The Edinburgh Historical Linguistic Atlases & Text Corpora: Early Middle English and Older Scots (2)

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The Edinburgh Historical Linguistic Atlases & Text Corpora: Early Middle English and Older Scots (2)

The principal aims of the project are to produce two historical linguistic atlases: A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150-1300 (LAME) and A Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots phase I 1380-1500 (LAOS). These atlases follow «A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English» (LALME), ed. Angus McIntosh, M.L. Samuels and Michael Benskin (Aberdeen: AUP, 1986). In the periods covered by these atlases, neither English nor Scots were written in a standard form. Written forms are characterized by variation – different spellings of ‘the same’ word or morpheme. Variants often show geographical patterning. Certain kinds of text can be localized on non-linguistic criteria — often ‘local documents’, i.e. charters, court and council books. Such texts provide the basic distribution of material on maps. Into this can be interpolated other texts without explicit non-linguistic associations, using the 'fit'-technique to localize assemblages of linguistic data by a process of progressive elimination. LAEME and LAOS differ from LALME in that, instead of using a ‘traditional’ questionnaire, they are based on corpora of fully transcribed texts in which each word and morpheme has been lexico-grammatically tagged. Computer programs produce different kinds of output — maps, chronological charts, concordancesm dictionaries, linguistic ‘fits’. The corpora will be complemented by auxiliary data-sets, including a Corpus of Etymologies and Corpus of Changes, being written by Professor Roger Lass (University of Cape Town). It is envisaged that LAEME and LAOS will be produced as electronic atlases on CDs with accompanying books to explain the theory and methodology.

Funders:

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

arts-humanities.net

Principal investigator:

Mr Derek Britton

Principal project staff:

Dr Margaret Laing; Dr Keith Williamson; Mr Derek Britton

Start date:

Tuesday, July 1, 2003

Completion date:

Thursday, June 1, 2006

Era:

Medieval

Place:

UK & Ireland

Data formats:

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Publications:

Laing, Margaret. Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993 186 pp.

Laing, Margaret. "Anchor Texts and Literary Manuscripts in Early Middle English". In Essays Celebrating the Publication of the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, edited by F. Riddy, 27–52. York Manuscripts Conferences Proceedings Series 2. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991.

Laing, Margaret. "A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English: the Value of Texts surviving in more than one Version". In History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics, edited by Matti Rissanen et al, 566–81. Topics in English Linguistics 10. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992

Laing, Margaret. "The Linguistic Analysis of Medieval Vernacular Texts: Two Projects at Edinburgh". In Corpora across the Centuries: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on English Diachronic Corpora, St. Catharine’s College Cambridge, 25–27 March 1993, edited by M. Kytö, M. Rissanen and S. Wright, 121–41. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994.

Laing, Margaret (with Angus McIntosh). "Cambridge, Trinity College MS 335: its Texts and Their Transmission". In New Science out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A.I. Doyle, edited by Richard Beadle and A.J.Piper,14–52. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995

Laing, Margaret. "A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English". Medieval English Studies Newsletter 33 (1995): 1–8.
University of Tokyo.

Laing, Margaret (with Angus McIntosh). "The Language of Ancrene Riwle, the Katherine Group Texts and the Wohunge of ure Lauerd in BL Cotton Titus D xviii". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 96 (1995): 235–263.

Laing, Margaret. "A Fourteenth-Century Sermon on the Number Seven in Merton College, Oxford, MS 248". Neuphilolgische Mitteilungen 98 (1997): 99–134.

Laing, Margaret. "Linguistic and textual relationships between the Corpus, Nero and Vernon Manuscripts of Ancrene Riwle — a response". Medieval English Studies Newsletter 38 (1998): 4–16. University of Tokyo.

Laing, Margaret. "Raising a Stink in The Owl and the Nightingale: a New Reading at line 115". Notes and Queries 243 (1998): 276–84.

Laing, Margaret. "Three notes on Dame Sirith, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 86, fols. 165r–168r." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99 (1998): 401–409.

Laing, Margaret. "Notes on Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, the Names of a Hare in English." Medium Ævum 67 (1998): 201–11.

Laing, Margaret. "Confusion wrs Confounded: Litteral Substitution Sets in Early Middle English Writing Systems". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100 (1999): 251–270.

Laing, Margaret. "The Linguistic Stratification of the Middle English Texts in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 101 (2000): 523–569.

Laing, Margaret. "'Never the twain shall meet' early Middle English the east west divide". In Placing Middle English in Context, edited by Irma Taavitsainen et. al., 97-124. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000.

Laing, Margaret. "Words reread. Middle English Writing Systems and the Dictionary". Linguistica e Filologia 13 (2001): 87–129.

Laing, Margaret. "Corpus-provoked Questions about Negation in early Middle English". Language Sciences 24 (2002): 297–321.

Laing, Margaret (with Roger Lass), "Tales of the 1001 Nists. The Phonological Implications of Litteral Substitution Sets in 13th-century South-West-Midland texts". English Language and Linguistics 7.2 (2003): 1-22.

Laing, Margaret. "Multidimensionality: Time, Space and Stratigraphy in Historical Dialectology." In Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology, edited by M. Dossena and R. Lass , 49-96. Bern: Peter Lang, 2004.

Laing, Margaret (with Keith Williamson). "The Achaeology of Middle English Texts." In Categorization in the History of English, edited by Christian J. Kay and Jeremy J. Smith, 85-145. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 261. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004.

Laing, Margaret (with Roger Lass). "Are front rounded vowels retained in West Midland Middle English?" In Rethinking Middle English: linguistic and literary approaches, edited by Nikolaus Ritt and Herbert Schendl, 280-90. Frankfurt / Main, etc.: Peter Lang, 2005.

Laing, Margaret (with Roger Lass). "$ho:fian{*}/vK2: A LAEME-based Lexical Study," In The Power of Words: Essays in Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics in honour of Christian Kay, edited by Carole Hough and Irene Wotherspoon, 79-91. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.

Laing, Margaret (with Roger Lass). "Early Middle English Dialectology: Problems and Prospects." In Handbook of the History of English, edited by Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los. Oxford: Blackwell, forthc. 2005.

Laing, Margaret (with Roger Lass). "Early Middle English 'knight': (Pseudo)metathesis and lexical specificity." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen forthc. 2006.

Williamson, Keith. "A Computer-aided Method for Making a Linguistic Atlas of Older
Scots" Scottish Language 11/12 (1992/3) , no. 11/12: 138-73.

Williamson, Keith. "Changing Spaces. Linguistic Relationships and the Dialect
Continuum". In Placing Middle English in Context, edited by Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu
Nevalainen, Pa"ivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen, 141-79 Topics in English Linguistics series. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 2000.

Williamson, Keith. "Lexico-grammatical tags and the phonetic and syntactic analysis of
medieval Texts". In Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Language and Computers, edited by
Christian Mair and Marianne Hundt, 385-95. Studies in Practical Linguistics, no. 33. Amsterdam,
Atlanta GA: Rodopi, 2000.

Williamson, Keith. "Spatio-temporal aspects of linguistic variation in Older Scots
texts." Scottish Language 20 (2001): 1-19.

Williamson, Keith. "The dialectology of 'English' north of the Humber, c. 1380-1500". In
Sounds, Words, Texts and Change, edited by Teresa Fanego, Bele/n Me/ndez-Naya and
Elena Seoane, 253-86. Selected Papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September
2000, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 224. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2002.

Williamson, Keith. "On Chronicity and Space(s) in Historical Dialectology". In Methods
and Data in English Historical Dialectology, edited by M. Dossena and R. Lass, 97-136.
Bern: Peter Lang, 2004.

Williamson, Keith (with Margaret Laing). "The Archaeology of Middle English Texts". In
Categorization in the History of English, edited by Christian J. Kay and Jeremy J. Smith, , 85-145.
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 261. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004.

Williamson, Keith. "DOST and LAOS - A Caledonian Symbiosis?" In Perspectives in the
Older Scottish Tongue, edited by Christian J. Kay and Margaret A. Mackay, 179-98. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

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