In Chapter 4 we considered a number of theoretical and methodological insights which feed into our understanding of what happens when closely related but linguistically discrete varieties come into contact. In this chapter we will consider in more detail this type of development, focusing on one particular set of contacts in the history of the English language. The theoretical positions discussed and assessed in this book will be regularly measured against the evidence presented here.

English and typological change

The English language as it now stands is strikingly different typologically from its earliest recorded ancestor, Old English. Of course, this is true for many language varieties when we either have texts dating from earlier forms of the language or can reconstruct ancestral forms consistently. What is striking about English, however, is that many of these profound changes were primarily confined to a particular stage in the language's development – the late Old English and early Middle English periods (roughly, 950–1300) – and that, when evidence is available, the actual changes involved took between two to three generations to pass through any one dialect. The level and speed of change involved are considerable.

A particularly apposite example of this can be found in the two continuations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle produced in the monastery at Peterborough in the south-east English Midlands in the first half of the twelfth century (as discussed in Millar 2012: 115–18; see also Watts 2011: 8). The two monks who wrote the continuations were, we can surmise, relatively old. It is tempting to see the creation and continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle as essentially representing use close to home or even primarily by the writers. We have no way of knowing the extent to which the birth dates of the two continuators differed, but it does seem likely, given the linguistic contrasts between the sections, that a gap of at least one generation was present.