{"id":839,"date":"2010-09-02T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=839"},"modified":"2010-06-23T10:23:06","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T08:23:06","slug":"handbook-of-middle-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=839","title":{"rendered":"Handbook of Middle English"},"content":{"rendered":"
Handbook of Middle English: <\/strong>Grammar and texts. By Luis Iglesias R\u00e1bade<\/strong>. (Studies in English linguistics 05.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2008. Pp. 630. ISBN 9783895869709<\/a>. $177.10 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Alessandra Cingi<\/strong>, Swansea University<\/em><\/p>\n

The Middle English (ME) period, from 1100 to 1500, was a time of great social transformation in Britain, which resulted in deep changes to all aspects of the English language. In this volume, Luis Iglesias R\u00e1bade explores, with the help of ME texts, the evolution of English from preconquest to the language we currently speak.<\/p>\n

Following a sociolinguistic overview of ME in Britain, the book is divided into four parts, which discuss morphology, phonology, syntax, and a collection of prose and verse texts.<\/p>\n

In Part 1, Chs. 1 and 2 analyze ME determiners and heads of noun phrases, including gender, number, case, and inflectional endings. Ch. 3 deals with adjectives, and Ch. 4 is dedicated to verbs, exploring weak and strong classes, mood, aspect, and voice.<\/p>\n

R then moves on to phonology, opening Part 2 with an outline of ME phonemes and syllable quality in Ch. 5. A detailed analysis of vowels is provided in Ch. 6, which illustrates the shift from each Old English vowel to its ME equivalent. Ch. 7 traces the evolution of diphthongs. The study of vowels concludes with Ch. 8, which explores vowel development in unaccented syllables as well as the weakening and loss of final schwa. Consonants and their length, voicing or devoicing, assimilation, and metathesis are discussed in Ch. 9. Ch. 10 concludes the discussion of phonology with an account of the Scandinavian influence on English phonology and spelling, coupled with a list of criteria to determine whether an English word is of Scandinavian origin.<\/p>\n

In Part 3, R begins the discussion of syntax with an exploration of the grammatical categories in Ch. 11 and morphemes and words in Ch. 12. Chs. 13 through 17 investigate noun, adjective, verb, preposition, and adverb phrases. Chs. 18 and 19 are concerned with the structure of kernel clauses and with interrogative and negative clauses, respectively. A description of simple, multiple, and complex grammatical units is provided in Ch. 20. Ch. 21 overviews multiple and complex clauses, and Ch. 22 details noun, comparative, and adverbial clauses. Finally, in Ch. 23, R turns his attention to paratactic structures and the workings of apposition and coordination in ME.<\/p>\n

Part 4 includes ten ME texts. Some texts are well-known (e.g. Peterborough chronicle<\/em> and The owl and the nightingale<\/em>), whereas other texts are more unusual (e.g. Dame Sirith<\/em> and Cursor Mundi<\/em>). Each text is introduced by a foreword, which sets the historical and literary context and specifies the dialect and other details of the manuscript. A glossary follows each text, which provides the specific meaning of words in the context in which they appear.<\/p>\n

This volume has several virtues, including its clarity of exposition, its richness of examples, and its coverage of many ME dialects. R does not presuppose an understanding of morphology and syntax: he thoroughly explains each concept. Moreover, R presents the ME period as a continuum from Old to Present English rather than as a snapshot frozen in time. For these reasons, this volume will be a useful tool for under- and postgraduate students of English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Handbook of Middle English: Grammar and texts. By Luis Iglesias R\u00e1bade. (Studies in English linguistics 05.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2008. Pp. 630. ISBN 9783895869709. $177.10 (Hb). Reviewed by Alessandra Cingi, Swansea University The Middle English (ME) period, from 1100 to 1500, was a time of great social transformation in Britain, which resulted in deep changes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}