Late Middle English incipient standards 1. Contact influence

Terttu Nevalainen

3. Late Middle English incipient standards 1. Contact influence

The transition from exoglossic to endoglossic norms in Late Middle Eng-lish (c. 1350–1500) did not take place without considerable contact influ-ence. Through wide-ranging trilingualism of the literate social ranks and extensive lexical borrowing, Latin and French spelling conventions left their marks on the emerging standard of English. In systemic terms, the basic phonemic fit between English spelling and pronunciation was weak-ened by the adoption of new digraphs and grapheme/phoneme correspon-dences.

In the course of the Middle English period, the non-Latin letters thorn

<þ>, eth <ð>, ash <æ> and yogh <>, used in Old and Early Middle Eng-lish, were gradually replaced by Latin equivalents. Thorn and eth were replaced with the digraph <th> (this, with), ash by <a> (that), and yogh typically with <gh> and <y> (thought, you). New spelling conventions were introduced as <j> and <v> were used as allographs of and , respectively, and <y> and became interchangeable.

Following French orthography, the digraph <ou> came to be used for the Middle English long /u/ (house), and <o> for the short /u/ (come, love).

Other long vowels were often marked by doubling the vowel symbol, as in

<ee> for /e/ and <oo> for /o/. In the consonant system, besides the regular

<s> (see), <c> came to be used for /s/ before front vowels not only in loan words (cellar) but in native words such as mice (cf. mouse). The digraph

<qu> replaced <cw> in words such as queen (OE cwen). As shown in detail by Scragg (1974), these multiple conventions arising from language contact complicated the emergent English spelling norms.

However, it should be borne in mind that the late medieval spelling sys-tem of English – to the extent that we can talk about one syssys-tem – was characterized by a high degree of regional variation and general instability.

Additional fluctuation was caused by the erosion of the inflectional system in Late Old and Early Middle English, which reduced word-final endings to an unstressed vowel, typically represented by <e> in later texts.

Although the focus of this volume is on the 16th century, the major steps towards the standardization of English spelling, the reduction in local-izable spelling conventions, that had already been taken in the previous century deserve to be discussed in some detail. They include – in Haugen’s terms (1997 [1966]) – the selection of the variety to undergo standardiza-tion and its acceptance first by institustandardiza-tions contributing to the process and later by the language community at large.

3.2. Focusing of spelling in Late Middle English

Middle English scholarship distinguishes several writing norms that tended towards regularization of spelling and morphology in the 14th and 15th centuries. Information about them, and the regional variation of English in that period, has been accumulated by the LALME project, and the research tool produced by it, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (McIn-tosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986). On the basis of dialect comparisons Samuels (1963) established four incipient written standards, which he calls Types I to IV. All four display a fair amount of spelling variation, but Types I and IV are more focused than II and especially III.

Type I, used from the mid-14th century onwards, has come to be known as Central Midland Standard because it was based on dialects of the Central Midland counties, especially Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bed-fordshire. Typical Type I spellings include mych ‘much’, ony ‘any’, sich

‘such’ and silf ‘self’. Features of this incipient standard are found in a large number of texts, in particular, in the religious writings of John Wycliffe (d. 1384) and his followers – tracts, sermons, and all copies of the later and

many of the earlier versions of the Lollard Bible. Type I written language was widely copied and survived until the late 15th century (Samuels 1963:

84–85). Later research has shown that it was common in vernacular medi-cal writings of the period (Taavitsainen 2000, 2004).

The other three incipient standards were directly connected with the London area, and it is suggested that their differences reflect the changing patterns of immigration to the capital from different parts of the country at different times (Samuels 1963: 91, McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986:

27). The earliest, Type II, consists of a group of 14th-century texts. The Auchinleck manuscript, dated to the 1330s, is taken to be representative of this group. It contains saints’ lives and legends, religious verse and ro-mances. Type II features include the present-participle ending -ande ‘-ing’, eld(e) ‘old’, noþer/noiþer ‘neither’, werld ‘world’.

Type III represents a later type of London writing and appears in texts copied in the late 14th century. These are mostly literary and include the best Chaucerian manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, a copy of Piers Plowman, writings of the poet and clerk Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1367–1426), as well as a number of London documents. Type III texts are characterized by features such as bot ‘but’, nat ‘not’, swich(e) ‘such’, thise ‘these’, and yaf ‘gave’, but also by neither, they, though, and world, which form part of the modern standard (Samuels 1963: 88–89).

Type IV, “Chancery Standard”, is the latest of the incipient standards associated with the capital. It is found in government documents issued by the Chancery, the Exchequer, the Privy Seal Office and the Signet Office from c. 1430 onwards. Evidently it was the Signet Office, the King’s small personal writing office, that provided the model – albeit a variable one – that the others accommodated to. Forms identified as typical of Type IV include but, not, thes(e) ‘these’, theyre ‘their’ and such(e), but also gaf

‘gave’, shulde ‘should’ and thorough/þorowe ‘through’.

These usages spread as English administrative and legal documents were issued, copied and disseminated within and by the government of-fices. The Inns of Chancery and Inns of Court were active in training their staff, other clerks, and common lawyers to master the form and content of these documents in Latin and French, and, it is assumed, also in English.

Besides Samuels (1963: 88–93), Chancery Standard is discussed and illus-trated, e.g., by Richardson (1980), Fisher, Richardson and Fisher (1984), McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin (1986: 47–49), Fisher (1996: 36–64) and Smith (1996: 68–73). Benskin (1992, 2004) criticizes some received views, notably those by Fisher and his associates, on Chancery Standard as

inaccu-rate, and calls for more empirical research especially on the regional diffu-sion of standards.

The LALME project shows that, apart from the incipient standards first identified by Samuels (1963), Late Middle English was characterized by extensive use of “colourless” mixtures of regional dialects in non-literary texts. They were unstable and showed local register variation, but as they displayed the more widespread features of their respective varieties to the exclusion of those that were more distinctly local, these usages are often referred to as “colourless regional standard” (McIntosh, Samuels and Bens-kin 1986: 47, Smith 1996: 73–77, BensBens-kin 1992: 82–85).

Dialectal levelling of this kind can also be found in other medieval European vernaculars before standardization set in (Auer 2005: 10).

I would assume that levelled usages suppressed stereotypical and socio-stylistically marked features of regional dialects, i.e., those features that had risen above the level of social awareness in the discourse community.

These “regional standards in the making”, as Benskin (1992: 84) calls them, may have served as a regionally neutralized backdrop for the assimi-lation of more focused, nationwide norms.⁴

3.3. A Lancastrian language policy?

Before the 1430s, the use of English by the royal writing offices was the exception rather than the rule. It was during his second campaign to France in 1417–1422 that King Henry V (1387–1422) began to dispatch most of his official correspondence home in English instead of French, as had been the custom before. It is commonly held that probably his reasons for doing so were not only strategic, prompted by enemy intelligence, but also finan-cial: by using the vernacular the King hoped to enlist support from the citi-zens of London (Richardson 1980: 740–741, Fisher 1996: 20–23).

John H. Fisher (1996: 20–30) goes on to argue that the decision must have been part of King Henry’s deliberate language policy to justify the Lancastrian claim to the throne by promoting English nationalism among the wealthy citizens of London and other English cities against the French-speaking nobility. Another indication of this policy was, according to Fisher (1996: 28), the upsurge in the production of copies of literary works in English, Chaucer manuscripts in particular, during the Lancastrian era.

Not all writers espouse Fisher’s views of Lancastrian nation-building by means of a deliberate language policy. Blake (1997b), for one, expresses his reservations concerning deliberate planning and management, and also

remarks that many Chaucerian manuscripts were produced in the early part of the 15th century and some possibly in the late 14th century, as were manuscripts of the poems of Chaucer’s contemporary John Gower (d. 1408). Blake’s conclusion (1997b: 512–513) is that Henry V is likely to have taken some interest in the language of his letters, but it does not fol-low from this that Lancastrian kings had a deliberate language policy.

Whatever the ultimate motivation for Henry V’s adoption of English in his missives may have been, the clerks of his Signet Office came to select the basic reference variety to be utilized for the purpose. There had been two local norms in the London area in the 14th century, Types II and III, but no direct continuity can be traced between this first supralocal written norm and its predecessors although Chancery Standard was also London-based (see 3.4.). However, had the King decided to retain the city of York as the seat of government, as it had been some hundred years earlier, the choice would probably have been in favour of a northern reference variety rather than a southern one (cf. Heikkonen 1996: 116).

Institutional support may partly account for the success of Chancery Standard in comparison with the other incipient standards. Administrative and literary texts typically enjoy a rather different institutional status. Once Chancery Standard was adopted by the various government offices in their English communication around 1430, it was “backed by the full weight of the administrative machine” (Samuels 1963: 89), while the main audience of the Chaucerian manuscripts, texts of Samuels’s Type III, consisted of a

“rather tight circle of civil servants and lesser gentry” (Blake 1997b: 512).

Samuels (1963: 88) maintains that neither Type II nor Type III could be looked upon as influential literary standards of their time.

Although London-based, these two incipient standards not only lacked sufficient institutional support but they were presumably also not focused enough to survive the diffusing Chancery Standard. By contrast, the more uniform Type I was widespread in the 14th century and continued well into the 15th century; it was also used in contemporary medical texts (Taavit-sainen 2000). It was, however, associated with the sectarian religious movement of Lollardy, which met with strong persecution in the 15th cen-tury, especially under King Henry V (Corrie 2006: 111). The Lollard move-ment persisted throughout the 15th century, but it did not have a direct con-nection with the English Reformation in the next century (Hudson and Kenny 2004). Chancery Standard was thus left as the major contender for a focused variety at the national level in the 15th century.

3.4. Features of “Chancery Standard”

Auer (2005: 20–22) makes the generalization that, combined with political centralization, capital cities had a leading role to play in providing models for emerging national standard varieties in Europe. This holds true for Eng-lish as well. Chancery Standard is East Midland-based, and southern rather than northern in outlook. It represents the variety associated with the capi-tal, which was the administrative, financial, and cultural centre of late me-dieval England. Having the highest potential in England for interaction with other towns in terms of population, transport advantages and migration fields (Keene 2000: 101–108), London was the hub from which innovations of all kinds diffused – a position it only strengthened in the following cen-turies.

Grammatically, Chancery Standard typically displays London and Cen-tral Midland features such as the southern third-person verbal ending -th (hath, sayeth) as opposed to the northern -s (has, says), and the plural be/ben (v. northern are). Some Midland features of northern origin also appear, probably reinforced by the number of Chancery clerks who came from the northern counties in the Lancastrian era. They include the plural personal pronouns in th- (they, them and their) as opposed to southern forms in h-; adverbs ending in -ly (v. southern -lich); suffixless plural forms of verbs (v. southern forms in -(e)n); and past participles without the prefix y-, as in called (v. southern ycalled) (Fisher 1996: 50–51, 76).⁵

Although it is the northern forms with <g> that are to become part of the national standard, Chancery Standard uses <y> for /j/ in words like ayen (‘again’) and yeue (‘give’). It provides a conservative norm in that it does not reflect ongoing phonetic developments. The digraph <gh> is used as a reflection of the velar fricative in words like high and knight, although its vocalization was well under way in speech. Similarly, although <h> was almost certainly not pronounced, it is retained in French loans such as heir and honour in texts representing Chancery Standard. Not unlike other texts from this period, they also treat the final <e> unsystematically in unstressed positions (Fisher 1996: 50–51, Fisher, Richardson and Fisher 1984: 28–33).

However, few practices of the government offices were absolutely fixed in the 15th century, as can be seen from the number of variant forms and spellings of ordinary words that appear in official documents. A couple of examples may suffice to illustrate this stage of focusing. Although the spelling such, with or without a final <e>, is the preferred form in these documents, several alternative forms are found in different proportions, including sich, sych, seche, swich and sweche. Similarly, not is the

pre-ferred spelling of the negative particle with nat as a minority form, but there are also clerks who prefer to spell the word with <gh> or <> after the vowel (Fisher, Richardson and Fisher 1984: 27, 30).

Some of these practices are illustrated by two versions of a summons to arms recorded in the name of King Henry VI by the Privy Seal in 1436 (Fisher, Richardson and Fisher 1984: 161–162, 164, Smith 1996: 72). They are reproduced in part in (1) and (2). These passages display alternation, for instance, between thorn <þ> and <th>. Together with certain other medie-val spelling conventions, notably abbreviations, this variation continued well into the next century. Other conventions shown here, such as the use of the letter <v> word-initially for as well as for <v>, and the letter

word-internally, were regarded as the norm even in print until the be-ginning of the 17th century.

(1) 1436E28/57A, Privy Seal: Summons to Arms (part)

By þe kynge Trusty and welbelouyd ffor asmoche as he þat calleth him Duc of Bourgoigne oure rebell with his puissaunce of fflemmenges Picardes Bourgoignons and oþer is come ouer þe water of Grauelyng and hath pighte his tentes with Inne oure Pale of þe marches þere willyng and disposyng him to gete oure Toune of Caleys and alle oure strengthes in þe marches þere þe whiche if so were þat god defende shulde be vn to vs you oure Reamme and subgitt to grete an hurte and a perpetuelle shame we þerfore willyng to resiste þe malice of (þe) saide callyng him Duc dispose vs in per-sone for to go to oure Citee of Caunterbury for þe rescous to oure said Toune and marches …

(2) 1436E28/57C, Privy Seal: Summons to Arms (part)

By the kyng Trusty and welbeloued for asmoche as he þat calleth hym Duc of Bourgoine oure rebell wyth his puissance of fflemynges picardes Bour-goignons and oþer is come ouer the water of Gravelyng and hath pight his tentes with Inne oure pale of the marches there willyng and disposyng hym to gete oure tovne of Caleys and all oure Strengthes in þe marches þere. the which if so were þat god defende shuld be vnto vs yowe oure roialme and subgettes to grete an hurte and perpetuell shame: we þerfore willyng to re-siste the malice of the said callyng hym Duc. dispose vs in persone for to goo vnto oure Citee of Caunterbury for the rescous to owre seid tovne and marches …

Although Chancery Standard obviously falls short of the requirement of fixity set for modern spelling standards, it represents a move towards it.

The next section will look at its diffusion in the language community.

3.5. Manuscript tradition before 1500

Chancery Standard constituted a nationwide endoglossic written norm in 15th-century England. In the course of the 15th and early 16th centuries, legal and administrative language increasingly converged upon this norm (McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin 1986: 47–49). McIntosh, Samuels and Benskin (1986: 22) note that, during the period 1420–1550, it provides the only norm into which writers would code-switch, and replace their own original regional spellings with those of this emerging standard. This proc-ess of focusing was not, however, straightforward.

Institutionally, the central government had a leading role in setting lin-guistic models for others to follow. But the existence of such norm-setters did not mean a wholesale adoption of these norms by other institutions, let alone by the language community as a whole. There are several reasons for this. As we have seen, the norm itself was probabilistic, focused, rather than fixed: while there are preferred Chancery Standard spellings such as any and but, there are others that are much more variable (e.g., much(e), moch(e), mych(e) ‘much’), and, interestingly, still others whose preferred Chancery form is not part of written Standard English today (e.g., wold(e)

‘would’; cf. Blake 1997a). The emerging norm represented domain-specific usage and was associated with a variety of legal and administrative genres.

Even if their practices had been uniform, mechanisms such as universal schooling in the vernacular through which these norms could have been enforced outside their respective institutions and communities of practice were lacking in the 15th century, as were systematic teaching materials that could have been used to that effect. In this period, the ideology of stan-dardization, to use the term of Milroy and Milroy (1999: 30), did not ex-tend to the vernacular to the same extent that it was observed for the classi-cal languages.

Considering the process of spelling standardization in the 15th and early 16th centuries, Samuels (1981: 44) presents four alternative strategies that individual writers could follow: (A) localizable dialect, (B) Chancery Stan-dard, (C) writing with a regional basis which includes forms of Chancery Standard, and (D) “colourless” regional writing. In practice he finds that the

alternatives combine and that texts can be graded on a scale, for instance, between (A) and (C) and (C) and (D).

It is therefore hardly surprising that even the preferred Chancery forms were not systematically followed, for instance, by the scribes copying the manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the 15th century. In his study of eight common lexical items (but, given, not, should, such, their, these, and through) in 50 medieval copies of the Pardoner’s Tale, Smith (1996: 73) found that there had been “a slight general movement towards Chancery Standard forms” but also that “the process is neither complete nor decisive”. The manuscripts continue to display colourless written language, a dialectal mixture of non-Chancery forms, the use of which was

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