Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English

Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English

In this paper we investigate the place of origin of the change from Jespersen’s Cycle stage II – bipartite ne + not – to stage III, not alone. We use the LAEME corpus to investigate the dialectal distribution in more detail, finding that the change must have begun in Northern and Eastern England. A...

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Main Authors: Walkden George, Morrison Donald Alasdair
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2017-12-01
Series:Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
Subjects:
middle english
negation
dialectology
language contact
corpus linguistics
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/stap-2017-0007
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spelling doaj-0d646605f8d345c1b458470537dfb91c2021-09-05T14:00:48ZengSciendoStudia Anglica Posnaniensia0081-62722082-51022017-12-0152217320110.1515/stap-2017-0007stap-2017-0007Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle EnglishWalkden George0Morrison Donald Alasdair1Department of Linguistics, University of KonstanzDivision of Linguistics and English Language, The University of ManchesterIn this paper we investigate the place of origin of the change from Jespersen’s Cycle stage II – bipartite ne + not – to stage III, not alone. We use the LAEME corpus to investigate the dialectal distribution in more detail, finding that the change must have begun in Northern and Eastern England. A strong effect of region and time period can be clearly observed, with certain linguistic factors also playing a role. We attribute the early onset of the change to contact with Scandinavian: North Germanic is known to have undergone Jespersen’s Cycle earlier in its history, and the geographical distribution of early English stage III fits neatly with the earlier boundaries of the Danelaw.https://doi.org/10.1515/stap-2017-0007middle englishnegationdialectologylanguage contactcorpus linguistics
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Walkden George
Morrison Donald Alasdair
spellingShingle Walkden George
Morrison Donald Alasdair
Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
middle english
negation
dialectology
language contact
corpus linguistics
author_facet Walkden George
Morrison Donald Alasdair
author_sort Walkden George
title Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English
title_short Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English
title_full Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English
title_fullStr Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English
title_full_unstemmed Regional Variation in Jespersen’s Cycle in Early Middle English
title_sort regional variation in jespersen’s cycle in early middle english
publisher Sciendo
series Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
issn 0081-6272
2082-5102
publishDate 2017-12-01
description In this paper we investigate the place of origin of the change from Jespersen’s Cycle stage II – bipartite ne + not – to stage III, not alone. We use the LAEME corpus to investigate the dialectal distribution in more detail, finding that the change must have begun in Northern and Eastern England. A strong effect of region and time period can be clearly observed, with certain linguistic factors also playing a role. We attribute the early onset of the change to contact with Scandinavian: North Germanic is known to have undergone Jespersen’s Cycle earlier in its history, and the geographical distribution of early English stage III fits neatly with the earlier boundaries of the Danelaw.
topic middle english
negation
dialectology
language contact
corpus linguistics
url https://doi.org/10.1515/stap-2017-0007
work_keys_str_mv AT walkdengeorge regionalvariationinjespersenscycleinearlymiddleenglish
AT morrisondonaldalasdair regionalvariationinjespersenscycleinearlymiddleenglish
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