Medieval English in a Multilingual Context

Sara M. Pons-Sanz is Reader in Language and Communication at Cardiff University, UK. She led the AHRC-funded network Medieval English (ca600-1500) in a Multilingual Context and co-led the AHRC-funded Gersum Project. She is the author of The Lexical Effects of Anglo-Scandinavian Linguistic Contact on Old English, and other books and articles on medieval English.  Louise Sylvester is Professor of English Language at the University of Westminster, UK. She co-edited the Bilingual Thesaurus of Everyday Life in Medieval England and the multilingual database Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain c700-1450. She has published widely on the effects of contact with French on the vocabulary of Middle English.

“This excellent volume contains individually strong chapters that have been thoughtfully curated by editors Sara M. Pons-Sanz and Louise Sylvester … . this is an impressive collection that moves the field forward in exciting ways while also making clear the rich potential for future studies. The chapters are uniformly of high quality and interest … . Medieval English in a Multilingual Context is a valuable contribution to the field in far more than a linguistic context.” (Lindy Brady, SELIM - Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, Vol. 29 (1), 2024)

• Chapter 1: Introduction Part I Research Contexts Chapter 2: Contact Theory and the History of English Chapter 3: From Original Sources to Linguistic Analysis: Tools and Datasets for the Investigation of Multilingualism in Medieval EnglishPart II Medieval Multilingualism and Lexical Change Chapter 4: Contact-Induced Lexical Effects in Medieval English Chapter 5: The West Germanic Heritage of Yorkshire English Chapter 6: Reframing the Interaction between Native Terms and Loanwords: Some Data from Occupational Domains in Middle EnglishChapter 7: Cheapside in Wales: Multilingualism and Textiles in Medieval Welsh Poetry Chapter 8: Caxton’s Linguistic and Literary Multilingualism: English, French and Dutch in the History of Jason Part III Medieval Multilingualism and Morphosyntactic Change Chapter 9: An Overview of Contact-Induced MorphosyntacticChanges in Early English Chapter 10: Traces of Language Contact in Nominal Morphology of Late Northumbrian and Northern Middle English Chapter 11: Origin and Spread of the Personal Pronoun They: La Estorie del Evangelie, a Case Study Chapter 12: Language Contact Effects on Verb Semantic Classes: Lability in Early English and Old French Chapter 13: Exploring Norn: A Historical Heritage Language of the British Isles  Part IV Textual Manifestations of Medieval MultilingualismChapter 14: Textual and Codicological Manifestations of Multilingual Culture in Medieval England Chapter 15: Adapting Winefride in Welsh, Latin and English Chapter 16: Let Each One Tell its Own Story: Language Mixing in Four Copies of Amore Langueo Chapter 17: The Materiality of the Manières de langage Chapter 18 Afterword