Old and Middle English language

The present article investigates the representation of Judith, the protagonist of the Old English poem preserved in the Beowulf Manuscript, based on episodes from the Old Testament Book of Judith. It argues that Judith makes significant additions to the biblical source with the aim of presenting the heroine as a figure of wisdom and justice. It also argues that such a representation of Judith is significant given the historical context of the composition of the poem.

Readers of Icelandic travel literature and visitors to Snæfellsnes are regaled with assertions that Columbus wintered near present-day Hellissandur in 1476-77 and that the memory of his stay has been passed on by oral tradition. However, there's good reason to believe that this lore is a 20th-century phenomenon, based on an 1886 short story by Danish author Sophus Bauditz, "Den fremmede I Rif," which first appeared in Icelandic as "Kólumbus á Íslandi" in the Winnipeg newspaper "Heimskringla" in 1889. A careful exploration of the evolution of the legend reveals that the story told today is almost certainly a case of fiction historicized.

This translation from the original Danish was done by Stefan Jonasson, editor of Lögberg-Heimskringla, in 2021 with cross comparisons to the Swedish and Icelandic versions. This is believed to be the story's first translation into English.

Following its original publication in Sophus Bauditz’s collection, Klokkestøberen og andre noveller (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1886), the story appeared in Swedish translation as “Columbus på Island” in Svenska Tribunen (Chicago, 1889) and was then translated from Swedish into Icelandic as “Kólumbus á Íslandi” for Heimskringla (Winnipeg, 1891).

It subsequently appeared in the Danish American magazine Dagen (Minneapolis, 1901) and then in a fresh and fuller translation into Icelandic as “Gesturinn á Ingjaldshóli” in Haukur (Reykjavík, 1901-1902). A translation by Jón Jónsson frá Sleðbrjót, “Gesturinn í Rifi,” appeared in Syrpa (Winnipeg, 1913), a periodical published by Ólafur S. Thorgeirsson.

It is a pleasure to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Mr George Jack at the University of St. Andrews for his constant advice and constructive criticism about my work. Without his continuing help and encouragement, my research could hardly have resulted in the present thesis. My thanks are also due to many members at the

Investigations on alternative control methods to chemicals including usage of plant extract for plant fungal disease take important place in current researches. Plant extracts are generally deemed to be less hazardous than synthetic compounds and could be alternative to antifungal treatments. In this study, the purpose was screening of some plant extracts against Fusarium culmorum causing foot and root rot on different small-grain cereals, in particular wheat and barley. In total 6 plant species including levander (Lavandula angustifolia), common mullein (Verbascum thapsus), common sorrel (Rumex acetosa), wood avens (Geum urbanum), poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) consisted the materials in the study. The antifungal effects of three different concentrations (20%, 40%, and 80%) of each extracted plant, obtained from dried plant parts in methanol, were evaluated on growth of F. culmorum by dual test technic on PDA (Potato Dextrose Agar). The maximum in vit...

This paper investigates the lexis associated with the church and the manor, two major institutions of medieval England, in order to assess the effects of language contact across lexical domains and levels of specificity. The data for this study, consisting of lexical items denoting locations and objects, was extracted from existing thesauri and analysed in terms of source languages, technicality, and survival, with the aim of finding out to what extent the influence of borrowing from French and Latin varied depending on the domain and level of specificity of meaning.

The results reveal a consistent predominance of Romance-origin lexis in the domain relating to the church and of native English lexis in the manorial vocabulary across all levels of specificity, although some variation was found in the subsets relating to locations and objects. In addition, survival rates are relatively higher in the religious vocabulary; however, neither of the two domains displays a considerable difference in loss of lexical material between different languages during the Middle English period. The differences and commonalities identified between the two lexical domains reveal the ways in which language contact operated in two major multilingual contexts of post-Conquest England.

currently holds the Swiss lectureship in German language, literature and culture at the University of Limerick, Ireland, having previously taught at the University of Zurich. He was one of the compilers of ZEN (Zurich English Newspaper Corpus), and he has recently completed his PhD in the field of early media language.

Abstrak : Tulisan ini membahas tentang pengaruh Bahasa Prancis terhadap Bahasa Inggris. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa sejarah lahirnya Bahasa Inggris tidak terlepas dari asal muasal peminjaman kosa kata dari bahasa lain, misalnya Bahasa Prancis. Sebagaian dari stok kosa kata Bahasa Inggris moderen berasal dari atau meminjam vocabulary Bahasa Prancis. Kata-kata pinjaman atau loanwords tersebut berkaitan dengan berbagai bidang seperti hubungan dan kedudukan sosial masyarakat, fashion, seni dan sastra, politik, pendidikan, makanan, hukum, pemerintahan dan administrasi, dll. Pengaruh budaya Prancis tercermin dalam sebagian kosa kata yang terdapat dalam Bahasa Inggris akibat pengaruh penjajahan beberapa abad yang lalu. Kata kunci : Role of French Language, - History of English.

Abstract: The motto of the royal coat of arms of The United Kingdom, Dieu et mon droit (God and my right), is in French. This is because the Norman Conquest (1066) has changed English considerably through an influx of Norman-French borrowings. Therefore, the focus of this study is to describe the Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Franco language contact and its linguistic outcome during the Middle Ages, the period of the main influx of Norman-French loanwords. Unfortunately, the Norman-French influence is underestimated, which will be analyzed as well. To do so, the Norman-French linguistic impact on English and the rebirth of English will be examined. The research for this study was conducted through a descriptive approach, which provides categorized examples, such as wordlists, for the reader’s comprehension. Concluded is that the changed spelling and pronunciation of English have been responsible for underestimating the Norman-French influence on the English language. Overall, this study may contribute to the acknowledgement of the Norman-French influence on English and that rivalry amongst languages is irrelevant as each language has its significance.
Keywords: Language Contact; Norman-French Loanwords; English Language; Norman Conquest.

Investigations on alternative control methods to chemicals including usage of plant extract for plant fungal disease take important place in current researches. Plant extracts are generally deemed to be less hazardous than synthetic compounds and could be alternative to antifungal treatments. In this study, the purpose was screening of some plant extracts against Fusarium culmorum causing foot and root rot on different small-grain cereals, in particular wheat and barley. In total 6 plant species including levander (Lavandula angustifolia), common mullein (Verbascum thapsus), common sorrel (Rumex acetosa), wood avens (Geum urbanum), poison hemlock (Conium maculatum), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) consisted the materials in the study. The antifungal effects of three different concentrations (20%, 40%, and 80%) of each extracted plant, obtained from dried plant parts in methanol, were evaluated on growth of F. culmorum by dual test technic on PDA (Potato Dextrose Agar). The maximum in vit...

The main goal of the paper is to show the value of texts preserved in more than one version for studies aimed at identifying reasons for the demise of words. The data selected is a set of six non-surviving English preterite-present verbs. The analysis of the material shows that mediaeval manuscripts often exhibit orthographic and morphological variation as well as differ in lexemes. Such differences prove to be useful for the search of factors leading to the elimination of the verbs in question.

There are some languages that try to avoid as far they can the use of alien terms. They do this by forming new words that are made up of native elements. English, how­ ever, has always made use of foreign words. The English language has been particular­ ly open to foreign influences (Serjeantson 1993: 1). English has borrowed words from several languages over the course of its histo­ ry. A great deal of the foreign elements in the English lexicon are of Latin or French origin, but several other languages have influenced English as well, e.g. Scandinavian. In my article I discuss Latin loanwords throughout the history of the English language. It must be kept in mind that French also had a great impact on the vocabulary of Eng­ lish, due to political reasons.1 Research has been made by several scholars, and there are a lot of good books that discuss foreign influence on the English language. These books are about the histo­ ry of the language, and they have a chapter about lexis where...

The Anglo-Saxon era in England, approximately between 400AD and 1000AD is described today as 'The Dark Ages'. For centuries, the popular paradigm of history saw this time as a primitive period following the higher culture of Rome. The conquering Normans then found it convenient to resurrect this concept claiming a return to a higher culture similar that of Rome. Throughout history the need to denigrate the previous regime, often on flimsy precepts, has been magnified by limited right to that power as in the case of the Normans. Indeed, it is a standard practice still frequently utilised today by politicians and autocrats. Current re-evaluation free of Norman propaganda is throwing new light on those perceptions.The common Saxon man under the laws of Alfred the Great and his successors had much greater rights under this law than under the tyrannical Norman occupation for which William I, the Conqueror, also known as William the Bastard, apologised on his death bed. Saxon women enjoyed the rights to own land, to divorce on their terms, and even to command nations and armies. Norman women were placed on a pedestal, but it was a pedestal of disempowerment, a pedestal on which women functioned only as decorative brood mares. Centuries would pass before women in most countries of today's world would enjoy the same status as Saxon women, or as the men of today. In other countries of today's world, women still have a lower status than men, or than their Saxon sisters.

This paper offers new data bearing on the question of when English developed a defi nite article, distinct from the distal demonstrative. It focuses primarily on one criterion that has been used in dating this development, namely the inability of þe (Modern English the, the refl ex of the demonstrative se) to be used as a pronoun. I argue that this criterion is not a satisfactory one and propose a treatment of þe as a form which could occupy either the head D of DP or the specifi er of DP. This is an approach consistent with Crisma’s (2011) position that a defi nite article emerged within the Old English (OE) period. I offer a new piece of evidence supporting Crisma’s demonstration of a difference between OE poetry and the prose of the ninth century and later.

In a number of positions the Old English semivowels [j] and [w] (as in “dæg”, “flowan”) began losing articulatory strength and were eventually vocalized to [i] and [u], respectively, joining the preceding vowels (cf. the diphthongs in Modern English “day”, “flow”). The present study empirically analyzes and quantifies the influence of various factors on this sound change by looking at spellings of relevant word forms in the lexicogrammatically annotated text corpus published along with the “Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English” (LAEME) in 2013. Factors that are taken into account include spatial and temporal variables as well as a number of linguistic factors, such as the quantity and quality of the preceding vowels, or the question of which part of a syllable the respective semivowels originally belonged to.Die altenglischen Halbvokale [j] und [w] kamen in bestimmten Positionen vor (vgl. altenglisch “dæg”, “flowan”), in denen sie allmählich an Artikulationsstärke verloren, zu [...

The main goal of the paper is to show the value of texts preserved in more than one version for studies aimed at identifying reasons for the demise of words. The data selected is a set of six non-surviving English preterite-present verbs. The analysis of the material shows that mediaeval manuscripts often exhibit orthographic and morphological variation as well as differ in lexemes. Such differences prove to be useful for the search of factors leading to the elimination of the verbs in question.

The Scandinavians were one of the peoples whose stay in England was to affect the development of the English language in several and crucial ways. The impact of the Scandinavian language upon English, which may be studied from the perspective of the area of historical linguistics and language contact, was to be felt during the earliest stages of the development of the language, namely, the periods corresponding to Old and Middle English. However, the influence of Scandinavian upon English was not of the same nature in either of the above mentioned periods of the language. On the whole, it is admitted that whereas during the Old English period the influence may be reduced in general terms to the extra linguistic factors, its effects were to be felt more directly upon the language during the Middle English period. To give just an example, this is the case of the double system of declensions for the personal and possessive pronouns that can be found in Middle English, according to the ...

This paper offers new data bearing on the question of when English developed a defi nite article, distinct from the distal demonstrative. It focuses primarily on one criterion that has been used in dating this development, namely the inability of þe (Modern English the, the refl ex of the demonstrative se) to be used as a pronoun. I argue that this criterion is not a satisfactory one and propose a treatment of þe as a form which could occupy either the head D of DP or the specifi er of DP. This is an approach consistent with Crisma’s (2011) position that a defi nite article emerged within the Old English (OE) period. I offer a new piece of evidence supporting Crisma’s demonstration of a difference between OE poetry and the prose of the ninth century and later.

There are some languages that try to avoid as far they can the use of alien terms. They do this by forming new words that are made up of native elements. English, how­ ever, has always made use of foreign words. The English language has been particular­ ly open to foreign influences (Serjeantson 1993: 1). English has borrowed words from several languages over the course of its histo­ ry. A great deal of the foreign elements in the English lexicon are of Latin or French origin, but several other languages have influenced English as well, e.g. Scandinavian. In my article I discuss Latin loanwords throughout the history of the English language. It must be kept in mind that French also had a great impact on the vocabulary of Eng­ lish, due to political reasons.1 Research has been made by several scholars, and there are a lot of good books that discuss foreign influence on the English language. These books are about the histo­ ry of the language, and they have a chapter about lexis where...

The overseas expansion of the Norsemen during the so called Viking Age led to the settlement of the Frankish province of Neustria, later renamed Normandy. In the regions that saw intense, mainly Danish settlement, an insight into the relations between the newcomers and the existing Gallo-Frankish population can be gleaned by studying the effects the Danish tongue had on the native languages, especially Norman and, to a lesser degree, French. In other words, by applying modern language contact theories and methods to the historical situation that arose with the arrival of Norse invaders to the shores of northern France. The linguistic and nonlinguistic requirements for extensive lexical borrowing are many. In this paper we will endeavor to prove that the most relevant factor behind the extensive borrowing of maritime vocabulary undertaken by Norman speakers was the prestige the local population felt the Old Norse language had in certain fields of human activity, mainly boat-building, sailing and other maritime activities. Thus, the vast majority of Norse derived loanwords in Norman and French are of a technical nature and pertain to rigging, navigation methods, beams and strakes that make up a wooden sailing-ship's hull. Furthermore, direct contact between Spaniards and Norsemen was sporadic and mainly violent in nature, leaving little room for linguistic relations of any kind. Thus, the Old Norse derived vocabulary present in the Spanish language is the result of indirect borrowing from French and Norman that took place from the 14 th century onwards. With this in mind we will examine in what manner these French and Norman lexical items of Norse origin found their way into Spanish and the reasons behind the borrowing of these words.

In Old English the littera 'h' represented the reflexes of Germanic *x. The standard consensus is that these were foot initial [h] and post-nuclear [x~ç]. These functions were considerably expanded in early Middle English. Since English at this period was not 'classical' or institutionalised it did not require fixed spelling: neither natural variation nor scribal eccentricity was prevented from surfacing in written forms. Early Middle English texts therefore display a wide range of representational strategies. Aside from its retained historical uses, 'h' in early Middle English had a number of other functions. Certain scribes used 'h' for Ø; others used it as part of complex systems of diacritic representation in which it often appears to indicate either fricativeness in general or periods of 'unplaced' voicelessness within a syllable nucleus. In this paper we explore some of the segmental, diacritic and arguably 'decorative' uses of 'h'.

The late 9th century, the starting point for the Scandinavian influence, represents the period in which English extended the number of words that entered or appeared in Old and Middle English vocabulary. Despite their skills as very good sailors, they were often regarded as barbarians, invaders and predators. But the greatest influence was on vocabulary words connected to sea, law and administration. The language before the Norse invasion was a language with a rich inflectional system, but the simplification of the language was the first step in its evolution. The words entered the language during Old English but could be found in written texts only in Middle English. Linguists consider this influence a distinctive mark of the Scandinavian occupation of Britain, as more than 600 names of places are a confirmation of their effect on the Old English and Middle English vocabulary. All parts of speech were influenced by the Viking population, so nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs extended in number especially during Middle English. A very important contribution to Modern English vocabulary with Norse origin is represented by the days of the week, some of them evolved from Old Norse gods.

In this paper we report the results of a study designed to discover how many and at what point in time words were borrowed into English from the Classical languages Greek and Latin, and the Romance languages French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.2 Our results are based on the immediate donor languages and first citation dates identified by the Oxford English Dictionary (1989). Ours is certainly not the first study to have used dictionary information to determine when particular loanwords have entered the language, though few consider more than one language over a number of centuries (notable exceptions being Bliss (1966) and Serjeantson (1961)). More importantly, no study to date has taken into consideration more than a small sample of the words available in the dictionaries consulted. For example, Jesperson (1938), Baugh (1935) and Cannon (1987) use a sample of a thousand words, and Bauer (1994) a sample of 2078 words. The availability of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989) (hereafter referred to as the OED) on CD-Rom has enabled us to conduct a comprehensive study on the leading historical English language dictionary of the day. In total we considered 231,482 headwords and identified 77,335 Classical and Romance loanwords. However, an important caveat to our conclusions must be borne in mind, namely, that our conclusions can only be as accurate as the OED’ s identifications.
We shall start by describing the general problems that this study encountered, and the nature of our computer searches. We then move on to introduce our findings, relating them where relevant to extant work.

The few Norse loanwords attested in late Old English poetry can be shown to have added factual plausibility to poems in praise of prominent contemporaries. Why did such loans remain part of the vocabulary of poems after the Norman Conquest? And how did Norse loans attested in late Old English and early Middle English prose likewise become part of the Middle English poetic vocabulary? This paper shows that the uses of the Norse loans erl, dreng, swain, and gersum in post-Conquest poems reflect a partial loss of their connection with the real world. They had turned into means of poetic colouring applied to a prehistoric , largely fictional subject matter, mostly by poets who addressed audiences in regions that had come under strong Danelaw influence before the Norman Conquest.

Most of the Norse legal and administrative terms attested in Old English were replaced by equivalents from the French superstrate soon after the Norman Conquest, whereas a remarkable number of more basic terms are known to have become part of the very basic vocabulary of modern Standard English. This paper focuses on Norse lexical loans that survived during and beyond the period of French rule and became part of this basic vocabulary. It explores (1) the regional and textual conditions for the survival of such loans and (2) their expansion into late medieval London English and into the emerging standard language. Based on selective textual evidence it is argued that they were not quite as basic originally, that they typically survived and developed in regional centres far away from the French-dominated court, and eventually infiltrated the area in and around late medieval London owing to its growing attraction as an economic and intellectual centre. Both the survival of Norse loans and their later usage expansion are shown to be in harmony with the principles of comparative contact linguistics.

This is a survey article of the English loan words from Arabic language. The article begins with different conflicting views regarding the term "loan words" and the amount of the Arabic loan words in English from both points of views the English and the Arab linguists'.Then, a historical preview from the first Arabic words in Old English till the latest few words in the last decades is displayed considering the factors involved in borrowing from Arabic to English. Finally, there is a recommandationfollowed by a conclusion.

The  main  goal  of  the  paper  is  to  show  the  value  of  texts  preserved  in  more  than  one  version  for  studies  aimed  at  identifying  reasons  for  the  demise  of  words.  The  data  selected  is  a  set  of  six  non-surviving  English  preterite-present  verbs.  The  analysis  of  the  material  shows  that  mediaeval  manuscripts  often  exhibit  orthographic  and  morphological  variation  as  well  as  differ  in  lexemes.  Such differences prove to be useful for the search of factors leading to the elimination of the verbs in question.

The monograph contains seven chapters. Chapter One provides a new insight into the origin of Germanic preterite-present verbs based on a comparative analysis of Old English, Gothic and Old High German with occasional references to ancient Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic and Polish. Chapters from Two to Seven, based on Old and Middle English data available in two electronic text corpora, i.e. the DOE Corpus (for Old English) and the Innsbruck Corpus (for Middle English), discuss each of the six verbs separately. These chapters consist of sections that correspond to the Old and Middle English periods, and subsections which present morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the analyzed verbs in the two periods. The sections labelled as Beyond Middle English show the consequences of the morhological and semantic overlap between preterite-present verbs in later periods, especially Present-day English.
The analysis focuses on morpho-syntax (with elements of phonology) and semantics, also revealing the main synchronic and diachronic tendencies in the evolution of the mentioned verbs.

The present MA thesis presents an analysis of version D of the Early Middle English verse sermon known as the Poema Morale. The objectives of the study were to verify the present localisation of D in Western Kent and clarify its relations to two more copies of the same text (T and M). The research consistsed in analysing the language of the text it terms of its dialect and distinguishing between different layers of copying, where possible. The analysis was performed using the electronic tool Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, specific procedures included mainly analyses of maps showing the distribution of dialectal features found in D, which were complemented by discussions of forms which D shares with other Kentish texts or versions T and M. The aim of these discussions was the identification of words coming from the exemplar. Evidence supporting the localisation of D in Kent as well as forms presumably taken from the archetype were presented and put in the context of the results of previous studies. Abstrakt Diplomová práce se zabývá rozborem verze D raně středověkého textu známého pod názvem Poema Morale. Cílem studie bylo ověřit stávající lokalizaci verze D v západním Kentu a objasnit její vztah ke dvěma dalším opisům stejného díla (T a M). Výzkum spočíval v analýze jazyka textu z hlediska nářečí a rozlišováním mezi různými vrstvami opisování tam, kde to bylo možné. K rozboru byl využit elektronický nástroj Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English a konkrétní postupy zahrnovaly především tvorbu a analýzu map zobrazujících výskyt nářečních prvků v D, doplněnou o rozebrání forem, které má D společné buď s dalšími kentskými rukopisy nebo s verzemi T a M. Záměrem této druhé části rozboru byla identifikace slov zřejmě pocházejících z předlohy textu. Na závěr byly představeny důkazy ve prospěch současné lokalizace verze D i konkrétní formy, které pravděpodobně pocházejí z předlohy a obojí bylo uvedeno do souvislosti s výsledky předchozích studií.

The present study discusses the language and the linguistic provenance of a number of medical Middle English texts in Ms Ferguson 147 housed at Glasgow University Library. The focus is on the medical recipe collection found in folios 63r-91r. The hitherto unexplored compilation contains mostly medical recipes for different diseases, but prognostic texts and charms also form part of this miscellany. The analysis offered here is grounded in the model supplied by the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (McIntosh et al., 1986). Following the methodology developed by the authors of this work, I will try to localise the text dialectally using the Fit-Technique (Benskin, 1991) taking into consideration the combination of forms and features which are found in it. By identifying the Profile in the LALME one should be able to establish its provenance. Theoretically, the provenance would be that of the scribe, although sometimes this could be misleading since the same scribe copying from different sources could produce quite different Linguistic Profiles. In fact, Carrillo Linares (2005) studied the Antidotarium Nicholai, also held in this manuscript, and referred to a western origin, but no specific LALME Linguistic Profile has been identified so far. By comparing the information provided by her with the forms found in the recipe collection, it is apparent that some of the forms do not coincide, even if Ker (1977: 892) identified one single hand throughout the manuscript. Very often these compilations are unique. Both Eggins & Martins (1997: 230-231) and Taavitsainen (2001: 2) mention the fact that the realisations of texts vary according to the target audience in terms of the style of writing adjusting it to professional, lay or more heterogeneous readership according to their knowledge of the topic. Even if the scribe was based on a common western tradition, the copyist could enlarge the original compendia with some other recipes from different sources. Without reaching a level which constitutes a Mischprache (Benkins & Laing, 1981), the choices of scribes are several, as they have passive and active repertoires, and their selection in a particular text does not mean that they would do the same in other contexts. It would be ideal to have parallel texts by the same copyist to compare the results of the analysis of every text, but to my knowledge there is no other text which is genetically related nor has the scribe been identified. Thus, as the manuscript does not have any extra linguistic evidence of provenance, the language is the only resource available to place it geographically.

The Prioress is a paradoxical character in Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”. In the
General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales she is described as a religious woman who was
so compassionate that cried over dead mice. She also kept pet dogs and fed them with the
best food. It was expected from a Christian woman in the church at that time to be low profile
and help the poor instead of keeping lap dogs. However, as being a noble woman and a
prioress she could indulge herself by keeping her dogs and her privileges. She is originally
called Madame Eglentyne and is a noble woman of good manners and educated compared
to other women in the same time period, who tried to speak French, which was the language
used by nobles at the time, and whoever learned French was doing so for social climb. Her
good manners on the table show how concerned with her self image she is, which is not
appropriate for a prioress.

This paper offers new data bearing on the question of when English developed a defi nite article, distinct from the distal demonstrative. It focuses primarily on one criterion that has been used in dating this development, namely the inability of þe (Modern English the, the refl ex of the demonstrative se) to be used as a pronoun. I argue that this criterion is not a satisfactory one and propose a treatment of þe as a form which could occupy either the head D of DP or the specifi er of DP. This is an approach consistent with Crisma's (2011) position that a defi nite article emerged within the Old English (OE) period. I offer a new piece of evidence supporting Crisma's demonstration of a difference between OE poetry and the prose of the ninth century and later.

This is a survey article of the English loan words from Arabic language. The article begins with different conflicting views regarding the term "loan words" and the amount of the Arabic loan words in English from both points of views the English and the Arab linguists'.Then, a historical preview from the first Arabic words in Old English till the latest few words in the last decades is displayed considering the factors involved in borrowing from Arabic to English. Finally, there is a recommandationfollowed by a conclusion.

This article traces the history of the construction in which a demonstrative precedes a possessive in English, the Dem Poss construction. The relationship of this construction to the 'double genitive' construction (e.g. 'these letters of ours) is examined.

The complex linguistic situation in the ME period, with widespread multilingualism and initial diglossia, has led to frequent contact-induced changes on all linguistic levels of English. The present chapter starts with a brief discussion of the relation between language contact and change and of the changing nature of ME multilingualism; then some specific research questions are introduced, such as the controversial issue of ME creolization, the frequent use of code-switching in medieval texts, and the possible Celtic influence on English. The remaining sections deal in some detail with contact-induced change on the various linguistic levels: while foreign lexical influence is well established, contactinduced structural changes are more controversial, since here a native origin is often equally possible. In many cases, especially of syntactic change, a polygenetic origin seems more plausible than a monocausal explanation. In any case, the extensive restructuring of Middle English cannot be explained without close linguistic contact.

This article focuses on the images and texts on page 3 of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, in which Lucifer foments rebellion, falls, and, as Satan, is bound to the mouth of hell. The bottom third of the page contains an image of falling angels, Satan, and the hellmouth. Above that image and to the left is written “hER SE,” Old English for “here that” or “here the.” We contend that this fragmentary textual note exaggerates both the linguistic function of other here x did y formulae in the manuscript and the interaction between these formulae and the visual images. Such exaggeration in the textual note at the very space and moment between the representation of rebellion and that of the completed transformation of Lucifer into Satan locates that metamorphosis in the act of reading-viewing itself. We consider the composition of the image and its inscriptions and set them into the context of Richard Drew’s Falling Man. Viewing the fall of Satan as part of a sequence of images and texts, we argue for the collaborative role of the viewer in sequential art and contend that Satan, as he appears in this depiction, is not safely distant from the reader-viewer but rather becoming through the active engagement of the viewer and reader in the creation of the world of image and language.

This article claims that there are major problems with existing classifications of Latin loanwords into Old English. These deficiencies spring not so much from the paucity of the Old English linguistic record, as a comparison with several much better documented Finnish loans into Modern English shows, but rather from methodological imprecision, which results in many lexical items being too hastily labelled with the umbrella term "lexical loan". Alternative terms are suggested for the twelve Finnish and six Old English words investigated in the article, based on their frequency, integration, the registers that they belong to, and the historical and cultural developments that they document.

Timofeeva, Olga (2013) “Latin Loans in Old English and Finnish Loans in Modern English: Can We Distinguish Statistics from Myth?” in Selected Proceedings of the 2012 Symposium on New Approaches in English Historical Lexis (HEL-LEX3), ed. by R.W. McConchie, Teo Juvonen, Mark Kaunisto, Minna Nevala, and Jukka Tyrkkö. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
http://www.lingref.com/cpp/hel-lex/2012/paper2845.pdf

In this article, the author attempts to sift out from Old Norse (ON) written sources the early Viking Age terms for ship types and to link them to actual ships and ship depictions from that period. The author argues that knǫrr, beit, skeið, kjóll, askr, and elliði were the main ship types of the early Viking Age in Scandinavia, at least in the west, and that knerrir referred during this period to warships like Oseberg and only later to cargo ships like Skuldelev 1. ‘A ship with a backwards curved stem’ seems to have been the original meaning of knǫrr. Kjólar were heavy, all-round ships like Gokstad, the author argues, and beit were very early ships with angular stems known from depictions. Skeiðar were low, narrow ships like Ladby. Askar were also very early, small, light ships with stitched planking, whereas elliðar were combined inland / sea vessels, originally Eastern  European.

This paper discusses the role of prestige in the contact of English with its most important donor languages, Celtic, Old Norse, French, and Latin, in this order. It shows that the prestige of a donor language can only partly be correlated with its stratal relation to the recipient language. Moreover, it demonstrates that by focussing on the stratal relation of a donor language with its recipient language under specific historical and social conditions, the likely motivations for borrowing can be ascertained with greater explanatory precision. The arguments presented are based on various kinds of comparative assessments of the evidence for language contact, namely (1) evidence from different donor languages of English, (2) evidence from one and the same donor language in different periods, and (3) evidence from English and other recipient languages in response to the same donor language.