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Lexical borrowing in the Middle English period: a multi-domain analysis of semantic outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

LOUISE SYLVESTER ,
MEGAN TIDDEMAN  and
RICHARD INGHAM
LOUISE SYLVESTER
Affiliation:
University of Westminster 309 Regent Street London W1B 2HW UK l.sylvester@westminster.ac.uk m.tiddeman@westminster.ac.uk r.ingham@westminster.ac.uk
MEGAN TIDDEMAN
Affiliation:
University of Westminster 309 Regent Street London W1B 2HW UK l.sylvester@westminster.ac.uk m.tiddeman@westminster.ac.uk r.ingham@westminster.ac.uk
RICHARD INGHAM
Affiliation:
University of Westminster 309 Regent Street London W1B 2HW UK l.sylvester@westminster.ac.uk m.tiddeman@westminster.ac.uk r.ingham@westminster.ac.uk
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Abstract

The Middle English period is well known as one of widespread lexical borrowing from French and Latin, and scholarly accounts traditionally assume that this influx of loanwords caused many native terms to shift in sense or to drop out of use entirely. The study analyses an extensive dataset, tracking patterns in lexical retention, replacement and semantic change, and comparing long-term outcomes for both native and non-native words. Our results challenge the conventional view of competition between existing terms and foreign incomers. They show that there were far fewer instances of relexification, and far more of synonymy, during the Middle English period than might have been expected. When retention rates for words first attested between 1100 and 1500 are compared, it is loanwords, not native terms, which are more likely to become obsolete at any point up to the nineteenth century. Furthermore, proportions of outcomes involving narrowing and broadening (often considered common outcomes following the arrival of a co-hyponym in a semantic space) were low in the Middle English period, regardless of language of origin.

Keywords

lexical borrowinglexical replacementsemantic shiftco-hyponyms
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 237 - 261
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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