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1882
Volume 30, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0890-2917
  • E-ISSN: 2031-0242

Abstract

Abstract

Reading depends in part on being able to distinguish well-formed ‘unmarked’ Middle English usages from well-formed but ‘marked’ ones, and both kinds of utterances from ones that are simply scribal or even authorial errors. Not being native speakers of Middle English and lacking any fourteenth-century English grammar books or dictionaries, modern readers can make these judgements on behalf of Langland and his contemporaries only by examining late medieval usages, modern dictionaries, textual notes, and the like. Even with rigorous practices of historical reconstruction, then, we have little access to the daily language practices of medieval England or, more generally, to Middle English as a natural language. Focusing on two peculiar but well-established forms, this paper suggests that for as much as reveals about medieval theology and social practice, the poem also tells us that there are things about medieval English that we do not, and perhaps cannot, know.

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2016-01-01
2025-12-06

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References

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