Code-switching in early English / edited by Herbert Schendl, Laura Wright.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Schendl, Herbert.

Wright, Laura.

Series:

Topics in English linguistics ; 76.

Topics in English linguistics, 1434-3452 ; 76

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Code switching (Linguistics).

English language--Old English, ca. 450-1100.

English language.

English language--Middle English, 1100-1500.

English language--Variation--Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (348 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The complex linguistic situation of earlier multilingual Britain has led to numerous contact-induced changes in the history of English. However, bi- and multilingual texts, which are attested in a large variety of text types, are still an underresearched aspect of earlier linguistic contact. Such texts, which switch between Latin, English and French, have increasingly been recognized as instances of written code-switching and as highly relevant evidence for the linguistic strategies which medieval and early modern multilingual speakers used for different purposes. The contributions in this volume approach this phenomenon of mixed-language texts from the point of view of code-switching, an important mechanism of linguistic change. Based on a variety of text types and genres from the medieval and Early Modern English periods, the individual papers present detailed linguistic analyses of a large number of texts, addressing a variety of issues, including methodological questions as well as functional, pragmatic, syntactic and lexical aspects of language mixing. The very specific nature of language mixing in some text types also raises important theoretical questions such as the distinction between borrowing and switching, the existence of discrete linguistic codes in earlier multilingual Britain and, more generally, the possible limits of the code-switching paradigm for the analysis of these mixed texts from the early history of English. Thus the volume is of particular interest not only for historical linguists, medievalists and students of the history of English, but also for sociolinguists, psycholinguists, language theorists and typologists.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction / Schendl, Herbert / Wright, Laura

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

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

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

Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649 / Halmari, Helena / Regetz, Timothy

Death, taxes and property: Some code-switching evidence from Dover, Southampton, and York / Trotter, David

On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing / Wright, Laura

Multilingual discourse in the domain of religion in medieval and early modern England: A corpus approach to research on historical code-switching / Pahta, Päivi / Nurmi, Arja

"Gadryng Togedre of Medecyne in the Partye of Cyrugie": Strategies of code-switching in the Middle English translations of Chauliac's Chirurgia Magna / Meecham-Jones, Simon

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

The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature / Machan, Tim William

Index of Manuscripts

Index of Subjects and Languages

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9786613400246

9781283400244

1283400243

9783110253368

3110253364

OCLC:

769343082