Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain

Laura Wright is a Reader in English Language at the University of Cambridge, where she works on the history of English. LISA JEFFERSON holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford. She is the editor of Wardens' Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths' Mistery of London, 1334-1446 (Boydell, 2003) and The Medieval Account Books of the Mercers of London. An Edition and Translation (Ashgate/now Routledge, 2009).

The papers take three general approaches to their subject matter, emphasizing the historical background of medieval language contact, code swuitching, or the lexicographical consequences of multilingualism. At their best these papers apply contemporary linguistic analyses to historical events in ways that illuminate both, and that material advance understanding of medieval multilingualism.

• - D A TrotterThe Welsh and English languages in late-medieval Wales - Llinos Beverley SmithHistorical background of multilingualism and its impact on English - Begona Crespo GarciaL'intellectuel 'anglo-normand' face à la pluralité des langues: le témoignage implicite du ms. Oxford, Magdalen 188 - Andres M KristolCollecting miracles along the Anglo-Welsh border in the early fourteenth century - Michael RichterThe languages of the law in later medieval England - Paul A BrandLinguistic aspects of code-switching in medieval English texts - Herbert SchendlFrench phrasal power in late Middle English. Some evidence concerning the verb nime(n)/take(n) - Luis Iglesias RabadeCode-switching in medical texts - Tony HuntBills, accounts, inventories: everyday trilingual activities in the business world of later medieval England - Laura WrightOne-fold lexicography for a manifold problem? - Frankwalt MohrenMedieval multilingualism and the revision of the OED - E S C WeinerThe language and vocabulary of the fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century records of the Goldsmiths' Company - Lisa JeffersonAspects of lexical and morphosyntactical mixing in the languages of medieval England - William Rothwell