, 29). Whilst the place-name evidence seems exclusively to involve the masculine singular deﬁnite article, there are (quite commonly) plural articles (36, possibly 37). It may be that this is an indication that the pattern was productive, that is, it could be and was (over time) developed to encompass plural objects. Whether or not the use of Anglo-French deﬁnite articles is indeed a switch-marking device (the extension of the practice to plural forms perhaps suggests not), there is very clearly, in these documents, evidence of morpho-syntactic mixing which indicates a high level of language-merger. There is only very limited evidence that the men who drafted these wills were conscious of the need to ﬂag up their use of non-Latin words: j. patella ennea vocata friyngpan (l. 24) and (in the subsequent list of examples) unum ciphum argenti et deauratum vocatum le Tun (example [30]). The second of these seems to imply a speciﬁc item, whereas the ﬁrst is simply a clariﬁcation of the (Middle English, or at any rate vernacular) name of the object concerned. The rarity of indications of this type (which recurs also in the Dover inventories above) seems to suggest that use of a word from a different language was not really a matter for comment at all. That on more than one occasion Middle English and Anglo-French words are juxtaposed here, as they are in the Beverley will, example (5) above, without apparent difﬁculty (le chapell chaumbre, example [14]; le waterhous chaumbre, examples [33] and [34]), seems to conﬁrm that language-mixing was perfectly normal.

5. Conclusions? What, then, can we learn from these documents? In the case of the Dover inventories, in a Latin matrix text, insertions are in Anglo-French and/or Middle English whereas in an Anglo-French matrix text, insertions are in Middle English. In the York wills, a Latin matrix text features insertions in Anglo-French but especially in Middle English, often introduced by the Anglo-French deﬁnite article le (cf. modern English place names of the type: Chester le Street, Chapel en le Frith). The Southampton Anglo-French text has insertions in Middle English, but also apparently unremarkable or at any rate, fully accepted borrowings from Italian. In some instances these come ultimately, but by then invisibly, from Arabic. There is also perhaps a loan from Catalan. Neither the Italian nor the Catalan word triggers any comment.

182 David Trotter

The following observations may be made: (1) A signiﬁcant percentage of the (now) English words inserted into both Latin and Anglo-French texts are of French origin. (2) After 1400 at the latest, the distinction (at the level of lexis) between Middle English and Anglo-French becomes increasingly problematic. (3) Although England was trilingual, the late medieval opposition is not or is not invariably ternary (Latin ~ Anglo-French ~ Middle English) but may on occasions (at least) be binary: Latin ~ vernacular (triggered it seems by the use of the Anglo-French deﬁnite article le in York and the bridge accounts, especially in place names). (4) We are dealing not with loanwords but with a much more thorough lexical integration or rather, with the integration of lexes originally (but probably no longer) associated with separate languages. Even the notion of language-mixing may be problematic insofar as it runs the risk of superimposing language labels on two vernaculars (French and English, in England) when these may not really have been perceived as genuinely “separate” languages (Trotter 2003a, 2006a, 2006b). “Borrowing”, similarly, implies an identiﬁable and separate lender and borrower, which may be anachronistic in the case of the vernaculars (Rothwell 1980; Vidos 1960, 1965). Medieval Latin had its own integrity for historical reasons, but even Latin had been inﬁltrated by vernacular elements from both French and English well before the fourteenth century, the date of the earliest of the three texts looked at here. (5) Documents of the type analysed here do not necessarily indicate that the scribes/ authors were strictly speaking bilingual or multilingual. Where the matrix language is Latin, the situation is different, given that Latin is necessarily a second, complete (and separate) language. But it does not require a very advanced level of knowledge of another language to use words from it. Nevertheless, a plausible scenario in cases such as these is of a ﬁrst-language English speaker, accustomed to writing in Anglo-French and Latin, because those were the languages in which one wrote. To designate objects with which he was most familiar in his own language, he reverts to Middle English. This need not have been conscious. Such a process would have been notably facilitated by the extent to which (by the time all these documents were compiled) Middle English was permeated by Anglo-French. (6) The admittedly limited evidence of contact with languages from much further aﬁeld (cf. also Trotter, forthcoming a, b) suggests that medieval England was by no means unreceptive to foreign words (Rothwell 1999). Italian and possibly Catalan words inﬁltrated Anglo-French; some of these (though not the words discussed here) were subsequently taken over from Anglo-French into English (Dietz 2005). The vehicle for linguistic commerce (i.e., the language in which the trade took place) was almost certainly French, whether insular or continental.

Death, taxes and property 183 French, in its various and mutually comprehensible forms, was the most signiﬁcant international vernacular across western Europe (Kowaleski 2007, 2009; Trotter 2003d, 2011). (7) These documents all demonstrate the extent to which the actual writing process contributed to language evolution. Whilst none of the material discussed here necessarily tells us anything about speech, the role of these written texts, as a means by which ostensibly different languages (or the lexis thereof ) were put together, is far from negligible. Medieval mixed-language documents are evidence of language mixing but they themselves play a dynamic and active part in the creation of English: and English (via French) seems to have been more receptive to (and more permeated by) non-English elements than we perhaps expect. (8) Code-switching (as it is normally understood) may not be an appropriate or adequate explanation for many of the phenomena discussed above. It implies (indeed has as a prerequisite) the existence of separate languages and of a consciousness of their boundaries, which medieval documents of the type analysed here do not appear to display.

References AND = Rothwell, William, Stewart Gregory, David Trotter, Geert De Wilde, Virginie Derrien and Heather Pagan, with the technical assistance of Michael Beddow, Anglo-Norman Dictionary: www.anglo-norman.net. Bateson, Mary (ed.) 1904–1906 Borough Customs. ( Publications of the Selden Society 18, 21) London: B. Quaritch. Battaglia, Salvatore and Giorgio Barberi Squarotti (eds.) 1961–2002 Grande dizionario della lingua italiana. Torino: Unione TipograﬁcoEditrice Torino. Becker, M. Janet 1930 Rochester Bridge: 1387–1856. A History of Its Early Years, Compiled from the Wardens’ Accounts. London: Constable. Boüard, Alain de 1933–1935 Documents en français des archives angevines de Naples. Paris: Boccard. Braunmüller, Kurt and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.) 2003 Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Chapman, A.B. Wallis 1912–1915 The Black Book of Southampton. Southampton: Southampton Record Society.

184 David Trotter

Chazelas, Anne 1977–1978 Documents relatifs au clos des galées de Rouen et aux armées de mer du Roi de France de 1293 à1418. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale. Coutant, Yves 1994 Middeleeuwse molentermen in het graafschap Vlaanderen/Terminologie du moulin médiéval dans le comté de Flandre. Tongeren/ Liège: George Michiels. Davidson, Mary Catherine 2003 Code-switching and authority in late medieval England. Neophilologus 87: 473–486. DCVB = Alcover, Antoni Maria and Frances de Borja Moll 1930–1962 Diccionari catalpà-valencià-balear. Palma de Mallorca: Moll. DEAF = Baldinger, Kurt, Frankwalt Möhren and Thomas Städtler 1971 Dictionnaire Étymologique de l’Ancien Français. Québec/ Tübingen: Presses de l’Université Laval/Niemeyer. DEI = Battisti, Carlo and Giovanni Alessio 1950–1957 Dizionario etimologico italiano. Firenze: Barbèra. DELI = Cortellazzo, Manlio and Paolo Zolli 1979–1988 Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana. Bologna: Zanichelli. Dietz, Klaus 2005 Die frühen italienischen Lehnwörter des Englischen. Anglia: Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie 123: 573–631. DMF = Martin, Robert, Dictionnaire du Moyen Français: www.atilf.fr/dmf. DMLBS = Howlett, David Robert 1975– Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. London: British Academy. Fennis, Jan 1995 Trésor du langage des galères. Tübingen: Niemeyer. FEW = Wartburg, Walther von 1922 Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bonn/Leipzig/Basel: Zbinden. Foster, Brian (ed.) 1963 The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1435–6. (Southampton Records Series 7) Southampton: Southampton University Press. Fryde, Edmund B. 1974 Italian maritime trade with medieval England (c. 1270–c. 1530). ‘Les Grandes Escales’: Recueil de la Société Jean Bodin 32: 291–337. Fryde, Edmund B. 1976 The English cloth industry and the trade with the Mediterranean c.1370–c.1480. In: Marco Spallanzani (ed.), Produzione, commercio e consumo dei panni di lana nei secoli XII–XVIII: Atti della “Seconda settimana di studio”(10–16 aprile 1970), Istituto

Death, taxes and property 185

Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”, 343–367. Firenze: L. Olschki. Gdf = Godefroy, Frédéric 1880–1902 Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle. Paris: Vieweg. Hope, Thomas E. 1971 Lexical Borrowing in the Romance Languages: A Critical Study of Italianisms in French and of Gallicisms in Italian from 1100 to 1900. Oxford: Blackwell. Hunt, Tony 1991 Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Hunt, Tony 2000 Code-switching in medical texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 131–147. Ingham, Richard 2006a Syntactic change in Anglo-Norman and continental French chronicles: Was there a ‘Middle’ Anglo-Norman? Journal of French Language Studies 16: 26–49. Ingham, Richard 2006b The status of French in medieval England: Evidence from the use of object pronoun syntax. Vox Romanica 65: 1–22. Ingham, Richard 2009 Mixing languages on the manor. Medium Ævum 78: 80–97. Ingham, Richard (ed.) 2010 The Anglo-Norman Languge and its Contexts. York: York Medieval Press. Kowaleski, Maryanne 2007 “Alien” encounters in the maritime world of medieval England. Medieval Encounters 13: 96–121. Kowaleski, Maryanne 2009 The French of England: A maritime lingua franca? In: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.), Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c.1100–c.1500, 103–117. York: York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer. La Mantia, Giuseppe 1918 Codice diplomatico dei re aragonesi di Sicilia (1282–1355). Palermo: Scuola Tip. Boccone del Povero. Ledgeway, Adam 2009 Gramatica diacronica del napoletano. Tübingen: Niemeyer. LEI = Pﬁster, Max and Wolfgang Schweickard 1979 Lessico etimologico italiano. Wiesbaden: Reichert.

186 David Trotter

Lüdi, Georges 1985 Mehrsprachige Rede in Freiburger Ratsmanualen des 15. Jahrhunderts. Vox Romanica 44: 163–188. Matras, Yaron 2009 Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MED = Kurath, Hans and Robert E. Lewis (gen. eds.) 1956–2001 Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Nobel, Pierre 1979 Étude du vocabulaire des documents en français des archives angevines de Naples: Règne de Charles 1er. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Strasbourg. OED = Oxford English Dictionary Online: www.dictionary.oed.com. Pasqualino, Michele 1789 Vocabolario Siciliano Etimologico, Italiano e Latina. Palermo: Reale Stamperia. Prior, W.H. 1924 Notes on the weights and measures of medieval England. Bulletin Du Cange 1: 77–97; 141–170. Raine, James (ed.) 1836, Testamenta Eboracensia. (Surtees Society 4, 30, 45.) Newcastle1855, 1864 upon-Tyne: Surtees Society. REW = Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm 1935 Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. (3rd ed.) Heidelberg: Winter. Rothwell, William 1980 Lexical borrowing in a medieval context. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 63: 118–143. Rothwell, William 1999 Sugar and spice and all things nice: From oriental bazaar to English cloister in Anglo-French. Modern Language Review 94: 647–659. Rothwell, William 2000 Aspects of lexical and morphosyntactical mixing in the languages of medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 213–232. Sandahl, Bertil 1951, Middle English Sea Terms. 3 vols. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell. 1958, 1982 Schendl, Herbert 2000 Linguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 77–92. Studer, Paul (ed.) 1913 Port Books of Southampton. Southampton: Southampton Record Society.

Death, taxes and property 187

TL = Tobler, Adolf and Erhard Lommatzsch 1925–2002 Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch. Berlin/Wiesbaden: Steiner. TLFi = Imbs, Paul Trésor de la Langue Française: www.atilf.fr/tlﬁ. TLIO = Beltrami, P. Tesoro della lingua italiana delle origini: http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO. Trotter, David 1997 Mossenhor, fet metre aquesta letra en bon francés: Anglo-French in Gascony. In: Stewart Gregory and David Trotter (eds.), De Mot en Mot: Aspects of Medieval Linguistics. Essays in Honour of William Rothwell, 199–222. Cardiff: University of Wales Press/Modern Humanities Research Association. Trotter, David 1998 Some lexical gleanings from Anglo-French Gascony. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 114: 53–72. Trotter, David A. (ed.) 2000 Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Trotter, David 2003a Langues en contact en Gascogne médiévale. In: Fernando Sánchez Miret (ed.), Actas del XXIII Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románica, Salamanca, 2001, III, 479–486. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Trotter, David 2003b Oceano vox: You never know where a ship comes from. On multilingualism and language-mixing in medieval Britain. In: Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.), 15–33. Trotter, David 2003c The Anglo-French lexis of the Ancrene Wisse: A re-evaluation. In: Yoko Wada (ed.), A Companion to Ancrene Wisse, 83–101. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Trotter, David 2003d L’anglo-normand: variété insulaire, ou variété isolée? Médiévales 45: 43–54. Trotter, David 2005 Langue et transmission du savoir artisanal: La construction navale en Angleterre au Moyen Âge. In: Pierre Nobel (ed.), La Transmission des Savoirs au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, 319–329. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de la Franche-Comté. Trotter, David 2006a Language contact, multilingualism, and the evidence problem. In: Ursula Schaefer (ed.), The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-century England, 73–90. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Trotter, David 2006b Si le français n’y peut aller: Villers-Cotterêts and mixed-language documents from the Pyrénées. In: David J. Cowling (ed.), Conceptions

188 David Trotter

of Europe in Renaissance France: A Festschrift for Keith Cameron, 77–97. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Trotter, David 2010 Trotter, David 2011

Bridging the gap: The (socio)linguistic evidence of some medieval English bridge accounts. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 52–62. (Socio)linguistic realities of cross-channel communications in the thirteenth century. In: Janet Burton, Frédérique Lachaud and Phillip Schoﬁeld (eds.), Thirteenth Century England XIII: Proceedings of the Paris Conference 2009, 117–131. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer.

Trotter, David forthcoming Italian merchants in London and Paris: Evidence of language contact in the Gallerani accounts, 1305–08. In: Dominique Lagorgette a and Tim Pooley (eds.), Studies in Honour of Professor R. Anthony ( Tony) Lodge. Chambéry: Presses Universitaires de Savoie. Trotter, David forthcoming Il sount aliens: Marchands étrangers et contact linguistique en Angleterre au Moyen Âge. In: Wolfgang Schweickard, Anja Overbeck b and Harald Völker (eds.), Festschrift für Günter Holtus. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Vidos, Benedek Elemér 1960 Le bilinguisme et le mécanisme de l’emprunt. Revue de Linguistique romane 24: 1–19. Vidos, Benedek Elemér 1965 Prestito, espansione e migrazione dei termini tecnici nelle lingue romanze e non romanze: Problemi, metodo e risultati. Firenze: Olschki. Vitali, David 2003 Interférences entre le latin et la langue vernaculaire dans les chartes latines de Suisse occidentale. In: Michele Goyens and Werner Verbeke (eds.), The Dawn of the Written Vernacular in Western Europe, 127–145. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Wagner, Max Leopold 1952 Historische Wortbildungslehre des Sardischen. Berne: Francke. Wansbrough, John E. 1996 Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean. Richmond: Curzon Press. Wardhaugh, Ronald 2010 An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. (6th ed.) Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Way, A. 1854 Accounts of the constables of the Castle of Dover. Archaeological Journal 11: 381–388.

Death, taxes and property 189

Wright, Laura 1997 The records of Hanseatic merchants: Ignorant, sleepy, or degenerate? Multilingua 16: 339–350. Wright, Laura 2002 Code-intermediate phenomena in medieval mixed-language business texts. Language Sciences 24: 471–489. Wright, Laura 2010 A pilot study on the singular deﬁnite articles le and la in ﬁfteenthcentury London mixed-language business writing. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 130–142.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing Laura Wright

1. Introduction From 1066, when the Anglo-Norman administration began, to c. 1500, when the writing system was abandoned, a kind of mixed-language system was used all over Britain in texts concerned with money management. In what follows, I am not using the term “mixed-language” in its technical synchronic sense as the “conventionalised result of a prior ‘mixing stage’ through unmarked code-switching” (de Smit 2010: 13), usually used of languages such as Michif, but to refer to the mixing stage through unmarked code-switching itself: that is, “intermingling usage patterns of two languages in use by a speciﬁc speech community” (de Smit 2010: 15).1 The languages mixed were Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English, and this nation-wide text-type was used at a time when there was no mutually intelligible written standard dialect.2 The text-type of money management included business, customs, and household accounts; accounts of perpetual institutions such as bridges, castles, cathedrals, hospitals, abbeys and churches; wills and testaments; inventories; other kinds of legal, civic and bureaucratic documents; and the journals and accountings of private individuals. In other words, the text-type was more widespread than might be apparent, and appeared in all walks of life. The mixing of Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English was not random, but followed an orderly set of principles according

1. In the present case it is the usage patterns of three languages rather than two, and I would add to de Smit’s deﬁnition: “[. . .] in use by a speciﬁc speech community for a speciﬁc pragmatic purpose”. 2. See Wright 1995a, 1995b, 1997a, 1997b, 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2005, 2010 for description and discussion. I should like to thank my co-editor, Herbert Schendl, and two anonymous referees for their comments on previous drafts.

192 Laura Wright

to parts of speech, which changed and developed somewhat over time. Such change over time accounts, for example, for the fact that texts of the late ﬁfteenth century contain a greater proportion of Middle English than those of the thirteenth century. Section 2 starts by describing some of the properties of the internal mixture of the three languages, and then considers synchronic variation in the ﬁfteenth century, with particular attention to the noun phrase. As mixed-language texts cause difﬁculty for historical dictionaries, this situation is discussed in Section 3 and a suggestion is proffered in Section 4.

2. Description of mixed-language business writing In Section 2 I provide a brief description of the linguistic properties of the mixed-language business text-type, and I use a will from 1425 from which to take examples. I have chosen this will (made by Londoner Thomas Colred, who was probably originally from Colrithe in Hampshire, and who may or may not have belonged to the Pewterers’ Livery Company) because it has not appeared in print before.3 Many medieval wills, accounts and inventories are as yet unpublished; there is a mass of unpublished medieval mixed-language writing of this text-type in British archives. This is in contrast to monolingual Middle English writing, which has, by and large, been made available in print, especially if the content is literary or of historical signiﬁcance. This reﬂects the monolingual bias and interests of modern scholars. The inventory part of Thomas Colred’s will is made up of Middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Medieval Latin, and can be marked up accordingly, based on the information provided by the Oxford English Dictionary(OED), Middle English Dictionary (MED), Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND) and Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (DMLBS), with Medieval Latin text in italics, Middle English emboldened and Anglo-Norman underlined (please note that this system of italics/bold/underline to denote the three languages is unlike usage in the other chapters in this book, and has been adopted due to limitations imposed by the medieval abbreviations and suspensions font). Example (1) is a short extract:

3. London Metropolitan Archives MS, formerly Guildhall Library MS, 7086/1 is the account-book of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers, dating from the midﬁfteenth century. It has been published in an edition by Charles Welch in 1902 with the omission of the ﬁrst few leaves. In his introduction, Welch said:

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing (1)

193

Extract from London, Guildhall Library MS 7086/1, fo 1, 1425 (angled brackets indicate barely legible letter-graphs) Sol a Itm voluit & dedit & manibz suis libauit Ricô ﬁlio dci Rici holte vnu puu gipcier les ryngis dargent le burȕ de baudekyn noir & rouge et quandam zonam harnersat et het libanta Matri sue[wormhole] xxij li xv d ob Sol a Itm [legauit crossed out] dedit Cristine ﬁlie sue vx Rici holte vnam zonam hernersat noir ene le dict huswiffes grd<e>ll et vnu kayebond hnersat & libanta eidm < et libata> Sol a Itm dedit eidm Ricô holte vnu maser sup pedem argent & deaurat cu quodam turtull sup coopclm et libata eidm Sol a Itm dedit eidm vnu gounee de russet pvse ffurre de beve et libanta eidm Sol a Itm dedit Johi Norton vnu goune de noir lyre ffurre de ffycheux et vnu vetris hallyng a le Spitell videlt vnu dosser de Tapicerie et le banker ad eandm < et libata Ri> Sol a Itm dedit dcô Johi Norton et Johe vx sue medietatem tocius coquine sue tam in vasis enneijs qam in peaut spites & gromes &c ‘Paid. Item, he left and gave and delivered into the hands of Richard, son of the said Richard Holte, one small pouch, the rings of silver, the purse of black and red embroidered material and formerly of a harnessed [‘mounted with silver or other metal’] belt, and it has been delivered to his mother: £22 15d halfpence Paid. Item, [‘he bequeathed’ crossed out] gave to Christine his daughter, wife of Richard Holte, one harnessed black belt in the said housewife’s girdle and one The earliest Audit Book commences in the year 1451. Preﬁxed to it are nine pages containing various memoranda of sums owing to the Craft and purchases made. They are interspersed with a transcript of the will and an inventory of the possessions of Thomas Cohed, who died in London on 19th July, 1425. These are of considerable antiquarian interest, and include the funeral expenses incurred by his executors. Cohed was probably a Pewterer and a benefactor to the Craft, but his relationship is not sufﬁciently clear to justify the transcript at length of these particulars. (Welch 1902: 14)

Whether or not he was a member of the Pewterers’ Livery Company, Thomas Colred (it is certainly an graph sequence and not an , but the two are easily confusible) was from Coldrey in Hampshire (a copy of his will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 20 July 1425 [The National Archives PROB 11/3]), and there are also several references to him being involved in transactions in British History Online, mainly over property in and around Cheapside. Thomas Colred’s will was made on 14th May 1425, with an addition on the 18th July 1425. He died on 19th July 1425. The inventory of his goods and chattels was taken on

194 Laura Wright harnessed keyband [OE cæg ‘key’ + ON bond ‘bond, band’, not in the Oxford English Dictionary or Middle English Dictionary], and they are delivered to the same Paid. Item, he gave to the same Richard Holte one wooden drinking-cup [‘mazer’] on a silver-plated and gilt foot with a certain turtle-dove on the lid, and it has been delivered to him Paid. Item, he gave to the same, one russet [AN russet ‘of a reddish-brown colour’] gown of cloth or fur [AN pel, ‘fur or woollen garment’] lined [AN furré] with beaver and delivered to the same Paid. Item, he gave to John Norton one gown of black cloth from Liere [‘blak of lyre’] lined with polecat, and one old halling at the guesthouse,4 that is, one tapestry wall-hanging [‘dosser’] and the tapestry covering for a bench [‘banker’] to the same, and delivered to RiPaid. Item, he gave to the said John Norton and Joan his wife, half all his kitchen-goods, both in brass vessels and in pewter, spits and forked supports for spits [‘gromes/groines’], etc.’

Such division into separate languages is how code-switched text is usually presented in order to highlight the switch-points, but it is a misrepresentation in the case of medieval mixed-language business writing because much of the text belongs to more than one language simultaneously. Examples of forms belonging to more than one language at once in Thomas Colred’s will include: – function words, such as de (Medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman), in (Medieval Latin and Middle English), et (Medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman)

the 30th July 1425, so we can assume that the copy of his will and inventory in MS 7086/1 dates to either the 30th July 1425 or shortly thereafter. The ﬁrst ten folios of MS 7086/1 have not attracted much scholarly attention, partly because Welch’s edition of the rest of the volume has made the majority of the monolingual English text in the manuscript available, and partly because the earlier date of the ﬁrst ten folios is not signalled in the Guildhall Library catalogue. The catalogue states that the Pewterers’ Company records begin in 1451, which is the starting-date of the accounts which make up the rest of the volume. The omission of any mention of the earlier records in the opening folios is probably due to the speed at which the Guildhall Keeper of Manuscripts, Albert Hollaender, had to work as he received documents deposited by the Livery Companies and City institutions just after the Second World War. MS 7086/1 was deposited by the Pewterers in 1952, when Hollaender was single-handedly surveying, collecting and cataloguing a ﬂood of archives which had been dislodged from their traditional homes. I am grateful to Charlie Turpie and Matthew Payne of the Guildhall Library for this information. 4. See Wright (forthcoming a) for more on spital.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

195

– bound morphemes, such as noun plural marker – is (Medieval Latin, AngloNorman, Middle English) – words which had been borrowed from one language to another, such as gipcier ‘pouch’ (Anglo-Norman to Middle English), spitell ‘guest-room’ (Anglo-Norman to Middle English), harnersat ‘decorated’ (AngloNorman to Medieval Latin ) – roots made visually bare by use of the medieval abbreviation and suspension system (which had the effect of hiding sufﬁxes), such as turtull ‘turtle-dove’ (Middle English, Anglo-Norman, Medieval Latin ), where the abbreviation sign on the ﬁnal graph enables the reader to supply the Latin ablative case ending or not, according to preference. (OE turtla, L turtur ‘turtle-dove’, turturilla ‘little turtle-dove’) – bound morphemes partially suppressed by the medieval abbreviation and suspension system, such as cariand ‘carrying’ (Medieval Latin and Middle English ) (note: the ME -and(e/-end(e/-ind(e sufﬁxes had become obsolete in London English by 1425, but cariand would have been good Middle English as well as Medieval Latin for earlier generations). I have marked argent, ‘silver-plated’, in the phrase sup pedem argent & deaurat, as Latin, but an equally valid mark-up would be argent, marked for Anglo-Norman (see AND argent, quasi a. ‘(of ) silver’) – and also argent, marked for Middle English (see MED argent (n. & adj.) (b) ‘silver-gilt’). The abbreviation mark at the end serves to render the word sufﬁcient in three languages at once, and it was up to the reader to supply whichever sequence from whichever language they chose. By contrast, in the phrase les ryngis dargent, the vowel of the preposition de has elided with the ﬁrst vowel of the modiﬁer argent, giving a form that is uniquely French. Example (2) is the same text again, this time marked with words which are Latin – and Latin alone emboldened (that is, Latin words such as item which entered French and English have not been emboldened), in order to give an impression of the ratio of Latin to vernacular (more on “vernacular” in Section 2.1.): (2)

Extract from London, Guildhall Library MS 7086/1, fo 1, 1425, marked for Medieval Latin only Sol a Itm voluit & dedit & manibz"suis libauit Rico ﬁlio dcii Rico holte vnu puu gipcier les ryngis dargent le burS de baudekyn noir & rouge et quandam zonam harnersat et het libanta Matri sue(wormhole) xxij li xv d ob

196 Laura Wright Sol a Itm (legauit crossed out) dedit Cristine ﬁlie sue vx Rici holte vnam zonam hnersat noir ene le dict huswiffes grd<e>ll et vnu kayebond hnersat & libanta eidm <et libata> Sol a Itm dedit eidm Rico holte vnu maser sup pedem argent & deaurat cu quodam turtull sup coopclm et libata eidm Sol a Itm dedit eidm vnu goune de russet pvse ffurre de beve et libata eidm Sol a Itm dedit Johi Norton vnu goune de noir lyre ffurre de ffycheux et vnu vetris hallyng a le Spitell videlt vnu dosser de Tapicerie et le banker ad eandm <et libata Ri> Sol a Itm dedit dco Johi Norton et Johe vx sue medietatem tocius coquine sue tam in vasis enneijs qam in peaut spites & gromes &c

I have not emboldened the entirety of zonam ‘zone’ and harnersat ‘harnessed’, despite their sufﬁxes, because their roots are attested in Anglo-Norman French. It is apparent from extract (2) that half the text was not Latin to readers in 1425, and to regard it as Latin with some vernacular words inserted when the scribe did not know the correct Latin translation is to misunderstand the extent to which this text-type at this date integrated all three languages. To an early ﬁfteenth-century observer, this text was composed according to the rules for writing ‘modern’ Latin as used for business purposes (it is important to stress the functional variety of business purposes; Medieval Latin written for other purposes was monolingual). We can express those rules as follows: – Use the AN deﬁnite article le, but use Medieval Latin for all other words, and for syntax and morphology. This rule is categorical: all parts of speech could be realised in Medieval Latin. – Optionally, use AN and ME vocabulary, but only for nouns, adjectives, roots of verbs and -ing forms. This rule is not categorical, so that no one individual lexical item has to appear in Middle English or Anglo-Norman, but all nouns, adjectives, roots of verbs and -ing forms are candidates. Languages could be mixed within the word. For example, the composer of Thomas Colred’s will mixed Anglo-Norman and Medieval Latin in the word hernersat (in full hernersatam, made up of AN root harnes ‘harness’ and Latin past participal marker -at- and adjectival accusative feminine singular inﬂexion -am), but he tended not to mix Middle English and Medieval Latin within the word.5 Other writers did so however, and the temporal parameters 5. See Wright (2010: 133) for an example of a scribe mixing three languages within one word wharfagio, made up of OE hwearf, AN -age and ML -io.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

197

of when this practice began to increase have yet to be established. To the synchronic composer, then, this text-type of mixed-language writing was not “dead”, but a productive language, which incorporated words from other language sources in a non-random manner. Example (3) is the same text again, this time morphologically glossed, so that the reader can judge the validity of the Latin, despite the ﬁfty per cent non-Latin component present: (3)

Extract from London, Guildhall Library MS 7086/1, fo 1, 1425 Sol a Paid

Itm Item

voluit & left & 3sg past

dedit & manibz gave & into the hands 3sg past DAT-pl

suis his DAT-pl

‘Paid. Item, he left and gave and delivered into the hands of’ libauit delivered 3sg past

Rico to Richard DAT-sg/m

ﬁlio dci son of the said DAT-sg GEN-sg

Rici holte Richard GEN-sg

‘Richard, son of the said Richard Holte’ vnu a/one ACC-sg/m/n

Puu small ACC-sg/m/n

gipcier pouch

les the pl

ryngis rings pl

‘one small pouch, the rings of ’ dargent le burS de baudekyn of-silver the purse of embroidered cloth

noir & black &

rouge et red and

‘silver, the purse of black and red embroidered material and’ quandam formerly

zonam harnersat et zone harnessed and ACC-sg/f past participle

het has 3sg

libanta been delivered passive

‘formerly a harnessed belt, and it has been delivered’ Matri to mother DAT-sg/f

sue[wormhole] his DAT-sg/f

xxij li 22ls

xv d 15d

ob halfpence

‘to his mother: £22 15d halfpence’ Sol a Paid

Itm Item

[legauit crossed out] bequeathed 3-sg past

dedit Cristine ﬁlie gave to Christine daughter 3-sg past DAT-sg/f DAT-sg

‘Paid. Item, [‘he bequeathed’ crossed out] gave to Christine his daughter,’

198 Laura Wright sue vx his wife DAT-sg/f

Rici holte of Richard GEN-sg

zonam zone ACC-sg/f

vnam a ACC-sg/f

‘wife of Richard Holte, one belt’ hernersat noir ene le dict huswiffes grd<e>ll harnessed black in the said housewife’s girdle past participle past participle ‘in the said housewife’s girdle’ et and

vnu kayebond hnersat & libanta eidm a key-band harnessed & being delivered to the same ACC-sg/m/n past participle present passive DAT-sg

‘and one harnessed keyband, and they have been delivered to the same’ <et and

Rico holte libata> Sol a Itm dedit eidm being delivered Paid Item gave to the same to Richard present passive 3-sg past DAT-sg DAT-sg/m

‘and delivered. Paid. Item, he gave to the same Richard Holte’ vnu maser a maser ACC-sg/m/n

sup on

pedem argent & foot silvered & ACC-sg

deaurat cu gilded with past participle (AN spelling)

‘one wooden drinking-cup on a silver-plated and gilt foot with’ quodam turtull sup certain turtle-dove on

coopclm lid ACC-sg

et libata eidm and being delivered to the same present passive DAT-sg

‘a certain turtle-dove on the lid, and it has been delivered to him.’ Sol a Paid

Itm Item

dedit gave 3-sg

eidm to the same DAT-sg

vnu goune a gown ACC-sg/m/n

‘Paid. Item, he gave to the same, one gown’ de russet pvse of russet cloth/skin

ffurre de beve et lined from beaver and AN past participle

libata being delivered present passive

‘of cloth or fur lined with beaver and delivered’ eidm to the same DAT-sg

Sol a Paid

Itm Item

dedit gave 3-sg past

Johi to John DAT-sg

‘to the same. Paid. Item, he gave to John Norton’

Norton Norton

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing vnu goune a gown ACC-sg/m/n

de of

noir black

lyre Liere

199

ffurre lined AN past participle

‘one gown of black cloth from Liere lined’ de from

ffycheux et polecat and

vnu vetris a old ACC-sg/m/n

hallyng a le Spitell halling at the spittle

‘with polecat, and one old halling at the guesthouse;’ videlt viz.

vnu dosser de a dosser of ACC-sg/m/n

Tapicerie tapestry

et and

le banker the banker

‘that is, one tapestry wall-hanging and the tapestry covering for a bench’ ad to

eandm <et the same and ACC-sg/f

libata Ri> Sol a Itm dedit being delivered to Ri- Paid Item gave present passive 3-sg past

‘to the same, and delivered to Ri-. Paid. Item, he gave’ dco to the said DAT-sg

Johi Norton et to John Norton and DAT-sg

Johe vx Joan- wife DAT-sg

‘to the said John Norton and Joan his wife,’ sue his DAT-sg/f

medietatem half ACC-sg

tocius entire

coquine kitchen GEN-sg/f

sue tam his both GEN-sg/f

‘half all his kitchen-goods, both’ in in

vasis enneijs qam vessels brass and DAT-pl/second declension DAT-pl

in in

peaut pewter

‘in brass vessels and in pewter,’ spites & spits &

gromes &c grooms etc.

‘spits and forked supports for spits, etc.’

A sequence such as Rico ﬁlio dci Rici ‘Richard son of the said Richard’, for example, depends on word-order in English but is signalled by inﬂexions in Latin. As is evident in extract (3), the composer of Thomas Colred’s will and inventory governed both Medieval Latin word-stock and grammar, and this is also apparent in that part of the will (the part which does not list commodities,

200 Laura Wright

not printed here) which is written in monolingual Medieval Latin. Different authors used differing amounts of Latin to French to English, and it is not, as yet, possible to state authoritatively what the frequencies were – but as the ﬁfteenth century wore on, English came to be incorporated more and more. Although the composer of Thomas Colred’s will did not have a high frequency of internally mixed-language words, as the century progressed, writers mixed languages within the word to a greater degree (usually between root and bound morpheme). Less common is our author’s use of Anglo-Norman past participles used adjectivally within the Medieval Latin noun phrase, as we have seen with, e.g., furré ‘lined with fur’ (vnu goune de russet pvse ffurre de beve ‘one gown of russet skin or cloth lined with beaver’), and elsewhere in the text (e.g. enamellé ‘enamelled’, vnu broche auri enamelle alb ‘one golden brooch enamelled white’ or ‘one white-enamelled gold brooch’). 2.1. On the orderliness of medieval mixed-language business writing 2.1.1. Articles In this subsection we look at some of the principles of mixed-language business writing expressed in Section 2, taking data from Thomas Colred’s will and inventory. The ﬁrst point was: – Use the AN deﬁnite article le. This is one of those rules which changed over time. Texts from the early part of our period, the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries, show few noun phrases with le, and those that are present were usually restricted to non-Latin personal names and place names. As time went on, more and more non-Latin nouns came to be modiﬁed by le (and, from the ﬁfteenth century, la). This led to a situation of variation, so that by the early ﬁfteenth century, scribes had a choice. The older way of expressing a prepositional phrase in mixed-language texts was by Latin prepositions and case endings on the noun governed. Thus Thomas Colred’s will of 1425 contains, for example, cu vno leone ‘with one lion’, sup cistam, ‘on a chest’, p viam, ‘by road’, ex mandato, ‘according to order’, where the Latin preposition governs the Latin inﬂexion. Not seen in our text but apparent in others written prior to 1425 is the incorporation of [preposition + non-Latin root + Latin inﬂexion].6 However the composer of Thomas Colred’s will also used the newer system, which consisted of a 6. See Wright (2010) for examples.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

201

preposition followed by an article plus, crucially, a non-Latin noun with a zero inﬂexion, as in P vno remanant ‘for one remnant’, P le doublet ‘for the doublet’, cu le banker ‘with the bench-cover’, where Anglo-Norman/Middle English remnant, doublet and banker do not inﬂect. This led to pairs, such as Latin sup coopclm ‘on the lid’ and French/English in le coucle ‘in the lid’ (both from Thomas Colred’s will): in 1425, our scribe was able to avail himself of both the older system and the newer one. This begs the question of whether there was any sociolinguistic weighting attached to usage of the new system. Was a scribe who used the new [preposition + le + vernacular N] construction sociolinguistically marking his text in any way? We may never know the full answer, but comparison of texts decade by decade shows an increasing amount of the newer construction, and it will be instructive to discover which institutions or individuals used it ﬁrst.7 In Anglo-Norman French, the deﬁnite articles le and la premodiﬁed masculine and feminine nouns. In ﬁfteenth-century British mixed-language texts however, le and la did not mark gender, as the pairs in (4) and (5) show: (4)

Itm P x virges de noir lire P Roulond & S John Cook la virg a iij s x d xxxviij s iiij d ‘Item, for 10 yards of black lire for Roulond and Sir John Cook, at 3s 10d the yard, 38s 4d’

(5) Itm P v verg de noir lire P kat ine vxe Aunger le virg a iij s x d xix s ij d ‘Item, for 5 yards of black lire for Katherine, Aunger’s wife, at 3s 10d the yard, 19s 2d’ Virges/verges was neither masculine nor feminine in this text. La was, in 1425, a low-frequency item in mixed-language writing. Its usage was to increase over the century. There are four tokens of la in Thomas Colred’s will, modifying lb (‘pound’, one token) and virg (‘yard’, three tokens). Neither Latin libra nor Latin virga are of English etymology (remember: le usually marked non-Latin words). It might be assumed that la agrees with the Latin feminine gender of libra and virga, and that that is the reason why it was introduced. However there are ﬁve tokens of le modifying ulna, ‘ell’, another Latin feminine noun (le vlne one token, le vln four tokens), with no tokens in our text of *la vln, and furthermore libra and virga are also modiﬁed by le (le lb, 11 tokens; le virg, two tokens). In other words, la cannot have served the function of marking

7. See Ingham (this volume) for more on [preposition + le].

202 Laura Wright

gender.8 Of the 46 tokens of nouns modiﬁed by le, only the ones mentioned already are Latin (that is, the weights and measures lb, vln, virg); the rest are French or English: le burS ‘the purse’, le dict huswiffes girdell ‘the said housewife’s girdle’, le Spitell ‘the guest-room’, le banker ‘the bench’, le lyue ‘the livery’, le Bedell ‘the beadle’, le pson ‘the parson’, le cheste ‘the chest’, le stoll ‘the stool’, le pece ‘the piece’, le gaudez ‘the gauds, le coucle ‘the lid’, le rynges ‘the rings’, le borsell ‘the borsel’, le Chaundeller ‘the chandler’, le wast ‘the waste’, le Mercer ‘the mercer’, le charr ‘the cart’, le doublett ‘the doublet’.9 It looks as though la entered in the semantic ﬁeld of weights and measures (compare the pragmatic effect of the semantic ﬁeld of weights and measures on English zero plural formation: six foot tall, three pound ten, eight stone six ounces), although whether this is idiosyncratic to this writer remains to be investigated. It has had a disrupting effect, in that not only does la modify weights and measures only, but it has caused lb, vln, virg to be the only Latin words to be modiﬁed by le. Not only gender but also number is marked variably: les gaudez~le gaudez ‘the gauds’, les ryngis~le rings ‘the rings’, les torches~les torche ‘the torches’. Trotter (2010: 60) suggests “le, far from introducing French (as one might expect from a French deﬁnite article), simply signals a switch from Latin to vernacular – and vernacular is a category which includes both French and English, perhaps [. . .] not distinguished by the writer. Documents of this type, in other words, function not with a ternary (Latin-French-English) system, but a binary (Latin-vernacular) mechanism”. The two modiﬁers le and la do have speciﬁc, different functions in this text (le modifying vernacular words,

8. The breakdown is 46 tokens; 4 tokens (la lb, la virg ); 4 tokens (les gaudez, les mortars, les corps, les torche); and elided l + vowel one token ‘the burial’. Non-cliticised <de le> occurs once (de le lyue ‘of the livery’); cliticised <des> occurs once (des Goldsmyth ‘of the Goldsmiths’); and <dez> occurs twice (dez Goldsmythes ‘of the Goldsmiths’). 9. Gaud is one of those words attested in this sense in Anglo-Norman and English but not in Continental French; that is, it developed semantically in the AngloNorman language whilst in Britain (OED gaud n.1 “One of the larger and more ornamental beads placed between the decades of ‘aves’ in a rosary”). The ﬁrst attestation of charret in the Middle English Dictionary occurs in an unsignalled mixed-language matrix (charret [n.]). Our token of borsell in MS 7086/1 is an antedating: MED borselle (n.) “a boss or knob (on a bowl or basin). (1439)”; OED bossell 1495; not in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

203

weights and measures excepting; la modifying weights and measures), but they are unlike their functions in the input languages. It must be emphasised that this conclusion pertains to Thomas Colred’s will only as the vast bulk of medieval mixed-language accounts remains to be analysed, but the gradual encroachment of le, and the later introduction of la in speciﬁc circumstances only, are not in doubt.10 2.1.2.

Noun phrases

Modern editors of medieval texts tend to be consistent. Nowadays, consistency is regarded as a virtue, and one that is insisted upon by editors, but it is an anachronism when interpreting medieval writing. Consider the representation of copper from Thomas Colred’s inventory of chattels: Et vnu brasspott de cop pond xxij lb, ‘And one brass pot of copper weighing 22 lbs’.11 The letter-graph and abbreviation-graph sequence cop can be expanded as English copper, Latin coperos- and/or Anglo-Norman coper, copre. The overlapping of two or more codes into forms which are simultaneously both creates what Muysken (2000: 133) calls “homophonous diamorphs”, perhaps better described in written texts as visual diamorphs. The Medieval Latin matrix of much mixed-language writing (Anglo-Norman could be a matrix too) tends to make modern editors assume that the abbreviation was to be expanded as Latin (or Anglo-Norman, as the case may be), but in reality writing in this text-type was variable, and the same scribe could easily write all three expanded forms in one manuscript. In fact our scribe expanded to elsewhere: Itm vnu roundbacyn de peaut viij d Et vnu chafoa de Coper iij s

10. Note how there is a theoretical implication here for the matrix language: Medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman French marked the constituents of the noun phrase for gender, but Middle English, by 1425, did not. When the deﬁnite article le is used with a feminine or plural noun in mixed-language writing, or when a feminine, masculine or neuter sufﬁx is suppressed by means of the abbreviation and suspension system, then the ungendered English system effectively imposes itself, so the matrix can no longer be regarded as Medieval Latin, but as an Angliﬁed new form. In theoretical terms, the notion of a duel between a matrix language and an embedded language (to use Myers-Scotton’s 1993 terms) cannot be upheld (see Auer (1998: 18) for more on the implications of this). 11. Brass at this time meant both ‘copper’, and ‘an alloy of copper and tin’, so a ‘copper brasspot’ disambiguated (see MED bras (n.) 1a., 1b.)

204 Laura Wright

iiij s iiij d, ‘Item, one round pewter basin, 8d. And one copper chafer12, 3s 4d, 4s’. The form itself is not analysable as discretely English or Anglo-Norman, as it was simultaneously both. Having chosen one form of expansion for a medieval abbreviation or suspension symbol, modern editors tend to stick to it. This may seem logical to present-day copy-editors, publishers and readers, but medieval scribes were more ﬂuid. Indeed, the overlapping of languages could lead to linguistic ambiguity, but this seems to have been a desirable outcome rather than a problem (that’s to say, any pragmatic ambiguities could be repaired, as with the copper brasspot above). With regard to word-order, adjectives could either be pre-or post-posed, as in Et vnu ioyned cheste xx d, ‘And one joined chest, 20d’, and also Itm vnu bredcheste ioyned xij d, ‘Item, one joint13 bread-chest, 12d’. They could be stacked rightwards, as in Itm iija cama vna tabla longa vernisshed & vnu par trest iij s iiij d, ‘Item, in the third room, one long varnished table and one pair of trestles, 3s 4d’, and also leftwards, as in Itm vnu large scolecuppe pond iij lb vj vnc v li v s, ‘Item, one large skal cup14 weighing 3 lbs 6 oz, £5 5s’. This is a merging of both the Germanic and the Romance rules on adjective placement. Again, my conclusion is that the system integrated these three languages rather than switched between them. 2.1.3. Deverbal nouns, gerunds and -ing forms It will be recalled from Section 2 that, in this text-type, -ing forms were candidates for realisation in Middle English and Anglo-Norman as well as Medieval Latin. Up until the fourteenth century, London writers of monolingual English used the sufﬁxes -and(e, -end(e, -ind(e to mark present participles and verbal nouns. Over the fourteenth century the -ing morpheme took over this role. Consider the overlapping -yng, -iend, -and morphemes in extract (6) from Thomas Colred’s will. (6)

In pmis p Cyryng de xx vlnis de Canvas P corpe custodiend ad saluo cariand le vln a iiij d Sa inde vj s viij d

12. OED chafer2 “A vessel for heating something”. 13. OED joined, ppl.a.1 2. “Put together, as a whole; constructed by joining the parts; spec. of furniture, etc., Made by a joiner.” 14. MED scole (n.(1)) ON skal ‘drinking cup’.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

205

Itm P xxix l cere ad dcm Canvas cerand la l a vj d xiiij sˆ vj d Itm P corde ad corpus ffrettand vj d Itm P Ceryng & trussyng corpis P labore le Chaundeller & s uient suoO xx s ‘Firstly for waterprooﬁng with wax of 20 ells of canvas for preserving the body, for carrying salve, at 4d the ell. Sum in respect thereof, 6s 8d; Item, for 29 lbs of wax for waxing the said canvas, at 6d the lb, 14s 6d; Item, for cord for tying the body, 6d; Item, for waxing and packing the body, for the work of the chandler and his servant, 20s’

The relevant forms in extract (6) are: cyryng/ceryng/cerand ‘waxing, waterprooﬁng’; custodiend ‘guarding’; cariand ‘carrying’; ffrettand ‘binding, wrapping’, trussyng ‘tying, packing’.15 Cyryng and trussing consist of an AN root with a ME derivational morpheme, whereas cerand is an ML/AN root with an ML inﬂexion. As mentioned, by this date in London (although not in other regions; see Wright (2001c: 87) for the continued usage of ME -and(e in late fourteenth century East Anglia, for example), forms such as cerand, ffrettand were unequivocally Latin grammatically, although to previous generations they were simultaneously Middle English and Latin. In present-day code-switching studies, prepositional phrases such as P custodiend, ad cariand, have been accounted for by appealing to government (c.f. Appel and Muysken 1987: 124–125), where the language of the preposition has been held to govern the language of the -ing form. However, [Romance preposition + Romance root + ME -ing] forms such as P ceryng & trussyng are an integral part of the text-type. In this text-type the prepositions (being closed-class function words) are realised in the matrix language, but using both vernacular and non-vernacular gerunds is part of the mixed-language

15. For French cirer, from Latin cerare ‘to wax’, see MED ciring (ger.), ﬁrst attestation (1468–1469), OED cering, n., ﬁrst attestation c1465, not listed in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. Thomas Colred’s will thus provides an antedating of cering in English, and as mixed-language texts are usually taken as sourcematerial for the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, an attestation of the word for that dictionary. For Anglo-Norman fretter, see MED freten (v.(3)) ‘to bind or fasten’, AND fretter2 ‘to fasten, secure’, DMLBS 1 frettare ‘to tie, bind’, with no entry for the -ing form in the Middle English Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary or the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. For Anglo-Norman trousser ‘to tie in a bundle’, see OED trussing, n., MED trussing(e (ger.), AND trusser.

206 Laura Wright

makeup. Both Latin and vernacular forms sit in this slot, so the language of the preposition cannot be held to govern the subsequent sufﬁx. It is not a question of switching between two systems, but of using two systems to create a third (see further Trotter, this volume).

2.1.4. Simplex words vs. two-element compounds In Section 2 it was observed that, by the ﬁfteenth century, all nouns, roots of verbs and -ing forms could appear in the vernacular as well as in the Romance matrix (earlier texts show far fewer vernacular forms). However, when a modiﬁer and a noun were compounded to make a word of two elements, then both elements frequently surfaced in the vernacular. The following compounds occur in the ﬁrst ten leaves of Thomas Colred’s will: bedbordes ‘bed-boards’, bredcheste ‘bread-chest’, bordcloth ‘board-cloth’, brasmore ‘brass ?mortars’, braspanne ‘brass-pan’, brasspott ‘brass-pot’, bridspite ‘bird-spit’, columbynﬂoa ‘columbine-ﬂower’, doreclothes ‘door-cloths’, fﬁrpanne ‘ﬁrepan’, fﬁrplace ‘ﬁre-place’, fﬁrake ‘ﬁre-rake, fﬁrshouill ‘ﬁre-shovel’, fﬂatpeces ‘ﬂat-pieces’, ffryngpanne ‘frying-pan’, goldrynges ‘gold-rings’, goldsmith ‘gold-smith’, gospanne ‘goose-pan’, gredyren ‘grid-iron’, kayebond ‘keyband’, lampeoile ‘lamp-oil’, maideneshed ‘maiden’s-head’, masertrees ‘maple-trees’, paxbred ‘pax-bred’, potthokes ‘pot-hooks’, poudrebox ‘powder-box’, poudregrate ‘powder-grater’, redgray ‘squirrel fur’, roundbacyn ‘round-basin’, scolecuppe ‘drinking-cup’, shipcheste ‘ship-chest’, spiceplate ‘spice-plate’, syngingbred ‘large communion wafers’, torchberers ‘torchbearers’, triaclebox ‘treacle-box’, yronbonde ‘iron-bound’. This results in pairs such as cista ‘chest’ ~ bredcheste, anulo ‘ring’ ~ goldrynges, panno ‘cloth’ ~ bordcloth, and is perhaps less prevalent in Thomas Colred’s writing than in that of some of his contemporaries; that is, the practice of compounding vernacular words is in keeping with writing from other archives and is not idiosyncratic to the composer of Thomas Colred’s will. To sum up Section 2: change over time must be considered when describing mixed-language business writing, and the kind of layering that results from new constructions entering and sitting alongside the old must be reckoned with. Shortly after the Norman Conquest, it makes sense to talk about code-switching with regard to this text-type because the vernacular element was low in frequency and can be distinguished, more or less, from the Romance matrix language. However, as time went on, this became less and less the case, so that by the mid-ﬁfteenth century the three languages can no longer be differentiated one hundred per cent. Moreover the overlapping of

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

207

the three languages was facilitated by use of the medieval abbreviation and suspension system, so whereas a code-switching analysis will work for texts written from 1066 to the mid fourteenth century, it will be less helpful for subsequent texts.

3. Treatment of medieval mixed-language business texts in historical dictionaries The analysis and subsequent description in Section 2 has been dependent on the historical dictionaries and could not have been undertaken without them. Yet, historical dictionaries do not, as yet, deal with mixed-language source-material systematically. We now turn to this in Section 3. I have noted ﬁve separate ways in which historical dictionaries deal with words attested in medieval mixed-language contexts.

3.1.

Silent inclusion

The ﬁrst way is inclusion without further comment. This is unproblematical for dictionaries if the word under consideration is attested in a monolingual English context at an earlier date. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary’s ﬁrst attestation under the second sense of mazer, n.1 2. (from either Anglo-Norman or Old English) “A bowl, drinking cup, or goblet, usually without a foot, made from a burr or knot of a maple tree and frequently mounted with silver or silver-gilt bands at the lip and base. [. . .] 1311 [. . .] j mazer cum pede argenteo” is listed without comment. This is our sense in extract (1), but there is no doubt about the Englishness of this word because under the previous heading, sense 1. a. “Maple or other ﬁne-grained hardwood used as a material for making drinking vessels”, there is an earlier attestation in a monolingual English context, from a1225. Similarly, the OED headword dosser1, dorser16 1. “An ornamental cloth used to cover the back of a seat, esp. of a throne or chair of state, or as a hanging for the wall of a hall or room of state, or of the chancel of a church” has four attestations in a monolingual English context, and then includes a ﬁfth attestation from 1495 in a Medieval Latin matrix, also without further comment (“Unum doser ad pendendum

16. Thomas Colred bequeathed vnu dosser de Tapicerie, ‘a dosser of tapestry’ to John Norton.

208 Laura Wright

supra lectum cum curtenis eidem pertinentibus.”). MED headword harneisen (v.) (b) “to adorn (a weapon, girdle, etc.)”, quotes three attestations from ﬁfteenth-century wills (“Zonam de viridi, harnest cum argento”, “Unam zonam cum uno pouche arneysed with twayl” and “Unum gladium harnysht cum argento”), but they are all preceded by two late fourteenth-century attestations in a monolingual English context. Thus, mixed-language contexts are treated as unproblematical if the headword has already been located in an earlier monolingual English context. However, unsignalled usage of mixed-language ﬁrst attestations can also be found. MED doser (n.) 1. “An ornamental cloth used as a wall hanging or as a cover for a seat” begins with two attestations taken from mixed-language wills and inventories (“In aula j dorser et ij bankers” [1338], “Unum doser decem ulnarum ad ponendum circa altare in choro” [1342]). There is no editorial indication that the English status of doser in these contexts is in any way problematical or doubtful, so this is a different treatment. This unmarked inclusion implies that mixed-language evidence constitutes evidence that the word was Middle English. The Oxford English Dictionary occasionally does this too (see discussion of bushel, n.1 in Wright, forthcoming a).

3.2.

Silent exclusion

The second way is exclusion without further comment, that is, suppression altogether of attestations which occur in a mixed-language context. An example is OED burse I.1. “A purse”. The ﬁrst attestation given is 1570, and there is no indication that there are earlier attestations in mixed-language texts, which is surely problematical for readers wishing to discover when the word was ﬁrst used in Britain. Similarly, under OED zone, n. 3. a. “A girdle or belt, as a part of dress”, the ﬁrst attestation is given as 1608, and under OED zone, n. 3. b. “A money-belt or purse” the ﬁrst attestation is given as 1692. These words are of Anglo-Norman derivation, but there is no indication that earlier attestations are to be found in mixed-language contexts. MED zone (n.) “A belt” has only two quotations, from 1394 and 1429–1430, both in a mixed-language matrix, and presented differently: the ﬁrst is in expanded Medieval Latin, and the second is translated – presumably because the editors of the published versions expanded and translated their texts. A comment is given under the etymological section: “[L zona & OF zone; exx. in quots. may be L or OF.]”. Thus unlike its treatment of doser (n.) 1., the Middle English Dictionary expresses doubt as to whether the word zone was part of the English language when attested in mixed-language texts.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

209

3.3. Square brackets and round brackets The third way of dealing with attestations in mixed-language accounts is inclusion in brackets before the monolingual English texts. The Oxford English Dictionary’s ﬁrst attestation under the headword lyre2 “The name (med.L. Lyra) of a town in Brabant, now Lire or Liere, occurring in the designations of certain kinds of cloth” is dated 1390–1391, and the ﬁrst quotation is placed within square brackets “[Pro xxiij bus uirgis panni nigri de Lyra]”. Square brackets “indicate a quotation is relevant to the development of a sense but not directly illustrative of it”, and the subsequent attestation is from a text dated 1421. The editor of lyre2 has decided that the 1390–1391 quotation helps to explain how lyre entered English, but that it is not an attestation. The Middle English Dictionary uses its square brackets in different ways in mixed-language contexts. MED burse (n.) (a) “A pouch, a purse” begins with two mixed-language attestations, but unlike MED doser (n.) 1. they are placed within square brackets: “[(1286) . . . Item pro reparatura cuiusdam Burse de serico facte.]”, “[(1415) . . . Vnum integrum vestimentum..cum frontell et contrafrontell et parura operata ad modum vnius Burse.]” (The round brackets indicate that the text is thought to have been composed at that date, and the ﬁrst monolingual English quotation is from ?a1425 without brackets of any kind, which indicates that ?a1425 is the date of the manuscript.) The Middle English Dictionary’s policy is as follows: Occasionally non-Middle English quotations (Latin, Old French, Old English, Middle Scots, etc.) are used for various illustrative purposes, e.g., for Latin or Old French, to exhibit the meaning or construction of the foreign word taken over into Middle English; [. . .] or to show the context(s) of the etymon. Such quotations are enclosed in brackets and placed at the beginnings of the blocks of Middle English quotations, regardless of date. (Lewis 2007: 19)

Thus the reader infers that the mixed-language attestations are regarded as illustrative of English but not as English attestations. Continuing with brackets, a problematical word in (1) is spital, which according to MED spitel (n.[1]) and OED spittle, n.1 meant ‘hospital’ at this date, but which in our Worshipful Company of Pewterers context is more likely to have meant ‘guest apartment’ or ‘guest-room’. AND hospital, s. “hospice, hospital, almshouse, guest-house, inn” lists a single spelling-variation without the ﬁrst syllable, enclosed in round brackets: “(spetille)”. The AND Reader’s Guide states: “Normal (round) brackets surrounding a headword form indicate that the editors have serious reservations about the reality of

210 Laura Wright

the form so listed”, but the spelling token is not linked to a quotation, so the reader cannot see what causes the doubt. Presumably the editor of this headword was unaware of further tokens of spital in a non-monolingual English context with the sense ‘guest-house’. Words such as this embedded in mixedlanguage texts (that is, a word of Anglo-Norman etymology (from hospital), but showing a sound-change more typical of English)17 pose a problem for the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, in theory at least, because it is not always possible to differentiate between the two vernaculars in mixed-language contexts. Fortunately for the reader, the editors of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary are inclusive. Because so many mixed-language accounts remain unpublished, editors are unable to see the frequency with which Anglo-Norman words were used; spital was a relatively high-frequency item for the Pewterers, who owned one. Similarly, the word gipser (OED gipser “purse suspended from a belt or girdle” ﬁrst attestation c1386; MED gipser (n.), ﬁrst attestation 1376, in an unsignalled mixed-language context; AND gipcer) has, as yet, no entry in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources.

3.4.

Question marks

A fourth way in which the historical dictionaries treat attestations from mixed-language business texts is by use of question marks.18 A problematical word in extract (1) is the sequence spelt, in minims, . It is not clear whether the three minims constitute an <m> letter-graph (gromes) or an sequence (groines), or indeed other conﬁgurations. The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (for whom medieval mixed-language texts are not a problem but a routine source) interprets the sequence as under the headword gronus: “gronus [? ME groin = snout, ME grones, pl. of grine + snare, noose], (?) forked support for spit, Y-piece, rax. 1374 in coquina . . . j magnum veru et j parvum veru et ~i ferr’ ad idem, precii in toto iij s.” This is likely to be our implement in extract (1), the forked supports that hold up either end of the spit upon which meat was roasted. However,

17. Weakening of the ﬁrst syllable of hospital started in Anglo-Norman (Pope §1137), but its loss did not go to completion in that language. See Wright (forthcoming a) for more on spital. 18. See Wright (forthcoming a), with regard to OED clow, n.2 “[? a. F. clou.] ? A nail”.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

211

the word in question could also be interpreted as (or in the case of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources’s single quotation, ). OED groom, n.2 is deﬁned as “A forked stick used by thatchers”, with ﬁrst attestation from Grose’s Provincial Glossary of 1790. The editor tentatively suggests that this derives from a different question-marked source “[? A western variant of CROME, CROMB.]”; from a putative West Germanic root giving an unattested Old English form, *cramb, but an attested Middle Dutch and Low German form, kramme, meaning “ ‘a stick with a hook at the end of it, to pull down the boughs of a tree, to draw weeds out of ditches,’ etc.”. The question-marks in the dictionaries’ discussions are helpful here as they allow the reader to gauge the degree of the editors’ certainty. As I can see that the editors are not sure of their etymologies I venture to proffer a third possibility. Thomas Colred’s kitchen equipment may have included: (a) (b) (c)

3.5.

a pair of groins, deriving from an Anglo-Norman word for a snout. a pair of grooms, deriving from a West Germanic root for a hooked stick. a pair of grooms, deriving from the common Middle English word groom meaning ‘boy, servant’, used metaphorically to anthropomorphise the forked supports.

Comment

A ﬁfth way in which medieval mixed-language material is treated is by direct comment. Current OED policy follows the practice of direct comment for attestations of headwords occurring in mixed-language texts,19 but instead of placing the quotation under the relevant sense division (as with headwords mazer, n.1 2.; dosser1, dorser 1.; lyre2), it is now placed in the etymological section, as under the headword pewter, n. and adj. The entry for pewter, n. and adj. was revised in June 2010, and the following occurs at the end of the etymology section: “[. . . The following should probably be taken as showing the Anglo-Norman word [. . .] rather than English adjectival use: 1367–8 [. . .] In duodena de peudervessell garnatis dimissis in ofﬁcio, 15 s.]” The closing square bracket completes the parenthesis opened at the beginning of the etymology section; that is, all etymological discussion is placed within

19. See Durkin (2009: 173–177) for a discussion of current OED policy with regard to mixed-language texts (“Historical dictionaries tend generally to take a pragmatic approach”).

212 Laura Wright

square brackets. The implication here must be that the attestation is regarded as being of etymological value, but not a direct attestation of English usage. It should be said that inconsistency of presentation is not, to some degree at least, the dictionaries’ fault and it is not, in practice, much of a problem. For example, moving to a word not present in extract (1), the ﬁrst quotations under MED hagodei (n.), which is a word of English etymology meaning “A ring forming the handle for raising the latch on a door”, are: (1353) . . . [For 6 pairs of ] laches [and] hagondays [for the doors of the staple house] (1383) . . . [Rings with plates, tinned, called] hagodayes, [for doors] (1402) . . . Rynges [called] hagadays (1414) . . . Pro v ceris, x clauibus, et v hafgooddays These quotations are all taken from one page of Salzman (1952: 299), and reﬂect his discussion of the original manuscript material – sometimes translated, sometimes transcribed, and sometimes paraphrased. It is therefore not surprising that the historical dictionaries have found multiple ways of presenting such evidence. Nonetheless, the over-riding impression is one of dismissal: the Oxford English Dictionary and Middle English Dictionary do not straightforwardly signal the value of mixed-language texts for the history of the English language, and sometimes they actively suggest that they should not be taken as evidence of English without signalling that this is debatable or, worse, suppress them altogether. The purpose of surveying these entries in the historical dictionaries is not to criticise those works, which all have multiple editors, changes of editorial policy over time, and which are on-going, but to highlight the apparent difﬁculty posed by medieval mixed-language texts. In practice, I suggest that the only real problem with these ﬁve different ways of dealing with mixed-language texts is caused by the second treatment, that is, not signalling at all that there is earlier mixed-language material extant containing the headword in question. All others can be teased out by the reader.

4. On the implication of mixed-language writing as monotext for historical dictionaries Part of the difﬁculty for historical dictionaries, as we have seen, is that they do not systematically regard mixed-language texts as an entity separate from

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

213

monolingual Latin and monolingual Anglo-Norman texts; rather, they view them as Latin or French texts which happen to have a greater or lesser amount of Middle English words embedded within. Therefore, some editors of the Middle English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary have expressed discomfort about culling English words from what they perceive to be Latin or French sources (which accounts for the inconsistent square brackets/round brackets/question-mark system), and some editors have ignored English words derived from Latin when embedded in a Romance matrix language (which accounts for why burse has a ﬁrst attestation of 1570 and zone of 1608 in the Oxford English Dictionary). This situation could be ameliorated by opening up the category of mixed-language business writing as a monotext. If the historical dictionaries were to distinguish between monolingual Medieval Latin texts on the one hand and mixed-language Medieval Latin matrix texts on the other, this problem would be regularised. Monolingual Latin and French texts would not be routine source material for the historical English dictionaries, but mixed-language writing would be, and words from such sources could be labelled as such. Let us see the effect by applying this suggestion to an entry in the AngloNorman Dictionary. We turn to the headword betme, the current entry for which is as follows: betme, bottum, butme s. bottom: Item pro duobus lingnis ad faciendum le butme xlij.s. Sandahl Sea i 34 (PRO E 101/5/2) betmeshide, (M.E.) (nav.) the keel of a ship: et expend in le bottumshyde balengere predicte precium pecie xx.s. Sandahl Sea i 56 (PRO E 101/43/5 m.1). betme piece, (M.E.) (nav.) keel, bottom-piece: Et en un betme piece achat’ pur la fesure del dit bat’ pris vj.s.viij.d. Sandahl Sea i 35 (PRO E 101/25/32 m.1); En deux betmepieces as ditz deux escomers pris xxx.s. Sandahl Sea i 35 (PRO E 101/25/32/m.1).

At present, the Anglo-Norman Dictionary gives the impression that the headwords betme (OE botm), betmeshide (OE botm + OE scid ‘piece of wood split thin’) and betme piece (OE botm + AN piece) were uncomplicatedly Anglo-Norman. In fact, there is no doubt that betme, betmescid and betmepiece were English words, but their inclusion as part of the Anglo-Norman word-stock has yet to be settled. Historical lexicographers make decisions about word-stock based not only on etymology but also on frequency of

214 Laura Wright

occurrence, so bottom, bottom-shide and bottom-piece have been included in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary because they show up in the various maritime texts surveyed by Sandahl (1982). However, the attestations are actually all from mixed-language contexts, both Medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman. There are no tokens at all of betme from a monolingual Latin context or a monolingual French one. Nevertheless these words have been included in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary because of the presence of the article le as a modiﬁer in some of the contexts, on the grounds that le was an Anglo-Norman article and therefore modiﬁed Anglo-Norman words (see Trotter 2010 for a critique of this practice). Were these words to be signaled (e.g., betmeml, betmescidml, betmepieceml, where ml stands for ‘mixed-language’), then it would be immediately apparent that these were not monolingual French words, but that their inclusion in a French dictionary is nevertheless justiﬁed.20 We would also get some sense as to how many of the words in our historical dictionaries come from mixed-language texts, and there would be further motivation for locating and publishing such texts, which are at present largely ignored (although it is precisely documents like these that are increasingly being digitized by archives and made available on the web).21 Lexicographers would be relieved of the responsibility of deciding categorically whether each word tagged as coming from a mixed-language context was English, Latin or French; that decision would be, ultimately, the reader’s, should they wish to make it. Such readers would then be in an informed position, armed with the relevant context as well as the etymology.

5. Summary In Section 2 I opened up the notion of a cline over time, with code-switching at one pole (as evidenced by eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth century texts),22

20. No doubt there is some more elegant method of labelling. 21. See, for example, http://www.cityoﬂondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/ Leisure_and_culture/Records_and_archives/Ancestry+digitisation.htm which announces that London land tax registers and wills will be digitised; http://www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/wills.asp?WT.hp=Wills already provides this service for wills 1384–1858 held at The National Archives. 22. See Wright (forthcoming a) for a discussion of an extract from a text of 1279, which shows code-switching (that is, Middle English and Anglo-Norman embedded in a Medieval Latin matrix).

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

215

and a more integrated mixing of the three languages at the other (as seen in texts of the later fourteenth, ﬁfteenth and early sixteenth centuries). I pointed out that mixed-language writing shows variation in the same way that monolingual systems do, so that, for instance, prepositional phrases could consist of [Latin preposition + ME/AN/ML root + Latin inﬂexion], or [Latin preposition + le + ME/AN root + zero inﬂexion]. Working backwards, as it were, from our texts to the medieval speakers behind those texts, we can infer that they were trilingual. Ingham (2010: 22) has argued that Anglo-Norman speakers in Britain were “balanced bilinguals with a high degree of competence in Insular French” right into the later fourteenth century. Let us assume that this is correct, and that the creators of mixed-language business texts in 1425, if not precisely “balanced trilinguals”, had a professionally competent knowledge of Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English. They were inheritors of a long tradition of mixing these three systems in an orderly way: they knew how to convey the matrix by means of Romance morphology, how to visually minimise that morphology by foregrounding cognate roots and suppressing sufﬁxes with abbreviation and suspension symbols, how to separate their closed-class function words (Romance) from their open-class content words (vernacular), how to follow both Germanic and Romance word-orders in the Noun Phrase, how to port meanings that had developed in the vernaculars back into Latin, how to alternate between the French, English and Latin realisation of a word, how to realise compounds, and how to maintain variation consistently (not a contradiction in terms!). Together, they collectively created a functional variety, which came about via a multilingual working environment. They exploited the full repertoire of their trilingualism by ﬁnding or creating common ground between the three systems, thereby creating new constructions not present in the input languages (such as the ﬁfteenth-century functions of le and la). The system had a social function, that of the language of written record of ﬁnancial activity, and was indexical of professionalism. Their writing, which, to repeat, was not unusual but a common, everyday event – far more common than monolingual literature – cannot at the time have been regarded as incompetent or faulty, or there would not be so much of it remaining in repositories and archives. That it changed over time shows it to have been a living, dynamic system (and see Trotter, this volume). Such observations lead me to suggest that it would be helpful for medieval mixed-language business writing to be recognised as such in historical dictionaries, thereby eliminating the present inconsistencies noted in Section 3 and foregrounding the prevalence of this text-type.

216 Laura Wright

References Manuscripts London Metropolitan Archives MS, formerly Guildhall Library MS, 7086/1 15th century Account-book of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers. The National Archives PROB 11/3. 20 July 1425 Will of Thomas Colred of Colrey, Hampshire. Printed and online material The Anglo-Norman Dictionary Online: http://www.anglo-norman.net/. Appel, René and Pieter Muysken 1987 Language Contact and Bilingualism. London: Edward Arnold. Auer, Peter (ed.) 1998 Code-switching in Conversation. Language, Interaction and Identity. London/New York: Routledge. Durkin, Philip 2009 The Oxford Guide to Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ingham, Richard (ed.) 2010 The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts. York: York Medieval Press and The Boydell Press. Kurath, Hans and Robert E. Lewis (gen. eds.) 1956–2001 Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ Latham, Ronald E. and David R. Howlett (eds.) 1975 Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. London: The British Academy and Oxford University Press. Lewis, Robert E. 2007 Middle English Dictionary: Plan and Bibliography. (2nd ed.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Muysken, Pieter 2000 Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1993 Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oxford English Dictionary Online: http://dictionary.oed.com/. Salzman, Louis Francis 1952 Building in England down to 1540: A Documentary History. Oxford: Oxford University Press (reprinted by Clarendon, 1997). Sandahl, Bertil 1982 Middle English Sea Terms, Vol. III: Standing and Running Rigging. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing

217

de Smit, Merlijn 2010 Modelling mixed languages: Some remarks on the case of Old Helsinki slang. Journal of Language Contact, Varia 3: 1–19. Trotter, David 2003 Oceano vox: You never know where a ship comes from. On multilingualism and language-mixing in medieval Britain. In: Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.), Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History, 15–33. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Trotter, David 2010 Bridging the gap: The (socio)linguistic evidence of some medieval English bridge accounts. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 52–62. Welch, Charles 1902 History of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers of the City of London based upon their own Records. London: Blades, East and Blades. Wright, Laura 1995a A hypothesis on the structure of macaronic business writing. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Medieval Dialectology, 309–321. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1995b Middle English -ende and -ing: A possible route to grammaticalization. In: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Linguistic Change under Contact Conditions, 365–382. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1997a Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English in a civic London text: An inquisition of the River Thames, 1421. In: Steward Gregory and David A. Trotter (eds.), De Mot en Mot: Aspects of Medieval Linguistics. Essays in Honour of William Rothwell, 223–260. Cardiff: University of Wales Press/Modern Humanities Research Association. Wright, Laura 1997b The records of Hanseatic merchants: Ignorant, sleepy or degenerate? Multilingua 16: 339–350. Wright, Laura 1998 Mixed-language business writing: Five hundred years of codeswitching. In: Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language Change: Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 99–118. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 2000a Bills, accounts, inventories: Everyday trilingual activities in the business world of later medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, 149–156. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

218 Laura Wright

Wright, Laura 2000b Wright, Laura 2001a

Wright, Laura 2001b

Wright, Laura 2001c

Wright, Laura 2002a Wright, Laura 2002b

Wright, Laura 2005

Wright, Laura 2010

Wright, Laura forthcoming a Wright, Laura forthcoming b

Social context, structural categories and medieval business writing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(2): 124–125. Models of language mixing: Code-switching versus semicommunication in medieval Latin and Middle English accounts. In: Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger (eds.), Language Contact in the History of English, 363–376. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. The role of international and national trade in the standardisation of English. In: Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño, Begoña Crespo Garcia, Emma Lezcano Gonzalez and Begoña Simal Gonzalez (eds.), Re-interpretations of English: Essays on Language, Linguistics and Philology (I), 189–207. A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña. Some morphological features of the Norfolk Guild certiﬁcates of 1388/9: An exercise in variation. In: Peter Trudgill and Jacek Fisiak (eds.), East Anglian English, 79–162. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer. Code-intermediate phenomena in medieval mixed-language business texts. Language Sciences 24: 471–489. Standard English and the lexicon: Why so many different spellings? In: Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch (eds.), Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-linguistic Factors, 181–200. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Medieval mixed-language business texts and the rise of standard English. In: Janne Skaffari, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik (eds.), Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, 381–399. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. A pilot study on the singular deﬁnite articles le and la in ﬁfteenthcentury London mixed-language business writing. In: Richard Ingham (ed.), 130–142. Mixed-language accounts as sources for linguistic analysis. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.), Multilingualism in Medieval Britain: Sources and Analysis. Turnhout: Brepols. The contact origins of standard English. In: Daniel Schreier and Marianne Hundt (eds.), English as a Contact Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion in medieval and early modern England: A corpus approach to research on historical code-switching Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi 1. Introduction As a transcultural and translinguistic phenomenon, religion provides a potentially rich site for multilingualism and language contact (see Spolsky 2003; Omoniyi 2006).1 In this article, we examine multilingualism and codeswitching in religious texts and by clerical writers in a historical perspective, focusing on texts from medieval and early modern England, more speciﬁcally in a roughly two-hundred year period extending from the mid-fourteenth to the late sixteenth century. For this study, we have selected sub-sets of material from two historical corpora, the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, amounting to c. 275,000 words. The primary aim of the study is to identify and describe patterns in the use of multilingual resources in the light of the material provided in the two corpora, paying attention to variation between different genres and to other contextual factors governing text production. The structure of the article is as follows. In Section 2, we discuss the socio-political history of religion of late medieval and early modern England. The corpora and their sub-sections analysed in the study are introduced in Section 3. In Section 4, we report the quantitative ﬁndings, paying attention to the frequency of code-switched segments in different languages across genres and over time. Section 5 examines the functions of code-switching

1. The research presented in this paper was supported by the Academy of Finland, the Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG) and the University of Tampere. We are grateful to Alpo Honkapohja and Matti Kilpiö for sharing their expertise in Latin with us.

220 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

observed in the material, and ﬁnally, Section 6 contains some concluding remarks.

2. Multilingualism and the socio-political history of religion in England in the period under review In the religious history of England, the period we examine is a dynamic one, witnessing an increase in the use of English by the side of Latin, the traditional language of the church. Other major shifts were also taking place. In fourteenth-century England, the Catholic Church was a major power, and clerical ministers were often in charge of governing the kingdom. The church had both political and economic power, and was greatly involved in providing education. However, rebellion against the church became evident, with anti-clericalism and talk of conﬁscating church lands; in the late fourteenth century the most organised movement in this protest was Lollardy. One of the inspirational ﬁgures for this group, focusing on the Bible as a basis for belief, was John Wycliffe (c. 1324–1384), an Oxford theologian, who advocated the importance of vernacular religious writing, including the Bible. While the Lollard movement was condemned by the church, it continued to ﬁnd support during the ﬁfteenth century (Briggs 1994: 96–98). This heritage was one of the elements contributing to the English Reformation in the sixteenth century. The Reformation had a major impact on society in “customs, laws, obedience and, lastly, in the very nature of the State itself ”, as a Venetian observer described it (Briggs 1994: 127). Opposition to the new church continued among the clergy for another thirty years, and with changing rulers the religion of the country shifted from Protestant to Catholic and back to Protestant. As the Church of England established its position during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Puritans began to demand even further reforms from the 1560s onwards (Briggs 1994: 128). The Reformation marked the ofﬁcial turning point in the vernacularisation of religious life in England, but the process had started earlier, being contemporaneous and connected with the more general shift in the status of the vernacular in late medieval England (see e.g. Wogan-Browne et al. 1999). The ﬁrst complete Bible translation appeared in the late fourteenth century, when John Wycliffe and his team of translators completed their work (see e.g. Hudson 1985; Biller and Hudson 1994). While the Lollards were rejecting many of the teachings of the Catholic Church, the source text they used was still the Latin Vulgate. Later translators like Coverdale continued to work mostly from the Latin, with help from e.g. German translations. The ﬁrst

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 221

English version of the New Testament translated directly from Greek was Tyndale’s (1526), and he began work on the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew as well (published posthumously in 1536). The Authorized Version in 1611 relied heavily on Tyndale’s style and lexis. While the Bible is a central text for Christianity, there is a great variety of vernacular religious writing produced during the period examined in our study, both in manuscripts and in print. For example, Colinson (2010: 398) goes as far as to call religion “the great staple of the sixteenth century book trade”, pointing out that approximately half of all books published dealt with matters of religion in some fashion. Following the English Reformation, the ﬁrst English version of the Book of Common Prayer appeared in 1549, developing English liturgical prose. The contention between Catholics and Protestants of various denominations produced a voluminous body of writing, and many genres continued regardless of denomination. A good overview of the breadth of early vernacular religious writing is provided by the Corpus of English Religious Prose (COERP) with its samples from six core genres (sermons, treatises, catechisms, prayers, religious biographies and hymns), three minor genres (monastic rules, penitentials and exegetical commentaries) and four associated genres (pamphlets, prefaces, religious letters and religious articles in newspapers) (Rütten et al. 2008). Many of these genres are also examined in our study (see Section 3). Multilingualism in religious writings from early England has been studied previously, with an emphasis on the medieval period. The most extensive study to date is by Wenzel (1994), who examined Latin/English bilingualism in medieval macaronic sermons, paying attention to the uses of the two languages in authentic manuscripts in their sociolinguistic and communicative context and to the structural and functional characteristics of language alternation within individual texts (see also Halmari and Regetz, this volume, on the grammatical patterning in Latin/English macaronic sermons). The rhetorical and grammatical aspects of bilingual practices in individual religious texts have received attention, for example, in numerous analyses of Piers Plowman, a long fourteenth-century English allegorical poem, containing several hundred Latin insertions (see e.g. Machan 1994; Halmari and Adams 2002 and their references). The mixture of languages in religious verse, religious treatises and sermons has also been discussed by Schendl (e.g. 2000). These studies, drawing on a range of methods and theories in linguistics, philology and literary analysis, conﬁrm that religious texts provide fruitful material for studying code-switching in a historical angle. In addition to providing information about domain-speciﬁc practices, they also

222 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

contribute to our understanding of the theory and practice of code-switching from a variety of angles, including its structural and grammatical nature, its functional meaning-making potential as a rhetorical, discursive and textual device, and its social embedding. The present study aims to complement this earlier research by examining code-switching practices in a variationist frame in a range of different types of writings from late-medieval and early modern England connected with religion and the church. Like previous studies, our data contain sermons and religious treatises, but the study also widens the data spectrum in the domain by including letters written by contemporary clergymen, some of them dealing with religious topics, others not. The study shows that including data from letters provides new insights into the extent of bilingualism in this domain by opening a new window on the language practices of the clergy outside the pulpit. Our method is also different from that employed in previous research on religious texts, as we make use of corpus linguistics, combining quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. Corpuslinguistic methods have been successfully used in code-switching research since the late 1990s. These studies comprise analyses of present-day corpus material examining code-switching between English and other languages in a range of genres (e.g. English-Norwegian in letters, Graedler 1999; English-Swedish in speech, Sharp 2001; English-Spanish in ﬁction, Callahan 2004; English-German in newspapers, Onysko 2007). In a historical frame, corpus methods have been used in our own code-switching research, including analyses of the multi-genre Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, extending from the eighth to the early eighteenth century (Pahta and Nurmi 2006); the domain-speciﬁc Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, with material from c. 1375 to 1700 (Pahta 2003, 2004, 2007, 2011); and the single-genre Corpus of Early English Correspondence and its extension, covering the period from c. 1410 to 1800 (Nurmi and Pahta 2004, 2010; Pahta and Nurmi 2007, 2009).

3. Material and method: Extracting and analysing data from two historical corpora of English The two historical corpora from which our material for this study is derived, the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC ) and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC ), were originally compiled of texts representing the English language. In the compilation process, extensive use of foreign

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 223

language has been one of the criteria for excluding data from the corpora, and thus, from the point of view of our data selection, any evidence of multilingual practices in the corpus may be considered incidental rather than planned. This means that no samples representing mixed-language texts where codeswitching is endemic, such as macaronic sermons with Latin as the matrix language (Wenzel 1994), mixed-language business documents (Wright 1992, 1998) or macaronic verse (Schendl 2002), are included in the corpora. Our earlier research shows, however, that despite their allegedly monolingual nature both corpora provide ample data for analyzing multilingualism and code-switching (see Nurmi and Pahta 2004; Pahta and Nurmi 2006). The research also indicates that religion is one of the social domains in medieval and early modern England where code-switching is more frequent than in most other domains, with the exception of science. In view of the fact that Latin was the ofﬁcial language of the Church in England until the Act of Uniformity in 1549, which established English as the language of worship through the use of the Book of Common Prayer, the frequent use of Latin is by no means surprising. However, the variety of ways in which writers in this domain draw on their multilingual resources in their meaning-making practices only becomes evident in systematic and detailed analyses of texts within the domain. Both the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence were originally compiled to facilitate variationist analysis in historical linguistics, albeit with different orientations. The basis of the variationist paradigm is the view of language as “orderly heterogeneity” (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog 1968), where variability is, or may be shown to be, structured and conditioned by language-external factors (Milroy and Milroy 1997: 47). The wide range of factors that condition the linguistic choices of speakers and writers include, for example, the context of discourse, the participants of the communicative situation, their social and regional backgrounds and their interpersonal relationship, and the purpose of the communicative act (see e.g. Labov 1972; Hymes 1974; Biber 1988). Variability is also inherent in language change over time and as such of special interest in diachronic linguistics (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog 1968: 188). Historical corpus-linguistic applications of the variationist approach have examined, for example, the impact of social, regional and textual factors on language variation and change (see e.g. Rissanen 2008; Nurmi et al. 2009 or Taavitsainen and Pahta 2010). Our ﬁrst data pool, the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, is a diachronic general-purpose multi-genre corpus containing over 1.5 million words of

224 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

running text from c. 700 to 1710.2 Within the variationist approach, the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts is, due to the corpus structure, speciﬁcally oriented towards the analysis of language variation and change in its genre embedding over time. The multiple parameter coding of the texts also makes it possible to examine the inﬂuence of other factors, including social and regional determinants (see Kytö and Rissanen 1993; Kytö 1996). The texts we focus on in this study, i.e. those representing the domain of religion, include a range of genres, or text types, as they are called in the corpus design. The inventory of categories in the corpus varies slightly from sub-period to subperiod (see Kytö 1996: 51–52), and this also applies to the variety of religious genres in the sub-periods we examine (M3 1350–1420, M4 1420–1500 and E1 1500–1570). The late-medieval samples, M3 and M4,3 include extracts of the Bible, sermons, homilies, religious treatises and religious rules, while the early modern dataset, E1, only continues to document sermons and biblical texts. All in all, our study includes 30 texts from the period 1350–1570 in the Helsinki Corpus, comprising 179,930 words and representing 6 different genres; details are provided in Table A1 in the Appendix. The second corpus used in the study, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC, and appropriate collections from its supplement, CEECSU), is a single-genre corpus, speciﬁcally designed for research in

2. The Helsinki Corpus (HC ) was compiled by a large project team led by Prof. Matti Rissanen at the University of Helsinki. For information on the HC, its compilers and the compilation process, see e.g. Rissanen et al. (1993), Kytö (1996) and the Corpus Resource Database (CoRD, at http://www.helsinki.ﬁ/varieng/CoRD/ corpora/HelsinkiCorpus/). See also Rissanen et al. (1997a, 1997b). 3. M4 also includes religious drama and saints’ lives, which we have ruled outside this study. Most passages in drama which are potentially analysed as switches are either names of characters (vast majority) or stage directions. While the types of II Puella ‘Second Girl’ or Et exeant ‘And they exit’ are instances of Latin and do give an indication of the multilingual practices in play production, they are highly repetitive and would have given little further insight into the switching practices in the domain of religion. Saints’ lives were left out because they did not have a counterpart in the other subperiods of the corpus under study here, and because there were altogether only 10 switched passages (all Latin) in them. All passages were either biblical quotations or references to the parts of mass (Te Deum laudamus ‘We praise thee Lord’).

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 225

historical sociolinguistics.4 The CEEC consists of personal correspondence from the earliest English letters dating from c. 1410 to 1681, and has 2.7 million words of running text, comprising 6,039 letters from 778 writers in 96 collections. The informants in the corpus are all English (i.e. Wales, Scotland and Ireland have not been included), and they have been chosen to represent the literate social ranks of the age as comprehensively as possible. On the basis of their social status, the informants in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence are divided into seven categories: Royalty, Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, Professionals, Merchants, and Other non-gentry. In this study, we examine letters written by members of the Clergy in the period c. 1410–1570, starting from the earliest letters to the date corresponding with the end of E1 sub-period in the Helsinki Corpus. The letter data includes 206 letters from 52 writers, making up a total of 94,100 words; details are provided in Table A2 in the Appendix. The Clergy consists of members of one profession with varying degrees of social status, including all clerics from Archbishops to the lowliest parsons. A division into Upper and Lower Clergy is made in Table A2, but we have chosen to deal with the different sub-groups together, because separately they are too small for a meaningful quantitative analysis. It should be noted here that not all letters written by these informants are on religious matters; many high-ranking members of the clergy were in fact keenly involved in the governing of the country, and their correspondence reﬂects that (see also Schendl, this volume, for the administrative duties of bishops). Nevertheless, we feel that their letters, regardless of subject matter, portray the language skills of the clergy of the time, and give us a better understanding of the range of multilingual resources available for them to draw on. All in all, the corpus material analyzed in this study amounts to 274,030 words. After selecting this material from the corpora for analysis, we proceeded to locating the instances of code-switching in the texts. Both

4. The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC ) was compiled by the Sociolinguistics and Language History project team at the University of Helsinki; for further information on the CEEC and its different versions, see CoRD, at http://www.helsinki.ﬁ/varieng/CoRD/corpora/CEEC/. Descriptions of the corpus and lists of editions included can also be found in e.g. Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg (2003) and Nurmi et al. (2009).

226 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

corpora have text-level annotation for foreign language, illustrated in example (1).5 (1)

I speake not thys wythowt causse, for I perceave that (\ubi corpus ibi congregantur aquilae\) [‘where the body is there eagles gather’; paraphrase of Job 39:30]; but yn unburdenynge myselff off thys cure hyt standethe me yn hand to be so circumspect (Johnson: 1551, Laurence Saunders, 1467)

This annotation was used as the search parameter for retrieving the codeswitching data from the corpora, which ensured efﬁcient and systematic data extraction, characteristic of the corpus methodology.6 An alternative method would have been to use an alphabetical wordlist of the corpus texts for identifying foreign-language items in the data; this method, less automated and more time-consuming, can also be used in analyzing code-switching in historical corpora that do not contain text-level annotation for foreign language

5. In the examples in this article, expressions in languages other than English appear bold, in the corpora they do not. The reference at the end of each example from the Helsinki Corpus indicates the period which the sample represents, genre (= text type), year of writing (if known), the name of the (writer and) text and the (volume and) page number of the edition referred to. In examples from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, the reference indicates collection name, year of writing, writer’s name and the page number of the edition referred to. 6. The coding principles for foreign language passages in the Helsinki Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence are similar. In the compilation of CEEC, Arja Nurmi was responsible for the decisions whether something was annotated as foreign language or not. In annotating, some attention was paid to decisions of editors in e.g. italicising lexical items, but there were other consistently used criteria. Inﬂectional endings were the most decisive one: when e.g. numerals were accompanied with Latin rather than English endings, they were annotated as foreign language. Names of books and titles of people were not annotated, neither were highly frequent items such as item or anno. Terms related to Christianity (pater noster, amen) were also treated as borrowings by this stage of the language and were not annotated. This followed from a decision made during the annotation process of the Helsinki Corpus, where the long diachrony of the corpus allowed for the annotation to reﬂect different stages of the language. The default decision in unclear cases was not to annotate. Because of our knowledge of the decisions made in annotating the corpus, we feel fairly conﬁdent in using the annotation for collecting the data, although in the course of this study we had to revise some earlier decisions of borderline cases.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 227

(see e.g. Pahta 2004, 2007, 2011). In addition, some longer foreign language passages that have been omitted from the texts during the compilation in both the Helsinki Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence were retrieved from the source texts and included in the analysis. These passages too were located using the code indicating omission as the search parameter.7 Since we are more concerned in this study with the writers’ textual and discoursal uses of their multilingual resources than with the grammar of switching, in the quantitative analysis we have counted foreign language passages in the data instead of individual switches from one language to another. All in all, the corpus searches in the two corpora yielded 679 passages of varying length containing language other than English, predominantly Latin. In the subsequent analysis, all examples were ﬁrst classiﬁed according to language-external criteria like the genre and sub-period of the text in which they occurred, and then subjected to a close reading in their textual embedding in order to examine their form and function. The results of this analysis are presented in the following sections.

4. Quantitative overview of code-switching in different genres over time The total of code-switched passages in the religious texts contained in our Helsinki Corpus material is 562, while the letters by clergy analyzed in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence contain 117 switched segments. The segments vary in length and grammatical form, ranging from single lexical items to phrases, clauses, sentences and entire sections of text. The quantitative ﬁndings, broken down by language and genre across time, are presented in Tables 1 and 2. In order to make valid comparisons of the frequency of switching, we have used normalized frequencies of code-switched segments per 1,000 words. Table 1 indicates that the overwhelmingly most common language used in addition to English in all sub-sets from both corpora is Latin. Eight instances of French occur in the data, and notably, all of them in the letter corpus. In a

7. The omitted passages consist of some longer stretches of Latin. We have not added the word counts of the omitted passages to the total word count, but their length is not sufﬁcient to inﬂuence the overall results.

228 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi Table 1. Code-switched segments in sub-sets of the Helsinki Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Time

Words

Latin

French

Total

Corpus and period HC M3 1350–1420 HC M4 1420–1500 HC E1 1500–1570 CEEC 15th 1410–1499 CEEC 16th 1500–1570 Total

78,790 70,440 30,700 17,195 76,905 274,030

N N/1,000 107 1.36 402 5.71 53 1.73 47 2.73 62 0.81 671 2.45

N N/1,000 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0.06 7 0.09 8 0.03

N 107 402 53 48 69 679

N/1,000 1.36 5.71 1.73 2.79 0.90 2.48

diachronic perspective, the highest frequency of code-switching is found in the ﬁfteenth-century data, with as many as 5.71 code-switched segments in every 1,000 words in the Helsinki Corpus sub-set from 1420–1500 and 2.79 in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence sub-set from 1410–1499. The Reformation may have some impact on the declining frequency of Latin passages in the sixteenth century, but the overall increasing vernacularisation in religious writing that started with the Lollards could also be one of the reasons behind the trend. As stated in Section 2, the Helsinki Corpus has material from a number of different genres. The breakdown of the ﬁgures according to genre reveals signiﬁcant variation in the frequency of code-switching between different types of religious writing. These results are shown in Table 2. The most striking ﬁgure in Table 2 is that indicating the frequency of codeswitched segments in the ﬁfteenth-century Bible, i.e. c. 15 foreign-language segments in every 1,000 words. As Table A1 indicates, the text in question is Richard Rolle’s Psalter, essentially a translation and commentary of the Psalms. In the Psalter, the Latin text is given at the head of each psalm, and it is this special practice rather than code-switching in the proper sense of the word that accounts for the unusually high frequency of foreign-language segments in the text (see also Machan, this volume, on the visual pragmatics of the manuscripts of the Rolle Psalter). The other Bible samples show practically no code-switching at all. Scripted texts, i.e. texts written to be spoken, such as homilies and sermons contain relatively high frequencies of code-switching across the twohundred-year period. A closer analysis of the sermon data shows that there is signiﬁcant variation between individual texts in the frequency of switching.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 229 Table 2. Code-switched segments per religious genre in subsets of the Helsinki Corpus (N = number of switches) Text type

N

HC Bible Homily Religious treatise Rule Sermon

1350–1420 1 0.05 24 3.30 13 0.35 47 8.72 22 2.71

CEEC Letter

N/1,000

– –

– –

N

N/1,000

N

N/1,000

1420–1500 157 15.04 – – 29 0.87 4 2.21 212 8.48

1500–1570 0 0 – – – – – – 53 3.5

1410–1499 48 2.79

1500–1570 69 0.90

In the ﬁfteenth century, when the incidence in sermons peaks at 8.48 per 1,000 words, frequencies signiﬁcantly above the average are found in In Die Innocencium and the Middle English sermons edited from MS British Library, Royal 18 B xxiii. Among rules, the fourteenth-century Benedictine Rule shows clearly a higher frequency of switched segments than Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum. Two versions of the latter text are included in the corpus, one in the fourteenth-century sub-corpus and the other in the ﬁfteenth-century samples. It is interesting to note that in this case the earlier version has a higher incidence of code-switching. One possible explanation for this difference is the source: the fourteenth-century text was translated from Latin, while the ﬁfteenth-century one was translated from French. In the fourteenth-century version Latin chapter headings were left in that language, and many Bible quotations were also given in Latin along with the translation. While there are two chapter headings in Latin and two Latin quotations in the ﬁfteenthcentury translation as well, it seems that the French intermediary text has done away with most of the latinate elements, leading the English translator to follow suit. (See also Meecham-Jones, this volume, for the medieval translation practices.) In view of genre coherence, the eleven texts representing medieval religious treatises seem most consistent in their relatively low level of codeswitching. An exception is the ﬁfteenth-century Vices and Virtues, which largely accounts for the somewhat higher frequency of code-switching in the later medieval sub-period.

230 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

The frequency of switching in correspondence of the clergy is consistently in the lower range, and seems to decline during the time covered by our study. Because of the varied nature of the letter data, no far-reaching conclusions can be drawn from this overall picture. There are clear differences between individual informants, which may be attributed to linguistic skills of both writers of the letters and their intended recipients. These differences are explored in more detail in the following section.

5. Textual and discoursal uses of code-switching in the religious domain 5.1. Code-switching in the Helsinki Corpus data While the different genres included in our material show great variation in the frequency of code-switching, there is less divergence in the ways in which multilingual resources are used in the texts. This applies especially to the Helsinki Corpus data, where the observed textual and discoursal uses of the switched segments are largely similar across genres and in individual texts. They also remain fairly stable over time. Most code-switched segments regardless of genre are direct quotations from Latin religious sources. Passages from the Latin Bible are common. Often these passages also represent direct speech in the original texts, as in example (2) from the fourteenthcentury Northern Homily Cycle in verse form, and in (3), from the Prick of Conscience, a fourteenth-century religious treatise, also in verse. In both examples, an English translation is provided immediately after the Latin passage. This practice is common in the texts and indicates that Latin literacy was not expected of the target audience. It also implies that the citing of the authentic Latin source text has a meaning-making function beyond the actual content. It can be argued that quoting passages from the authoritative Latin Bible or other sources brings additional authority to the words of the author, presenting him as an expert in the ﬁeld and fully familiar with the most central source of religious life. There may also have been a naïve understanding of these passages as the original words uttered by biblical characters, at least on the part of the intended readership, who may not have been familiar with the translation process involved in producing the Vulgate. (2) Jesus þan omang þe Jews Answerd þus to þa pharisews,

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 231 Nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua. “Forsuth I say to ow ilkane, Praised in his kith prophet es nane” (M3, homily, The Northern Homily Cycle, II, 67) ‘Jesus then among the Jews Answered thus to the Pharisees No one is a prophet in their own country [Mark 6:4] “Indeed I say to all of you No prophet is praised in his own land” ’ (3)

Þan may þai say þus als David says: Letati sumus pro diebus quibus nos humiliasti, annis quibus vidimus mala. “Loverd ful glad for þe days er we, In whilk þou made us lawe to be, In þe yheres in whilk we saw illes.” Þus may þai syng and say for sere skilles. (M3, religious treatise, Prick of Conscience, 250) ‘Then may they say as David says: We are happy for the days when you brought us low and for the years that we saw sorrow. [Psalm 89:15] “Lord, we are very glad for the days In which you brought us low In the years when we saw sorrow.” Thus may they sing and speak for various reasons.’

Similar examples are seen in (4), from the fourteenth-century Benedictine Rule, where only the ﬁrst words of the Latin passage are given before the full English translation, and in (5), an extract of a sixteenth-century sermon. (4) And bidis þat ye ne sal noght be ouir-la and; and þinkes what þe prophete sais: “Stultus in risu &c. – þe fool turnes hys þoght in-til la ter, and helpis noht” (M3, rule, The Benedictine Rule, 14) ‘And [Saint Benedict] asks that you will not be too merry; and thinks what the prophet says: “Only fools [raise their voices] in laughter – the fool turns his thought to laughter, and does not help” ’

232 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi (5) Almighty god sayd vnto Moyses spekynge of Aaron. Ipse loquetur pro te ad populum. & erit os tuum. Tu autem eris ei in iis que ad deum pertinent. [‘He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth. You shall be as God to him.’ Exodus 4:16] that is to saye. he shall speke in thy stede vnto the people. & thou shalt be for hym agayn. in thoo causes that perteyne vnto god. (E1, sermon, John Fisher, Sermons, 1, 316)

Quotations from other sources also occur, most notably from the writings of early Church Fathers, as in examples (6) and (7), illustrating the practice in two sermons, the ﬁrst one, from the ﬁfteenth century, quoting St Jerome, and the second one, from the sixteenth century, quoting St Gregory. (6) This glorious Ladie with all hur vertewes and preuilegees as þis day was taken vp in soule aboven þe hiest ordere of angels – and in bodie also, as Seynt Austyn and Anselme haue þer oppinions; and Ierom in ys pistell fauors þe same: “Exaltata est sancta Dei genitrix,” et cetera – where she besely prayeþ þat we may sewe hure in lyvynge. (M4, sermon, Middle English Sermons (MS Royal), 251) ‘This glorious Lady with all her virtues and privileges whose soul was taken up today above the highest order of angels – and whose body too, as St Austin and Anselm give their opinions; and Jerome in his epistle agrees: “The holy mother of God has been exalted,” and so on – where she diligently prays that we may follow her in life.’ (7) And saynt Gregory saythe. Certe Petrus apostolus primum membrum sancte et vniuersalis ecclesie est. Paulus. Andreas. Ioannes quid aliud quam singularium plebium sunt capita. [‘Certainly Peter the apostle is the ﬁrst member of the holy and universal church. Paul, Andrew and John, what else are they but heads of single congregations.’] that is to saye. Peter is the chefe membre of the vnyuersall chirche. Paule & Andrew. & Iohan what els be they. but heedes of certayne & synguler people. (E1, sermon, John Fisher, Sermons, 1, 319–320)

Early modern preachers also quote from the works of Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century German reformer (8). (8) For the fyrst martyn luther can not denye. but this promesse is made vnto the vnyuersall chyrche. & ther vnto we shall bynde hym by his owne reason. he sayth in the booke de captiuitate babilonica. Quod si demus vnam aliquam epistolam Pauli. aut vnum alicuius epistole locum. non ad vniuersalem ecclesiam pertinere. iam euacuata est tota Pauli authoritas. [‘on the Babylonian captivity. For if we allow that any letter of Paul’s or any part of a letter does not refer to the universal church, we remove all of Paul’s authority.’] that is

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 233 to say yf we wyll afferme that any one epistle of saynt Paule. or any one place of his epistoles. perteyneth not vnto the vnyuersall chirche of chryst. we take away all saynt Paules authoryte. (E1, sermon, John Fisher, Sermons, 1, 314)

Non-religious ancient authors are discussed in some texts. For example, Walter Hilton quotes Cato in his ﬁfteenth-century religious treatise (example [9]), and the ﬁfteenth-century sermon in MS Royal quotes Aristotle in Latin, expounding the quotation in a lengthy English paraphrase, and ﬁnishing the passage with another Latin quotation, this time from the Bible (10). (9) Whoso wil be perﬁ t and lyue aftir þis chapitil, do as Catoun seiþ: ‘Cum recte uiuas, ne cures verba malorum’. Do þou þat longiþ to þee, and þi loued dere Iesu Crist schal wel do þat perteyneþ to him. (M3/4, religious treatise, Walter Hilton, Eight Chapters of Perfection, 4) ‘Whoever wants to be perfect and to live according to this chapter, do as Cato says: ‘As long as you live righteously, do not pay attention to the words of the wicked’. Do as is ﬁtting for you, and your beloved dear Jesus Christ shal certainly do what is his part.’ (10) Worshippfull men and wymmen, þe worthye clerke Aristotle in þe laste boke of is Ethicus seyþ þat þere is þre manere of frenshippes: amicicia propter vtile, amicicia pro voluptate, et amicicia propter bonum morale. Som man, seyþ he, is a frende to an oþur for is owne avauntage, as courteours and seruuauntes, þat dare in no wise displese here maisters oþur lord; and þis frenshippe is now the. The second maner of frenshippe is frenshippe of luste, as lecherous men oþur wymmen vsen for a tyme; but als-so sone as þe luste is fulﬁllid, þan þe frenshippe is gone. The þrid maner of frenshippe is frenshippe of wertewe, þe wiche þat on hathe to an oþure for is good lyvynge and vertuous; þis is a verry frenshippe þat holy writte spekeþ of, “Iam non dico vos seruos, sed amicos”. In þis wyze bene all good levers called þe frendes of God. (M4, sermon, Middle English Sermons (MS Royal), 16) ‘Worshipful men and women, the worthy scholar Aristotle in the last book of his Ethics says that there are three kinds of friendship: friendship that is useful, friendship for pleasure and friendship for the sake of good morals. Someone, he says, is a friend to another for his own beneﬁt, as courtiers and servants, who do not dare to displease their masters or lords in any way; and this friendship is nothing. The second kind of friendship is friendship of lust, such as lecherous men or women sometimes practice; but as soon as the lust has been fulﬁlled, the friendship is over. The third kind of friendship is friendship of virtue, which one has for another because of his good and virtuous life; this is a true friendship that the holy writ speaks of, “I no longer call you servants but friends”. In this manner all those who lead good lives are called friends of God.’

234 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

Sometimes the quotation is preceded or followed by a Latin reference to the work and passage from which it is taken. This practice is particularly favoured in the ﬁfteenth-century sermon In Die Innocencium [‘In the day of the innocents’], illustrated in example (11). (11) Therfore that age is moost uncertayn in knowlege, as Salomon sayth, Proverbior. xxxo, Tria sunt michi difﬁcilia ad cognoscendum, et quartum penitus ignoro. Viam navis in medio maris, et viam viri in adolescencia. “Thre thynges (sayth Salomon) bene harde to me to knowe, and the fourth utterly I knowe not. The ﬂyghte of the egle in the ayer; The waye of the serpent on the erthe; The sayllyng of a shyppe in the see; But the fourth and moost hardest is to understande the waye of a man in his growynge age. (M4, sermon, In Die Innocencium, 2–3) ‘Therefore that age is the most uncertain in knowledge, as Solomon says, Proverbs 30[:18–19] Three things are difﬁcult for me to understand, and the fourth I completely fail to know. The way of the ship in the middle of the sea and the way of a man in adolescence. “Three things (says Solomon) are hard for me to understand, and the fourth I completely fail to understand. The ﬂight of the eagle in the air; The path of the serpent on the earth; The sailing of a ship in the sea; But the fourth and hardest is to understand the ways of a man in his youth.’

Latin quotations generally have a text-organizing function, as the change of language co-occurs with a boundary between two different levels of the text, or two different voices, separating them from each other. Other types of Latin segments can also serve text-organizing functions, e.g. marking beginnings and endings of entire texts or sections of texts, as in examples (12)–(14). This practice only occurs in the medieval material (pre-1500). (12) DOMINICA XXIII.POST FESTUM TRINITATIS. EVANGELIUM. SERMO 23. ABEUNTES PHARISEI. MATHEI 22. Þe storye of þis gospel telluþ how þe pharisees casten to desseyue Crist by wordis of ypocrisye. (M3, sermon, Wyclifﬁte Sermons 23, I, 313) ‘23RD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. GOSPEL. SERMON 23. THE PHARISEES LEAVING. MATTHEW 22. The story of this gospel tells how the Pharisees attempt to deceive Christ by hypocritical words.’

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 235 (13) TERTIO. SEPTEM SUNT SACRAMENTA ECCLESIE. THE SEUENE SACRAMENTES OF HALY KYRKE. Þe thirde thynge of þe Sex þat I ﬁrste touchide, es þe Seuen Sacramentes (M3/4, sermon, Dan Jon Gaytryge, Sermon, 7) ‘THIRD. SEVEN ARE THE SACRAMENTS OF THE CHURCH. THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE HOLY CHURCH. The third thing of the six that I ﬁrst discussed is the seven sacraments.’ (14) CAPITULUM 20 On a day as þis creatur was heryng hir Messe, a ong man and a good prest (M4, religious treatise, Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, I, 47) ‘CHAPTER 20 One day when this person was hearing her Mass, a young man and a good priest’

Finally, there are occasional instances of Latin special terms in the Helsinki Corpus data, illustrated in examples (15) and (16). (15) Whan that infant age is ended, the fader provydeth for hys childe for a mayster, the whyche gyveth instruccyon in small doctrynes, as in hys Donate, Partes of reason, and suche other, the whiche mayster comunely is called Pedagogus in Latyne. (M4, sermon, In Die Innocencium, 6) ‘When the age of infancy has ended, the father ﬁnds a teacher for his child, one who gives instruction in small doctrines, as in his Donate, Parts of reason, and other such things; this teacher is commonly called Teacher in Latin.’ (16) Secondly that the heed of the vnyuersall chirche iure diuino [‘by divine right’] is the pope. (E1, sermon, John Fisher, Sermons, 1, 314)

5.2. Code-switching in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence data Prefabricated expressions, including prefabricated chunks in the psycholinguistic sense, i.e. expressions stored in a speaker’s brain, and other utterances not originally formulated by the writer, such as quotations, dominate in

236 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

the code-switching practices observed in the sermons, homilies, rules and religious treatises contained in the late fourteenth to late sixteenth century samples of the Helsinki Corpus, whereas a very different picture emerges in the letters of the clergy from roughly the same period included in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Here a smaller proportion of the codeswitched segments are prefabricated expressions. On the contrary, the results for the Corpus of Early English Correspondence suggest that the incidence of switching in letters is largely due to the language skills of individual writers and their particular correspondents. In the ﬁfteenth century there are very few representatives of the upper clergy, and the most frequent use of Latin appears in the letters of Friar John Brackley, representing the lower clergy (see below). In the sixteenth century, there seems to be a clear difference in the multilingual practices between the upper and lower clergy, with Bishops and Archbishops clearly favouring code-switching, and the lower clergy avoiding it. But even here there are some individual writers among both groups who contribute more strongly than others in the formation of this pattern (particularly Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; see below). Factors contributing to the variation among writers include the difference of language skills, acquired in education, between the different groups of writers, as well as between the recipients of their letters. When writing to a correspondent not ﬂuent in Latin, it would have been pointless to include switched segments, unless especially for the purpose of emphasizing the social distance, and difference, between the writer and recipient. Contrariwise, in correspondence with educated recipients the judicious use of Latin expressions could emphasize the in-group relationship of writer and addressee, as well as contribute to the identity performance of the writer as an educated member of the ecclesiastical elite. Unlike the Latin code-switched elements, the few French segments that are found in the letters, however, are formulaic or prefabricated (see Table A1 in the Appendix). It is notable that most of the eight French passages are found in letters written by Stephen Gardiner (d. 1555), Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor, during his visit to Bruges to negotiate with the French. Thus the use of French in our data is closely connected with the physical environment of the writer. The switched segments represent either genre-speciﬁc writing conventions, such as dates (17) or addresses, placed outside the letter, as in (18) and (19), or instances of reported speech as in (20) and (21). It can be argued that addresses outside the letter (as in 18) are not switches proper, but they are a reﬂection of the multilingual resources available to our informants, and as such we regard them as useful evidence.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 237 (17) Wrytton at Peterborugh, the xvij jour [‘day’] of Aprylle, anno 1541. (Johnson: 1541, Thomas Saxby, 11) (18) A William Paston soit donné. (Paston: 1425, Nicholas, Prior of Bromholm, II, 1) ‘To be given to William Paston.’ (19) To hys trusty frend Mr. John Jonsson thys be delyvard besydes Sant Antony’s in London. Soyt [‘to be’] delyvered. (Johnson: 1551, Thomas Saxby, 1423) (20) The Chaunceler spake a foule worde, to saye, Rendez Boloigne. [‘Hand over Boloigne.’] (Gardiner 2: 1545, Stephen Gardiner, 183) (21) he turned him to thEmperour and with a lowde voyce said, ‘Il est morte.’ [‘He is dead.’] (Gardiner: 1546, Stephen Gardiner, 216)

Genre-speciﬁc formulas and various text-organizing elements are also found among the Latin segments in the letters, but they form a minority of all instances of code-switching. This is seen in Figure 1, which shows the frequencies of the textual and discoursal functions of Latin segments observed in the correspondence by the clergy in the CEEC letters in 1410–1570. In Figure 1, genre-speciﬁc passages include dates, salutations and leavetakings, illustrated in examples (22) and (23). The majority of switches related to text levels are quotations, where the quoted element is in Latin, and the surrounding text in English (24), but there is also a reverse example, where the Latin comments on and organizes the English quotations (25). There are also isolated legal terms, but these are insigniﬁcant in number. (22) Salutem in Christo. [‘Greetings in Christ.’] Toching the informacion sent from Morton, it is like enough that you be talked on and mysreported, (Parkhurst: 1570, John Parkhurst, 117) (23) I pray yowe know his pleasure before that he sytt uppon Friday next. Vale datum Canterbury 11 Maii 1570. [‘Fare well, dated in Canterbury 11 May 1570.’] (Bacon: 1570, Stephen Nevinson, I, 13)

Genre-specific

Text levels

(Legal) terms

Other

Figure 1. Code-switching by Clergy in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence 1410–1570

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Latin

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 239 (24) And thiese Protestantes be entangled with thre encombres; that is to saye, with povertie, with subjection in duetie to hym they resist, thEmperour, and with want of credite and truste. Non Appollinis responsum magis est verum [‘The answer of Apollo is not more truthful’; Terence, Andria, 698], as he said; and we have prouf by experience et crimine ab uno disce omnes [‘and from one crime we can tell the character of all’; Aeneid, II, 65]. (Gardiner: 1545, Stephen Gardiner, 187–188) (25) Every day this v dayes he seyth, ‘God send me sone my good cosyn Paston, for I holde hym a feythful man and ever on man.’ Cui ego, ‘That is soth’, andc. Et ille, ‘Schew me not the mete, schew me the man.’ Hec verba replicat sepius cum magno stomacho, andc. (Paston: 1459, John Brackley, II, 186) ‘Every day over the past ﬁve days he says, ‘May God send me soon my good cousin Paston, because I ﬁnd him a faithful man, and always constant.’ To which I, ‘That is true’, and so on. And he, ‘Do not show me the physical body, show me the man inside.’ These words he repeated frequently with great vexation, and so on.’

The majority of the Clergy’s switches, classiﬁed as Other in Figure 1, do not fall into any of the speciﬁc textual or discoursal functions that are observed in other genres in the domain of religion in this study. Some passages may well be quotations that we have not managed to identify, but the majority of code-switched segments in this category are clearly not quotations, but evidence of the writers making ﬂuent use of their multilingual resources, with no speciﬁc identiﬁable discourse functions. Particularly the bishops’ language contains frequent switches to and from Latin. Many bishops were obviously very ﬂuent in Latin, and would switch to and from it easily in ways which escape classiﬁcation. Code-switching is particularly typical of their letters to colleagues in the Clergy, but it also occurs in letters to members of the upper ranks of society, when the writer knew that the recipient could read Latin. Examples (26) and (27) illustrate this in sixteenth-century letters to the King written by Stephen Gardiner and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (d. 1530). (26) write unto your Majestie the truth and lightlywodes of truth as they shal appere unto me, whether the same shal delighte and please for the tyme or otherwise; knowing wel that to be the oonly thing which shal obteyne solidam veram et perpetuam gratiam a Maiestate vestra, que templum est ﬁdei et veritatis unicum in orbe relictum, in quo certa harum numina esse creduntur. [‘real, true and perpetual grace from your Majesty, who is the only temple of faith and truth left in the world, in which these two are certainly believed to reside.’]

240 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi Which thing moved me by myn other letters to expresse such dispayre as I thenne had, being moch more thenne I coulde by wordes in convenient maner expresse; trusting always that in compassing and conducing such thinges as depende upon a nother mannes acte, your Highnes wil not conjoyne studium et voluntatem meam cum eventu; [‘my zeal and willingness with the event’] but perceyving ﬁdem, studium, et voluntatem meam [‘my faith, zeal and willingness’] to have effectually concurred, as it hath and shal ever doo (Gardiner: 1528, Stephen Gardiner, 6) (27) nowe specially that the apparell of Wynchester and Saynt Albons shalbe takyn from me, to geve and appoynt on to me a convenyent fernyture for the same, non ad pompam sed necessariam honestatem: [‘not for ostentation but for the necessary honesty’] and yf I may have the free gyft and dyssposycion of the benefyces, yt shalbe gretly to my comfort. [. . .] I shall, with Gods mercy and help, so ordyr my lyff, that I trust hys Majeste shal take special comfort theran, and be pleasyd with the same. Spero quod haec quae peto non videbuntur magna. [‘I hope that which I ask for will not appear great.’] Howbeyt I moste humbly submyt and refferre all my petycions, immo ipsam vitam [‘indeed [my] life itself ’], to hys gracyous ordynance and pleasure, prayng yow to declare and sygnyfye the same, supplying myn indyssposcycon and lack of wyt conceyvyd by reason of my extreme sorowe and hevynes (Original: 2 1520S?, Thomas Wolsey, 12)

Our last example, (28), contains a passage from a letter by Friar John Brackley, conﬁdant to the Paston family of Norfolk in the mid-ﬁfteenth century, who is the informant making the most frequent use of Latin in his correspondence. He is the lone writer in the group of lower clergy with a considerable degree of code-switching. In some of Brackley’s letters the dominant language seems to be Latin rather than English. He tends to start his letters in English, with increasing switches to Latin, until he fails to switch back to English at all. Brackley’s conﬁdence in his recipients’ ability to understand Latin was obviously high, and since his correspondence with John Paston continued in a similar manner over a period of time, it seems he was correct in his estimation. Paston had studied at Cambridge before training for the law, and may even have welcomed the opportunity of brushing up his Latin skills with this clerical correspondent. (28) Jesus, Maria, andc. Ryte reuerent mayster and most trusty frend in erthe, as lowly as I kan or may I recommande me, andc. Syre, in feyth I was sore aferd that e had a gret lettyng that e come not on Wednysday to mete, andc. Be myn feythe and e

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 241 had be here e schuld haf had ryte good chere, andc., and hafe faryd ryte wele after owr plesere, andc., wyth more, andc. [. . .] The Lord Skalys is to my lord Prince, andc., to wayte on hym, andc. He seyth per deum sanctum, as we sey here, he schal be amrel or he schal ly there-by, andc. [. . .] As I haf wrytyn to ow oftyn by-fore this, ‘Facite vobis amicos de mammona iniquitatis’, quia de facto T. T., J. H., et J. W., cum ceteris Magistri Falstoff fallacibus famulis magnam gerunt ad vos invidiam quod excelleretis eos in bonis, andc. [. . .] Vester ad vota promptissimus, Frater J. B., Minorum minimus Vtinam iste mundus malignus transiret et concupiscencia eius. (Paston: 1459, John Brackley, II, 184–185) ‘Jesus, Mary, and so on. Right reverend master and most trusty friend on earth, as humbly as I can or may I commend me, and so on. Sir, in truth I was greatly afraid that you had a great hindrance because you did not come on Wednesday to the meeting, and so on. By my faith, if you had been here, you would have had great joy, and so on, and would have fared quite well in pursuing what you wish, and so on, with more, and so on. [. . .] The Lord Scales has gone to my lord Prince, and so on, to pay his respects, and so on. He says by the holy God, as we say here, he shall be admiral or he shall lie close by, and so on. [. . .] As I have written to you often before, ‘And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness [Luke 16:9]’, which in fact T. T., J. H., and J. W., with other deceitful servants of Master Falstoff greatly envy you, because you excel them in good things. [. . .] Most eager to obey your wishes, Brother J. B., Least of the least If only this wicked world and its concupiscence were to pass.’

6. Conclusion In this corpus-based study, we have examined multilingual discourse practices in different types of texts written in the domain of religion in late medieval and early modern England. The study included material from six genres: the religious genres of homilies, sermons, religious treatises, rules of religious houses and Bible texts, and personal letters written by the clergy. In a variationist frame, we have analyzed code-switching practices using both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, examining variation across genres and over time, and aiming to identify patterns typical of speciﬁc genres.

242 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

The results show that English texts connected with the domain of religion in general make frequent use of Latin. In view of the strong position of Latin as the traditional language of the church, this is perhaps to be expected. The fact that professionals operating in the domain, i.e. the clergy, also use Latin frequently in their correspondence is a further indication of inherent English-Latin bilingualism in the domain throughout the period examined here. French, which also had a strong position in medieval England, does not ﬁgure in any signiﬁcant way in the writings. In a quantitative assessment, different genres show great variation in the frequency of code-switching. While religious treatises in general contain few Latin elements, religious rules and sermons make frequent use of them. In a diachronic view, code-switching is most frequent in ﬁfteenth-century texts. However, a qualitative assessment of the switched segments in their textual embedding indicates that in individual religious genres, it is difﬁcult to identify any speciﬁc textual and discoursal patterns distinguishing them from other religious genres, as the code-switched segments are used in largely similar ways in all the ﬁve genres examined in this study. These segments primarily consist of prefabricated expressions, such as references to earlier religious writings or quotations from them, or Latin headings used for text-organizing purposes. Furthermore, individual texts in each genre also show different frequencies of switching. The discoursal nature of the Latin segments provides a key to the different frequency patterns: sermons and rules, making frequent use of quotations from the Bible and earlier religious writings, seek to explicitly explain and elucidate the scripture and other religious teachings to the congregation and members of religious houses, while religious treatises do not have a similar direct instructive purpose. At the same time, a signiﬁcant qualitative difference is observed in codeswitching practices between the religious genres and the personal letters written by members of the clergy. While code-switching practices in the religious genres are fairly conventionalized, the letters in general illustrate more informal use of multilingual resources by individuals in a domain permeated by bilingualism and accustomed to operate in more than one language. Here too there is variation between individual writers, which may be conditioned by the writers’ educational background and position in the social hierarchy in the domain, also connected with their level of Latinity. On average, a higher position in the church also implies more frequent use of Latin in correspondence. The amount of Latin in the letters is also related to the nature of the clergymen’s correspondents, as functional use of Latin in a letter also assumes Latin literacy from the recipient. Thus, the interactional aspect of the

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 243

communication is an important determinant in the code-switching practices observed in our data, and not only in letters, but also in the religious genres, where the language skills of the recipients of the message may in some cases be much more difﬁcult to deﬁne than in letters, generally targeted at individuals whom the writer knows. The study illustrates some beneﬁts of using electronic corpora in codeswitching research. A corpus annotated for foreign language, like the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, enables systematic and speedy data retrieval, where quantiﬁcation of the ﬁndings according to the language-external categories included in the corpus structure is relatively straightforward. For a full understanding of the phenomenon, however, the quantitative analysis is not enough, but needs to be combined with a close qualitative analysis, where the data extracted from the corpus with the help of a computer concordancer is carefully examined in its micro-context. For example, in our study, the frequency of code-switching alone does not give a sufﬁcient view of the patterns of variation in different genres. In our view, a more complete understanding of the differences and similarities in texts written in the religious domain in medieval and early modern England can only be obtained by combining the quantitative and qualitative paradigms. The study also reveals some of the present weaknesses in corpus analysis, which mainly stem from the relatively small size of the corpora that are currently available in research on historical linguistics in general. For example, diachronic patterns in code-switching practices over the entire two-hundredyear time-span in focus could only be traced in two genres, i.e. sermons and the Bible. All the other genres were only represented by material extending over shorter periods. On the other hand, this could be compensated by material from other sources. Furthermore, the amount of data available for each genre in each sub-period was relatively small – too small in fact in most cases to allow any broad-scale generalizations. In the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, some genres examined in this study, e.g. sermons, are only represented by one or two texts in some sub-periods. In such small samples, the inﬂuence of idiolectal or text-speciﬁc practices on the overall results can be signiﬁcant, as is the case with Rolle’s Psalter, which is a very peculiar work in our Helsinki Corpus material. This further emphasizes the importance of qualitative analysis in the interpretation of the results. Again, the use of material from other sources would solve the data problem. We hope to have shown in this study that the examination of even small corpus samples can yield interesting results about multilingualism and

244 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

code-switching practices in a historical angle, even when the corpora have not been speciﬁcally designed for the study of multilingualism. Eventually, we believe, the on-going and future work in the dynamic ﬁeld of corpus compilation will improve the ground for corpus-facilitated historical codeswitching research. In the particular ﬁeld and geographical context that we have examined here, the situation will greatly improve when the Corpus of English Religious Prose becomes available in the future. On-going corpus compilation in other ﬁelds of writing will further facilitate comparison across domains, but new historical corpora are a desideratum (see e.g. Rissanen 2000, 2008; Kohnen 2007). In addition to language-speciﬁc historical corpora that do provide material for the analysis of multilingualism, as we have shown in this article, we would most enthusiastically like to advocate the compilation of corpora speciﬁcally designed for the examination of bi- and multilingualism, in the vein of the Anglo-Norman Correspondence Corpus (see http://www.lhds.bcu.ac.uk/english/anglo-norman-corpus). It is only by combining ﬁndings from qualitative and quantitative research based on different data sources, including original primary sources and large computerized data-sets, and multiple approaches that we can obtain a rounded view of the nature of multilingual practices in human communication.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 245

Appendix Table A1. Material from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts included in the study Text type (genre) M3 (1350–1420) Homily Sermon Rule Religious treatise

Bible

M4 (1420–1500) Sermon

Rule Religious treatise

Bible E1 (1500–1570) Sermon Bible

Text

Words

The Northern Homily Cycle (the Expanded Version) Wyclifﬁte Sermons The Benedictine Rule Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum John Purvey, The Prologue to the Bible The Cloud of Unknowing Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne The Pricke of Conscience Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Parson’s Tale Wycliffe, Old Testament Wycliffe, New Testament

7,280 8,130 2,380 3,010 3,020 15,690 8,050 5,910 4,410

Middle English Sermons John Capgrave, Sermon John Mirk, Mirk’s Festial Dan Jon Gaytryge, Sermon In Die Innocencium Richard Fitzjames, Sermo Die Lune Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum The Book of Vices and Virtues Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love Walter Hilton, Eight Chapters of Perfection Richard Rolle, The Bee and the Stork Richard Rolle, Prose Treatises Richard Rolle, The Psalter

5,820 1,470 3,190 5,150 3,690 5,690 1,810 6,960 9,670 5,050 4,920 540 6,040 10,440

John Fisher, Sermons Hugh Latimer, Sermons Tyndale, Old Testament Tyndale, New Testament

4,460 5,010 10,100 11,130

9,910 11,000

246 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi Table A2. Material from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (and Supplement) included in the study 1410–1499 Social category Upper Clergy

Lower Clergy

1500–1570 Upper Clergy

Lower Clergy

Clergyman Chichele, Henry Kempe, John Fox, Richard Weston, John Nicholas, Prior of Bromholm Brackley, John Cotyng, William Gloys, James Webber, H. Howes, Thomas Herward, William John, Abbot of Norton Abbot of Langley Keteryche, Joan Caversham, Peter Salter, Richard Shynner, John Stallworth, Simon Abbot of Lilleshull

Words 495 465 189 292 344 2,744 846 4,793 842 1,940 208 222 613 617 311 162 647 848 617

Fox, Richard Pace, Richard Wolsey, Thomas Tunstall, Cuthbert Bonner, Edmund Gardiner, Stephen Higdon, Brian Cranmer, Thomas Magnus, Thomas Haddon, James Calfhill, James Grindall, Edmund Bentham, Thomas Parkhurst, John Burbank, William Barwick, John Bonde, John

6,983 409 4,696 1,119 2,561 36,190 566 1,436 191 321 429 133 4,102 695 2,121 304 464

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 247 Table A2. Material from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (and Supplement) included in the study (Cont.) Capon, John Foster, John Frysby, Thomas London, John Leyson, Thomas John, Abbot of Tewkesbury Wilson, John Wybe W. Knight, William Grene, Thomas Fitzherbert, Alice Messyndyne, Jane Zouche, Jane Saxby, Thomas Saunders, Laurence Jolie, Thomas Nevinson, Stephen

195 298 196 706 264 141 2,369 229 183 3,029 195 285 217 2,850 2,180 580 268

References Biber, Douglas 1988 Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biller, Peter and Anne Hudson (eds.) 1994 Heresy and Literacy: 1000–1530. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Briggs, Asa 1994 Social History of England: From the Ice Age to the Channel Tunnel. (2nd ed.) London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Callahan, Laura 2004 Spanish/English Codeswitching in a Written Corpus. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins. Collinson, Patrick 2010 English reformations. In: Michael Hattaway (ed.), A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (vol. 1), 396–418. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. CoRD. Corpus Resource Database: http://www.helsinki.ﬁ/varieng/CoRD.

248 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

Graedler, Anne-Line 1999 Where English and Norwegian meet: Codeswitching in written texts. In: Hilde Hasselgård and Signe Oksefjell (eds.), Out of Corpora: Studies in Honour of Stig Johansson, 327–343. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Halmari, Helena and Robert Adams 2002 On the grammar and rhetoric of language mixing in Piers Plowman. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 103: 33–50. Hudson, Anne 1985 Lollards and Their Books. London: Hambledon. Hymes, Dell 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kohnen, Thomas 2007 From Helsinki through the centuries: The design and development of English diachronic corpora. In: Päivi Pahta, Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Jukka Tyrkkö (eds.), Towards Multimedia in Corpus Studies. Helsinki: Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English, University of Helsinki: http://www.helsinki.ﬁ/varieng/ journal/volumes/02/kohnen/. Kytö, Merja (compiler) 1996 Manual to the Diachronic Part of The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Coding Conventions and Source Texts. (3rd ed.) Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki: http://helmer.aksis.uib. no/icame/hc/index.htm. Kytö, Merja and Matti Rissanen 1993 General introduction. In: Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), Early English in the Computer Age, 1–17. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Labov, William 1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Machan, Tim William 1994 Language contact in Piers Plowman. Speculum 69: 359–385. Milroy, James and Lesley Milroy 1997 Varieties and variation. In: Francis Coulmas (ed.), Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 47–64. Oxford: Blackwell. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg 2003 Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Pearson Education. Nurmi, Arja and Päivi Pahta 2004 Social stratiﬁcation and patterns of code-switching in early English letters. Multilingua 23: 417–456.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 249

Nurmi, Arja and Päivi Pahta 2010 Preacher, scholar, brother, friend: Social roles and code-switching in the writings of Thomas Twining. In: Päivi Pahta, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English, 135–162. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Omoniyi, Tope 2006 Societal multilingualism and multifaithism: A sociology of language and religion perspective. In: Joshua A. Fishman and Tope Omoniyi (eds.), Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, 121–140. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Onysko, Alexander 2007 Anglicisms in German: Borrowing, Lexical Productivity, and Written Codeswitching. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Pahta, Päivi 2003 On structures of code-switching in medical texts from medieval England. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 104: 197–210. Pahta, Päivi 2004 Code-switching in medieval medical writing. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), Medical and Scientiﬁc Writing in Late Medieval English, 73–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pahta, Päivi 2007 Flowers, cum multis aliis quae nunc praescribere longum est: On code-switching in Early Modern English medical texts. In: Ute Smit, Stephan Dollinger, Julia Hüttner, Ursula Lutzky and Gunther Kaltenböck (eds.), Tracing English through Time: Explorations in Language Variation, 259–272. Vienna: Braumüller. Pahta, Päivi 2011 Code-switching in Early Modern English medical writing. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), Medical Writing in Early Modern English, 115–132. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pahta, Päivi and Arja Nurmi 2006 Code-switching in the Helsinki Corpus: A thousand years of multilingual practices. In: Nikolaus Ritt, Herbert Schendl, Christiane Dalton-Puffer and Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), Medieval English and its Heritage: Structure, Meaning and Mechanisms of Change, 203–220. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Pahta, Päivi and Arja Nurmi 2007 What we do cón amore: On structures of code-switching in eighteenthcentury letters. In: Javier Perez-Guerra, Dolores Gonzalez-Alvarez, Jorge Bueno-Alonso and Esperanza Rama-Martinez (eds.), ‘Of varying language and opposing creed’: New Insights into Late Modern English, 401–420. Bern: Peter Lang.

250 Päivi Pahta and Arja Nurmi

Pahta, Päivi and Arja Nurmi 2009 Negotiating interpersonal identities in writing: Code-switching practices in Charles Burney’s correspondence. In: Arja Nurmi, Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.), The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800), 27–52. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Rissanen, Matti 2000 The world of English historical corpora: From Cædmon to the computer age. Journal of English Linguistics 28: 7–20. Rissanen, Matti 2008 Corpus linguistics and historical linguistics. In: Anke Lüdeling and Merja Kytö (eds.), Corpus Linguistics: An International Handbook, 53–68. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kytö and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.) 1993 Early English in the Computer Age. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kytö and Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.) 1997a English in Transition: Corpus-based Studies in Linguistic Variation and Genre Styles. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rissanen, Matti, Merja Kytö and Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.) 1997b Grammaticalization at Work: Studies of Long-term Developments in English. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Rütten, Tanja, Ingvilt Marcoe, Kirsten Gather and Thomas Kohnen 2008 Corpus of English Religious Prose (COERP). Corpus Resource Database (CoRD): http://www.helsinki.ﬁ/varieng/CoRD/corpora/COERP/ index.html. Schendl, Herbert 2000 Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2002 Mixed-language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective, 51–78. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Sharp, Harriet 2001 English in Spoken Swedish: A Corpus Study of Two Discourse Domains. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Spolsky, Bernard 2003 Religion as a site of language contact. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23: 81–94.

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion 251

Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta (eds.) 2010 Early Modern English Medical Texts: Corpus Description and Studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov and Marvin I. Herzog 1968 Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In: Winfred P. Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel (eds.), Directions for Historical Linguistics, 97–195. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wenzel, Siegfrid 1994 Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Watson and Ruth Evans 1999 The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1350–1520. Exeter and University Park: University of Exeter Press and Penn State Press. Wright, Laura 1992 Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380–1480. In: Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 762–770. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1998 Mixed-language business writing: Five hundred years of codeswitching. In: Ernst Håkon Jahr (ed.), Language Change: Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 99–118. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie”: Strategies of code-switching in the Middle English translations of Chauliac’s Chirurgia Magna Simon Meecham-Jones

This paper examines patterns of lexical code-switching found in the Middle English translations of Guy de Chauliac’s Chirurgia Magna, and investigates the role of code-switching in the establishment in English of a vocabulary of medical and physiological terms. These translations provide early (or, sometimes, the ﬁrst recorded) appearances of a great number of medical terms, many of which (in particular those naming body parts) were to become established in the English medical lexicon.1 This vocabulary was heavily indebted to that found in the Medieval Latin treatise being translated, which itself had adapted and incorporated medical terms from Greek and Arabic. The Chauliac translations are marked by the very heavy incidence of code-switched terms, raising questions about the linguistic capabilities and expectations of the translators, and those of the projected audience for these texts. Furthermore, the survival of distinct manuscript traditions of the Chauliac translations provides a particular opportunity to observe the use of code-switching in the transference of a highly developed lexical system into the vernacular, and to ask whether the practices found in these texts can be used to shed light on the process of vernacularisation more widely, or whether the medical translations represent a distinct and sui generis practice of code-switching, applicable only to this very specialised category of “learned” writing. The Chirurgia Magna was a handbook of surgery, written in Latin and completed in Avignon by Guy de Chauliac in 1363. The Middle English translations of Chauliac are found in four distinct versions. The earliest surviving translation is generally accepted to be New York Academy of Medicine MS

1. Kuhn (1972: 548) notes that, despite the very large number of items listed in the Middle English Dictionary, MED’s coverage of material from the Chauliac translations is far from being comprehensive.

254 Simon Meecham-Jones

12, which Wallner (1964) and Ogden (1971), following the Middle English Dictionary (MED), both date to around 1425. Wallner (1964: xxvii) offers a proposed stemma in which the New York manuscript derives from one hypothesized (but lost) archetype, together with the manuscripts British Library MSS Sloane 3666, Sloane 1, and Sloane 965 and University Library Cambridge MS Dd. 3.52, while the manuscript Paris BN MS Angl. 25 appears to derive from a distinct and unrelated archetype. The Paris manuscript has been dated by Ogden (1971: v) to “the ﬁfteenth century, perhaps during the second quarter”. Like Wallner, she sees the two traditions as being separate in their origins, “certainly the work of different translators” and “clearly based on textually different Latin manuscripts” (Ogden 1971: vi). To distinguish these manuscript traditions, Ogden suggests different titles to mark out differences in the contents.2 The third version of the text, “which contains Chauliac’s Anatomy (Book 1), but without the Capitulum Singulare” (Wallner 1995: 4) survives in Glasgow University Library Hunter MS 95. This manuscript is probably also ﬁfteenth century, maybe somewhat later than the New York manuscript, and is characterized by a somewhat different textual tradition, especially its addition of “rather long passages [. . .] from Henri de Mondeville’s Anatomy [. . .], composed in Latin at the beginning of the 14th century” (Wallner 1995: 4). Finally, Wallner identiﬁed a fourth version of the translation which shows enough variation to suggest a discrete textual tradition, but which survives in fragmentary form in MS Gonville and Caius 336/725.3 The supplementing of Chauliac’s text in the Hunter MS by the addition of material translated from other texts should not be considered surprising since, to a considerable degree, the editor/translator’s practice echoed Chauliac’s own patterns of critical analysis and summation in the composition of his own text. Chauliac drew heavily on a variety of texts – from Galen (in Latin translations) to the more recent treatises of Saliceto, Mondeville and

2. “In addition to the Cyrurgie in the Paris MS., there are three other Chauliac translations in Middle English. Of these only one includes the complete Inventarium. This translation is called the Inventorye of Guydo de Caulhiaco in the colophon of Cambridge University MS. Dd.3.52, and it is convenient to designate it as the Inventorye to distinguish it from the Cyrurgie. The Inventorye is extant in a number of manuscripts, of which the earliest is New York Academy of Medicine MS. 12 (a1425)” (Ogden 1971: v–vi). 3. In listing lexical items from these traditions, the Middle English Dictionary classiﬁes the New York MS as Chauliac 1, the Paris MS as Chauliac 2, MS Glasgow Hunter as Chauliac 3 and MS Gonville and Caius as Chauliac 4.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 255

Lanfranc.4 Chauliac’s critical reading and evaluation of these sources was a crucial and undisguised mainstay of his method as an author in a discipline where his audience should be expected to have drawn on his work as an authority in practical situations.5 The wealth of text-derived source material made available in the Chirurgia serves to foster the impression that Chauliac, as a practitioner, had practical experience to guide him in his selection of which sources could be relied on and recommended. While drawing attention to Chauliac’s method as a compiler and commentator, Taavitsainen, for example, insists on the importance of his experience as a practitioner to inform his conclusions, so that “the logical expectation is that the writings also incorporate his own conclusions” (Taavitsainen 2004: 55). One factor to be considered, both in analyses of Chauliac’s work and of the Middle English translations of his work, must be the extent to which the choice of code-switched vocabulary guaranteed the authority of the author-as-practitioner. Chauliac’s practice of composition – comparing and selecting from a variety of sources which were distinguished diachronically, and derived from distinct linguistic traditions – would have made it inevitable that, independent of Chauliac’s stylistic or scholarly preferences, the text of the Chirurgia was itself heavily inﬂuenced by, and indebted to, a long history of translation and of consequent linguistic innovation in the service of translation. The broad range of sources Chauliac consulted allowed proliﬁc opportunities for language contact in all its forms, as well as for (lexically and orthographically productive) authorial and scribal error. The presence of lexical items from a number of different languages in the translations (whether from Latin to French, or Latin to English, for example) is scarcely to be considered surprising but in such circumstances the ﬁrst stage of any description of the text must involve the deﬁnition of the terms used for description. In particular, it is necessary to ask if such a phenomenon should be described as code-switching, and, why it was considered to be required, or, at the very least, desirable in the translation of such texts. The ﬁrst question is perhaps the easier to formulate, if not to answer. Romaine (1995: 121) draws on Gumperz (1982: 59) to supply a deﬁnition of code-switching as “the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages belonging

4. McVaugh, in his introduction to the volume which he completed following Ogden’s death, draws on the work of Ogden to offer a comprehensive account of Chauliac’s presumed sources: McVaugh and Ogden (1997: 3–15). 5. McVaugh suggests that “[n]o other medieval author [. . .] is so candid in naming his authorities” (McVaugh and Ogden 1997: 1).

256 Simon Meecham-Jones

to two different grammatical systems or subsystems” (Romaine 1995: 121). It is a very broad deﬁnition which, as Romaine (1995: 121) notes, might be applied “not only to different languages, but also to varieties of the same language as well as styles within a language”. The application of the term has, however, been further complicated by the presumption that code-switching can (and should) be distinguished from the practice of borrowing where words derived from (an) other language(s) are assimilated into the discourse of a language.6 Where “borrowing” has occurred, the words need no longer be considered to belong to “different grammatical systems or subsystems”. The presence of code-switched or borrowed items in translations of medical texts raises some interesting difﬁculties in determining whether such items should be classiﬁed as representing different grammatical systems. The difﬁculties of deciding whether a linguistic form should be considered codeswitched or borrowed is clear in Stone’s account of what he perceives as the deﬁciencies of the French translation of Chauliac: In his struggle to ﬁnd expression for the terminology of the Latin model, the translator tried or experimented with a variety of devices: now he uses a folk-term, now he paraphrases in simple French; again he leaves the term intact, alone or with an explanation, a comment or a French approximation. A common device was to formulate a French calque or close imitation of the Latin, usually by merely adapting the ending to French spelling. (Stone 1968: 175)

Confusingly, Stone uses the term calque to describe words which, though now apparently French in morphology, remain semantically (and associatively) Latin.7 But the desperation Stone imputes to his French translator is far less obvious in the work of the English translators of Chauliac. There are few equivalents of the compound formations functioning as loan-translations which can be found in the (perhaps contemporary) Middle English translation of William of Saliceto’s Anatomia: 6. While Appel and Muysken (1987: 172), for example, note that “the classical view is that code-mixing and borrowing can easily be kept apart” (though they admit that “this view is problematic”) more recently the view that the two phenomena form a continuum has become more prevalent (see, e.g. Myers-Scotton 1992; Matras 2009: 110–113), etc. 7. Stone’s use of the word calque – deﬁned by the Oxford English Dictionary as a “loan-translation” – for an imitation of the original is, at best, poorly expressed, if not mistaken.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 257 (1)

wherlbone/whyrlbone/whirleboon, [‘head of a bone in a joint’] – vertebrum appill of the knee – patella shappe of a woman – vulva (Heimerl 2008: 29, 47, 57, 61)

Nor are there frequent examples of code-switched items being given English inﬂectional endings. There is perhaps a tendency by the Chauliac translators to add -es to pluralize code-switched terms (e.g., Bubones ‘swellings in the groin’, clistres ‘enemas’) though the translator’s practice is inconsistent and other terms appear with clearly un-English endings (sclirosi ‘hard external aposteme’, fugilique ‘a hardened glandular swelling’) which seem to emphasize their code-switched nature. However patchy its appearance in these texts, morphological integration has often been taken to be a sign of borrowing rather than code-switching. Romaine (1995: 60) argues, for example that since “[t]he potential for morphological transference [. . .] is almost always present in bilinguals by virtue of the fact that when speakers borrow words from one language into another, they may cause the morphology of the recipient language to be realigned through the introduction of foreign morphemes”. She follows Haugen (1953) in describing borrowing as a process in three stages, which begins with the speech choices of bilinguals, through processes of integration, to the ﬁnal stage, which may involve “the use of the word by monolinguals” (Romaine 1995: 60). But it may be too easy to say that the use of a word by monolinguals unfamiliar with the full linguistic context from which the word is derived can safely be described as a completed borrowing of the term. In some instances it would be wrong to assume that, even in the speech of monolinguals, a speciﬁc word has been stripped of all of its cultural associations with the donor culture and the donor language. In so far as the word is culturally marked as “non-native”, however that process of marking might be achieved, the word is generally used with at least some intimation of its source in a different system, so the integration of the word at a pragmatic level must be considered less than absolute.8 Similarly, the processes of assimilation need to be recognized as potentially more complex than Haugen’s model suggests.

8. Noting that some transference of morphemes is “only marginally productive”, Romaine (1995: 60) concludes that “there are qualitative differences in borrowing”, but these differences could be interpreted as being between “borrowed” items (for which all pragmatic links with the original language have been extinguished) and “code-switched” items, which retain some marking of their linguistic origins.

258 Simon Meecham-Jones

When a “foreign” word is assimilated into another language system, the process is rarely if ever immediate, perhaps involving an intermediate stage as Haugen (1953) suggests, in which the term might be considered to be both “borrowed” and “code-switched” simultaneously, certainly in the usage of different members of the speech community, and perhaps (occasionally) even in the usage of a single speaker, dependent on, and distinguished by, context. Nor is it the case that the process of assimilation is always irreversible.9 Furthermore, a word might be considered “assimilated” in written discourse but remain perceived as unassimilated in the speech community, or vice versa. If the concept of assimilation presents problems of deﬁnition and interpretation, then the identiﬁcation of code-switching as “a central part of bilingual discourse” (Appel and Muysken 1987: 117) similarly requires caution. In societies which maintain a variety of models of full and partial bilingualism, the functions fulﬁlled by code-switching may vary considerably in different pragmatic contexts. It must be questioned, ﬁrstly, how far consistently “monolingual” expressions might be thought to have existed in the circumstances of regular (if pragmatically restricted) language contact in late medieval England. The absorption of many lexical items – across a wide range of semantic ﬁelds – from French and Latin ensured that many English speakers best considered “monolingual” were nonetheless making regular use of terms derived from other codes – no doubt sometimes unconsciously, but sometimes consciously to serve particular pragmatic functions. This introduces a degree of qualiﬁcation to the presumption that borrowing is a phenomenon of monolingual cultures, while code-switching is a feature of bilingual or multilingual cultures. Sometimes the fact that a word had originated in a different language might be irrelevant to the ways in which it was used, but clearly there were times when the “unfamiliarity” of the lexical item inﬂuenced, or even determined its function. To call such items “borrowed” seems misleading. An alternative approach to the problem of distinguishing borrowing and code-switching is offered by Myers-Scotton’s distinction between the Matrix Language (ML) which provides the frame for discourse, and the Embedded Language (EL) which provides lexical material which is used in a 9. One could trace, for example, the borrowing of the Russian word glasnost from its immediate political context into English discourse in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and its (related) application to other contexts by (non-Russian-speaking) English speakers but it is debatable how far, if at all, the word will be recognisable to English speakers born ﬁfty or a hundred years after the Gorbachev era.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 259

code-switching discourse (Myers-Scotton 1992). Myers-Scotton (1992) acknowledges the difﬁculty in distinguishing between “borrowed” and codeswitched items, leading her to conclude that “a continuum of relationships exists between borrowing and all forms of CS material so that code-switching and borrowing are not distinct phenomena” (Myers-Scotton 1992: 21). She then seeks to demonstrate that “the constraints on their [borrowed and codeswitched items] occurrence are different” (Myers-Scotton 1992: 21), and that this difference “is a reﬂection of the fact that B forms have become part of the ML mental lexicon; whereas CS forms remain as EL material which occurs only in ML morphosyntactic frames during code-switching discourse”. The terms of the distinction she offers raise some difﬁculties in consideration of the Middle English medical texts. In so far as terms like hernia ventosa ‘a cavity in the lungs ﬁlled by air, now generally described as a pneumatocele’ and aposteme ‘any morbid swelling or inﬂammation in any part of the body, external or internal’ occur regularly and without explanation in the translations, it might be argued that they should be regarded as having become “part of the ML mental lexicon”, but it would be misleading to regard the use of words so clearly marked out as having come from an Embedded Language as representing an identical phenomenon to that of the use of a word like dropesye which, although originally a code-switched item (derived from a Medieval Latin form (h)ydropisa which represented the Latin hydropisis which in turn represented the Greek *údro¯pisis [OED s.v.]), had become so familiar through popular usage as to deserve being considered an English word by this time. Another potential difﬁculty in the application of MyersScotton’s analysis to these medical translations lies in her assertion that “what may be the most telling feature of all code-switching material is its relative lack of predictability” (Myers-Scotton 1992: 37). The English medical texts reveal beyond question that the adoption of code-switched words for illnesses, body parts and surgical instruments and paraphernalia was such a widely-recognized convention of the style that it cannot have been considered surprising by its audience. Certainly, there is some unpredictability – as late as the Hunter manuscript there is, for example, an (apparently random) variation between the Latin/French-derived term muscles and the older English form cordes, but this does not seem sufﬁcient to meet Myers-Scotton’s concerns with frequency and unpredictability as diagnostic tools. But much of Myers-Scotton’s theorisation is based on the analysis of code-switching in speech incidents, in which the paradigms may be a little different from those applicable to texts or, more speciﬁcally, to texts which fall into this category of translating a speciﬁc learned or scientiﬁc discourse. Valuable though it

260 Simon Meecham-Jones

undoubtedly is, Myers-Scotton’s concentration on the morpho-syntactical constraints on code-switching does not, in this case, provide sufﬁcient assistance in classifying or explaining the incidence of code-switching in medieval translation in general, or these translations in particular. In his account of the code-switching-borrowing continuum Matras (2009) sidesteps the need to maintain a distinction between Matrix Language and Embedded Language by redeﬁning the differentiation of borrowing and codeswitching as involving “a bundle of criteria, each arranged on a continuum” (Matras 2009: 113). Unfortunately, our lack of knowledge concerning both the authors and the audience for these texts makes it impossible to attempt to back-project Matras’ criteria – a compositional continuum, a functional continuum, etc. – as a means of recovering the context within which these translations were produced. In such circumstances, the only means of ascertaining or interpreting the role of code-switching in their composition lies in an examination of the particularities of the texts as they survive. A comparison of three parallel versions of the Middle English Chauliac translations reveals none of the confusion and error that Stone found in the French version of Gerard of Crèmona. Although the texts seem to derive from distinct manuscript traditions, and although Ogden (1971: vi) argued that “the translator of the Cyrurgie had a less adequate command of Latin than the translator of the Inventorye”, which caused him to attempt “to render the original in a more thoroughly English idiom”, each of the texts makes use of a sophisticated pattern of code-switching, across several languages, which adds a stylistic vigour and variety to their work. A comparison of the same passage in each of the three full translations demonstrates the extent to which all three versions are marked by a very high prevalence of code-switching – it is noticeable that the Middle English translators of Chauliac show a marked reluctance to use calquing, compounding or ﬁgurative formulations,10 preferring to use code-switched terms which may (at least in some cases) have been previously unused in English. Nonetheless, marking the code-switched items presents some difﬁculties. This characteristic passage of one hundred and three words from New York Academy of Medicine MS 12 contains no less than twenty-eight items which might be considered code-switched:11

10. The components of translation – calques, loan-words etc. – are discussed by Backus and Dorleijn (2009). 11. Code-switched terms recorded before the last quarter of the fourteenth century are in italics; terms for which the ﬁrst record of this particular meaning dates

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 261 (2)

Bi þe haunches bene understond here þe lowar partie of the wombe, takyng vn-to the thies and þe shameful membre , Of þe which þe partie bene. 3 fold [.] Some ben conteynyng[.] Som contened. Som procedyng outward. Þe conteynyng partie bene mirac and ciphac and irbus and þe bones. Þe partie contened bene þe vesic. Þe spermatic vessele , Matrix in wymmen, þe longaon or þe ri t entrale. Nerue , veyne , and arterie descendyng dounward. Þe partie procedyng outward bene dyndymye , testicle , and þe erde, þe inguyne , peritoneon. Þe buttoke , & muscle descendyng to þe þies, Of which it is to be seid bi ordre. (Liber Primus Capitulum 7; Wallner 1964: 132) ‘The haunches are to be understood here as referring to the lower part of the trunk [from the lowest rib to the thighs], to the thighs and the shameful organs, of which the elements are threefold. Some of them are containing, some contained and some proceeding outward. The containing parts are the anterior abdominal wall, the peritoneum, the omentum and the bones. The parts contained are the urinary bladder, the spermatic vessels, the uterus in women, the rectum or the right entrail, nerves, veins and arteries descending downward. The parts proceeding outward are the epididymis, the testicles and the penis, the groin, the perineum, the buttocks and muscles descending to the thighs. Of which it is to be said by order.’

These items include forms which had been used in English texts for generations before the Chauliac translations (e.g. haunches, entrale) – these switches are marked by italics. There are, though, a signiﬁcant number of words, many of which are either not previously attested in English, or found for the ﬁrst time in translations of a similar date. Some of this terminology is described by the Middle English Dictionary (MED) as being found in the Chauliac translations only, while some is also found in the late Middle English translations of Lanfranc’s Science of Surgery (preserved in Oxford,

from texts dated to the period 1370–1450 are marked in bold. The word vessel, for example, was familiar in several meanings (container, drinking glass) before 1370, but has not been recorded for ‘tubes carrying blood’ before this date. The dates 1370–1450 for the items marked in bold cover the probable range of time during which the translations were written, from the presumed date of the projected (but lost) archetype of the New York manuscript, to the latest dates proposed for the Paris and Glasgow version, though it is likely that much (or even most) of the process of translation was completed by 1425.

262 Simon Meecham-Jones

Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1396 of c.1400)12 and Mondeville’s Anatomy, raising the question how far the Chauliac translators were required to create a new vocabulary, and how far they were able to access a pre-existing and accepted scientiﬁc register which was (perhaps) being set down (and evidenced) for the ﬁrst time in these texts of translation.13 There is a signiﬁcant overlap of terms, also, with Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum, completed in 1398, that is, (probably) a generation before the Chauliac translation found in the New York MS, and which might therefore provide evidence of these words being already in circulation in medical circles. The surprising appearance of the word spermatic in the Chauliac translations, for example, is mirrored in Trevisa, while the term Nerue (code-switched from Latin but derived from Greek) is found in both texts, and also in the Lanfranc translation. It is possible that Trevisa’s lexical choices were inﬂuenced by contact with the lost (and earlier) Chauliac translations hypothesized in Wallner’s (1964) stemma previously referred to.14 It is perhaps more likely, though, that the appearance of terms in the Chauliac translations and Trevisa’s Bartholomeus translation reﬂect parallel but unrelated examples of the application of similar principles of code-switching to enable the rendering of unfamiliar terms. Although the New York and Paris manuscripts adopt somewhat different approaches to the translation – in Wallner’s judgment “one a close translation, the other a free rendering of a Latin original” (1964: x) – a comparison of the same passage in the Paris translation shows a similar frequency in the use of code-switching, namely here twenty-three items in one hundred and eleven words:

12. The other surviving Middle English Lanfranc is in a manuscript (London, British Library, MS Additional 12056) of c. 1450, which would rule out the possibility of it being a source for the Chauliac translations, but might indicate a shared professional vocabulary. 13. Ogden and Wallner’s presumption that the New York, Cambridge and British Museum Sloane MSS derive from a lost predecessor raises the (unproven) possibility that there may well have been (an) earlier translation(s) now lost. 14. It may be signiﬁcant that both the New York and Paris manuscript traditions of Chauliac have been described as being in South Midlands dialects, that is, in dialects geographically relatively close to those of Trevisa’s employment in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. In his review of Wallner (1964), Kuhn (1968: 555) argues that Wallner “correctly describes Chauliac 2 as a South-East Midlands text and Chauliac 1 as South Midland, with the implication [. . .] that it is Eastern rather than Western”.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 263 (3)

By the haunches here ben vnderstonden þe lower parties of the wombe fro þe sumenis unto the þighes and schamfast membres. Whos parties ben þrefolde: some ben conteynynge, some conteynede, some comynge outward. Þe conteyning parties beþ myrak and syphac and zirbus and bones. Þe conteynde parties ben þe bledder, þe vessellis of sperme, þe moder in wommen, longaon or þe even gutte, synowes, veynes, arteryes, (i. wosen), goyng dounward. Þe parties comynge outward ben dyndymy, þe priue stones and þe erde, te schare, perytoneum, (i. þe space bytwene þe fundament and þe erde), þe lendes and brawnes descendinge to þe þighes. Of þe whiche it is to say by ordre. (Ogden 1971: 65)15

There is certainly a higher survival of terms which may be derived from an older English medical vocabulary – lendes ‘loins’, schare ‘groin’ – including code-switched terms which could have become assimilated into English, e.g. brawne – but even these terms can raise some problems. Though the translation uses the word wosen ‘tubes to carry blood’ which appears to be derived from Old English, there is no prior record of the term. Further, the translation is supplemented by a high number of code-switched items, repeating, for example, the confusion found also in the New York MS of the perineum (the part of the body between the anus and the scrotum or vulva) with the peritoneum (a membrane which lines the abdominal cavity), and with the additional creation of the previously unrecorded switch sumenis ‘lower abdomen’. Not all of these code-switches involve the switching of wholly unfamiliar terms – though the term order is widely recorded in earlier Middle English, it appears that the sense in which it is used here (in both Paris and New York manuscripts) is not, and while member is listed as a meaning for sexual organ from the early fourteenth century, its use here as a general term to represent body part(s) appears to be a new usage. As for the Glasgow MS, despite the presence of a higher number of familiar non-switched items (gutte, bledder, gryndes, buttockes), when allowance is made for the greater prolixity of the style, the use of code-switching is scarcely diminished – twenty-one items in one hundred and ﬁfty-one words: (4)

Þe neþer parties off þe wombe ben understonden her bi þe haunches as takinge þo parties to þe þies and to a mannes members, of þe which þer ben parties, ffor summe of þo parties contenen oþer holden. And summe of þo parties be conteyned and summe off þo parties passen oute of þe bodie.

15. The translation for example (3), and for example (4), differs in no signiﬁcant respect from that for example (2).

264 Simon Meecham-Jones Þe parties þat conteynen oþer ben þe mirak and þe ciphac and þe irbus and þe bones/þe parties þat ben conteined ben þes [:] þe bledder, þe vesselles þat holden þe sperme oþer þe kynde off a man, þe matrice in a womman, þe longaon oþer the ri te gutte, þe whiche is þe laste gutte of alle, nerves, veines, and arteries þat descenden dunwarde. Þe parties that proceden oþer fallen utwarde ben þes [:] dindimi, þe ballokes, a nes erde, þe gryndes, þe buttockes, and þe brawnes þat descenden, of þe which y wille treten by ordre. (Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 95, Wallner 1995: 71)

The translator(s) of each version seem(s) as much at ease with long-standing code-switched items and “borrowings” (vein) as with those of more recent coining (artery – ﬁrst recorded in Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus’ De Proprietatibus Rerum at the end of the fourteenth century), and with words derived from Old English (schare) as with those from Greek or Arabic (mirak ‘the anterior abdominal wall’, irbus/zirbus ‘a peritoneal serous membrane that envelops the bowels, the greater omentum’). Comparable procedures for code-switching medical terms are found in each manuscript tradition, and although the frequency of code-switching does vary, the variation of frequency is not especially striking. Similarly, the practice of using or creating code-switched terms is not limited to body parts or illnesses, but also involves both the descriptions of the medical texts themselves – in code-switched formations like Antidotarie (from the Medieval Latin antidotarius) – to the specialized vocabulary the Chauliac translators adapt to designate surgical instruments and paraphernalia. It appears that the translators expected their readership to know that picecarole were instruments “for plucking hairs or removing foreign bodies from an eye or wound, tweezers” (MED s.v.), or that one type of cauterising instrument was named olivaria, on account of it “having at its end an iron knob about the size and shape of an olive pit, or, according to some, an olive leaf ” (MED s.v. ol¯ıvar¯ ¯ ıe) – an observation which might be commonplace in Italy or Greece, but less so in the Midlands of medieval England. Perhaps it is not surprising that so many medieval medical texts contain illustrations of surgical instruments – including New York Academy of Medicine MS 12 and Paris BN MS Angl. 25.16 An alternative interpretation of the recurring presence of such codeswitched items might be to interpret it as evidence of the multilingual norms 16. Illustrations found in medical texts are discussed (and demonstrated) by Voigts (1989).

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 265

which characterised the linguistic performance of the texts’ readership, that is, of a compositional context in which multilingual speakers ﬂexibly operated a single linguistic system drawing together elements from different languages, rather than being conscious of drawing from distinct and discrete linguistic traditions. In his account of the mixed vocabulary of shipping, Trotter (2003: 20) concludes that “it is erroneous to attempt this type of classiﬁcation of vocabulary into different languages, especially in England, because the distinction itself is not supported by the documentary evidence [. . .] and because there is a very strong case for arguing that the separation of these languages at the lexical level [. . .] does not correspond to medieval reality”.17 The context Trotter describes is one which operated or evolved across a considerable period of time and involved the multi-national and multilingual speech community as well as those involved in the writing of texts. A closer parallel to the context in which the Chauliac translations were composed might be sought in Hanna’s work on Lambeth Palace Library MS 260, described as a “substantial English book” (Hanna 2008: 132) and copied around the same time as the New York Chauliac MS. In his account of “the variety of ways in which English and Latin interweave in the presentation of ‘vernacular’ texts” Hanna (2008: 141) seeks to problematise the idea of English medieval “vernacular texts” by highlighting the evident, frequent and revealing traces left by their creation within a system of functional trilingualism. Hanna’s interpretation of the evidence of Lambeth Palace MS 260 seems to suggest that for practical purposes, the differences between languages – which have seemed so crucial to modern readers – may have seemed “a particularly ﬂuid and perturbed linguistic frontier” (Hanna 2008: 132) in the ﬁfteenth century. There can be little doubt that the translators, and probably the early users, of the Chauliac translations would have been necessarily proﬁcient in Latin, to the extent that the creation of these texts might similarly be understood as an exercise in “achieved trilingualism”(Hanna 2008: 168).18 Such a model of the text’s composition inevitably calls to mind Wallner’s characterization of the text of the translation as being “a text which, in numerous words, is a compromise between English and Latin” (Wallner 1964: xi). Wallner’s comments

17. See also Trotter (this volume). 18. Hanna’s interpretation seems to develop the implications already present in Hunt’s judgment that, in medical texts, “in the context of multilingual societies it can be unrealistic to attempt to distinguish code-switching from borrowing” (Hunt 2000: 131).

266 Simon Meecham-Jones

are directed in particular to the translation in the New York manuscript, and in that version we can certainly see this tendency to rely on code-switching to supplement the medical vocabulary leading at times to the creation of what can seem like a hybridized linguistic form. In the rubric describing the chapters of the second book, the translator seems almost to despair of using English terms: (5)

Of apostemes of the breste as of bubouns in which is made transgression of mortalitee .i. pestilence. And of þe aposteme fugelico & indurate in þe e[m] unctorie . Of aposteme of þe pappys, Of coagulacioun .i. cruddyng of mylke. (Wallner 1964: 34) ‘Of tumours of the breast, such as buboes, which diagnose mortality; hardened glandular swellings in the excretory organs, of tumours of the nipples, of clotting, that is the curdling of milk.’

But a similar phenomenon is found in the Paris MS translation of the same passage, despite the translator’s (presumed) attempt “to render the original in a more thoroughly English idiom” (Ogden 1971: vi). The use of codeswitched nouns for naming – apostemes, bubones, aposteme fugilique – is carried over into the English, even where the more ﬂorid verbal signatures of the New York MS translator’s Latinity are absent: (6)

The 5 chapitre is of an apostemes of þe breste, as of ham þat hi te bubones in þe whiche trespase of deth is imade, and of þe aposteme fugilique yharnede in þe purgynge places, of apostemes of þe tetes, of cludding of þe melk. (Ogden 1971:16–17) ‘The ﬁfth chapter [concerns] tumours of the breast, such as those that are called buboes, which diagnose mortality; hardened glandular swellings in the excretory organs, of tumours of the nipples, of clotting, that is the curdling of milk.’

Elsewhere, the different translations provide somewhat contradictory evidence for any performance that might be consistent with Hanna’s contention that “received (and thus written) medieval usage” can be identiﬁed “polylingually and dialectically as ‘coplas’ (improvisation)” (Hanna 2008: 171). Consider, for example, how the three translated passages previously cited negotiate the appearance of the late Latin word matrix ‘womb’. The New York MS transplants the word, in what might be seen as a demonstration of the slippage between languages which, in Hanna’s view, characterises “the

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 267

perpetually shifting linguistic frontier that lies beneath the imposed boundaries of governance” (Hanna 2008: 177) – though it might also plausibly be described as an example of a lexical code-switch. The Glasgow MS switches the word, while adapting its spelling to the less alien-looking matrice, in a gesture which seems to mark out the word as henceforward, if not previously, English. The translation preserved in the Paris MS treats the word quite differently. Intuiting the relationship between matrix and mater ‘mother’ the Paris text translates the word as moder, seeking to transplant into English the ﬁgurative identiﬁcation of the words for mother and womb. But, surprisingly, this usage was anticipated by Trevisa, whose translation of Bartholomeus may have acted as a source for the translator’s lexis. Though Ogden (1971: vi) argues that the Paris MS translator had “a less adequate command of Latin” than those responsible for the New York MS, the various responses to this semantic crux reveals not the interchangeability of different linguistic traditions, but rather a series of determined efforts at translation from one language tradition into another. A similar creative determination to render the original can be seen in the apparent coining in each translation of new forms procedyng, conteynyng, descendyng to render the Latin terms procidentes, continentes, descendentes. Though there are differences in how the three versions represent these ideas, all three texts prove resourceful in extending English forms to give an accurate equivalent of the Latin. In doing so, they go beyond the problem of how to give expression to a wide body of speciﬁc and technical vocabulary, which might not have been described in the language previously, in the direction of a more ambitious recomposition of the Latin, in which switches are by no means restricted to nominals. By comparison with the language shifts described in Lambeth Palace MS 260, which may appear thoughtless or without expressive purpose, the policy of switching in the Chauliac translations seems more careful and more considered, at times expressing a sensitivity to the ideological and stylistic issues inherent in the process. It must be remembered, also, that the Middle English Chauliac texts were produced within particular constraints – ﬁrstly of being translations, and secondly of being “technical” treatises – each of which will have determined elements of the translators’ practice. Both Voigts (1989: 380–383) and Taavitsainen and Pahta (2004) characterize the development of a corpus of medical texts in Middle English as evidence of the vernacularisation of the medical and scientiﬁc tradition, but the presence of so many code-switched items (albeit sometimes alongside vernacular alternatives) must be seen as introducing some element of qualiﬁcation into the process. For Voigts, the vernacular medical texts provide evidence of a breakdown

268 Simon Meecham-Jones

between the “mutual exclusivity of learned, Latin culture on one hand and popular vernacular culture on the other” (1989: 383) and it could be argued that one witness of that breakdown is the apparent evidence of the merging of lexical material into a single multilingual resource. But such a reading presupposes a sustained level of Latin competence in a (presumably) capably multilingual audience. When the term purgyng was so well-understood, the decision of the Chauliac translator to code-switch emunctorim – a Medieval Latin term, derived from the word for candle snuffer – to represent “any part of the body through which waste matter from one of the principal organs (e.g. brain, heart, liver) is excreted” (MED s.v. emunct ¯ orie ¯ ) – cannot be the result of an insufﬁciency of vocabulary. Maybe these practices of usage could be read as representing a pattern of multilingual variation without motive or expressive purpose. Pahta, in seeking to offer a partial explanation for such occurrences, draws attention to the fact that these translations were produced in an intellectual climate which “was clearly not monolingual” (Pahta 2004: 97). Nonetheless, the presence of so many lexical items derived from Latin (and, through Latin and French, from Greek and Arabic) might equally well be seen as an attempt to preserve some of the (perceived) “learned” and exclusive qualities of Latin, in a manner which must qualify our understanding of the term vernacularisation. For a multilingual audience, it seems that the writing of a “vernacular” text was not incompatible with the inclusion of a signiﬁcant presence of code-switched terms. But the patterns of code-switching found in the Chauliac translations often do not appear to be motiveless. The lexical performance of these translators was inﬂuenced by the particular (and practical) nature of the texts being mediated, as well as by the authority invested in the reputations of their sources. With the beneﬁt of hindsight, it seems clear that every exercise in code-switching performs – in effect, if not necessarily in intention – both an ideological and a stylistic statement and it is to describe these functions that the term code-switching is an appropriate, if not essential, element of any description of the particularities of the Middle English Chauliac translations. Pahta (2004: 97) notes that “the most prominent function [of code-switching] is related to professional discourse” and it is certainly possible to theorize reasons related to professional discourse which might explain some of the speciﬁc instances of code-switching. One element of this preference for code-switching was the result of practical considerations, for example in distinguishing different medical phenomena. Where a compound formation of existing English lexemes signalling a swelling of the leg might, in the absence of additional lexical material, fail to

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 269

distinguish between types of swelling derived from different causes, such a difference might well have been marked out by distinguished terms in Latin, Greek or Arabic, so there might be practical, as well as ideological, reasons for making reference to terms used in sources. Nonetheless, that need not cause us to doubt that the primary ideological purpose of code-switching in these translations is to establish each translation as a summation of previous treatises, simultaneously reminding the reader of the breadth of range of prior texts used while, at the same time, suggesting that the authority of those prior texts has been appropriated by the new vernacular text. Both purposes can be seen at work in Chauliac’s own style, each element of his extensive reading exerting an inﬂuence on the patterns of code-switching found in his text and it should scarcely be considered surprising that it is subsequently to be found in the translations. Two particular sources of linguistic interest in the Middle English translations of Chauliac are the survival of terms derived from Arabic, and the heavy concentration of terms derived from Greek. In the early Middle Ages, the work of Arabic physicians and surgeons was accorded great prestige,19 a prestige in surgery enhanced, and perpetuated for several centuries by the prohibitions on Christian surgeons practicing dissection on human corpses. One of the most interesting source strands in the Chauliac translations is the pattern of lexical items derived from the treatise on surgery written as part of a larger medical textbook compiled by Abu’l ¯ Qasim ¯ Halaf Ibn Abb¯as al-Zahraw¯ ¯ ı (Albucasis in European Latin tradition) in Cordoba in Mozarabic Spain, around the end of the tenth century. This text had been translated from Arabic into Latin by Gerard of Crèmona, in Trotter’s view almost certainly in Toledo in the twelfth century (Trotter 1999: 23), and Gerard’s translation was itself translated into Occitan and into French, a tradition represented by the (lost) thirteenth century Metz manuscript, MS Metz 1228, and by the (probably late thirteenth-century) manuscript Paris BN Fr. 1318.20 Chauliac made extensive and acknowledged use of the Latin translation of the work of his esteemed Arabic predecessor. Albucasis’s Chirurgia was far from being

19. “In the process Greek texts took on an Arabic dress (the ‘Almagest’ of Plato retains in Latin the Arabic article al), and numerous Muslim writers, not only Ibn SӍnҧ (Avicenna) and Al-RҧzӍ (‘Rhazes’), but many lesser men, became commonplace Latin authorities” (Hodgson 1974: 365). 20. Trotter (2005) presents an edition of MS BNF, Fr. 1318.

270 Simon Meecham-Jones

the only Arabic text Chauliac made use of,21 but it did play a prominent role in the shaping of Chauliac’s text, and Chauliac refers to Albucasis by name as a respected authority in the introductory preface to the work, and at various points within the text: (7)

a.

Of Albucasis and Asaram, the which wheþer þei were þe same or dyuerse, þey had hem beste moste in þe Book of Almansorum and of Diuisiouns and in þe Cirurgie of Albucasis aforeseide. And as Haly Abbas saide, in hem he putte his special þinges. (Ogden 1971: 8) ‘Of Albucasis and Asarem, whether they are the same person or not, their best work is to be found in the book of Almansorum and of Divisions, and in the previously mentioned surgery of Albucasis. And, as Haly Abbas said, in these texts he put his special things.’

b. And after, brenne ham with a poyntede cauterie or wiþ a sharpe medecyne, but after Albucasis, þay shal be ﬁrst departede al aboute and pullede vp by the rootes. (Sixth book, seventh chapitle, Ogden 1971: 410) ‘And after burn them with a pointed cauterizing instrument or with a sharp medicine but according to Albucasis they shall be cleared out completely and pulled up by the roots.’

Conversely, Albucasis’s work was not translated into Middle English, so the translation of Chauliac’s text was a crucial conduit through which Middle English readers gained access to Arabic medical texts which were still known and respected by reputation at least – a persistent, if sometimes uninformed, respect, traces of which can be seen in the misidentiﬁcation by the Middle English translators of Haly Rodoan with the more celebrated Haly Abbas: (8)

Þe whiche descripcioun Haly Abbas ordeynede most perﬁtely in þe 8 sermone of þe ﬁrste parte of his Book of Real Dispocicioun. (Secounde Book, the ﬁrste chapitle (sic), Ogden 1971: 73) ‘The which description Haly Abbas outlined most clearly in the eighth section of the ﬁrst part of his book of real Disposition.’

These references were mistakenly translated in the Middle English texts as referring to the Persian physician Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (known to

21. McVaugh (McVaugh and Ogden 1997: 69) notes, for example, the use of Albucasis’s Antidotarium, as well as Alcoatim’s Liber de Oculis and Avicenna’s Liber de anima, seu sextus de naturalibus.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 271

medieval Europe as Haly Abbas) but actually refer to a less familiar source, Haly Rodoan’s commentary (in Arabic) on Galen’s Tegni, the citation of which enabled Chauliac to integrate elements of an Arabic commentary on Galen alongside his own re-reading of Galen (in Latin translation).22 Where Chauliac’s text marks out what appears to be a speciﬁc debt to a particular text,23 the Middle English misidentiﬁcation demonstrates the reassuring security to be gained from a less precise recollection of the scholarly foundations underpinning the text. It is not surprising, then, that some Arabic terms for illnesses and body parts, whether used in Arabic medical texts or translations into Arabic of Greek texts, were absorbed into Latin translations, leaving, in Latham’s view, “an unmistakable mark on the vocabulary” (1972: 30). Nonetheless, the process of transplanting Arabic terms into the Latin script created many difﬁculties, not least since the Arabic texts might also contain words code-switched (however accurately) from Greek and Persian. The under- or oversupply of diacritical points marks out one obvious potential area of error, as does the prevalence of abbreviation and suspension in Medieval Latin texts, which helped to lead copyists astray.24 The profusion of these Arabic terms, code-switched through Latin intermediaries into French, has led Trotter (1999) to hail “L’importance lexicographique” of the translations into French, and also into Occitan, of Gerard of Crèmona’s Latin translation of Albucasis. Derived from this process, he lists two categories of Arabic-derived lexis; that which is only attested in this translation tradition, and that which is attested elsewhere, albeit later than in the translation found in Paris BNF MS Fr. 1318. The decision to code-switch in this fashion remains striking, not least because of the questions it raises about the linguistic capabilities of its audience. Trotter (1999) notes that there is occasional glossing in the MSS, for example of the Arabic-derived words abbaches and alratica by the gloss i.pustule (itself a code-switched

22. McVaugh (McVaugh and Ogden 1997: 9) notes that Chauliac uses an abbreviated translation of Galen’s De utilitate partium, derived from an Arabic translation, alongside Nicholas of Reggio’s full Latin translation. 23. McVaugh (McVaugh and Ogden 1997: 59) notes that Haly “does not in fact use the phrase Guy attributes to him”, which perhaps suggests that Chauliac was citing his sources from memory. 24. Latham (1972: 31–33) provides the example of alkibrit, which appears as albubit, algibich, allzebric, amongst other forms, and the transformation of nar.q¯ ¯ a as berile.

272 Simon Meecham-Jones

item)25, while one manuscript (BL MS Additional 36617) even includes a glossary of such terms, although the glossing and glossary are written in later hands. The debt to illustrious predecessors is explicitly acknowledged, even vaunted, through the adoption and adaptation of words whose phonological or orthographical singularity draws attention to the transmission of knowledge. What is most noticeable about the English Chauliac translations, in comparison, is that they witness a partial, though signiﬁcant, attritional displacement of Arabic terms, not by English-derived terms, but by terms code-switched from other language traditions. Sometimes, the replacement is by terms which can be considered unproblematically to be Medieval Latin. But, at ﬁrst glance, the English Chauliac translations seem to contain a surprising proportion of Greek terms – surprising in view of the presumed relatively sparse familiarity with Classical Greek in early ﬁfteenth-century England.26 Actually, many of these terms are in fact received through Medieval Latin, having themselves been code-switched into Latin translations of Greek texts. Nonetheless, a comparison with the French translations does reveal a signiﬁcantly higher proportion of Greek-derived terms in the English texts, suggesting a (perhaps) conscious process of relexiﬁcation, as English translators sought to emphasize the continuity of their vernacular work with the tradition of highest authority in medicine – that is, the Greek tradition. The relative decline in Arabic-derived terms in the Middle English texts might be explained by the lesser ability of English translators (compared to their French peers) to recognise the Arabic origins of these words, by the later date of the English translations or perhaps by a declining awareness of Arabic achievement in this ﬁeld. Whatever the cause, the difference between English and French sources is striking. If we look at the terms Trotter (1999: 30) has listed as “Arabismes propres au textes du MS. Fr 1318”, it is noticeable how few of them ﬁnd their way into any of the Middle English Chauliac translations. All of the following terms are absent: (9)

adubelati – tumour; alagadeing – a ﬂeshy growth; albathe – pustule; albathir – scarlet pustule; albaret – a type of migraine; albulcon-a swelling on the gums; alcunnati – an eye complaint; aleacrati – an eye infection; algefri – forceps;

25. The Middle French term pustule was adapted from the Classical Latin pustula. 26. The limited study of Classical Greek in the early ﬁfteenth century in England is noted by Weiss (1967).

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 273 almagda – a needle; alratrice – an unruptured hymen; almagderi and almecdate – types of cautery; almidach – forceps; arissati – ﬁstula of the eye; augeherich – veins in the mouth; cocie-cucie – laxative pill; nakir – sporadic thrombophlebitis; taxmir – operation on the eye (Trotter 1999: 30–34).27

With his second list, of “Arabismes attestés ailleurs, mais plus tardivement que dans le ms. fr. 1318” [‘Arabic-derived forms attested elsewhere, but in sources later than ms. fr. 1318’] (Trotter 1999: 34), out of eleven items listed, eight are found in the Chauliac Middle English translations. Although alcali ‘potash’, althelul ‘corn or wart’ and alchatim ‘sacrum’ are absent, the following are present in the Middle English Chauliacs: (10) Albaras – a form of leprosy; bothor – a pustule; chamelot – a type of cloth; mirach [or mirak] – the anterior abdominal wall; sebel – an eye disease characterized by veins engorged with blood and by a web obscuring the sight; siphac – the peritoneum; sode – a type of migraine; zirbus – a peritoneal serous membrane, the greater omentum. (Trotter 1999: 34–38)

It is interesting to speculate why these terms might have been considered useful, while terms like almagda or alratice were not. The fact that Trotter has noted them in other texts subsequent to MS Fr. 1318 might suggest that they achieved a greater degree of familiarity or acceptance in French. Mirach/mirak, for example, is also attested in Mondeville. But that would not explain their appearance in English, unless the English translator perhaps used a French crib to aid the translation. In any case, a number of words attested in the Chauliac translations are also found in the Middle English translations of Lanfranc’s Science of Surgery. The frequent coincidence of vocabulary between the Chauliac and Lanfranc translations suggests strongly that these terms enjoyed a wider popularity in medical circles, so that the translators were able to make use of forms recognized by their audience, rather than having to create terms independently as part of the processes of translation. It is interesting that although the English translations of Chauliac contain a far more limited number of Arabic terms than, for example, the French 27. In translating these terms into English, it is salutary to be reminded how far modern usage coincides with ﬁfteenth century practice in favouring code-switched items, albeit derived from Medieval Latin, and received perhaps directly, or perhaps indirectly through Old French (pustule, ﬁstula, migraine).

274 Simon Meecham-Jones

translations of Gerard of Crèmona’s translation of Albucasis, several Arabicderived terms which made their way into the English text refer to ailments of the eye (e.g., sebel ‘an eye disease characterized by veins engorged with blood and by a web obscuring the sight’, sernac ‘a tumour or cyst on the eyelid’, and sulac ‘an inﬂammation of the edge of the eyelid’). Arab surgeons had enjoyed a great prestige in treating afﬂictions of the eye and it might be thought that the survival of these terms marks out at least a vestigial echo of that prestige. Such a theory presumes that (at least some of ) those who perpetuated the words were able to distinguish these Arabic-derived forms from the Medieval Latin matrix within which they were encountered, which is, at best, uncertain and unprovable. More often, the words have been presumed to have been assimilated into Medieval Latin – so Norri (1998), for example, in his account of the Names of Sicknesses in English lists all these terms, along with other Arabic-derived names (e.g., albaras ‘vitiligo or some forms of leprosy’; soda ‘headache’) as being taken from Medieval Latin, (or, in the case of soda, Medieval Latin and medieval French) rather than Arabic (from which Medieval Latin had borrowed them). The result is a foreshortening of the complexity of language contact, which ﬂattens out the processes of code-switching which might have caused these English names to be created or preserved, but the higher rate of survival of Arabic derived terms in this area of surgery is, at the very least, worthy of notice. If we were to discount the probability of manifold semantic associations of this kind triggering each of the code-switches present in the English translations, then we are still left with a host of switches, perhaps created independently in the New York and Paris MS traditions, the existence of which is unexplained. For Pahta (2004: 98), “there are switches for which no external discourse function can be assigned”, which leads her to conclude that “these switches rather seem to stem from the author’s or scribe’s idiolectal habits”. In the multilingual scenario she posits this might at ﬁrst seem plausible, but there is a danger that such an explanation shirks the difﬁculty of accounting for a situation which displays regular switches into the (largely) unspoken language of Latin, and, moreover, a highly specialized register of Latin quite distinct from the Latin of religious observance encountered daily, or to the Latin of the classical auctors – Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, Horace and their peers – which were so inﬂuential in medieval schooling. Certainly, the persistence of medieval ideas of auctoritee in language provides some explanation for code-switching into languages perceived to be higher in the hierarchy of linguistic value, in particular providing some explanation for the surprisingly high incidence in the English translations of terms derived from Greek, a

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 275

language of even higher authority than Latin, at a time when familiarity with Classical Greek in England was sparse, albeit many of these “Greek” terms were received through intermediary Medieval Latin forms. But the prevalence of code-switching across parallel and unrelated translation streams in the English Chauliac tradition rather suggests that the strategy provides evidence of an often conscious and sophisticated response to the difﬁculties of transferring lexical information into languages where it has not previously been needed. One unexpected element of these translations rests in the fact that not merely was the recourse to code-switching not inevitable and unavoidable, but that this non-inevitability was signalled as such by the translators. Most often in the New York MS, but also in the unrelated Paris MS, code-switched items are sometimes followed by what Wallner (1987: 286) refers to as “the .i. periphrasis”: “The translator was also able to render the foreign terms in simpler English and for this purpose he formally used a device which may be called the tautological or appositive .i., used as i.e. to-day to render Latin id est”. Wallner (1987: 287–289) lists examples where a code-switched item is followed by a vernacular alternative (e.g., “acuite .i. sharpenez, cranei .i. brayne panne, ligamentis .i. byndynge ”). If the translator realizes that his audience may well not understand cerebelles, but will understand braynez, then the appearance of both terms, linked by the appositive .i must signal that, for the translator, the appearance of the code-switched term must serve some additional pragmatic purpose beyond the rendering of a Medieval Latin term which could have been achieved through the use of the familiar word braynez. One possibility might be to see it as a characteristic of the processes of clariﬁcation and distinction inherent in the act of translation.28 In their account of English modal adverbs of certainty, Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijimer supplemented their use of the British component of the International Corpus of English with “translations from English and into English as found in Dutch, French, German and Swedish translation corpora” (2007: 7). They

28. The study of the processes of translation has created and developed many highly sophisticated models for the analysis and interpretation of textual structures and practices in the exercise of translation but it is striking that code-switching has rarely if ever been considered as a constituent of the models. This might, perhaps, offer a fruitful direction for future research. Medieval understanding of what might be considered ‘translation theory’ has been considered by Ellis (1989), Wogan-Browne et al (1999), and Moessner (2001).

276 Simon Meecham-Jones

justify this practice by arguing that “translations can contribute to providing a ﬁne-grained picture of the multiple senses of words in the source language. By looking at correspondences in other languages one discovers subtle meaning distinctions which may go unnoticed if one considers monolingual data only” (Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2007: 7). But their analysis of “translation properties” – that is, “the properties of words mirrored in another language” (Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2007: 7) – may be less appropriate in the analysis of the data offered by the Chauliac translations. The ﬁfteenth-century English translators were, for the most part, not seeking to mark out “subtle meaning distinctions” within a stable and well-established vocabulary, but (presumably) to establish a vocabulary in English in ﬁelds where previously one had only existed in other languages. Whether they expected that the terms they code-switched would in time be assimilated into English, or whether they expected that (like many of the “terms of art” used in ballet or dressage, for example) the words would remain code-switched in popular usage must remain a matter of speculation. Indeed, though the presence of code-switching in texts such as these has generally been interpreted as essentially a lexical phenomenon, it might be more accurate to understand it as the lexical manifestation of an ideological phenomenon – ideological being in this case understood within the terms of Silverstein’s deﬁnition that “ideologies about language, or linguistic ideologies, are any set of beliefs about language articulated by the users as a rationalization or justiﬁcation of perceived language structures and use” (Silverstein 1979: 193). To a considerable extent, our ability to understand medieval practices of code-switching has been distorted by ideological notions of lexical “consistency” which postdate the texts being analysed, but it is possible to frame an analysis of medieval practices which circumvents this difﬁculty. Simon-Vandenbergen and Aijmer, following the lead of Fillmore (1977) and Nerlich and Clarke (2000), lay great emphasis on the distinction between semantic ﬁeld and semantic frame, arguing that “the semantic or lexical ﬁeld is identiﬁed with ‘frame’ and the conceptual ﬁeld with the ‘schema’ ” (Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2007: 14).29 What seems clear in the Chauliac translations is that the translators have

29. Similarly Nerlich and Clarke (2000: 143) remark that “[i]t is the conceptual schema and the chunking of knowledge in situation and context that underlies the lexical ﬁeld and therefore structures it, and it is the conceptual schema that, when activated by a linguistic expression from a certain lexical ﬁeld, helps the hearer to understand the meanings of the word”.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 277

no expectation that the lexical ﬁeld, or frame, must be drawn from a single language. Since the lexical frame was formed from the gathering of material from a variety of language traditions, it is only the distorting perspectives of subsequent linguistic ideologies which make it surprising that the linguistic ﬁeld also displays some marks of this heterogeneity of sources. Whether we interpret the wide-spread presence of code-switching in these medical translations as the exercise of a strategy in textual (self )validation, as a gesture of afﬁliation to precedent traditions, or as representing some other expressive or sociolinguistic purpose(s), it is clear that its presence needs to be recognized not as merely the consequences of the insufﬁciency of the vernacular languages to receive this category of textual material, but rather (at least some times) as evidence of sophisticated, critical and voluntary processes of selective language use being reﬂected in the stylistic and lexical characteristics of these texts.

References Appel, René and Pieter Muysken 1987 Language Contact and Bilingualism. London: Edward Arnold. Backus, Ad and Magreet Dorleijn 2009 Loan translations versus code-switching. In: Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-Switching, 75–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, Roger 1989 The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translations in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Fillmore, Charles J. 1977 Scenes-and-frames semantics. In: Antonio Zampolli (ed.), Linguistic Structures Processing, 55–88. Amsterdam: North Holland. Gumperz, John J. 1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanna, Ralph 2008 Lambeth Palace Library MS 260 and the problem of English vernacularity. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 20: 131–199. Haugen, Einar 1953 The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Heimerl, Christian (ed.) 2008 The Middle English Version of William of Saliceto’s Anatomia. Heidelberg: Winter.

278 Simon Meecham-Jones

Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 1974 The Venture of Islam. (3 vols.) Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hunt, Tony 2000 Code-switching in medical texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, 131–147. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Kuhn, Sherman M. 1968 Review of Wallner (1964). Speculum 43: 552–556. Kuhn, Sherman M. 1972 Review of Wallner (1969), Wallner (1970) and Ogden (1971). Speculum 47: 544–548. Latham, John Derek 1972 Arabic into Medieval Latin. Journal of Semitic Studies 17: 30–67. Matras, Yaron 2009 Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McVaugh, Michael R. and Margaret S. Ogden 1997 Guigonis de Caulhiaco Inventarium Sive Chirurgia Magna. (Studies in Ancient Medicine, vol. II: Commentary), 3–15. Leiden: Brill MED = Kurath, Hans and Robert E. Lewis (gen. eds.) 1956–2001 Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Moessner, Lilo 2001 Translation strategies in Middle English: The case of the Wyclifﬁte bible. Poetica 55: 123–154. Myers-Scotton, Carol 1992 Comparing code-switching and borrowing. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 13: 19–39. Nerlich, Brigitte and David Clarke 2000 Semantic ﬁelds and frames: Historical explorations of the interface between language, action and cognition. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 125–150. Norri, Juhani 1998 Names of Body Parts in English, 1400–1550. Helsinki: Annales Academiæ Scientiarum Fennicæ. OED = Oxford English Dictionary Online: www.dictionary.oed.com Ogden, Margaret (ed.) 1971 The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac. (Early English Texts Society OS 265) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pahta, Päivi and Irma Taavitsainen 2004 Vernacularisation of scientiﬁc and medical writing in its sociohistorical context. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), 1–22. Romaine, Suzanne 1995 Bilingualism. (2nd ed.) Oxford/Cambridge, M.A.: Blackwell.

“Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie” 279

Silverstein, Michael 1979 Language structure and linguistic ideology. In: Paul R. Clyne, William F. Hanks and Carol L. Hofbauer (eds.), The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie and Karin Aijmer 2007 The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Stone, Howard 1968 Puzzling translations in the thirteenth century multiple equivalents in early French medical terminology. Romance Notes 10: 174–179. Taavitsainen, Irma 2004 Transferring classical discourse into the vernacular. In: Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.), 37–72. Taavitsainen, Irma and Päivi Pahta (eds.) 2004 Medical and Scientiﬁc Writing in Late Medieval English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trotter, David 1999 L’importance lexicographique du traitier de Cyrurgie D’Albucasis en ancien français. Revue de Linguistique Romane 63: 249–250, 23–53. Trotter, David 2003 Oceano vox: You never know where a ship comes from. On multilingualism and language-mixing in medieval Britain. In: Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.), Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language History, 15–33. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Trotter, David (ed.) 2005 Albucasis: Traitier de Cyrugie. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Voigts, Linda E. 1989 Scientiﬁc and medical books. In: Jeremy Grifﬁths and Derek Pearsall (eds.), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, 345–402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wallner, Björn (ed.) 1964 The Middle English Translation of Guy de Chauliac’s Anatomy. Lund: Lunds Universitets Årsskrift Wallner, Björn 1987 On the .i. periphrasis in the N. Y. Chauliac. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 88(3): 286–294. Wallner, Björn (ed.) 1995 An Interpolated Middle English Version of Guy de Chauliac’s Anatomy. Lund: Lund University Press.

280 Simon Meecham-Jones

Weiss, Joseph 1967 Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century. Oxford: Blackwell. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Watson and Ruth Evans 1999 The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1350–1520. Exeter/University Park: University of Exeter Press and Penn State Press.

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet: Diglossia and footing Ad Putter

1. Introduction This essay examines some examples of code-switching between French and English in the poetry of William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer and the anonymous Gawain poet. Its argument is that recent developments in the study of bilingual communities offer opportunities for a better understanding of the functions and effects of code-switching in Middle English verse.1 Two new developments seem to me particularly relevant. The ﬁrst is the insight that in multilingual communication code-switching operates not only between different languages but also between varieties of one and the same language. In practice these two forms are not always easy to distinguish. The second is the insight that, from a sociological perspective, code-switching is one of a number of strategies that allow people to negotiate footing, i.e., to adjust their position vis-à-vis other people and vis-à-vis their own words. Both these insights will, I hope, be useful when we come to examine how and why Middle English poets switch into French.

2. The scope of diglossia and code-switching The ﬁrst insight is the result of a widening of the term diglossia. This term seems to have been coined (in English-language scholarship at least) by Charles Ferguson who used it to cover a sociolinguistic situation which offers members of a speech community a choice between two different linguistic codes: one language variety that is “low” (L) and one that is “high” (H) and

1. I would like to thank Robert Mayr for his guidance in the ﬁeld of modern linguistic research on multilingual communities.

282 Ad Putter

“superposed”, i.e. learned by speakers in addition to the “primary, ‘native’ variety” (Ferguson 1964: 429). An example is provided by the speech of the town where I grew up, Maastricht (in the south of the Netherlands), where locals typically use L (a regional dialect known as Mestreechs) in one kind of situation – for instance, amongst friends in the pub – and H (the standard national language, Dutch) in another, for instance, in ofﬁcial written communication. In Ferguson’s original deﬁnition of the term, diglossia referred strictly to the coexistence of two varieties of one language, H and L, each with their own functions and social meanings; it did not refer to bilingual situations where code-switching involves two different languages, L1 and L2. Such a restrictive view of what is meant by diglossia has now largely been abandoned. Thus Ralph Fasold deﬁnes what he calls broad diglossia as the reservation of highly valued segments of a community’s linguistic repertoire (which are not the ﬁrst to be learned, but are learned later and more consciously, usually through formal education) for situations perceived as more formal and guarded; and the reservation of less highly valued segments (which are learned ﬁrst with little or no conscious effort) […] for situations perceived as more informal and intimate. (Fasold 1989: 53)

Fasold deliberately leaves open the question of whether or not that community’s linguistic repertoire is mono- or multilingual: in his usage, diglossia applies to linguistic varieties “of any degree of linguistic relatedness […] from stylistic differences to separate languages” (Fasold 1989: 53). This broader sense is now so well established that medievalists no longer have any qualms about using the term diglossia when talking about bilingual communities. Thus in a recent article about monolingual French speakers in twelfth-century England, Ian Short typiﬁes the linguistic situation in Anglo-Norman England as one of “diglossic bilingualism. By this is meant a community characterised by the simultaneous presence of two languages in contact, with each of the languages having a distinct range of social functions […] English was the majority, or dominant language in the countryside, while Anglo-Norman (or Insular) French was, initially at least, an aristocratic idiolect” (Short 2009: 245). This extension of what is meant by diglossia has had obvious implications for the study of code-switching, which has similarly come to encompass switches not only between different varieties of the same language (H and L), but also between different languages (L1 and L2). As Suzanne Romaine explains, the reason why many linguists today use the term code-switching is

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 283

that “the term ‘code’ is a neutral one […] and does not commit us to taking a decision as to whether the varieties or codes concerned constitute languages or dialects” (Romaine 1994: 63). While these broader uses of diglossia and code-switching have become generally accepted in the ﬁeld, it is useful to be reminded occasionally of the history of these terms and of the arguments that helped the broader view to prevail. One important argument is that codeswitching between different languages and code-switching between different varieties of the same language are not functionally separable. For example, as Dell Hymes (1967: 8) pointed out, when monolingual speakers of French select between different pronouns of address, tu and vous, they are signalling relationships of proximity or distance and thereby accomplishing what bilingual speakers are able to do when selecting between different languages (e.g. English versus French in Anglo-Norman England). It might be objected that the gap between different varieties of the same language is not as wide as that between distinct languages, but, as John Gumperz (1967: 49) has shown, this objection has no foundation in empirical facts. From a formal linguistic perspective (lexical, grammatical, etc), the gulf between, for instance, some forms of lower- and upper-class English in New York is wider, not smaller, than that which separates some linguistic varieties that have been traditionally classiﬁed as different languages, such as Hindi and Urdu in India. Any attempt to make a ﬁrm distinction between L1/L2-switching and L/H-switching is further undermined by the practical difﬁculty of knowing whether, when a speaker utters a non-indigenous phrase, he is switching from L1 into L2, or using loan words (borrowed from L2, but now part of the L1 lexicon) or neither/both. When, for instance, a bilingual German/ French speaker from the Alsace converses in German with a passer-by but has greeted this same person with Bonjour, is his greeting “French” (L2) or polite German (H)? In his essay on the Middle English translations of Guy de Chauliac’s Chirurgia Magna in the present collection, Simon MeechamJones observes that Middle English texts raise similar questions. It is often difﬁcult, if not impossible, to decide “whether a linguistic form should be considered code-switched or borrowed” (256). As we shall see, the poetry of Langland, Chaucer, and the Gawain poet confronts us with precisely these problems. It may be heartening to anyone who has had to worry about such issues that, when an expert jury of native Alsatian informants were asked to pronounce on the “Frenchness” or otherwise of a range of comparable greetings and expressions, they could not decide which were loans, code-switches or something in-between, and were only able to agree “in approximately one third of cases” (Gardner-Chloros 1995: 74).

284 Ad Putter

There are thus good reasons why the restrictions on the use of the terms diglossia and code-switching have been lifted, and, as I hope to show, taking the wider view helps us notice continuities and connections between L/H and a L1/L2 switching that we might otherwise have missed.

3. Footing The second advance in linguistics that can help us with Middle English literature is the development of a conceptual framework, originating with the sociologist Erving Goffman, which linguists have fruitfully applied to the study of present-day bilingual conversation. Code-switching, Goffman argued, can be seen (along with many other linguistic and paralinguistic strategies) as a change of “footing”, that is “a change in the alignment we take up to ourselves and others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utterance” (Goffman 1979: 5). One great strength of Goffman’s theory is that it allows us to deal, within a single explanatory framework, with two types of code-switching that have previously been seen as distinct, namely situational and metaphorical code-switching. Situational code-switching is associated with a change in the perception or deﬁnition of the social situation. To adapt an example from Blom and Gumperz (1972) to a linguistic environment with which I am personally familiar, the arrival of an outsider sometimes prompts a group of bilingual English-Welsh to switch from English to Welsh, or, if they feel more friendly, from Welsh to English. In the case of metaphorical code-switching there is no marked change in the deﬁnition of the social situation; rather, the switch responds to a change in the nature of the topic or subject matter. In studying a bilingual Spanish-English community of Puerto Ricans in New York, Ana Celia Zentella noticed, for example, that bilingual speakers will sometimes switch language when they come up against a taboo topic or term. Below is an example from her corpus: (1)

They should blow an ash can [ﬁrecracker] up his huevos [‘balls’]. (Zentella 1997: 97)

Here the switch into Spanish registers the speaker’s awareness that the word is “vulgar” and belongs, as it were, to the vulgar tongue. The formal distinction between these two types of code-switching, situational and metaphorical, has its uses, but it will be evident that both types involve changes of footing. In the case of situational code-switching this change

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 285

of footing involves a re-alignment of the speaker towards others: it negotiates social relationships and group membership. In metaphorical code-switching, this interpersonal dimension, while not altogether absent, is secondary to the speaker’s re-alignment towards his own utterance. Code-switching, then, can be a way of marking distance and proximity not only between people but also between speakers and their words. To recapitulate, recent work on code-switching has yielded two important insights: a) code-switching between separate languages cannot be separated formally or functionally from switching between other linguistic codes (varieties of the same language, dialects, registers, styles, etc.) b) code-switching is one of a number of ways in which people change footing, i.e. re-align themselves to others and/or to their own words. It now remains to be seen whether these insights are of any use when we come to consider code-switches between English and French in Middle English poetry.

4. French and English in Langland’s Piers Plowman I would like to begin with William Langland. Although recent scholarship has given renewed attention to the macaronic quality of Piers Plowman (Machan 1994, Halmari and Adams 2002, Davidson 2003, Somerset 2005), the focus has mainly been on Latin switches, while the role of French in Langland’s linguistic repertoire has been rather neglected. It is true that French plays a “limited role in Piers Plowman – compared with Latin” (Machan 1994: 383 n.72), but that makes it possible to look systematically at moments where French occurs and to ponder the whys and hows. The most substantial chunks of French in Langland’s verse occur in proverbs. When Reason commends suffraunce (‘patience’) as a key virtue, he cites several proverbs in support, including one in French: (2)

“Holy Writ”, quod that wye, “wisseth men to suffre: Propter Deum subiecti estote omni creature. Frenche men and fre men affaiteth thus hire children: Bele vertue est suffraunce; mal dire est petite vengeance. Bien dire et bien suffrir fait lui suffrant a bien venir.” (B-Version, XI, 382–384 [Schmidt 1995])

286 Ad Putter ‘ “The Bible”, said that man [Reason], “teaches a man to endure. Be ye subject to every creature for God’s sake [I Pet 2:13]. Frenchmen and freemen instruct their children as follows: Patience is a ﬁne virtue, and speaking ill is a meagre revenge. Speaking well and enduring well will bring good things to the person who suffers.” ’

In an earlier discussion between Will and Scripture, Will himself cites a French proverb to bolster his case that it is hard to know the meritoriousness of human actions. God alone knows, and so the only hard certainty is that we shall all be accountable for our actions when we die: (3)

Forthi lyve we forth with lithere men – I leve fewe ben goode – For “quant OPORTET vient en place il ny ad que PATI;” And he that may al amende, have mercy on us alle. (X, 437–439) ‘So let’s continue to live on with wicked men – I believe few are good – For “when MUST comes on the scene there is nothing to be done but ENDURE;” And may He who has the power to amend everything have mercy on us all.’

This example gives us a kind of double-nested code-switch: ﬁrst from English into French, and then, within the French, into Latin. John Alford and others have found parallels for the second proverb in French writings, and have noted the application of the proverb by other medieval writers to the Last Judgement where everything will come to light, whether we like it or not (Alford 1992: 69–70). From a linguistic perspective, both passages are fairly straightforward instances of a type of code-switching which scholars have called “citational”. In her study of Spanish-English code-switching amongst the Puerto Rican community in New York, Zentella (1997: 94) found that quotations, direct or indirect, provided the second most common context for code-switches (after topic-shifts). The language shift obviously allows speakers to signal they are not now voicing their own words but rather those of others. With regard to Langland’s choice of French, it is worth noting that Langland did not think his readers needed any help with French, and his statement that “Frenche men and fre men affaiteth thus hire children: Bele vertue est suffraunce […]” (example [2] above) in fact implies that Frenchmen across the Channel and freemen in England imparted wisdom to their children in the French language. In the domain of proverbs, it would appear, French remained a force to be reckoned with, in part, I suspect, because

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 287

proverbs are inherently conservative, linguistically and morally, and in part because proverbs were the staple diet of the medieval schoolboy (Busby and Putter 2010: 5). The schoolboy’s main task was of course to learn Latin, but until the end of the fourteenth century the vernacular language used to construe Latin was French rather than English. Latin proverbs such as the Distichs of Cato would thus be glossed into French, so it is not surprising that numerous proverb collections in Anglo-Norman survive from Langland’s period (Dean 1999: 143–156). The switches into French in these two examples, with Latin preceding or incorporated in it, are a deferential bow to the authority of the schoolmaster, and to a traditional system of school education in which Latin was still being taught via French. It is true that this traditional system was already changing in Langland’s day, but Langland’s derogatory remarks about “thise newe clerkes” (XV, 372) who are unable to “rede a lettre in any language but in Latyn or in Englissh” (XV, 375) make it quite clear that he himself was a cleric of the old school. However, Langland does not merely use French as a language of lore, allied to Latin. Another context that gives rise to code-switching is the topic of “ﬁne living”, as the following three examples will illustrate. In the ﬁrst, Langland takes to task hypocritical clerics who display their “heigh clergie” (XV, 78) more in pomp and circumstance than in deeds of charity: (4)

Right so manye preestes, prechours and prelates – Ye [b]en enblaunched with bele paroles and with [bele] clothes, Ac youre werkes and wordes therunder aren ful w[o]lveliche. (XV, 114–116)2 ‘Just so many priests, preachers and prelates – You are whitened with ﬁne words and [ﬁne] clothes, But your works and words underneath are wolf-like in the extreme.’

In the next example, Patience warns Haukyn that those who enjoy their heaven here on earth are more likely to be excluded from heaven when they die: (5)

Aungeles that in helle now ben hadden joye som tyme, And Dives in deyntees lyvede and in douce vie; Right so reson sheweth that tho men that [riche were] And hir makes also lyvede hir lif in murthe. (XIV, 121–124)

2. I have adopted the emendation by Kane and Donaldson (1975) of “clothes” to “[bele] clothes”.

288 Ad Putter ‘The angels that are now in hell had a good time once, And Dives lived in luxury and in a life of pleasure; In the same way reason shows that men who were rich And their wives, too, lived their lives in pleasure.’

And in this ﬁnal example, Langland satirizes the “wasters” who will eat nothing apart from “haute cuisine”: (6)

Laborers that have no land to lyve on but hire handes Deyned noght to dyne aday nyght-olde wortes May no peny ale hem paie, ne no pece of bacoun, But if it be fressh ﬂessh outher ﬁssh fryed outher ybake – And that chaud and plus chaud, for chillynge of his mawe. (VI, 306–310) ‘Labourers who have no land to live on but have only their hands Disdained to eat the leftovers of yesterday’s vegetables; Ordinary ale did not please them, nor any piece of bacon, But only fresh meat or ﬁsh, fried or baked, And that warm and warmer to prevent their stomachs from getting chilled.’

What Langland is able to exploit in these examples is the association of French with the discourse of the nobility, an association that is as much part of the meaning of these words as their referential content. Rendering chaud as “warm”, bele paroles as “ﬁne words”, douce vie as “a life of pleasure”, as I have in my translation, therefore drastically diminishes the force of Langland’s poetry in its original language. That force is bound up with the switch into French, and I can think of no better way of describing Langland’s achievement here than to quote the linguists who coined the term metaphorical code-switching: “The context in which one set of alternatives is regularly used becomes part of its meaning, so that when this form is then employed in a context in which it is not normal it brings in some of the ﬂavor of the original setting […]” (Blom and Gumperz 1972: 425). In Langland’s case, the French imports the ﬂavour of the aristocratic court, with all its luxuries and pretensions. In other respects, too, Langland vindicates current linguistic theory, and in particular Gumperz’s argument that code-switching between languages is not functionally separable from code-switching between other linguistic codes. For in all three cases, Langland’s bilingual diglossia is pre-announced by a diglossic shift in Ferguson’s orginal sense of diglossia, that is, by a shift

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 289

between high and low varieties of the same language. In example (4), the preparatory work is done by the notable word enblaunched. Grammatically, this may behave like an “English” word, but it is actually a very outlandish item. The Middle English Dictionary (MED) lists only two attestations of the word in Middle English, Langland’s being the earliest by some way (s.v. emblaunchen v.). As Carl Schmidt (1983: 146) has observed, the word so obviously ﬂaunts itself as the “posh” romance equivalent of normal English whitened that we instantly recognize it to be itself imitative of the bele paroles, the smooth-talking, of the pompous clergy. In example (5), the Frenchderived deyntees sets the tone. Langland later varies the expression “to live in deyntees” with the phrase “to live in murthe”, but it is not just the alliterative metre that makes it impossible for us to interchange the nouns. For, as Langland knows, “bon viveurs” like Dives would say deyntee, not murthe. In example (6), the entire a-verse “Deyned noght to dyne aday” manages to make the Germanic b-verse “night-olde wortes” sound vaguely repellent. Langland’s dyne is especially interesting. This French loan had been widely used in English in the intransitive sense ‘to have dinner’, but judging by the Middle English Dictionary (s.v. dƯnen v.[2], 2.[a]) we have here the earliest example of a transitive usage in the English language.3 Because of this markedly irregular usage, the reader cannot help noticing that dine, from the superposed language variety (H), is here being asked to do the job that would normally have been entrusted to the simple word eat (L). With “Waster” we are entering the circles of those who “dine” rather than “eat”, so Langland suggests, and before we know it he has us speaking French with “chaud” and “plus chaud”.

5. French and English in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales It is of course risky to rely too much on MED evidence when one is seeking to recover the connotations of words. Written attestations are later than

3. MED attestations are listed in order of the date of the manuscript rather than the date of composition, so in MED the citation from Sir Ferumbras (c. 1380) comes before Langland’s above-cited line (also in the A-version, composed c. 1370), though the author of Ferumbras was writing some ten years later (the manuscript of Ferumbras is an autograph copy while Piers Plowman survives only in later scribal copies). The other Langland example cited in MED, “dynet sumwhat” (A-Version, VII, 244), is dubious since somewhat may well be adverbial.

290 Ad Putter

oral ones, and the Middle English Dictionary is bound to omit some tokens from the record. Indeed, there is another early example of transitive dine in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale (Benson 1987, III, 1837), which the Middle English Dictionary omits. As we shall see, however, the context of this example conﬁrms the “poshness” of transitive dine. With Chaucer we have come to the poet who is renowned as the “father of English poetry” (Dryden). Although that renown is richly deserved, he does in his English writings make the occasional foray into French, and these forays are not entirely out of character. Chaucer is likely to have learned to speak French as a page in the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, and the one surviving text that is likeliest to be in Chaucer’s own hand, a memorandum of his appointment of a deputy as controller of the wool quay (May 1378), is in French (Petti 1971: 44–45). The Summoner’s Tale contains snippets of Latin as well as French. The Tale deals with a friar who embodies the usual vices associated with his profession: he ﬂirts with women, married or unmarried, trades on his position of religious authority, and likes to visit the rich since they wine and dine him more agreeably and have more money to give. This noble “prechour”, too, is “enblanched with bele paroles”, and, as in Langland, some of these ﬁne words are not in English. He sprinkles his discourse with the odd Latin phrase – a greeting (“Deus hic!”, III, 1770) and the odd scholasticism (“per consequens”, III, 2192). The purpose of this is presumably to show off his clerical education. Compare the Friar’s scholasticism with Will’s revealing words in Piers Plowman: “ ‘Contra!’, quod I as a clerc, and comsed [‘proceeded’] to disputen” (VIII, 20). But Chaucer’s Friar also switches into French on two occasions. On the ﬁrst, he opportunistically sides with the husband’s wife when she accuses her husband of being too grumpy, and he feigns moral outrage: (7)

“O Thomas, je vous dy, Thomas! Thomas! This maketh the feend; this moste ben amended. Ire is a thyng that hye God defended,” (III, 1832–1834) “‘O Thomas, I am telling you, Thomas! Thomas! This is the work of the devil. You will have to make amends. Anger is something that our supreme God has forbidden,” ’

The bold print (italics in Mann 2005) may give the misleading impression that we can easily tell where the Friar’s French begins and ends, but this is not in fact the case. One of the ﬁner points in this passage depends on the fact that the name Thomas can be either English (with ﬁrst-syllable stress

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 291

and a second-syllable vowel approximating to schwa) or French/Franglais (with second-syllable-stress and second-syllable vowel in /a:/). Chaucer’s metre (iambic pentameter) and the rhyme word at line 1831 (cas) indicate that the Friar pronounces the ﬁrst Thomas as an English name, but continues in French fashion after je vous dy. An obvious way of signalling this subtle point to readers would be to put Thomas! Thomas! in bold also. In a note on line 1832 in her edition of The Canterbury Tales, Jill Mann suggests that the “friar’s use of French betokens a certain pretentiousness” (Mann 2005: 911). This is plausible, but from a linguistic perspective there are two further points to be made about the passage. The ﬁrst point, made by Tim Machan in his contribution to this volume, is that neither Chaucer nor any of the ﬁctional characters offers any comment about the Friar’s codeswitching: evidently it reﬂected “a strategy with which readers were familiar – one that to them was unremarkable” (see below, 305). The second point is that the code-switch also performs a more speciﬁc function in the discourse. For, as linguists who have studied bilingual behaviour have found, codeswitching is commonly found in the context of warnings and reproofs. For example, Gumperz reports that “on a number of occasions, Puerto Rican mothers in Jersey City could be heard calling to their children as follows: ‘Ven acquí, ven aquí.’ If the child would not come immediately, this would be followed with: ‘Come here, you’.” (Gumperz 1970: 5). Here the switch into English, like the switch into French in the Summoner’s Tale, is a way of encoding the speaker’s authoritativeness and seriousness both vis-à-vis the addressee and vis-à-vis his own utterance. What the speaker communicates by switching language is something like “And I mean it”. The Friar’s second switch into French (almost immediately following the ﬁrst) occurs in response to the wife’s polite question if he would like to have anything in particular to eat: (8)

“Now maister,” quod the wyf, “er that I go, What wol ye dyne? I wol go thereaboute.” “Now, dame,” quod he, “now je vous dy sans doute, Have I nat of a capoun but the lyvere, And of youre softe breed nat but a shyvere, And after that a rosted pigges heed – But that I nolde no beest for me were deed – Thanne hadde I with yow homly sufﬁsaunce.” (III, 1836–1843) ‘ “Now sir,” said the wife, “before I go, What would you like to eat? I’ll go and make provisions.”

292 Ad Putter “Now lady,” said he, “now I assure you without doubt, If I only had the liver of a capon, And only a sliver of your soft white bread, And after that the head of a roast pig – Though I would not like any animal killed for my sake – Then I would have enough simple fare with you.” ’

The terms of address – maister (used especially for learned and universityeducated men), reciprocated by dame – are elevated, and the transitive use of dine ﬁts that context beautifully.4 So of course does the French, though this time the verbatim repetition of je vous dy (‘I assure you’), ampliﬁed by means of yet another sincerity marker (sans doute ‘without doubt’), reveals not only the limited range of the Friar’s French vocabulary but also his disingenuousness. What the Friar is trying to say is that he is not interested in ﬁne food – which is why he skirts the question (the repeated conjuncts Now […] now suggesting a transition in thought where really there is none) and why any mention of food is carefully prefaced by negatives (nat, nat, nolde, no). As in the Friar’s words to the husband, so in his words to the wife, the switch to French seems designed to underscore the “sincerity” of what is itself already a sincerity marker, though the repetition of this strategy sends a different signal to intelligent readers. We learn from experience not to trust salesmen who interject “To be honest!” too assiduously, and the Friar, who says that kind of thing in French and by means of French, does not inspire conﬁdence either. His linguistic code-shiftiness is a reﬂection of the slipperiness of his “footing”. Another Canterbury Tale that contains a notable instance of code-switching is the Shipman’s Tale, which is set in St. Denis near Paris. The tale is about a merchant who is cuckolded by a family friend, the virile monk “daun John”. The merchant spends much of his time hard at work in his counting house, and there his wife goes to tell her workaholic husband that it is about time he came out to have dinner: (9)

Up to hir housebonde is this wyf ygon, And knokketh at his countour boldely. “Qui la?”, quod he. “Peter! it am I,”

4. Recognizing the oddity of transitive dine, the Globe edition of Chaucer’s works (Pollard 1913) punctuated: “What, wolde ye dyne? I wol go thereaboute.” But both the Friar’s reply and the way the wife continues show that she asks what he would like to eat (I wol go thereaboute ‘I’ll go out to buy it’).

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 293 Quod she, “What, sire, how longe wol ye faste?” (VII, 211–214) ‘The wife went up to her husband, And knocked boldly on the door of his counting house. “Who there?”, he said. “By St Peter! It’s me.” Said she: “What, sire, how long do you intend to fast?” ’

In a note to these lines which has stood unchallenged until now, the Riverside Chaucer claims that this is “Chaucer’s only use of foreign speech in a foreign setting [i.e. France] as local color” (Benson 1987). Since French was alive and well in England as a written and spoken language, the notion of French as a “foreign” language is misleading, however. And it is even more misleading given the social scene that Chaucer is here imagining: the household of a rich merchant who regularly travels abroad on business. For in addition to being the lingua franca of mercantile trade (Kowaleski 2009), French was also regularly used in mercantile circles for guild business and in spoken form for oaths and proclamations (Britnell 2009). True, the Tale is set near Paris, but since Chaucer does not elsewhere switch into another language when his characters are abroad, is it not possible that “Qui la?” was the kind of thing a fourteenth-century English merchant might say if someone came knocking on the door? There is one piece of contemporary evidence and one linguistic consideration that strengthen this hypothesis. The contemporary evidence comes from a contemporary dream vision from Flanders, Een droom, from the Gruuthuse manuscript (c. 1395). I should say by way of introduction to this poem that the linguistic situation in late medieval Flanders was in many ways comparable to that in England. In Flanders, too, a primary native language, Dutch, co-existed with a prestige language, French, which was especially favoured in court and urban settings (Sleiderink 2010: 128–31). In the allegorical story of Een droom, the narrator, accompanied by Lady Hope, visits a castle and is eventually greeted by the porter. The porter’s family name (orname, 724) is Vraghen (‘Ask’), but the poet also gives him a revealing personal name: (10) Vrou Hope die ghinc cloppen doe, Soe dochte mi daer wel bekent. Ki-la was doe daer ghesent Van sinen meester Orghelieus. Met zoete woorden gracieus Antwoorde hem Hope: “laet in, laet in”.

294 Ad Putter Ki-la die scoof een veinsterkin: “Wie wil daer in en es gheen dach?” (697–704)5 ‘Lady Hope went to knock on the door; It seemed to me she was well-known there. Qui-la was sent there By his master Pride. With sweet and gracious words, Hope answered him: “Let me in, let me in.” Qui-la opened a little window: “Who is seeking entry when it isn’t daytime?” ’

The porter’s double name, Vraghen and Ki-la, wittily sums up his role in life and in ﬁction. His job is to ask “Who is there?”, and since the name, Ki-la, does exactly that, the mere mention of the name doubles up as direct speech in the allegorical ﬁction, where Hope answers Ki-la (“Antwoorde hem”) even before the latter has said anything. Returning to Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale, the interesting implication of this passage is that in some contexts Dutch speakers used French to ask the question “Who is there?”. If that is true for late fourteenthcentury Flanders, it may have been true for fourteenth-century England as well. The linguistic consideration that bears on my hypothesis arises from studies of code-switching in present-day bilingual communities. In the Puerto Rican neighbourhood in New York (known as el bloque), the language of the home tends to be Spanish. Yet when someone visits the house, two answers are possible: “A knock on the door of any of the apartments that housed the families of el bloque was greeted by “Who?” or “Quèn es?” (“Who is it?”) or both. The lone interrogative was most popular, even with Spanishdominant occupants.” (Zentella 1997: 56) The simplest explanation for the choice of L2 is the fact that the superposed language tends to be preferred in situations which, to repeat Fasold’s words, are “perceived as more formal and guarded” (Fasold 1989: 53). This situation obviously obtains when someone, who could be either a stranger or a friend, comes knocking on the door. In such circumstances, a Flemish porter and an English merchant might well have said “Qui la?”. We can think of it as a form of situational code-switching, prompted by an abrupt change in the 5. The citation is based on the diplomatic transcription (with my punctuation and capitalisation) of the manuscript, available on-line at www.http://kb.nl/galerie/ gruuthuse.

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 295

deﬁnition of the social situation, though of course the fact that the expression is ritualised, as door-opening exchanges often are, makes it possible that we are dealing with a petriﬁed code-switch.6

6. French in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl The Gawain poet was born and bred in Cheshire. The fact that he was steeped in French is clear from his reading in French sources, which included the Roman de la Rose, Mandeville’s Travels (in the Anglo-Norman version) and French Arthurian romances (Putter 1996: 4–5). It is worth emphasizing, however, that his French was not just based on his reading. He must have heard French, too, for his alliterative practice suggests that his ear had registered alternative pronunciations. For example, though he always spells chambre according to the “French of Paris”, with , his alliterative practice shows he knew it was pronounced either with /k/ or with /tf/. Note the following lines from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the ﬁrst two alliterating on /tf/, the second two on /k/: (11) To chambre, to chemné, and cheﬂy þay asken (978) And syþen by þe chymné in chamber þay seten (1402) Ho comez withinne þe chambre dore, and closes hit hir after (1742) He called to his chamberlayn, þat coﬂy hym swared (2011)

The two different pronunciations reﬂect the alternative pronunciations of Old French in Anglo-Norman, where, in addition to /tf/, the Central French pronunciation, /k/ was heard, as it was in other Northern and Western dialects of French (Short 2007: 17–19). Not surprisingly, then, French is also occasionally heard in the poet’s works. Most of the French phrases in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (graunt 6. The wife’s reply is also ritualized. The invocation of St Peter (the doorkeeper in heaven) is conventional from the other side of closed door (cf. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tolkien and Gordon 1967: 813), and “Hit am I” is idiomatic Middle English for “It is me” (cf. Charles D’Orléans, Fortunes Stabilnes [Arn 1994: 2558]). As Laura Wright has pointed out to me, the fact that the greeting Have good day became lexicalized in Middle English as the term for a door handle (see MED s.v. hagodai n.) provides further evidence for the ritualized nature of door-opening exchanges.

296 Ad Putter

merci, 838, 1037, 1392, 2126, beau sir, 1222) are ritualised expressions that go with the reﬁned manners of polite society. The poet calls such behaviour “Frenkysch fare” (1116); and it is revealing that, unlike other English writers who used the term pejoratively to denote high-handedness, the Gawain poet uses the term with approval.7 One reason for this is the poet’s admiration for all things courtly, and another reason is that courtesy is much more than a social quality in his eyes; it is also a moral quality – which is why Gawain, who is the most courteous knight, shows himself to be capable of “Frenkysch fare” even when he is quite alone. On his solitary quest, when Castle Hautdesert suddenly appears before him as if in answer to his prayer, he responds with exquisite manners: (12) Þenne hatz he hendly of his helme, and he ly he þonkez Jesus and sayn Gilyan, þat gentyle are boþe, Þat cortasyly had hym kydde, and his cry herkened. “Now bone hostel,” coþe þe burne, “I beseche yow ette.” (774–776) ‘Then he politely took off his helmet, and devoutly thanked Jesus and St. Julian for being both so kind, For they had shown him courtesy and heard his cry. “Now bon hostel,” said the man, “I beseech you to grant me.” ’

As with the other examples of “French” phrases, graunt merci, beau sir, it is difﬁcult to know whether we should classify bone hostel as French, English or something in-between.8 If we take a broad view of diglossia and code-switching, the answer does not really matter. What matters more is that Goffman’s explanation of code-switching as a change in footing needs to be revised if it is to be applied to medieval literature, where the “others present” to whom speakers align themselves include God and the saints. What the French (or Frenchiﬁed English) signals is Gawain’s recognition that in making yet

7. Examples of the phrase in Middle English are discussed by Williams (2004: 1). To her examples should be added John the Reeve, l. 826. Williams detects a note of criticism in the Gawain poet’s use of the phrase, but her reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not persuasive in my view. 8. MED (s.v. hostel n) provides one further (and earlier) attestation of bon hostel in Chaucer’s House of Fame, in a very similar context: “Saynt Julyan, lo, bon hostel!” (II, 514).

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 297

another request he is imposing on the goodwill of his addressees. As Brown and Levinson remark in their study of rituals of politeness, “switches into a code associated with external relations may, amongst other things, signal an FTA [face-threatening act] accompanied with negative politeness” (Brown and Levinson 1978: 142), “negative politeness” being politeness “oriented mainly toward partially satisfying H’s [the hearer’s] negative face, his basic want to maintain claims of territory and self-determination” (70). God and St. Julian, too, have “claims to self-determination”, and Gawain’s French tactfully acknowledges this. The recourse to code-switching for politeness’ sake, an interesting subtype of footing, also helps us with the ﬁnal example of code-switching in the Gawain poet that I would like to discuss. In the poet’s dream vision Pearl, the Dreamer is unconvinced when his infant daughter (now in heaven) assures him that she is now a queen. God may be generous, the Dreamer concedes, but this elevation would be a step too far: (13) “That cortaysé is to fre of dede, yf hyt be soth þat þou cone saye. Þou lyfed not two er in oure þede; Þou cowþe nawþer God nauþer plese ne pray, Ne neuer nauwþer Pater ne Crede; And quen made on þe fyrst day! I may not traw, so God me spede, Þat God wolde wryþe so wrange away. Of countes, damysel, par may fay, Wer fayr in heuen to halde asstate, Or elle a lady of lasse aray; Bot a queen! Hit is to dere a date.” (Gordon 1953, ll. 481–492) ‘ “That generosity is too lavish in action, If you’re telling me the truth. You did not even live for two years amongst our people. You were never able either to please God or to pray, And did not know either your Pater Noster or your Creed; And made a queen on the ﬁrst day! I am unable to believe, God help me, That God could turn so unjustly from the right path. To hold the position of countess, young lady, by my faith, Would be reasonable in heaven, Or else of a lady of lesser estate; But a queen! That is too exalted a goal.” ’

298 Ad Putter

The context for the code-switching here is one of mock-politeness. As Myra Stokes remarks in a note to these lines, “damysel suggests exactly the put-down that would be implied if a modern father were to use the modern equivalent (‘my young lady’) as a term of address to his daughter” (Putter and Stokes, forthcoming). This put-down, signalled by an L/H switch from the father’s previous address (my swete: L) to (damysel: H), is then followed by a trick which is more readily available to medieval English fathers than to modern ones. The former, speaking French as well as English, had an additional linguistic means of changing footing, and the Dreamer uses it when he accompanies his appeal to sound common sense with a French exclamation: Par may fay! It is possible to translate this, as I have done, with “by my faith”, but in translation the effect of the code-switch is lost. What we are dealing with here is an instance of “Appeal and Control switches”, i.e. switches that seek “to direct the addressee’s behaviour by means of imperatives tinged with threats or entreaties” (Zentella 1997: 95). Compare the following example from Zentella’s corpus of “Spanglish”: (14) E/h/te se está llenando [‘This one is ﬁlling up’], lookit, Ana.

“Members of el bloque,” Zentella (1997: 95) adds, “acknowledged their use of these strategies when they cited ‘getting mad’ as a reason for switching languages”. To get across the pragmatic force of the Dreamer’s exclamation (as distinct from its literal sense), a better translation would be: “Are you listening?” – though, of course, the Dreamer’s French has the added ﬁnesse of retaining the semblance of politeness that is called for when one is addressing a damysel.

7. Conclusion In this and in the other examples I have discussed, I have deliberately taken a broad view of diglossic code-switching. For if we take a narrower view, and restrict our analysis either to code-switching between languages or to codeswitching between varieties of the same language, we risk losing sight of the fact that, in many cases, the two are interrelated. For example, it is surely signiﬁcant that in Langland the switches into French (chaud and plus chaud, bele paroles) are preceded by switches into “posh” English (enblaunched and transitive dine). In the same way in Pearl, par ma fay follows damysel. In several of the examples I have discussed (Qui la?, bone hostel, par may fay) we may or may

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 299

not be dealing with “French”: arguably, these are fossilized expressions which were no longer thought of as French by fourteenth-century medieval writers, readers and speakers. In the broader view of code-switching that I am advocating here, this problem no longer seems so important. Moreover, the case of present-day bilingual Alsace – where a panel of native experts could not decide whether phrases like Bonjour and Au revoir were French or German – teaches us that, even if we had been able to put the problem to Langland, Chaucer, or the Gawain poet, they may not have given us a clear answer. In looking at examples of code-switching in Middle English poetry, I have therefore found it more productive to focus on the whys and hows of code-switching. As I have argued, Goffman’s notion of footing has much to recommend it, since it cuts across not only the artiﬁcial distinctions between L1/L2 and L/H switching but also those between metaphorical and situational code-switching. In situational code-switching (as when one answers a knock on the door with Qui la?) footing is established just as surely as it is in metaphorical code-switching, where the code-switch regulates the speaker’s proximity or distance vis-à-vis his or her own words. Footing has certainly proved its worth in recent work on presentday bilingual communities; if my observations on code-switching in Middle English poetry seem sensible, medievalists may beneﬁt from it, too.

References Alford, John 1992 Piers Plowman: A Guide to the Quotations. Binghamton: State University of New York, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Arn, Mary Jo (ed.) 1994 Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s Book of Love. Binghamton: State University of New York. Benson, Larry D. (gen. ed.) 1987 The Riverside Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin. Blom, Jan Petter and John J. Gumperz 1972 Social meaning in linguistic structures: Code-switching in Norway. In: John. J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics, 407–434. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston. Britnell, Richard 2009 Uses of French language in medieval English towns. In: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.), 81–90.

300 Ad Putter

Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson 1978 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Busby, Keith and Ad Putter 2010 Introduction. In: Keith Busby and Christopher Kleinhenz (eds.), Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbors, 1–14. Turnhout: Brepols. Davidson, Mary Catherine 2003 Code-switching and authority in late medieval England. Neophilologus 87: 473–486. Dean, Ruth 1999 Anglo-Norman Literature. (Anglo-Norman Text Society, Plain Text Series 3) London: Anglo-Norman Text Society. Fasold, Ralph 1989 Introduction to Sociolinguistics Volume 1: The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Ferguson, Charles 1964 Diglossia. Word 15 (1959): 325–340. Reprinted in Dell Hymes (ed.), Language and Culture in Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology, 429–439. New York: Harper and Row. Gardner-Chloros, Penelope 1995 Code-switching in community, regional and national repertoires: The myth of the discreteness of linguistic systems. In: Lesley Milroy and Peter Muysken (eds.), One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code-switching, 68–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goffman, Erving 1979 Footing. Semiotica 25: 1–29. Gumperz, John J. 1967 On the linguistic markers of bilingual communication. Journal of Social Issues 23: 48–57. Gumperz, John J. 1970 Verbal strategies in multilingual conversation. (Language-Behavior Research Laboratory Working Paper 36) Berkeley: University of California. Halmari, Helena and Robert Adams 2002 On the grammar and rhetoric of language mixing in Piers Plowman. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 103: 33–50. Hymes, Dell 1967 Models of interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues 2: 8–28. Kane, George and E. Talbot Donaldson (eds.) 1975 Piers Plowman: The B-Version. London: Athlone.

Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet 301

Kowaleski, Maryanne 2009 The French of England: A maritime lingua franca? In: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.), 103–117. Machan, Tim William 1994 Language contact in Piers Plowman. Speculum 69: 359–385. Mann, Jill (ed.) 2005 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin. Middle English Dictionary, Kurath, Hans and Robert E. Lewis (gen. eds.) Ann 1956–2001 Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Petti, Anthony G. 1971 English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden. London: Arnold. Pollard, Alfred W. (gen. ed.) 1913 The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. London: Macmillan. Putter, Ad 1996 An Introduction to the Gawain Poet. London: Longman. Putter, Ad and Myra Stokes (eds.) forthcoming The Works of the Gawain Poet. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Romaine, Suzanne 1994 Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, A.V.C. 1983 Lele words and bele paroles: Some aspects of Langland’s word-play. Review of English Studies (New Series) 34: 137–150. Schmidt, A.V.C. (ed.) 1995 The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text. London: Everyman. Short, Ian 2007 Manual of Anglo-Norman. London: Anglo-Norman Text Society. Short, Ian 2009 Anglice loqui nesciunt: Monoglots in Anglo-Norman England. Cultura Neolatina 69: 245–262. Sleiderink, Remco 2010 From Francophile to Francophobe: The changing attitudes of medieval Dutch authors towards French literature. In: Keith Busby and Christopher Kleinhenz (eds.), Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbours, 127–143. Turnhout: Brepols. Somerset, Fiona 2005 “Al þe commonys with o voys atonys”: Multilingual Latin and vernacular voice. Yearbook of Langland Studies 19: 107–136. Tolkien, J.R.R. and E.V. Gordon (eds.) 1967 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (2nd ed., revised by Norman Davis) Oxford: Clarendon Press.

302 Ad Putter

Williams, Deanne 2004 The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter (eds.) 2009 Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500. York: York Medieval Press and Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. Zentella, Ana Celia 1997 Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Oxford: Blackwell.

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature Tim William Machan

1. Introduction: Oral and textual switching In the modern world, and particularly in the focus of much scholarly discussion, code-switching appears as a largely oral phenomenon. Such discussion can emphasize how code-switching often occurs when bilinguals shift topics of conversation, for example, or introduce a new interlocutor to their conversation, or exercise self-expression and creativity. And studies have shown that to emphasize the oral switch, speakers can use conventional proxemics like hand gestures and head nods. This emphasis on the oral certainly makes sense, both because sociolinguistics in general has tended to concentrate on the characteristics of ordinary language rather than the artistry of novels and poetry, and because in the written channel the development of standard languages has cultivated a stylized variety that suppresses deviance from it into other languages or into nonstandard varieties. Code-switching certainly occurs in contemporary writing and print, where it can in fact be put to signiﬁcant effect. This is the case in novels like Sandra Cisneros’s 1994 The House on Mango Street or Junot Díaz’s 2007 Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which use English as the base language but frequently switch to Spanish for words, phrases, and sentences in order to particularize certain characters or to heighten the emotional content of a passage. And it is also the case in popular forums like La Opinión, a Spanish-language newspaper published in Los Angeles that sometimes includes switches to English “El Viper también recibe un impuesto de alto consumo de gasolina (gas guzzler tax)” [‘The Viper also receives a tax for high gas consumption (gas guzzler tax)’].1

1. http://www.impre.com/laopinion/autos/2008/12/10/dodge-viper-srt10-coupegt-200–97629–2.html. Translations are the author's.

304 Tim William Machan

Even though all these switches occur in the written channel, however, the channel itself generally contributes little to their signiﬁcance – nothing equivalent, say, to the proxemics of conversation. Indeed, as with the representation of French code-switching in translations of nineteenth-century Russian novels, the only graphic aspect of the switches – besides the mere fact that their orthography indicates a second language is being used – might be quotation marks or italic font. Much of the time, as in the example from La Opinión, even these features are absent. And this remains so whether the absence of typographic distinction for switches owes to readers’ expectations that the whole of a written text should appear in a largely consistent font or simply to the cost of specialized text-setting. In either case, modern code-switches in written texts remain primarily, and perhaps paradoxically, features of spoken language. In late-medieval England, the spoken variety of code-switching certainly occurred. In some parts of the country, it might even have occurred more frequently than today. Compared to the modern world, late-medieval England had a higher rate of illiteracy and a lower rate of text-production. As a result, there was a greater dependence on oral communication for many commercial and political activities that these days might seem restricted to writing, both conventional and electronic; late in the fourteenth century, for instance, the expression of contractual obligations often occurred in speech rather than writing. Such speech acts might well involve individuals from varying sociolinguistic backgrounds, as an Italian merchant, a French ship captain, and an English miller. Indeed, on any given day, speakers in at least urban centers and seaports had the opportunity to hear several languages, including English, French, Latin, Dutch, Italian, and German, as well as (probably) Welsh, Norwegian, and Arabic. And if there were lots of languages, there were lots of bilingual speakers populating a complex social world of commerce, government, and religion. All of which means that conditions were conducive to code-switching, as, in fact, the historical record indicates. Late-medieval business records embody extensive and regular switching among Latin, French, and English in particular, and even switches among varieties of English are sometimes noted, as in a 1364 plea about bigamy heard at York (Wright 1992, 1996; Clark 1981). Further conﬁrmation of the reality of oral code-switching in the late-medieval period comes from the fact that literary artists could use it for literary effect, as did William Langland in Piers Plowman. However stylistically arch the poem’s multiple shifts between Latin and English might be, their medieval intelligibility

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 305

depends on there being some degree of verisimilitude between Langland’s poem and late-medieval discursive practices. If Langland sought to represent a speech event that would be understood as a conversation, that is, he needed to employ devices that would mark it as such. And these, evidently, included code-switching, though he used it to a degree and for effects that could not have occurred in daily interactions. One of Chaucer’s characters in the Canterbury Tales similarly points to the late-medieval reality of oral code-switching (code-switches marked in bold by the author) when he observes: (1)

“O Thomas, je vous dy, Thomas! Thomas! This maketh the feend; this moste ben amended”. (Canterbury Tales III.1832–1833) ‘ “Oh Thomas, I tell you, Thomas! Thomas! The ﬁend is doing this, that must be changed.” ’

Inasmuch as neither Thomas the character nor Chaucer the author offers any remark on the switch to French, it had to reﬂect a strategy with which readers were familiar – one that to them was unremarkable (Davidson 2003; Machan 1994, 2010; Putter, this volume). But in certain ways late-medieval code-switching differed signiﬁcantly from its modern counterpart. Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, medieval code-switching, far more so than its modern counterpart, is in effect as much a written as an oral phenomenon. For one thing, the oral channel is lost to us save in written representations of it – as in the Canterbury Tales example. Whatever we know of the conventions of spoken language in the Middle Ages, we thus know only through written accounts and depictions of them, where they are ﬁltered through the constraints of written language.2 And for another, compared to modern books, many medieval documents in general utilized a wider variety of bibliographic codes, such as changes in text size, color, rubrication, illumination, underscoring, historiation, text-boxing, and so forth. Not all late-medieval manuscripts employ such devices, of course; court rolls, yearbooks, chronicles, and even poetic miscellanies typically have restrained, unadorned texts. But the point is that while the bibliographic codes of modern printed texts typically involve only

2. For a discussion of the verisimilitude of medieval written representations of spoken language, see Machan (2003: 16–18).

306 Tim William Machan

font size and type, a broad array of codes was available for any aspect of medieval text-production, and that includes code-switching. When surveys of manuscript production (e.g., Clemens and Graham 2007) discuss script and color change, however, they have not for the most part connected them to code-switching as such. Studies of individual manuscripts (e.g., Bryan 1999; Kerby-Fulton and Despres 1998; Taylor 2002) likewise do much to integrate layout and textual meaning, but again without speciﬁcally addressing code-switching. In this paper I am concerned with this distinctively medieval phenomenon: the visual pragmatics that designate code-switching in primarily literary manuscripts.3 I want to sketch out the strategies that writers and scribes used to represent changes in language, as well as the circumstances and frequency in which they employed these strategies. On one hand, I am interested in a speciﬁc practical issue of my own: the ways in which this interplay of bibliographic codes contributed in a distinctively medieval way to the production of meaning in written texts. On the other, I am interested in the larger sociolinguistic implications of this interplay and what it reveals about how code-switched utterances were presented – and perceived – as linguistic phenomena.

2. Pragmatic strategies In literary works, medieval writers commonly used several strategies for switching from one language to another, both intersententially, as in quotations or at sentence breaks, or intrasententially, as for syntactic structures or individual words. While sometimes switches from English to Latin (say) might seem random, many enhance a work’s stylistic and structural design. The intersentential switch to Latin for titles, colophons, and rubrics, for instance, can both sharply deﬁne a work’s parts and their interrelations and also, by involving the language of scholastic tradition, elevate and even dignify a work’s achievement. Similarly, intersentential switching for biblical and scriptural quotations can render familiar Latin passages – along

3. Following Herbert Schendl’s classiﬁcation, I thus here exclude sermons, religious prose texts, legal texts, medical texts, business accounts, and letters. See Schendl (2000b).

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 307

with their exegetical associations – part of a vernacular work’s artistry, even for monoglot English readers. Intrasentential switching for glosses, names, and technical terms provides another way for supplementing the vernacular and indicating the seriousness of a work’s purpose. Macaronic poems that alternate languages for refrains or even every other line transform code-switching into an occasional stylistic strategy tantamount to rhyme or metaphor, while other works can use code-switching to deﬁne characters and their motives. In Piers Plowman, for instance, Anima is both one of the poem’s pre-eminent spiritual authorities and one of its most gifted conversational code-switchers. In late-medieval drama code-switching can both enhance the authority of God, who often speaks in Latin, and accentuate the falseness and deviance of potentates, who characteristically speak in French.4 As much as authors might have varied in their linguistic and stylistic strategies for incorporating code-switching in their works, so scribes utilized an array of visual pragmatics in representing switching. F. 112r of London, British Library MS Add. 12044, which contains a copy of Troilus and Criseyde, represents one extreme. Chaucer’s poem, of course, is in English, but in Book Five, when Cassandra explains the meaning of Troilus’s dream of Criseyde in the arms of a boar, most manuscripts include a twelveline précis of Statius’s Latin Thebaid. The passage is in fact so common in the Troilus manuscripts that many critics believe it may have occurred in Chaucer’s holograph, whether as an extended note that he intended to translate or as yet another multilingual authority meant to be incorporated among the disparate voices of the poem’s ﬁnal book. In any case, despite the code-switching and despite the fact that the Latin necessarily exhibits a different metrical form from the English, the scribe of Add. 12044 presents it as no different from the English. It is broken into stanzas of seven and ﬁve lines, each beginning with the kind of blue paraph that opens all of the poem’s other stanzas and otherwise continuing with the same hand and ink as those stanzas. With two seven-line stanzas of English before the Thebaid extract and another after it, f. 112r of Add. 12044 can easily appear to be no

4. For representative studies of the mechanics of medieval code-switching and how they relate to writer and audience, see, for example, Schendl (2000a, 2001), Nurmi and Pahta (2004), and this volume’s essays by Schendl, Ingham, and Halmari and Regetz. On drama in particular see Stevens (1977) and Diller (1997/98).

308 Tim William Machan

different from any other folio in the manuscript, each of which contains ﬁve English stanzas. Similar disregard for the fact of language change ﬁgures in National Library of Scotland MS Adv. 19.2.1, the famous Auchinleck manuscript. This manuscript contains passages like the following from the Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle: (2)

Þe king seyd wiþ glad chere. Welcome be þou maiden here. & she answerd in hir language. Trauaile somes par mere sauage. Enfebli somes de graunt feym. Kar y nous defaut vin & peyn.5 ‘The king said in a happy manner: Be welcome here, maiden. And she answered him in her own language: We are enslaved by a cruel mother. We are enfeebled by a great hunger, For we lack bread and wine.’

And so the French continues for four more lines, with all the lines in the passage, English and French, embodying the same design of a rubricated initial letter and brownish ink for the remainder of the line. A quick glance at either Add. 12044 or Adv. 19.2.1 would offer no hint that multiple languages are present. Such non-recognition of code-switching also ﬁgures in one of the most famous macaronic poems of the Middle Ages – Gustav Holst even set it to music, titling it (as the poem itself often is) Of One That Is So Fair and Bright. A Marian poem that occurs in several manuscripts, the lyric in question is the initial piece in BL MS Egerton 613, a multilingual miscellany of French, English, and Latin works, where it is written in black ink throughout and with this lineation at the outset: (3)

Of one þat is so fayr ant briht. velud maris stella. Brihter þan þe dayis liht. parens & puella.

5. NLS Adv. MS 19.2.1, f. 311 rb. I am grateful to Thea Summerfeld for this example.

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 309 Ic crie to þe þou se to me. leuedy preye þi sone for me. tam pia. Þat ic mote come to þe. maria.6 ‘Of one that is so fair and bright, as the star of the sea, brighter than the day’s light, parent and daughter. I call to you, you look on me. Lady so piteous, pray to your son for me. That I might come to you, Maria.’

Here, code-switching coincides with metrical as well as syntactic breaks to render a poem with a distinctively antiphonal quality by which the Latin both answers the English and provides a deeper, theological subtext for the emotional rhetoric of the vernacular. Modern printings of the poem in fact highlight this quality by assigning the English and Latin to separate lines. Similar in impact but far more ambitious in scope is BL MS Harley 2253, one of late-medieval England’s best-known multilingual manuscripts, with over 100 items in Latin, French, and English, as well as an interlanguage based on code-switching among two or more of these languages. The ﬁnal stanza of the lyric Dum ludis ﬂoribus thus reads: (4) scripsit hec carmina in tabulis / mon ostel est enmi la vile de paris / may y sugge namore so wel me is / ef hi de e for loue of hire / and duel hit ys.7 ‘I have written these songs on tablets, my house is in the middle of the city of Paris. I can say no more of this, it goes so well for me; if I should die for love of her, it would be a pity.’

Here again the intrasentential switching is artful, made more so by typical modern formatting that amends minor copying errors (e.g., scripsit for scripsi) and that begins a new line with each code-switch; in the manuscript, by contrast, the entire stanza is written in two lines, with virgules marking syntactic

6. f. 2r. The lyric also occurs, with slight variation, in Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.39, which even more so than Egerton 613 contains a great many works in Latin, Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and macaronic combinations of one or more of these languages. The Egerton version is printed with normalized lineation in Brown (1932: 26). 7. f. 76r. The standard text of the Harley Lyrics remains Brook (1968), where the lyric occurs on p. 55.

310 Tim William Machan

units and the line-break coming after may. Yet the scribes of neither Egerton 613 nor Harley 2253 draw any graphic attention to their code-switching, using (instead) the same ink and script in which other poems in these manuscripts appear. Both manuscripts are thus characterized by multilingualism and code-switching but also by a design that tends to acknowledge neither. If non-recognition is one extreme in scribal response to code-switching, the other is a consistent graphic design that visually emphasizes moments where a text changes languages, as in BL MS Add. 59495 known as the Trentham manuscript. Add. 59495 is a lavish production containing a selection of Gower’s Latin, French, and English poems, perhaps assembled for the Duke of Lancaster’s coronation as Henry IV. The English In Praise of Peace, written in black ink, is the ﬁrst piece in the volume, but it is bookended by a red Latin rubric (“Electus Cristi, pie Rex Henrice, fuisti [. . .]” [‘Chosen one of Christ, oh pious King Henry, you were [. . .]’]) and colophon (“Explicit carmen de pacis commendacione” [‘Here ends the song praising peace’]). An extract from the Vox Clamantis follows, written not in the red of the Latin rubric but the black of the English poem, which is also used for the subsequent (and only) copy of the Cinkante Balades, a brief Latin piece, a copy of the Traitié pour ensampler les amantz marietz, and some concluding Latin verses. The red ink recurs only for a French rubric beginning the Balades (“escrites en francois” [‘written in French’]) and in French marginal glosses beside the ﬁfth and sixth of these. While the Trentham scribe’s practice is not absolutely consistent, then, all changes in ink accompany some kind of code-switching.8 Cambridge, University Library MS Ii.3.21 uses not ink color but scribal hand to distinguish passages in Latin from those in English. A long composite manuscript, Ii.3.21 opens with an alphabetized Latin list of topoi in Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, and there follows a Latin text of the Consolatio with Chaucer’s translation (the Boece) intercalated after each prosa and metrum. In the margins of both texts occur extracts from Nicholas Trevet’s early fourteenth-century Latin commentary on the Consolatio. While the two texts and their surrounding commentary were written by the same scribe in varieties of Anglicana script, each appears in a slightly

8. The Latin marginal glosses to the Traitié are written in black ink. For a discussion of the manuscript’s slight variations in the anglicana script, all from the same scribe, see Hanna (2005: 227).

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 311

different size, varying from a large formal bookhand for the Latin text to a small version for the commentary. Shifts between texts – and languages – are marked, then, by shifts in text size as well as by the placement of the text on the page. But it is the use of red ink for Latin and black for English that prevails in late-medieval manuscripts as, in effect, a way to mark various kinds of codeswitching. BL MS Harley 978 contains the famous lyric Sumer is icumen in, which appears with music and a Latin lyric set to the same melody. The English text, in black, occurs directly beneath the musical notation, with the Latin in red directly beneath it. Containing a copy of Chaucer’s Boece, BL MS Add. 10340 similarly uses black ink for the English and red for the Latin running-titles as well as for the extracts from the Consolatio with which each prosa or metrum begins (e.g., Tunc me discussa at the beginning of 1m3). In BL MS Add. 30031, which preserves a copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror, red is used to highlight a variety of code-switches: rubrics, section titles, glosses, quotations, and even incidental Latin borrowings. Red is used as well at the conclusion of the English text, when the text switches to Latin for the autobiographical colophon: “iste liber translatus fuit de latino in anglicum per dominum Nicholasum Loue” (f. 110r) [‘This book was translated from Latin into English by master Nicholas Love’]. A similar but simpler pattern obtains in BL MS Stowe 65 – perhaps ironically so, since this is a much larger and more elaborate folio devoted to John Trevisa’s translation of the Polychronicon. While the manuscript is substantial and deluxe – replete with full-page illuminations to open individual books – it restricts highlighting in red to Latin cross-references (e.g., vide libro quarto, ‘look in book four’) for its only code-switching). BL MS Add. 36704 importantly suggests, however, that the visual pragmatics for code-switching was not merely a professional device. Add. 36704 is a rarity among late-medieval manuscripts: an author’s holograph. Written by John Capgrave himself, the manuscript contains copies of his English lives of St. Augustine and of St. Gilbert along with an account of the orders subject to the Benedictine Rule, “drawe oute”, according to its title, “of a sermoun seyd be frer Jon Capgraue at Cambridge þe ere of oure lord a mccccxxii” (f. 116r) [‘Written down from a sermon said by friar John Capgrave in the year of our Lord 1422.’]. And in this highly personalized manuscript, switches to Latin follow the professional scribal pattern by appearing in red, as when having said that St. Augustine was in the age “whech is clepid infancia” [‘which is called infancy’], Capgrave goes on to say “infancia is [. . .]” and underscores with red the Latin word in this gloss (f. 9r).

312 Tim William Machan

3. Psalters, plowmen, and confession The manuscripts that I have discussed so far indicate that late-medieval code-switched texts could produce meaning in at least three areas: aesthetic, linguistic, and rhetorical, by which I mean switches that involve a work’s literary artistry and design. Aesthetically, the representation of different languages on a manuscript page could draw on devices and bibliographic codes that governed medieval text-production of all kinds, whether multilingual or monolingual, and in this way the representation could ﬁgure in the visual design of a manuscript. As a feature of the rhetoric of written language, further, code-switching also embodies generic constraints, for every literary text that can be categorized as code-switching can also be categorized as a lyric, a narrative, a drama, and so forth. A code-switched utterance may ﬁgure in a dialogue between lovers and thus be subject to romance conventions. Or it might appear marginally, as part of a gloss, and thus be subject to the conventions of commentary. And of course any code-switched utterance by deﬁnition brings together two or more languages and in so doing evokes conventions of morphology, lexicon, syntax, and even the ontology and integrity of individual languages. In producing code-switched utterances, writers and scribes necessarily situated their works in relation to these various conventions, even if they weren’t always aware that or how they had done so. Readers (modern as well as medieval) likewise respond to code-switching in accordance with their expectations of its aesthetic, rhetorical, or linguistic conventions. Given this breadth of interpretive options and the fact that writers and readers may variably judge the relative signiﬁcance of each, code-switching provides an opportunity not only for the production of multiple kinds of meaning but also for discrepancies in the meanings that prevail in a particular case. A writer might understand an utterance as primarily an expression of genre; one reader might see it as a feature of a manuscript’s aesthetic design; another might take notice only of the ways in which two languages are being combined. And the presence and signiﬁcance of any of these conventions might, of course, vary from one manuscript to another of the same work. What all this means is that code-switching constitutes a particularly elusive feature in the meaning of medieval manuscripts and their texts. To gain a deeper sense of how the representations of code-switching might produce meaning and also of its status as linguistic activity, I want now to focus on three extensive manuscript traditions, each of which reﬂects some planned consistency in transmission but nonetheless also embodies a range of graphic responses to

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 313

language switches. I begin with manuscripts of Psalter translations and then proceed to the transmission of Piers Plowman and the Confessio Amantis.

3.1.

Psalters

From the Old English period on, Psalter manuscripts characteristically adjoined the English translation to at least a partial version of the Vulgate text, often with a vernacular commentary. Such manuscripts thus offered a juxtaposition of languages that was, at the same time, a juxtaposition of textual parts that could be realized through various bibliographic codes. In BL MS Add. 17376, for instance, each Psalm intercalates the Latin text and an English translation, a sentence at a time, set off from one another with alternating red and blue paraphs and written in the same black. Throughout the Latin original sporadic individual words and phrases are underscored in red, as is the conclusion of each Psalm. Ink color thus subtly distinguishes shifts in textual segments as well as language. Textual shifts are marked more prominently in BL MS Harley 1806, which contains a copy of Richard Rolle’s Psalter and commentary. Here, in every Psalm each line of Latin begins with a large colored letter and is written in black ink. The same ink is used for the adjoined English translation, but it, too, begins with a colored letter – red if the Latin letter is blue, and vice versa – and is entirely underscored in red. A red or blue paraph introduces the subsequent gloss, written in the same black ink of the Latin original and English translation. The visual effect of this design at once establishes a coherent whole of Psalter, translation, and commentary and afﬁrms a differing status not so much for individual languages but for the individual textual parts, each of which has its own bibliographic codes. This kind of design seems endemic to manuscripts of Rolle’s Psalter, appearing in an even more developed – if variable – form in BL MS Arundel 158. Indeed, in the preface to the Psalter that accompanies this manuscript, Rolle draws a primary distinction between source and translation: “In þis werk I speke no straunge englische; but þe ly test & þe comuneste & such as is most lyk to þe latyn. so þat þei þat knoweþ no t latyn. bi þe englysch mowe come to many latyn wordes” (f. 11r) [‘In this work I do not use unusual English but the easiest and the most common and such as is most similar to Latin, so that those who do not know Latin might through the English come to know many Latin words.’] In the ﬁrst 99 folios, the Latin appears in a large black script, the adjoined English translation in a black

314 Tim William Machan

script that is about half the size of that used for Latin and that is underscored in black, and the English commentary in the same black ink script (but not underscoring) as the English translation; decorated capitals occur only with the ﬁrst word of each Latin verse. As of Psalm 49 on f. 100r, the translation and commentary are further distinguished from one another as distinct parts of the Psalter by the use of a decorated capital for the initial letter of each. Another change occurs in Psalm 91 on f. 178r, where the coloring of these initial letters terminates (though the underscoring of the English continues) and, more dramatically, the Latin verses not only begin with a colored letter – red or blue – but are also boxed in the same color ink. By f. 195v the scribe has returned to the initial design, and from f. 210v until the Psalter concludes with Psalm 135 on f. 231r, the underscoring of the English is sporadic and in many instances the Latin verses begin only with key letters that were never colored in by a scribe or rubricator. Pre-eminent in the design of Arundel 158, as well as Harley 1806, then, was the demarcation of shifts among rhetorical units (original, translation, gloss) that only partly coincide with shifts in language. Unlike Harley, Arundel’s scheme proved difﬁcult to complete, whether because of its greater complexity, the length of the Psalter, or uncertainty about the status of Latin and English and the shifts between them within the text. But while the execution of the scheme varies through the manuscript, its focus remains constant on the rhetorical function of the work’s parts. BL MS Add. 10046 sheds additional light on this issue. A tiny quarto (perhaps three inches by four), Add. 10046 opens with a copy of the Wyclifﬁte Psalter in which shifts among levels of text (and between languages) are particularly prominent. Each Psalm is prefaced by an English title that is written in black ink, underscored in red, and prefaced by a red or blue paraph; the ﬁrst verse of the Latin text appears next, written in black but beginning with a colored paraph; and there follows an English translation of the entire Psalm, written in the same ink and employing a large colored capital at its beginning and smaller colored capitals for the opening of each verse in the translation. On f. 115v the manuscript moves from the Psalter to the Canticles, preserving the same general pattern of distinguishing disjunctions between languages and levels of text: each Latin canticle is written in black ink but opens with a red or blue capital, as does each adjoined English translation. When the Canticles conclude on f. 124r, the manuscript shifts to the articles of faith, slightly changing the design but nonetheless preserving the same general linguistic-textual distinctions. Each Latin article thus now appears entirely in red ink, prefaced with an initial blue capital; each is accompanied

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 315

by an English translation that is in black ink and underscored with red; and each concludes with a commentary written entirely in black ink. What predominates in Add. 10046, then, is an over-arching design focused on levels of text, regardless of individual works. It is the rhetoric of the manuscript, more than its code-switching or individual texts, that the scribe’s practices accentuate.

3.2.

Piers Plowman

Similar patterns obtain in many manuscripts of William Langland’s Piers Plowman. The poem itself is a masterpiece of intra- and intersentential codeswitching that involves switches to Latin for its rubrics, Biblical quotations, and individual words and phrases. Various characters as well as the narrator seem to switch languages almost at will, though (as I noted above) some characters, such as Anima, seem particularly adept at moving back and forth between English and Latin: (5)

“Beatus est”, seiþ Seint Bernard, “qui scripturas legit Et verba vertit in opera fulliche to his power”. Coveitise to konne and to knowe science Adam and Eue putte out of Paradis: Sciencie appetitus hominem inmortalitatis gloriam spoliauit. (B.15.60–15.63)9 ‘ “Blessed is”, says Saint Bernard, “he who reads Scripture, And turns the words into deeds to the best of his ability.” Covetise to know and understand knowledge Drove Adam and Eve from Paradise. The desire for knowledge has robbed man of the glory of immortality.’

Often, as is the case in this passage, the sense of the Latin is rendered contextually in English. In many other instances the code-switched Latin derives from a well-known reading or passage from a religious service:

9. Unless explicitly stated to have been taken from a particular manuscript, all quotations of the B version come from Langland (1988). I exclude editorial diacritics and the edition’s italicization.

316 Tim William Machan (6)

Aungeles out of heuene come knelynge and songe, Gloria in excelsis Deo &c. (B.19.74) ‘Angels from Heaven came kneeling and sang, Glory to God in the highest etc.’

Langland’s code-switching thus has a paradoxical quality. On one hand, it constitutes one of his poem’s most signiﬁcant stylistic achievements, distinguishing it from any other late-medieval English verse and serving as an opportunity for the poet both to advance the themes of Piers Plowman and to exhibit his own rhetorical and linguistic brilliance. On the other, much of the poem works even if a reader has little idea what the Latin means or is meant to do. And perhaps not coincidentally, in its transmission the Latin clearly drew attention to itself as a distinctive feature of the poem, even as it occasioned confusion about its status in the work. Manuscripts like BL MS Add. 34799 (which contains a copy of the Piers Plowman C version) enact perhaps the most successful strategy for representing Langland’s code-switching. Latin section headings (e.g., “Passus primus de visione Petre Plou man” [‘Passus I of the vision of Piers Plowman’]), whole lines of Latin, and even individual Latin words and phrases typically appear in red ink. Even sporadic switches to French appear in red, as at C.Pro.229: “And dryueth forth þe longe day with ‘dieu saue dame Emme’ ” [‘And drives the long day forward with ‘May God save lady Emma’’].10 By reserving black ink for the English, the manuscript makes a clear distinction between languages, whatever the rhetorical function of a particular code-switched passage. The B version found in BL MS Add. 35287 attempts a similar distinction but in the process reveals some of the scribal challenges occasioned by Langland’s extensive code-switching. In the main, Add. 35287 reserves black ink for the English and red ink for the Latin rubrics; red lines are used to form a box around individual Latin words or quotations within the poem. This is a program that seems to match the linguistic as well as rhetorical character of the switches; red ink, that is, marks both the rubrics and quotations as switches into another language, while boxing distinguishes the latter from the former. What is intriguing for my purposes is that the longer this admittedly long manuscript goes on, the less clear these distinctions become. At B.3.338, for example, the Latin is not boxed in red but only underscored: “Was omnia

10. Quotations from the C version are from Langland (1997).

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 317

probate, and þat plesed hire herte” [‘it was test everything, and that pleased her heart’]. And a few lines later, at 3.343, the entire line, Latin and English, is boxed in red: “Quod bonum est tenete; truþe þat text made” [‘Hold what is good; truth created that text.’]. At 4.143–4.144 two adjacent lines are boxed together in red without any attempt to distinguish Latin from English: (7)

for Nullum malum þe man mette wiþ inpunitum And bad Nullum bonum be irremuneratum. ‘For he said that no evil that a man encounters goes unpunished and no good goes unrewarded.’

Spoken by Reason, one of the poem’s unambiguously positive characters, the lines express one of the work’s most insistently voiced sentiments – that good behavior is rewarded, bad punished – in some of its most inventive codeswitching. And yet with English as well as Latin appearing in the red box, their presentation violates the scribe’s apparent ambitions for Add. 35287. Elsewhere, Latin switches appear without any graphic emphasis or with only red underscoring, which is also sometimes used to emphasize English words and phrases.11 In the dreamer’s famous line of autobiographical recognition, thus, the ﬁnal two words are so underscored: “ ‘I haue lyued in londe’, quod I, ‘my name is longe wille’ ” (15.152) [‘I have lived a long time in the land’, I said, ‘my name is long Will’]. Entire English lines that express sentiments central to the poem can also be underscored in red: (8)

And feden hem wiþ goodly foode, and gyue þere it nedeþ. (15.573) ‘And feed them with spiritual food, and give wherever it’s needed.’

At 15.577–15.578 red ink underscores both the English and the Latin: (9)

O ias seiþ for swiche þat sike ben and feble, Inferte omnes decimas in orreum meum vt sit cibus in domo mea. ‘Osias says that for those who are sick and feeble, Carry all the tithes into my granary so that there might be food in my house.’

11. Several Latin passages are underscored in black as well, though I believe these underscorings are in a later hand and thus not part of the manuscript’s composition.

318 Tim William Machan

Red sometimes underscores proper nouns as well: Troianus (12.210), Bethleem and Babiloigne (15.510), Samaritan (17.51). And the pragmatic function of boxing also sometimes shifts, as at 17.24, where it is used with personal names connected by English conjunctions: “Iosue and Iudith and Iudas Macabeus”. Like the scribe of Add. 34779, then, the scribe of Add. 35287 set out to designate switches to Latin from English with red ink and further to demarcate Latin quotations with boxing. Indeed, the scribe sometimes took great care to exclude any English from the boxing. But whether it was because of the length of Piers Plowman or the complexity of how code-switching operates in it, this system broke down: the visual pragmatics of the manuscript come not simply to mark switches in language but also to emphasize various kinds of conceptual concerns, irrespective of the language in which they are expressed, with the result that code-switching becomes as much a matter of rhetoric as of language. Latin may be linguistically different from English, but Latin quotations and phrases are not categorically different from important English word play, names, and places. The conceptual difﬁculties, maybe even anxiety, occasioned by the status of Langland’s code-switching appear still more strongly in BL MS Harley 3954, which contains a hybrid copy of the B version that interpolates scattered readings and essentially seven entire passus from the A version. Here red is again used for Latin rubrics and Latin switches. It is also used for sporadic marginal glossing, particularly at the beginning of the poem. In the Prologue, for example, glosses include Beggeris (40), bachelerys (88), and Conseyl of ratouns and of smale mys (145) [‘beggars; bachelors; the counsel of rats and small mice’]. And red likewise is the ink of the manuscript’s Latin conclusion: “explicit tractus de perys plowman” [‘here ends the text of piers plowman’]. As with Add. 35287, then, Harley 3954 treats code-switching as more a matter of rhetoric – of different textual functions, including gloss and rubric – than of language. But the manuscript also bespeaks uncertainty about the text of Piers Plowman. The text contains many unique and often garbled readings, and the passus division is sometimes confused as well; the second passus, for instance, runs straight on to the third, whose beginning is not announced until a red rubric appears after line 100. The scribe’s treatment of Latin switching might be seen in this context of confusion. At least early in the manuscript, despite the contextual clariﬁcations of the Latin’s sense, the scribe often follows the red code-switch with a black English translation not otherwise occurring in the manuscript tradition, as with the second line below:

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 319 (10) Ve terre vbi puer Rex est &c. Wo to þe oon þer þe kyng is a chyld (B.Pro.196) ‘Alas for a land where a boy is king, Woe to the one where the king is a youth.’

At B.1. 52–1.53, the reconstructed authorial text reads: (11) “Reddite Cesari”, quod god, “that Cesari bifalleþ, Et que sunt Dei Deo, or ellis ye don ille”. ‘ “Pay to Caesar”, God said, “whatever is owed to Caesar, And those things that are God’s to God, or else you do wrong”.’

But following line 52, the scribe of Harley 3954 inserts a line translating the ﬁrst Latin reference and then substitutes a translation of the second line, before continuing with the text: (12) eld to sesar þe god þat to hym longyth And to god þat longyth to hym or elles e doun ylle. ‘Give to Caesar the goods that belong to him, And to God whatever belongs to Him, or else you do wrong.’

Following the Latin at B.1.186 – “Fides sine operibus mortua est &c.” [‘Faith without works is fatal’] – the scribe interpolates three lines of English in black before continuing with line 187 as it appears in modern editions: (13) For Iamys þe gentyl iugid in bokys That feyth withoutyn ded is wersse þan nouth And ded as a dore nayl but yf dedys folwe. ‘For James the noble argued in books That faith without works is worse than nothing And dead as a door nail unless matched by deeds.’

At B.2.123, the Latin code-switching follows its interpolated English translation: (14) For worthy is þe werkman hys mede to haue For Dignus est operarius his hire to haue. ‘For a workman is deserving of his reward, For a laborer is worthy to have his pay.’

320 Tim William Machan

Other problems with the Latin include its simple omission, its movement to a position several lines before or after its appropriate place, and its transposition with the adjoined English. In the following couplet from B.2.241, in which both lines are authoritative, the Latin and English are transposed, with the Latin occurring ﬁrst in Harley 3954: (15) And enformeþ pouere peple and pursueþ truþe: Qui pecuniam suam non dedit ad vsuram et munera super innocentem &c. ‘And instructs poor people and pursues truth: Whoever did not give his wealth for interest nor [accepted] rewards against the innocent man.’

In the third passus, the scribe omits lines 253–254, placing the subsequent Latin (in red) immediately after 252 and moving directly on to line 255. In its confusion, Harley 3954 offers important insights into both the transmission of Piers Plowman and medieval conceptions of code-switching. The scribe’s layout and design bespeak a clear sense that the Latin is a distinct and signiﬁcant part of the poem – that however challenging it may be to scribe and reader, it constitutes an important part of Langland’s work. Indeed, the scribe went to great effort not only to make the Latin prominent but also to render it intelligible: the use of red ink, glossing, translation, transposition of lines, and even elimination of lines that must have seemed difﬁcult for one reason or another. At the same time, this variation – and its own variable success – suggests the failure of the scribe’s efforts. Unable to decide what the Latin means and does, he essayed several strategies, with the result that while in general visually distinct from the English, the Latin of Piers Plowman in Harley 3954 has no consistent function – neither entirely as a rhetorical device nor entirely as linguistic code.12 Before turning to Gower’s Confessio Amantis, I want to touch brieﬂy on one other manuscript of Piers: BL MS Royal 18.B.XVII, which contains a C version. A late manuscript, dating to the beginning of the sixteenth century, Royal 18.B.XVII in some ways embodies the inevitable result of the negotiations over the meaning of Langland’s Latin that are evident in Add. 35287 and Harley 3954. At the outset the scribe’s plan seems to have been to use

12. Simon Horobin (2008: 80) has suggested that the manuscript was copied for an East Anglian religious house whose members were “not accustomed to, or perhaps not even capable of, reading Latin”.

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 321

black ink for Latin as well as English and to demarcate the former with a slightly larger script and black underscoring, although eventually the same size script is used for both languages. Like Harley 3954, Royal 18.B.XVII offers an often garbled and sometimes unintelligible text with unclear divisions between passus, suggesting that its scribe also had difﬁculty with the poem in general. But as in the Additional manuscript and, to a lesser extent, the Harley one, the Latin points to a conception of the language’s role as largely rhetorical rather than linguistic. Although making no attempt to translate the switches, that is, the scribe comes to employ underscoring not just for the Latin poetry but for English personal names and place names, as well as for the Latin rubrics that introduce passus. In this context, it might even be argued that by making no attempt to understand the Latin that is comparable to that of the scribe of Harley 3954, this scribe further bracketed off Langland’s switches from any speciﬁcally linguistic meaning.

3.3.

Confessio Amantis

Like Piers Plowman, Gower’s Confessio Amantis offers various kinds of extended code-switching. There is, ﬁrst of all, some intrasentential switching, though it is infrequent and ﬁgures far less signiﬁcantly in Gower’s poem than it does in Langland’s. Intrasentential switches to French are rare. In a warning against drunkenness, for instance, Genius imagines an inebriate in this way: (16) Thus ofte he is to bedde broght, Bot where he lith yit wot he noght, Til he arise upon the morwe; And thanne he seith, “O, which a sorwe”. So that halfdrunke in such a res With dreie mouth he sterte him uppe, And seith, “Nou baillez ça the cuppe”. (6.54–6.60)13 ‘And thus he is often brought to bed, But he doesn’t know where he’s lying, Until he arises in the morning

13. Quotations are from Gower (1900).

322 Tim William Machan And then he says, “Oh, what a sorrow”. That half-drunk in a stupor, With a dry mouth he leaps up And says, “Now give here the cup.” ’

Intrasentential switches to Latin are rarer still. In an account of a wedding reception that degenerated into drunken debauchery, Genius includes a oneword switch for Centauri (with its Latin inﬂection), when he narrates that the guests (17) so ferforth here lustes soghten, That thei the whiche named were Centauri, ate feste there Of on assent, of an acord This yonge wif malgre hire lord In such a rage awei forth laden. (6.520–6.525) ‘Their desires were so great That those who were called Centaurs, at a feast there Of one mind and by one accord Led away in a rage this young wife, Despite her husband.’

What does predominate are switches from English to Latin for poems that introduce books and subsections of the Confessio, for a running Latin commentary, and for several concluding pieces of both poetry and prose. While these Latin works are anonymous in the manuscripts, there seems good reason to believe that Gower himself is responsible for all of them: they are stable features of the work’s transmission history; the complexity of the Latin poems and extensiveness of the Latin glosses bespeak a peculiarly strong interest in the Confessio; the autobiographical details of the concluding pieces bespeak a similar interest in Gower; and Gower himself, as his selfdesigned tomb in Southwark Cathedral suggests, was especially proud of his own multilingual abilities (Echard 2005). These frequent switches into and out of Latin, in any case, are also notable because of the manuscripts in which they occur. Along with Lydgate and Chaucer, Gower was identiﬁed by many ﬁfteenth- and even sixteenth-century writers as one of the founders and embellishers of a nascent English literary tradition. Manuscripts of all three

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 323

poets accordingly stand out as some of the most deluxe English documents of the period, replete with illuminations, historiated initials, and multi-colored decorative ﬂourishes. For scribes of the Confessio in particular, this illumination program provided a variety of ways to correlate the visual, rhetorical, and linguistic signiﬁcances of code-switching. At the simplest extreme, BL MS Add.12403 offers no graphic distinction among languages or rhetorical functions: the same black script in which the English poetry occurs is used for the Latin poetry and the marginal glosses, including sporadic identiﬁcation of individuals as Amans or Confessor. All of the glosses stop early in Book Two on f. 16r, and so in execution as well as design, Add. 12403 (like Royal 18.B.XVII of Piers Plowman or Add. 12044 of Troilus and Criseyde) points to a limited, uncertain sense of how the Latin relates to and differs from the English. A casual reader who only glanced at a page of the manuscript would get no visual clue that two languages were present, and even a more careful reader would have no reason to see the switch from one language to another as in any way a distinctive feature of the poem’s rhetoric or the manuscript’s design.14 A lavish manuscript in general, BL MS Stowe 950 reﬂects an only slightly more complex design. Initially, the scribe draws no distinction between Latin and English poetry by using the same black script for both and reserving red for the Latin glosses, which are nonetheless written in the same script as the poetry and which occur within the columns of text. And by “glosses” I here mean both the long commentary and short, incidental words (like speech identiﬁers) or phrases that articulate the poem’s structure (like “De morte Imperatoris” [‘on the death of the emperor’], 2.1589; or “nota hic contra istos qui iam lollardi dicuntur” [‘note here [an argument] against those who are called Lollards’], 5.1856). But as the manuscript progresses, variation in design seems to reﬂect a changing or even confused sensibility. For example, as at 1.568 and 1.712, many of the speech identiﬁers Confessor and Amans do not appear where they should. Likewise, the Latin poetry appears more and more regularly

14. On the copying difﬁculties occasioned by Gower’s Latin, see Pearsall (2004). The most variable aspect of design in Confessio manuscripts, and likely added by scribes and compilers but not Gower, speaker identiﬁcations (in black as well as red) appear in approximately two-thirds of the 49 essentially complete manuscripts of the Confessio. See Echard (2001).

324 Tim William Machan

with red underscoring. And while the placement of the red glosses within the column of text remains constant, their position in relation to the Latin poems ﬂuctuates. Sometimes, the commentary is adjoined directly to the conclusion of the Latin poem, producing a large block of red text that dramatically stands out on the page; this is the case at 1.575, 1.1234, and 1.2398. On other occasions, for no apparent stylistic or thematic reason, the commentary gloss is separated from the poem from which it (and the English) follow; this is the case at 1.1343. At 1.1883 the English directly follows the Latin poem, and the English text continues until 1891, where, following the ﬁnal word (semeth ‘seems’), the Latin commentary begins at the end of the line; it ﬁlls the next two lines as well, whereupon the English resumes with line 1892. In the main, the manuscript’s layout eventually draws not a two-level distinction between Latin and English but a three-level distinction among the kinds of text present in the Confessio: Latin poetry, Latin gloss, English poetry. And in doing so, the design focuses on the rhetorical rather than linguistic characteristics of these levels of text, since the switches to Latin are visually distinguished from one another according to their function in Gower’s poem. The manuscript’s design inconsistencies (such as the position of gloss and Latin poetry) emphasize this functional rather than linguistic pragmatics. They point, that is, to uncertainty over the poem’s rhetorical components rather than to its switches between Latin and English. Representing the farthest extreme from Add. 12403, BL MSS Egerton 1991 and Royal 18.C.XXII are among the most lavish copies of the Confessio, large in size, luxuriant with color and full-page ﬂoriations, and even illustrated with the miniatures sometimes found in Confessio manuscripts (Emmerson 1999). Both also express the poem’s multilingualism through a panoply of bibliographic codes. They thus use red for the Latin poems, commentary, and autobiographical Latin works with which many Confessio manuscripts conclude, that is the Quia unusquisque [‘Because each one’] and the Quam cinxere [‘How they have surrounded’]. Both manuscripts also position Latin gloss material within the column of text, whether this material is the commentary, a speech identiﬁer, or a textual demarcation, e.g., “Ipocrisis Religiosa” [‘religious hypocrisy’] at 1.608 in Royal 18.C.XXII. In this way these manuscripts, unlike Stowe 950, represent and thereby categorize all the Latin in the same fashion. BL MS 22139, a similarly deluxe manuscript, uses much the same formatting for the Latin poetry, glosses, and English text, with the exception that the concluding Latin pieces appear in black rather than red script. All three manuscripts, then, follow the now-familiar pattern of shaping the representation of code-switching through rhetorical as well as linguistic concerns.

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 325

4. Conclusion: Speaking and writing pragmatically “ ‘What am I to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know’ ”, observes Tony Jobling in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, “pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary ﬁxture in an English stable. ‘Ill fo manger. That’s the French saying, and mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so’ ” (1975: 332). For Tony, a switch to French elevates both his status as a speaker and the value of what he says; by citing the authority of another language’s aphorism, he hopes to render his immediate concern for life’s basic needs as an expression of some larger philosophical outlook on human experience. For Dickens, the switch is a moment of droll humor at Tony’s expense: neither Tony nor his audience realize how badly he has mangled the French and how they all thereby reveal the intellectual limitations of their genuine sentiment. As a moment of pathos characteristic of Dickens’s ﬁction, Tony’s switch also points to one of the salient features of code-switching in general: like all discursive strategies, its meanings are situationally and socially determined. It is a linguistic act that acquires sense as well as structure through speakers’ performance, the physical and social context of this performance, and the syntactic, stylistic, and topical issues that guide what speaker and listener do. And this social orientation governs both how speakers code-switch as well as how their interlocutors process the switching. This is a point generally made about speech communities as long ago as 1972, in John Gumperz’s pioneering discussion. And for codeswitching in medieval literature in particular, it has been reafﬁrmed in Hans-Jürgen Diller’s argument that the social meaning of code-switching in late-medieval drama depends on the interactions among the playwright or writer, actor or reader, generic characteristics of drama, the dramatis personae of a particular play, and the audience (Gumperz 1972; Diller 1997/98).15 For producers of medieval manuscripts, the decision to employ bibliographic codes like rubrication, illumination, underscoring and so forth was likewise a communicative act and thus anything but abstract. To an extent, such a decision would have rested on the character of a work and, if applicable, the renown of its author. But such decisions were also made within the context of how particular speech communities processed code-switching

15. One could add setting and occasion to the contextual factors Diller (1997/98) discusses.

326 Tim William Machan

and of the speciﬁc determinants of manuscript production in general. Foremost of the latter were the cost of manuscript production and the fact that to the close of the middle ages much vernacular manuscript production remained bespoken and not done on speculation. While the notion of marking code-switching in Psalters with colored letters and paraphs may thus have depended partly on the nature of the work and on an audience’s expectations for it, it also depended on the presence of a buyer who was willing to pay for text-decoration. Within this context, it comes as no surprise that between the extremes of Add. 12044 and Royal 18.C.XXII – between manuscripts that bypass the presence of language switching and those that use it to shape their mise en page – occurs a great deal of variability in the relations between visual and textual pragmatics. While generalizing from this variation may be perilous, I would by way of a conclusion tentatively like to venture three tendencies in late-medieval manuscript treatments of code-switching, each of which directly reﬂects on the speech communities that produced and received these manuscripts. The ﬁrst such generalization may border on the tautological – that variability is constant in this variation. Put more directly, the manuscripts do not give evidence that code-switching was a rigid phenomenon, either linguistically or conceptually. English itself, in its days before codiﬁcation and the emergence of a standard, could be a ﬂuid code open to syntactic and lexical borrowings of all kinds that sometimes, as in business accounts, leave it unclear whether a text is best understood as code-switched, written in English with French borrowings, or written in French with English borrowings (Wright 2000). Code-switching likewise seems to have been a linguistic strategy open to varying uses and interpretations, with the result that, depending on the work and its manuscript, distinct differences between Latin and English might be viewed as integral or inconsequential to a text’s structure. They might even be moments of inscrutability for reader and scribe alike, moments whose predominant effect is the production of the latter’s struggle for comprehension and representation. As manuscripts of Piers Plowman and Confessio Amantis indicate, generalizations even about the role of code-switching in particular works can be fraught, since whatever intentions Langland and Gower may have had, scribes provided differing representations of movements into and out of Latin, to which medieval readers, of necessity, responded differently. The code-switching in Harley 3954 produces meaning quite different from that in Royal 18.B.XVII, even if both manuscripts can be said to contain Piers Plowman. As prominent as language shifts are in both poems, indeed, variations in

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 327

each manuscript tradition, along with adaptations of particular manuscripts’ strategies, suggest that the shifts could occasion considerable difﬁculty for scribes and (presumably) readers. Given this variability, code-switching at the very least supplies one more argument to the literary, linguistic, and textual critics who have increasingly called for the crucial importance of individual manuscripts, rather than modern critical editions, in any historical study (Lass 2004; Grund 2006; Smith 2007). And it argues against any claims that medieval languages could have such stable sociolinguistic signiﬁcance that the mere presence of English (say) constituted an act of either national identity or cultural resistance. A second tentative generalization is that against this backdrop of variability, code-switching seems to be conceptualized as much (if not more) rhetorically as linguistically. By nature, switches involve different languages, and yet even in works like Psalters, Piers, and the Confessio – works in which code-switching is extensive and multiform – scribal representations can be occasioned less by the fact of linguistic difference than by a switch from rubric, to main text, to translation, to gloss, to commentary, to supplementary works. And this is the case whether no distinctive features of script or presentation are used for these switches, whether the same features are used for any extra-textual material, or whether the features distinguish Latin gloss from Latin poem in manuscripts of (for example) the Confessio. Even the errors and design alterations that scribes make in the process of completing a particular manuscript point to a primary struggle over the rhetorical purposes and effects of switches. In this light, I note yet one more manuscript: BL MS Sloane 2593, a small quarto containing a number of Middle English lyrics. As is often the case in lyric manuscripts, stanzas are generally bracketed or linked in some way with pen-lines, and refrains are then added in the margin (Boffey 1985). In Sloane 2593, the same black script is used for all poems and refrains, including those that involve code-switching to Latin. One English lyric thus has the marginal “bona natalicia” [‘[may she have] birthday gifts [i.e. good things on her birthday]’] as the refrain to the opening stanza: (18) Mary is a lady bry t Sche ha t a sone of moche my t Ouer al þis word she is ly t. ‘Mary is a bright lady. She has a son of great power. Over all this world she is the light.’

328 Tim William Machan

While “bona natalicia” obviously constitutes code-switching, it is not this but its status as a refrain that motivates its distinctive marginal placement. And this is clear from the fact that the same bracketing of stanzas and marginal positioning for the refrain occur in poems that are in Latin, English, or a code-switched mixture of the two. One of the latter has the marginal Latin refrain “quod vocatur maria” [‘for which she is called Maria’] for this stanza: (19) Saluator mundi domine Fadir of heuene blyssed þu be Þu gretyst a mayde with on aue. ‘Lord, savior of the world, Father of Heaven, may you be blessed. You greeted/impregnated a maid with a single “ave”.’

In these instances, the bracketing and marginal placement of the refrain remain constant, but the Latin within the poem is treated no differently from the English, with which it constitutes the same rhetorical unit: the stanza. The primary distinction in the poem is not between English and Latin but between stanza and refrain (ff. 8v, 15v, 9v). The third generalization I want to draw follows from what I have already described – and this is that code-switching itself does not seem to have been in any way a controversial sociolinguistic practice. It remained a vital and productive feature of literary production throughout the English Middle Ages, and it did so in ways that deﬁned differences among the kinds of works in which code-switching could occur. As generic groups, that is, macaronic sermons embody one set of syntactic and rhetorical constraints, mixed business records another, and literary works yet another. The maintenance of categorical differences like these reﬂects genres that are implicitly welldeﬁned for reader and writer alike. In literary works in particular, even those as politically charged as Piers Plowman, switches in language may occasion difﬁculties for scribal comprehension but they are neither suppressed nor exaggerated in ways that constitute linguistic and social statements of their own. And by this I mean that whatever consequence that the Lollards and their opponents, say, could invest in speciﬁc linguistic codes – arguing, for example, whether theology and the Bible might be expressed in English as well as in Latin – Latin, English, and switches between them afﬁrm stability in the late-medieval linguistic repertoire (see further the essays in this volume by Trotter, Wright, Pahta and Nurmi, Meecham-Jones, and Putter).

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 329

Indeed, for all our modern images of a triumphant English or an emergent or resistant vernacular, the sociolinguistic experience reﬂected in literary manuscripts appears conservative and meaningful, if also at times befuddled. The plain confusion that code-switching could occasion for scribes not simply of Piers Plowman but also of the Confessio and the Psalter is relevant here, for it bespeaks no sense that the languages or switches among them might have clear, inherent, and ﬁxed signiﬁcance of a kind that would make the code by itself a political argument. Such confusion points, rather, to the expressive potential of speciﬁc pragmatic practices. The continuity that is present in the visual and linguistic pragmatics of late-medieval manuscripts thus ill-matches the tensions and controversies that modern critics can see in late-medieval linguistic activity (Cole 2008). And yet such continuity is not surprising. It is, in fact, the sense speakers typically have of the sociolinguistic world they inhabit and whose future they might predict but cannot know. As Richard Bailey (2002: 466) has observed, “By looking at trajectories of change, we miss the sense that speakers have of the stability of their own language”.16 In this paper, I have necessarily only touched the surface of an enormous and complex topic. Representations of code-switching in manuscripts of Piers Plowman alone would be a challenging ﬁeld to explore in its entirety. I do hope to have sketched out some of the contours of the ﬁeld in general, however, and suggest that the peculiarities of written representations of spoken phenomena are of literary and aesthetic as well as linguistic signiﬁcance. I also hope to have shown that details, devilish or otherwise, can be more challenging than generalities, and that in its details, late-medieval linguistic practice in fact resists generalities, perhaps particularly those that see controversy and resistance where the manuscripts suggest complexity and continuity.

References Bailey, Richard W. 2002 A thousand years of the history of English. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), 449–471. Boffey, Julia 1985 Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later Middle Ages. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer.

16. For an argument for the vitality of Latin even within the context of late-medieval code-switching, see Fletcher (1994).

330 Tim William Machan

Brook, George Leslie (ed.) 1968 The Harley Lyrics: The Middle English Lyrics of MS. Harley 2253. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brown, Carleton (ed.) 1932 English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bryan, Elizabeth J. 1999 Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho La amon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Clark, Cecily 1981 Another late-fourteenth-century case of dialect-awareness. English Studies 62: 504–505. Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham 2007 Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cole, Andrew 2008 Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson, Mary Catherine 2003 Code-switching and authority in late medieval England. Neophilologus 87: 473–486. Dickens, Charles 1975 Bleak House. Edited by Norman Page. Harmondsworth: Penguin [1853]. Diller, Hans-Jürgen 1997/98 Code-switching in medieval English drama. Comparative Drama 31: 506–537. Echard, Siân 2001 Dialogues and monologues: manuscript representations of the conversation of the Confessio Amantis. In: Alastair J. Minnis (ed.), Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, 57–75. York: York Medieval Press. Echard, Siân (ed.) 2005 A Companion to Gower. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Emmerson, Richard K. 1999 Reading Gower in a manuscript culture: Latin and English in illustrated manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 143–186. Fletcher, Alan J. 1994 “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini”: A thirteenth-century sermon for Advent and the macaronic style in England. Mediaeval Studies 56: 217–245.

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 331

Gower, John 1900 The English Works of John Gower. Edited by G. C. Macaulay. (Early English Text Society extra series 82) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grund, Peter 2006 Manuscripts as sources for linguistic research: A methodological case study based on the Mirror of Lights. Journal of English Linguistics 34: 105–125. Gumperz, John J. 1972 Introduction. In: John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, 1–25. New York: Holt Rinehart. Hanna, Ralph 2005 London Literature, 1300–1380. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horobin, Simon 2008 Harley 3954 and the audience of Piers Plowman. In: Denis Renevey and Graham D. Caie (eds.), The Manuscript Experience: What Medieval Vernacular Manuscripts Tell Us about Authors and Texts, 68–84. London: Routledge. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn and Denise Louise Despres 1998 Iconography and the Professional Reader: The Politics of Book Production in the Douce Piers Plowman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Langland, William 1988 Piers Plowman: The B Version. Edited by George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson. (Rev. ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press. Langland, William 1997 Piers Plowman: The C Version. Edited by George Russell and George Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lass, Roger 2004 Ut custodiant litteras: Editions, corpora and witnesshood. In: Marina Dossena and Roger Lass (eds.), Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology, 21–48. Bern: Peter Lang. Macaulay, G. C. 1900 The English Works of John Gower. (Early English Text Society extra series 82) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Machan, Tim William 1994 Language contact in Piers Plowman. Speculum 69: 359–385. Machan, Tim William 2003 English in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

332 Tim William Machan

Machan, Tim William 2006 Medieval multilingualism and Gower’s literary practice. Studies in Philology 103: 1–25. Machan, Tim William 2010 Robert Henryson and the matter of multilingualism. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 109: 52–70. Minkova, Donka and Robert Stockwell (eds.) 2002 Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Nurmi, Arja and Päivi Pahta 2004 Social stratiﬁcation and patterns of code-switching in early English letters. Multilingua 23: 417–456. Pearsall, Derek 2004 The organisation of the Latin apparatus in Gower’s Confessio Amantis: The scribes and their problem. In: Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal and John Scahill (eds.), The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, 99–112. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer. Schendl, Herbert 2000a Linguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 77–92. Schendl, Herbert 2000b Syntactic constraints on code-switching in medieval texts. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.), Placing Middle English in Context, 67–86. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert 2001 Code-switching in medieval English poetry. In: Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger (eds.), Language Contact in the History of English, 305–335. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Schendl, Herbert 2002 Mixed-language texts as data and evidence in English historical linguistics. In: Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell (eds.), 51–78. Smith, Jeremy 2007 Sound Change and the History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stevens, Martin 1977 Language as theme in the Wakeﬁeld Plays. Speculum 52: 100–117. Taylor, Andrew 2002 Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature 333

Trotter, David A. (ed.) 2002 Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Wright, Laura 1992 Macaronic writing in a London archive, 1380–1480. In: Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, 762–770. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wright, Laura 1996 Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wright, Laura 2000 Bills, accounts, inventories: Everyday trilingual activities in the business world of later medieval England. In: David A. Trotter (ed.), 149–156.

Index of Manuscripts Auchinleck manuscript, see Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 19.2.1 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 336/725, 254 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.14.39, 309 Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd. 3.52, 254 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.3.21, 310 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 19.2.1, 308 Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 95, 254 London, British Library, MS 22139, 324 London, British Library, MS Add. 10046, 314 – 315 London, British Library, MS Add. 10340, 311 London, British Library, MS Add. 12044, 307 – 308, 323, 326 London, British Library, MS Add. 12056, 262 London, British Library, MS Add. 12403, 323 – 324 London, British Library, MS Add. 17376, 313 London, British Library, MS Add. 30031, 311 London, British Library, MS Add. 34799, 316, 318

London, British Library, MS Add. 35287, 316 – 318, 320 London, British Library, MS Add. 36617, 272 London, British Library, MS Add. 36704, 311 London, British Library, MS Add. 46204, 51 London, British Library, MS Add. 59495, 310 London, British Library, MS Arundel 158, 313 – 314 London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero E.i, 51, 80 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.xiii, 51 – 52, 80 London, British Library, MS Egerton 613, 308 – 310 London, British Library, MS Egerton 1991, 324 London, British Library, MS Harley 978, 311 London, British Library, MS Harley 1806, 313 – 314 London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, 309 – 310 London, British Library, MS Harley 3954, 318 – 321, 326 London, British Library, MS Royal 18.B.xxiii, 229 London, British Library, MS Royal 18.B.xvii, 320 – 321, 323, 326 London, British Library, MS Royal 18.C.xxii, 324, 326 London, British Library, MS Sloane 1, 254

336 Index of Manuscripts London, British Library, MS Sloane 965, 254 London, British Library, MS Sloane 2593, 327 London, British Library, MS Sloane 3666, 254 London, British Library, MS Stowe 65, 311 London, British Library, MS Stowe 950, 323 – 324 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 260, 265, 267 London, Metropolitan Archives, MS 7086/1 (formerly Guildhall Library MS 7086/1), 193 – 199, 201 – 206 London, The National Archives, PROB 11/3, 193

Metz, MS Metz 1228 (lost manuscript), 269 New York, Academy of Medicine, MS 12, 253 – 254, 260, 264 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 649, 115 – 148 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1396, 262 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Angl. 25, 254, 264 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Fr. 1318, 269, 271, 273

Index of Subjects and Languages Abbas, Haly, 270 – 271 abbreviations and suspension marks, medieval, 25, 26, 29, 156 adjuncts, see peripheral switches Albucasis, 269 – 271, 274 Alcoatim, 270 alliteration, 295 Anglicus, Bartholomeus, 262, 264, 267 Anglo-French, see Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman, 96 – 111, 156 – 182, 191 – 215, 228, 295 – 299, 305, 308, 321, 326 Continental French and, 19 in mercantile communities, 31, 157 – 183, 191 – 215, 293 Italian loan-words in, 31, 166 – 170 monolingual, 21, 33 proverbs, 285 see also text-types spoken, 19 used in schools, 287 vernacular, with Middle English, 20, 32, 101, 103, 106, 109 – 111, 176 – 181, 191 – 215 vocabulary, 19 see also lexis written, 19 Arabic, 8, 31, 100, 171, 269 – 274 articles, 6, 96, 99, 106 – 111 see also le, la Avicenna, 270 Benedictine Reform, 48 Benedictine Rule, see text-types, rules Bible, the, 220, 221, 228, 230, 245 bilingualism, 19, 157, 257 – 258 diglossic, 282, 288 – 289 French-English, 19, 98, 110, 291

Latin-English, 242 preaching, 27, 31 Boethius, 310 borrowing, 24, 182, 256 – 259, 283 see also code-switching versus borrowing business writing, see text-types calque, see loan-translation Canterbury, Dunstan of, 48 Capgrave, John, 311 case-assignment, 125 – 126 Catalan, 168 charters, see text-types Chaucer, Geoffrey, 9, 21, 27, 289 – 295, 305, 307, 310 – 311 Chauliac, Guy de, 8, 253 – 277 clause, boundary, Old English charter, 57, 60 – 61, 78, 80 boundary, syntactic, 123, 126, 128, 132 – 133 dating, Old English charter, 66, 81 sanction, Old English charter, 65, 80 clergy, 225, 236 – 240, 246, 290 – 291, 311 code bibliographic, 305 – 306 mixed, 7, 30 spoken, see code-switching written, see code-switching code-choice extralinguistic variables and, 81 – 85 code-mixing, 23 code-switching address terms and, 292

338 Index of Subjects and Languages appeal and control, see code-switching, imperatives for threats and entreaties versus borrowing, 256 – 260, 265 citational, 286 conjunctions and, 134 determiners and, see phrase discoursal, 75, 78, 85 – 86, 230 – 237 door-knocking and, 293 – 294 embedded, 101, 108, 111 formality marker and, 294, 296 frequency hierarchy of, 116, 123, 129 functions of, 4, 20 – 21, 60 – 69, 87 – 88, 99, 120, 230 – 241, 268, 291 – 298 government and, 6, 96 – 98, 135 imperatives for threats and entreaties and, 298 ink, change in colour of, signifying, 308 – 320 interjections, exclamations and, 135 – 136, 297 – 298 intersentential, 22, 70, 306 intrasentential, 2, 6, 30, 71 – 80, 306 – 307, 321 – 322 metaphorical, 284 – 285 names and, 307 noun phrases and, see phrase peripheral, 121 – 123, 129 – 132 place names and, 54 – 55, 66 – 67, 73 – 78 politeness and, 296 – 298 prefabricated chunks, see codeswitching, discoursal prepositions, prepositional phrases and, see phrase probabilistic nature of, 116 professional discourse and, 268 proverbs and, 133, 285 – 286 quotative, 229 – 234, 237, 286, 306, 315 – 318 sincerity, marking, 292

single-word, 71 situational, 284 – 285, 294 spoken, 27 – 28, 157, 303 – 305 subject and object complements, between, 134 – 135 syntactic constraints on, 5, 6, 28, 97 – 98, 106 – 111, 121 – 125, 128 – 130, 146 – 148 technical terms and, 172, 267, 307 two-word, 7 verb phrases and, see phrase visual representation of, see pragmatics warnings and reproofs and, 291 weights and measures and, 163 – 172 written, 9, 27 – 28, 157, 183, 303 – 305 Colred, Thomas, 192 – 194 corpus linguistics, 26, 219 – 244 Corpus of Early English Correspondence, 8, 26, 222 – 228 correspondence, see text-types Crèmona, Gerard of, 260, 269, 271, 274 Dickens, Charles, 325 dictionaries, historical, 207 – 215 diglossia, 281 – 284, 288 – 289, 298 Dutch, 282 Middle, 31, 211, 293 – 294 English Early Modern, 228, 232 Middle, 19, 31, 96 – 111, 159 – 161, 171 – 172, 174 – 176, 191 – 215, 228, 259, 261 – 275, 285 – 297, 305 – 329 monolingual, 21, 55, 83 Old, 5, 19, 30, 47 – 90 Standard, 19, 20 Florys, Robert, of Guernsey, 163 Florys, Thomas, of Guernsey, 163

Index of Subjects and Languages 339 footing, 281, 284 – 285, 296 – 298 French, see Anglo-Norman Galen, 254, 271 Gawain poet, the, 9, 295 – 298 German, 22 Middle Low, 31, 211 Gower, John, 310, 321 – 325 Greek, 8, 272, 275 Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, 7, 25, 26, 222 – 228, 245 Holst, Gustav, 308 homilies, see text-types indeterminacy, 110 -ing, 204 – 206 Italian, 21, 31, 163 – 171 la, article, 201 – 203 Lanfranc, 255, 261 – 262, 273 Langland, William, 9, 285 – 289, 304 – 305, 315 – 321 language carrier, 125, 136 – 146 language contact, 18, 173, 274 language mixing, 23 – 24 versus code-switching, 156 – 183 see also mixed-language texts language shift, 21 Latin, 18, 19, 31, 47 – 90, 96 – 111, 115 – 148, 223, 228 – 230, 237 – 240, 268 dative case, 73 Dog, 16 gender in, 201 – 202 Medieval, 33, 96, 104, 158 – 183, 191 – 215, 274 – 275, 287, 307 – 311, 313 – 324 monolingual, 21, 33, 55, 83 – 84 proverbs, see code-switching registers in, 274 used in schools, 287

le, article as code-switching marker, 78, 96, 99 – 100, 107 – 110, 176 – 181, 196, 200 – 203 blocking following Latin sufﬁx, 178, 200 – 203 in place names, 181 lexis, Anglo-Norman and Middle English, inseparability of, 26, 31, 157, 161, 176, 182, 191 – 215, 290 – 291 loan-translation, 256, 260 Lollardy, 220, 228, 323, 328 Love, Nicholas, 311 lyrics, see text-type macaronic texts, see text-types medical texts, see text-types Mediterranean, commercial vocabulary from, 166 – 171 mixed-language texts, 21, 23, 25, 103, 183, 191 – 215 research on, 2 – 3 Mondeville, 254, 262, 273 multilingualism, 18 – 20, 157 – 158, 162 names personal, 6, 66 – 68, 102 – 112 place, 66 – 68, 74 – 78 Oswald of Worcester, 48 – 49, 87 Parliament, Rolls of, 21 Pewterers’ Livery Company, 192 – 194 phrase determiner, 97, 101, 106 – 111, 123 – 125, 139 – 145 locative, 63, 67 – 68, 74 – 78, 103 noun, 19, 72, 97, 108 – 111, 124 – 125, 203 – 204

340 Index of Subjects and Languages prepositional, 6, 19, 54, 63, 67, 75 – 78, 97, 101, 103, 105 – 111, 123 – 125, 141 – 143, 200 – 201 verb, 137 – 139 politeness, see code-switching pragmatics, historical, 7, 21 visual representation of, 9, 29, 303 – 329 psalms, see psalters psalters, see text-types religious treatises, see text-types Rodoan, Haly, 271 Rolle, Richard, 228, 313 rules of religious houses, see text-types Saliceto, William of, 256 – 257 sermons, see text-types sincerity markers, see code-switching Southampton Port Books, 163 – 173 Statius, 307 style-shifting, 24, 268, 283 text-types accounts, 7, 22, 25, 32, 34, 176 – 181 administrative, 7, 22, 50, 156 – 183 business, 7, 23, 32, 191 – 215, 304 charters, 22, 47, 49 – 50 correspondence, see letters drama, 22, 25, 27, 307 glosses, 162, 170, 271 – 272, 307, 313, 318, 322 – 324 inventories, 7, 34, from Dover Castle, 158 – 162, 192 – 206 homilies, 228, 245 leases, 30, 47 – 90

legal, 7, 16, 99 letters, 21 – 22, 25, 225, 236 – 237, 247 literary, 9, 283 – 298, 305 – 329 lyrics, 308 – 311, 327 – 328 medical, 22, 253 – 277 poems, macaronic, 307 – 309 proverbs, see code-switching psalters, 228, 313 – 315, 326, 329 religious, 8, 219 – 247 rolls, lay subsidy, 101 – 111, pipe, 102 rules of religious houses, 229, 231, 245, 311 scientiﬁc, 22, 253 – 275 sermons, macaronic, 6, 22, 25, 31, 115 – 148, 221, 228 – 235, 245, Wenzel’s taxonomy of, 116 – 117, 119 – 120, 127 tax returns, 102 – 109 texts, macaronic, negative attitude to, 16 – 17 trade, 17, 163 – 173, 191 – 215 verse, 22, 230, 285 – 297, 305, 308 – 309, 315 – 322, 328 wills, 7, 22, of Thomas Colred, 192 – 206, of Robert Florys, 163, from York, 174 – 181 writs, 50, 55 translation, 8, 253 – 277 Trevet, Nicholas, 310 Trevisa, John, 262, 311 Tyndale, 221 Wycliffe, John, 220

A Comparative Grammar Of British English Dialects: Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses (Topics in English Linguistics : 50.1) (Topics in English Linguistics)

Read more

Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English (Topics in English Linguistics)

Read more

Modality in English: Theory and Description (Topics in English Linguistics 58)

Read more

Argument and Rhetoric: Adverbial Connectors in the History of English (Topics in English Linguistics)

Read more

English Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction (Studies in English Language)

Read more

Introducing English Linguistics

Read more

Cardinal Numerals: Old English from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Topics in English Linguistics)

Read more

Empirical Studies in English Applied Linguistics

Read more

English Adjectives of Comparison: Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses (Topics in English Linguistics)

Read more

Cognitive English Grammar (Cognitive Linguistics in Practice)

Read more

Cambridge Introducing English Linguistics

Read more

Introducing English Linguistics

Read more

Cambridge Introducing English Linguistics

Read more

Introducing English Linguistics

Read more

Cambridge Introducing English Linguistics

Read more

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Read more

Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English

Read more

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Read more

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Read more

Moral Identity in Early Modern English Literature

Read more

The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment

Read more

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Read more

Genitives in Early English: Typology and Evidence

Read more

Medical Writing in Early Modern English

Read more

Impact Topics! 30 Exciting Topics to Talk About in English

Read more

Codeswitching

Read more

Essentials of Early English

Read more

Dictionary of Early English

Read more

Essential idioms in English (Dixon's English Series)

Read more

Rhythmic Grammar: The Influence of Rhythm on Grammatical Variation and Change in English (Topics in English Linguistics)

Read more

Recommend Documents

A Comparative Grammar Of British English Dialects: Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses (Topics in English Linguistics : 50.1) (Topics in English Linguistics)

A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects ≥ Topics in English Linguistics 50.1 Editors Elizabeth Closs Trau...

Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English (Topics in English Linguistics)

Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English Topics in English Linguistics 69 Editors Elizab...

Modality in English: Theory and Description (Topics in English Linguistics 58)

Modality in English ≥ Topics in English Linguistics 58 Editors Elizabeth Closs Traugott Bernd Kortmann Mouton de ...

Argument and Rhetoric: Adverbial Connectors in the History of English (Topics in English Linguistics)

Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English Topics in English Linguistics 64 Editors Bern...

English Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction (Studies in English Language)

This page intentionally left blank English Corpus Linguistics An Introduction English Corpus Linguistics is a step-by...

Introducing English Linguistics

This page intentionally left blank Introducing English Linguistics Are you looking for a genuine introduction to the ...

Cardinal Numerals: Old English from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Topics in English Linguistics)

Cardinal Numerals Topics in English Linguistics 67 Editors Elizabeth Closs Traugott Bernd Kortmann De Gruyter Mout...

Empirical Studies in English Applied Linguistics

University of Pécs Roundtable 2006: Empirical Studies in English Applied Linguistics Edited by Marianne Nikolov and Józ...

English Adjectives of Comparison: Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses (Topics in English Linguistics)

English Adjectives of Comparison Topics in English Linguistics 63 Editors Elizabeth Closs Traugott Bernd Kortmann ...

Cognitive English Grammar (Cognitive Linguistics in Practice)

Cognitive English Grammar Cognitive Linguistics in Practice (CLiP) A text book series which aims at introducing stude...