Herbert Schendl – författare

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.

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.

This volume presents Middle English studies as a modern discipline which unites linguistics, literature, philology, the history of ideas, textual studies including recent developments in the study of text types and genres, as well as the sociohistorical perspective. This large variety of both traditional and new approaches is mirrored in the four main parts of the book, starting with texts and text types, and moving on to vocabulary, syntax and morphology, and finally phonology and orthography. Aspects of language contact as well as corpus linguistic studies are also addressed in a number of contributions. Authors are leading experts in their fields, and come from the United States, South Africa, and all parts of Europe.

The volume features new work in English historical linguistics. It focuses on Medieval Englishes, but also discusses how processes originating there continued to unfold in later stages of linguistic evolution. In language internal terms, it deals with phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic constituents. At the same time, cognitive, pragmatic and social factors are taken into account. All contributions go back to papers delivered at the 13th International Conference of English Historical Linguistics, held at Vienna in 2004. They address central questions from new perspectives, report empirical findings, point out new directions for research, make new methods relevant for the historical study of English, manage to revise established views, and provide a good survey of issues currently discussed in the community of historical English linguists.