code-intermediate phenomena in medieval mixed-language business texts

Code-intermediate phenomena in medievalmixed-language business texts§

Laura Wright

Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Abstract

This paper discusses a written linguistic system, evidenced in medieval mixed-languagebusiness texts, that was replaced by Early Modern English. This variety routinely mixed

Romance (Anglo-Norman, Medieval Latin) with Germanic (Middle English) languages, in anorderly way. I examine medieval mixed-language business writing from the point of view ofsuffix mergers, as the lack of language-specific suffixes resulted in code-intermediate states;

that is, an inability to decide whether a given world in a given context belonged to English,French or Latin. The question raised is whether without hindsight one could predict, on for-mal structural grounds rather than social, economic or political grounds, that one system was

about to be superseded by another. I conclude that code-intermediate states do not, of them-selves, presage the abandonment of the mixed-language business variety. # 2001 Published byElsevier Science Ltd.

Keywords: Mixed-language business texts; Medieval Latin; Anglo-Norman; Middle English; Code-inter-

mediate states; Multilingualism

1. Mixed-language business varieties1

In Section 1, I rehearse the argument for regarding medieval mixed-languagebusiness writing as a distinct variety, as outlined in Wright (1992, 1994, 1995a,

Language Sciences 24 (2002) 471–489

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0388-0001/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

PI I : S0388-0001(01 )00045 -6

§ Portions of earlier drafts of this paper were presented to the International Colloquium on Linguistic

Convergence, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge 1998, to NWAVE, University of Geor-

gia 1998, to the Oxford English Dictionary Research Seminar, Kellogg College, University of Oxford

1998, and to the Department of English, University of Stockholm 1998.

E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Wright).1 Throughout this paper I use the term ‘mixed-language business variety’ to mean the specific kind of

mixing of three languages (Anglo-Norman, Middle English, Medieval Latin) described hereafter, rather

than in the technical sense in which the term ‘mixed-language’ is used by some creolists, to indicate spoken

languages which have only two input systems, with the grammar from one, and the lexifier from the other.

1995b, 1997b, 1998). The mixed-language business variety was used for the purposeof accounts-keeping and inventories, and is found in any text where listing occurred.The keeping of accounts is a fundamental activity for a business, perpetual institu-tion, private merchant, or manager of a household. Finance justifies the existence ofa business, and it is therefore crucial that the written record of accounts is accessibleand comprehensible to the auditor. This kind of language mixing was supra-regio-nal, at a time when written Middle English varied considerably from place to place.(1). Is taken from the archive of London Bridge for the year 1460/1461, and iswritten in Medieval Latin+English.

The distribution of the two languages is not random. Nouns, deverbal-ing formsand adjectives may optionally appear in English; but prepositions, conjunctions andpronouns must appear in Latin. So, for example, lymekylne (3), busshell (3), salter(4), pece (7), lyne (7) appear in English, and , apud, de, ab, ipo- appear in Latin.

In practice, this clearcut distinction is blurred. Firstly, there is some matter whichis common to both Medieval Latin and Middle English, such as the preposition in,for example; or roots which are either cognate or which English had borrowed fromLatin. Secondly, the medieval abbreviation and suspension system reproduced in thetranscription served to visually hide many of the Latin inflexions, so that roots arefar more visible than appended morphemes. An example is sac (7). It is easy to

472 L. Wright / Language Sciences 24 (2002) 471–489

ignore the abbreviated inflexion, and read this as the English word, ‘sack’. Therewas, therefore, considerable room for exploitation of the overlap of the twolanguages.

Is this just bad Latin? Previous commentators2 have tended to dismiss such mixedforms as due to scribal ignorance of Latin, but this claim can be refuted. Firstly, itwas a norm for scribes to write a lexeme in both its Latin and its English realisationin close proximity, often on the same folio. In 1. the scribe wrote both <calce vs >(5) and the element < lyme-> in < lymekylne> (3). It is common to find the Englishword in a compound form and the Latin calque in a simplex form. Although thescribe knew how to render ‘lime’ in Medieval Latin, the text-type demanded that heuse it only on occasion. Secondly, the base text is unmistakably Medieval Latin. Thescribe knew how to decline nouns, conjugate verbs, match up preposition and caseinflexion, mark adjectives for number and gender, and a great deal of later Latinvocabulary.3 This demonstrates considerable skill, which is something that linguistsstudying present-day codeswitchers tend to stress, as non-switchers may interpretswitching as due to incompetence. Mixed-language business writing required con-siderable knowledge of Medieval Latin to write, although not a commensuratelygreat knowledge of Latin to read.

Clerks could be very subtle in their integrating of the two languages. In (1). thescribe graphically distinguished between Latin and English lexemes which had thesame form. The Latin word for a sack (L. saccus,-i ‘a sack’) lines 5–8, was alwaysspelt with a <cc> graph: saccis, sacco , sac . The only exception is when the lexemeappeared in the English compound sakclothe (5) (OE sac, ‘a sack’), when a <k>graph was used. The other instances of <k> graphs are found embedded in Englishwords only: lymekylne (3), wykers (4), Blakeman- (5), pakthrede (6). Thus the scribewent to considerable lengths to indicate the Englishness of the compound element<sak-> , as opposed to the Latinity of the simplex lexeme <sacc-> . The scribe wasconstrained by the text type to place English words in his Medieval Latin text,4 ascodeswitching in the functional variety of business records was a norm rather thanan exception. The languages are mixed in such a way as to exploit any overlappingmaterial they have in common. (2). Comes from Customs Accounts now kept in thePublic Record Office, written in 1480/1481:

2 See Wright (1997b) for a discussion of some previous commentators’ criticisms of medieval scribes’

usage of Medieval Latin and Anglo-Norman.3 See Wright (1997a) for a demonstration of Medieval Latin (as written in London) prepositional

phrase suffixes.4 See Wright (1995a) for a hypothesis as to which words surfaced in Latin and which in English.

L. Wright / Language Sciences 24 (2002) 471–489 473

Public Record Office E122 194/25 Petty Custom 1480x81.See Cobb (1990:10) for a calendared translation.

In (2). the position of the modifier in a noun phrase is usually after the noun itmodifies, as is customary in Romance languages. Thus in line (1). buske, large, stricand te all follow the noun pe , and large and li follow buske and tel. Contrast theEnglish pattern of ‘nine large busk pieces’, where everything premodifies ‘piece’.However, there are also compound forms, with some elements in Latin and some inEnglish: holywa stoppys lato (4); tucky hok lato (4); mag writyng tables (5).These display both the tendency of Germanic languages to premodify nouns, andthe Romance tendency to postmodify. In the two laton examples, the Latin wordpostmodifies and the English words ‘holywater’ and ‘tuckyn’ premodify ‘stoups’ and‘hooks’ respectively; but in the last instance, the Latin word mag premodifies‘writing tables’ (magnus and parvus were frequently attracted to the premodifyingposition in Latin, so the romance and germanic rules converge in this case). It cannotbe concluded that Latin adjectives postmodified and English ones premodified;adjectives of both languages could be found in both positions. The same phenomenonoccurred in Anglo-Norman+English texts: (3). is from the money-lender Gilbert orGybon Maufield’s (he spells his name in several different ways) account book.

Public Record Office E101/509/19, fo 40v, Gybon Maufield: A Merchant’s bookof his debts, August 1394.

The word nouell is positioned both after the noun modified [wyghtes nouel , (1)]and before the noun modified [nouel plom (2), nouel led (3)]. The calques plom andled occur in the same noun phrase. All this is written by Maufield on the same sideof the same folio. The modern virtue of consistency did not yet exist; rather theconclusion has to be that he was constrained by the text type of accounts-keeping tomix, in an orderly way, English into his French text.


When the mixed Anglo-Norman+English and Medieval Latin+English formsbecame replaced with incipient Standard English, the same positioning phenomenonwas retained. (4). Is from Lady Elizabeth Lewkener’s will of 1466:

Public Record Office Prob/2/3, m. 1. will of Lady Elizabeth Lewkener, widow ofBroadhurst, Sussex, 1466.

In the inventory of her bedclothes, we find ‘plain’ and ‘long’ premodifying ‘ward-naps’ (4), and ‘short’ and ‘narrow’ postmodifying ‘plain wardnaps’ (5).5 Both patternsoccur, and still constitute inventory-style in present-day English.

Thus it is easy to see why accounts written in Medieval Latin+English andAnglo-Norman+English have been deemed faulty and indicative of moribundity: ifone presupposes language purity and a monostylistic register, then it appears thatMedieval Latin and Anglo-Norman are degenerate at this date (and the scribes allseem incompetent). But if one bears in mind a notion of morphological accom-modation, and language-mixing is seen as a goal (obeying the constraints of the styleof the text type; enabling a wide readership of whatever reading competence), thenthis kind of morphological and lexical behaviour is pragmatically viable.

2. Moribund mixed-language business writing

English, French and Latin were routinely mixed and, as will be further discussed,some suffixes were visually merged from the time of the Norman Conquest to the timeof the rise of Standard English, but once Standard English took over the function ofkeeping business records, the mixed-language varieties ceased to be used. However, inmany records, there was not a clean shift from mixed varieties to Standard English, but:

(a) an encroachment of English on the mixed varieties: mostly English word-order,much English vocabulary, but variable retention of Latin or French function

5 Wardnaps are placemats for protecting a tablecloth, see OED Gardnap.


words. I call this the ‘moribund’ state of the mixed varieties (Wright, 1998:107–109), and the determining factor is the presence of English function words. Pre-sence of English function words would thus equate to the ‘tip’ in Dorian’s (1978,1981) terminology; that is, where a previously stable language undergoes a suddenchange immediately before it dies out altogether.

(b) short runs of text entirely in English interspersed amongst the mixed varietiesand the moribund mixed varieties.

Examples (5–8) demonstrate the kind of archive described by (b) and comesfrom the Mercers Company Wardens’ Account for 1429/1430. Example (5) showsinsertion of English entries amongst the Anglo-Norman matrix. In the Anglo-Norman entries the words are French but the word-order is largely English:

Thus (5) is not moribund according to my definition above, but such switchingfrom language to language in discrete entries is a phenomenon that often accom-


panies moribund passages of business mixed-language and is part of the ‘tip’,or sudden disruption of the system. (6) shows the moribund state of the Anglo-Norman+English entries: that is, the main language used is the Anglo-Norman+English variety, but the English element transcends the usual boundaries, so thatfunction words such as prepositions, articles, and pronouns occur in English(emboldening mine):

Notice pur John Wareyn and for John Wareyn on contiguous lines (3 and 4).However, by (7), which is 26 folios on from (6), we find the usual expected kind ofbusiness Anglo-Norman+English again (that is, nouns, stems of verbs and-ingforms may occur in English with all function words in Anglo-Norman):


But (8), 16 folios later, moves back to the moribund stage (emboldening mine):

Notice to west for (1) and a west pr (3), and also the postmodifying positionof the adjective in wex Ruge (10), as opposed to the premodifying position ofthe adjective in white vestment (11). Thereafter, the Mercers’ accounts change toEnglish, then back to the orderly kind of Anglo-Norman+English, and then theychange to English for good thereafter. So the period of giving way to incipientStandard English is by no means a straightforward changeover in this archive. Otherarchives6 show a more abrupt transition point-even in an archive as meticulously

6 For example, Corporation of London Records Office MS Bridge House Rental 3, fos 308–308v,

1479x80, where a list of names in Latin switches overleaf to a rental heading in English, and continues

thereafter in English.


written as that of London Bridge, there is some (comparatively small) disruption ofthe switching rules immediately before the changeover point.7

3. Code-intermediate states

One of the noted (although not necessary) characteristics of dying spokenlanguages is a change from synthetic to analytic structure. Whilst this is certainlytrue of our moribund Anglo-Norman+English and Medieval Latin+English, it isalso true of all the romance languages and English itself, so it cannot be identified asa specific characteristic in this text type. Nevertheless one of the features of laterbusiness Medieval Latin+English is a preponderance of prepositional phrases,8 sothat to translate the text one merely has to calque the romance words into English.The sentences given under (9) demonstrate sequences of prepositional phrases, andare taken from the folios leading up to folio 308v of the London Bridge House Rentalvolume 3, which is where the archive switches for good into English. In (9) theprepositional phrases are marked by the prepositions in, ad, sub, ex, inter, per; noticealso the characteristic usage of gerundial -ing forms in line 3 (emboldening mine):

7 It is important to distinguish the moribund state when considering the morphological make-up of

Anglo-Norman words as written in British texts: Miller (1997, p. 252) uses the Grocers’ Company records

as evidence of hybrid Anglo-Norman and English lexemes, in order to build an argument about the pre-

ponderance of hybrid forms in Middle English. But his examples from the Grocers’ Company records are

taken from the tip or sudden disruption point in this archive [he does mention this (pp 255–256)]. The

implication is that the morphology of the mixed-language element becomes disrupted.8 Compare a similar observation by L.C. Hector [1958 (1980) p. 25]: ‘‘Prepositions, especially de, ad,

and per, are much more freely used than in classical Latin, and almost always in the senses borne by their

French derivatives. In parenthetical clauses the ablative of the gerund often has a force scarcely to be

distinguished from that of a present participle: Willelmus, non cognoscendo terram esse tanti valoris,

dicit, etc.’’


Both the romance languages and Middle English had a tendency to move awayfrom synthetic case inflexion and towards prepositional particles. This was a sys-temic change, rather than a reduction or loss of grammar. It does not indicatemoribundity, merely the drift towards analycity found in this language family. Ithappened in monolingual Medieval Latin writing and monolingual English writing,and so is not special to this text-type. However, at an earlier stage, there was avisual overlap of the gerundial [-and(, -end(-, -ind(-] markers, which later lead todivergence, because of a change in English: the expansion of the function of thesuffix -ing. Mixed-language business writing is particularly full of gerundial forms.9

Consider the instances given under (10–13), which come from the fourteenth-centuryaccounts of St. Paul’s Cathedral10 (emboldening mine):

To present-day eyes, re an , lathan , supportan , dauban and iecten lookunmistakably Medieval Latin. But at this date the -ing form had not yet taken overthis function in English and the relevant English marker was -and(e in the North,

9 For more examples of gerundial forms, and a more detailed argument, see Wright (1995b).10 My thanks to Colin Taylor, Corporation of London, for transcription of the St. Paul’s Cathedral

documents.


-end(e in the Midlands, and -ind(e in the South. In the fourteenth century, the earlier[-and(-,-end(-,-ind(-] suffixes existed side-by-side with the incoming [-ing] suffixes,and only in the fifteenth century did the [-and(-,-end(-,-ind(-] group drop out of usealtogether. In 10. re an consists of a Latin root (re ar-) plus a Latin suffix (-an )and simultaneously it consists of a Middle English root (re ar-) plus a Middle Eng-lish suffix (-an ). Similarly with supportan ‘supporting’ and iecten ‘pargetting’(contiguous <c> and < t> graphs are notoriously indistinguishable at this date; cf<Corettyng> ‘correcting’ in 6/4 earlier). These three words are simultaneouslyLatin and English, so long as the final morpheme is abbreviated, and they aresemantically French and English as their sense is derived from Anglo-Normanusage. In (12) supportan (‘supporting’) [and (17) supporta (‘supportage’)] arederived from Latin supportare, yet in Latin this meant ‘to bring, carry, convey’. TheEnglish meaning of the word support comes via the Anglo-Norman form of the word.Lathan and Dauban are rather different in that their roots are English, not Latin.Thus they are well-formed Middle English words, but mixed Latin forms, with anEnglish root plus a Latin suffix. ‘Lath’ is derived from Old English laett, *la , ‘athin narrow strip of wood used to form a groundwork upon which to fasten theslates or tiles of a roof or the plaster of a wall or ceiling’, and ‘daub’ is derived from OldFrench dauber (which itself is derived from Latin dealbare ‘to make white’) ‘to coat orcover (a wall or building) with a layer of plaster, mortar, clay, or the like; to cover lathsor wattle with a composition of clay or mud, and straw or hay, so as to form walls’.As both Dauban and dealban are used in (13), it is reasonable to assume that theFrench-derived form is the English word ‘daub’, and the Latin-derived form is,indeed, Latin for ‘whitewashing’. Thus Latin roots which are cognate with Englishor borrowed into English (‘repair, support, pargett’), and all other English words,could take the [-and(-,-end(-,-ind(-] suffixes and be well-formed Middle Englishwords, or they could be read as Latin words. However, once the -ing suffix took overin the fifteenth century, this particular merged suffix ceased to function as such, andthere is a noticeable rise in the amount of -ing forms found in mixed-languagebusiness texts.11 (14–17) demonstrate the French morpheme -age, where there is astructural borrowing from Anglo-Norman into English (emboldening mine):

11 In fact, to claim that -and(e was Northern, -end(e was the Midlands usage, and -ind(e Southern is

not borne out by London monolingual texts, where -and(e was always a common suffix, despite being a

long way from the North. In Wright (1995b) I suggest that the reason -and(e is found so frequently in

London Middle English writing is precisely because of visual merging with the Medieval Latin gerundial

endings, -and- for -are verbs, -end- for -ere verbs, and -iend- for -ire verbs, where the final suffix is only

occasionally written in letter-graphs, and more frequently realised with an abbreviation sign. The -are

verbs are the most frequent class of verbs in romance languages, the default class, and hence any non-

Latin roots are more likely to attract -and- than -end- or -iend-.


Anglo-Norman had given Middle English a whole new range of derivationalmorphemes. The suffix -age, denoting actions and abstract nouns, is derived fromFrench -age, which itself is derived from Latin -a-ticum. However, once the Old French-age suffix evolved, a back-formation was adopted in Medieval Latin: -agium. If‘wharfage’, ‘carriage’, ‘freightage’ and ‘supportage’ in (14–17) had been borrowedfrom Latin prior to the development of the daughter romance languages, they wouldbe spelled as derivatives of *wharfaticum, *cariaticum, etc. As it is, wharua , caria ,fretta and supporta can be read as both Medieval Latin and English.

The visual merging of English, French and Latin does not, in itself, indicate mor-ibundity. As well as a move from syntheticity to analycity, another signal of lan-guage death (again, not displayed by all dying languages) is a reduced grammar,where features not present in the dominant language are given up first. This happensin MS Bridge House Rental 3 with regard to articles, which in romance languagesare marked for number and gender, although Classical Latin did not use articles assuch. Compare (8) le shrif (3), le Mai (3), e Maires (4) which all occur on con-tiguous lines: ‘sherrifs’ is plural here, but again this is not represented in the pre-ceding article. By contrast, (7) shows les mynstrelx (1), les viscountz (2), and thefeminine form la Chapell (3), la fra nitee (5–6), la fesure (7). In (6) we find la Mas-boke (4), although an underlying livre would usually be regarded as a masculine


word in French. De followed by a word in English often omits any article, so wecannot tell whether it would be marked for number or contracted. (6) has wasshingde auter Clothez (4–5) and amedyng de vestemets (5), where ‘vestments’ is also plural,(7) has wasshyng de au clothes (4) and scouryng de Chaundelers (4–5). With regard tocontraction, (5) has de vne some (2), and (7) has dune vestment (3); as well as as ditzmynstrelx (2) and as prestres & Clerks (5), where (5) has a lez wardeins (10). Thehallmark of this text type is its variability: both agreement and non-agreement arefound; both contraction and lack of contraction.

Although we can demonstrate increasing use of prepositional phrases and ger-undial forms, these features can be found increasing in many late medieval Romanceand late Middle English text-types. But, as mentioned above, the transcending of theswitching rules can be viewed as paralleling the tip phenomenon, so that the mor-ibund state can be seen to equate with present-day semi-speakers. Semi-speakers arebetter at understanding than they are at producing the dying language, and theirmorphology and grammar are stretched to encompass the dominant language’srules. Semi-speakers are sometimes judged adversely by monolinguals as beingincompetent, and some present-day scholars have criticised the medieval businessscribes for getting their Latin and French wrong. In particular, loan words fromthe dominant language are not tolerated by monolingual listeners/readers, and areadduced as proof that the speaker cannot speak properly or the writer write properly.12

Yet present-day English, one of the world’s most predominant languages, hasborrowed tremendously throughout its history. It is only when the function wordssurface in English that moribundity sets in, as in (6) and (8) earlier. Borrowing doesnot mean that a language is about to be abandoned, but a reduced grammar maywell herald this. With regard to borrowing, Picone (1994a) gives a what he calls atest for moribundity (although it is more of an assertion than an actual test):

The test is simple. Does the innovation lend itself to some kind of indigenouslexical productivity? If it does, then regardless of its innovative properties, itconstitutes a natural element in the response to a neological challenge. . . .Integral lexical borrowings and especially borrowings of morphemes as rawmaterial for lexicogenetic manipulation do not, in and of themselves, representa danger to the viability of the language. Picone (1994a, p. 282)

We have already seen examples of ‘indigenous lexical productivity’, that is, wordsof English etymology in an Anglo-Norman or Medieval Latin text that have takena French or Latin inflection, such as (11) lathan and (14) wharua . In 18/2Tidemanno not only takes up the Latin genitive plural inflection, but also fails totake up the mutated vowel which indicates plurality in English man/men; and asmentioned earlier there are also words that can be read as both Latin and English,such as Carpen and labora :13

12 See Dorian (1978, p. 172) for listeners’ intolerance of borrowings from the dominant language.13 For a discussion of these and other river terms see Wright (1996).


Corporation of London Records Office MS Bridge House Weekly Payments FirstSeries, Volume 2, 1420 � 1421, p. 443 (translation from Harding and Wright1995, p. 65).

So long as words are assimilated into the French or Latin text by (a) takinginflections, by (b) not taking up their native mutations, and by (c) taking abbreviationand suspension signs which enable the reading of inflections as operative in bothLatin and English, or French and English, the morphological integrity of the baseAnglo-Norman or Medieval Latin text is not compromised and the matrix languageis not endangered. We can discern linguistic features which show a moribund stateof mixed-language business usage, but not all instances of mixed-language businessusage occurring immediately before a switch into English display moribundity.

It has been noted (e.g. Woolard, 1989) that convergence need not lead directly tolanguage death. I have mentioned characteristics of dying languages that can befound in the mixed-language varieties, and yet claimed that they are not to beregarded as heralding the abandonment of the mixed varieties, because these changes(the move from syntheticity to analycity, analogic levelling14) are found in all theromance languages and in English. They could be regarded as internally motivatedchanges. Lass (1997, 201–205) points out that just because something happens in acontact situation does not mean it would not have happened anyway. Change, eventypological change, is the default pattern. Milroy (1997, 311–323; 1998, p. 21–36)counters this by pointing out that all languages are contact languages, and that thereis no principled way of distinguishing internal from external motivation for change.No speaker speaks all of a language, but uses all of the grammar and some of theword stock. It is impossible to speak without invoking a register, yet there is noregister that is crucial to any speaker - there is no such thing as a ‘core’ register. Theoverlap mechanism I have been discussing in the mixed-language varieties wouldseem to illustrate both types of change, as things that happened in monolingualMedieval Latin and monolingual Anglo-Norman can be found in these businesstexts, yet the principle of merging matter that can be merged seems to be particularto this contact variety.15 The whole phenomenon of the mixed-language business

14 Not discussed in the body of the text; an instance can be found in 5/5–6: D Richard Dento p estffranke v poy deu nt so me fene vjs viijd; where fene, third person singular present tense indicative of

fenir ‘to finish’ takes the Class 1a suffix -e, instead of the earlier Class II -ist suffix [see Einhorn, 1974

(1985) 46 for a full paradigm]. Again, it indicates a change in Anglo-Norman, not specifically a change in

Anglo-Norman+English business writing.15 This is not to imply that I regard monolingual Anglo-Norman or monolingual Medieval Latin texts

as evidence of non-contact, ‘pure’ language states—they were contact languages too. But in this paper I

am trying to distinguish features found in French and Latin that may well be typical of dying languages,

but that do not connote language death, from the accelerated forms found at the turnover point that do

connote language death.


varieties came about as the result of that intense social incentive for contact outsidethe speech community, trade.

4. Present-day code-intermediate states in spoken languages

To what extent can the code-intermediate states described above (essentiallyconveyed by the abbreviation and suspension system) be related to phenomenafound in some present-day spoken varieties? Myers-Scotton (1997, p. 159) detailslanguage loss in two Turkish girls aged seven and nine who at the point of studywere in the process of losing German, after moving from Germany back to Turkey.She notes ‘‘The girls . . . leave out prepositions altogether (i.e. they produce ‘‘bareforms’’ in an ML frame but without the requisite ML system morphemes . . .)’’(ML=matrix language—LCW). The forms which are morphologically neither onelanguage nor the other are ‘‘a grammatically-reduced version of CS, showing manycontent morphemes as ‘‘bare forms’’ ’’ (CS=codeswitching—LCW; Myers-Scotton,1997, p. 162). This is because the speaker is about to lose one language and becomemonolingual in the other. But in the medieval mixed-language business texts, formswhich are morphologically sufficient in both languages simultaneously do not indicatemoribundity, but are an integral feature of the system.

The production of ‘‘bare forms’’ (that is, words which are inflectionally neitherone language nor the other) is also reported by Picone (see Picone 1994a, pp. 272–274, 1994b, 1996, pp. 90–94, 1997; Klingler et al., 1997, pp. 172–176.) Picone pointsout that in present-day Louisiana French, mixed forms of Louisiana French andAmerican English often occur, where nouns and verbs defy categorisation as theyare uninflected, meaning that they fit into neither the French nor the English gram-matical system. He calls this both an ‘‘intercode’’ and a ‘‘buffer code’’ (Picone 1994a,pp. 272; Klingler et al., 1997, pp. 174–176):

it is not clear that the categories ‘borrowing’ and ‘code switching to L2’ are theonly two proper alternatives for classifications of imported materials. In someinstances it may be that the status of borrowing/switch is left in suspension andthat a ‘buffer code’ is created . . . a single lexical item taken from English, nounor verb, may remain totally unassimilated phonologically, accept no nativeinflection and yet be marked in a special way, namely by stripping it of allEnglish inflection, to indicate that it is no longer operating morphosyntacticallyas part of the English code. As such, the form is code neutralized, occupying aplace midway between borrowing and switching to L2. The speaker is reallyswitching to a buffer code rather than to L2.

Picone (1994a, p. 271)

The use of the medieval abbreviation and suspension system could be regarded asa ‘stripping’ of inflections, or at least visually reducing them, but what I perceive asreminiscent of medieval mixed-language business texts in this account of present-day


Louisiana French, is the presence of material that cannot with certainty be cate-gorised as wholly French or wholly English.16

Although reports of bare forms in varieties of present-day French are of particularinterest, it should be mentioned that they occur in other mixed codes too. Budzhak-Jones and Poplack (1997) also report bare forms for speakers of (Ukrainian andCanadian English). They studied seven speakers of Ukrainian who were resident inCanada, four of whom were raised in the Ukraine, and three of whom were second-generation Ukrainian speakers raised in Canada (1997, p. 230), and collected about10 hours of informal, spontaneous conversation. They analysed the nouns of Eng-lish etymology, and categorised them according to whether they bore an overtUkrainian inflection or not. They subdivided the inflected nouns into those whichfollowed the standard Ukrainian inflectional paradigm, and those which bore a non-standard inflection. Of the bare forms, Budzhak-Jones and Poplack distinguishedthose which were morphologically sufficient according to the paradigms of bothlanguages, from those which would require an inflection in standard Ukrainian, butdid not receive one (1997, pp. 232–233). As with the German and Louisiana Frenchexamples mentioned above, this is reminiscent of, but not the same as, the examplesfound in the medieval mixed-language business texts. Consider the examples given in1/7 sac , (‘sack’), 2/1 pe (‘piece’), 5/2 di s sones (‘diverse persons’), 6/3 di ß suertez(‘diverse sureties’), (10) re and (present-day English ‘repairing’), (12) supportan ,(present-day English ‘supporting’), (15) caria (‘carriage’). In context, these are lexicallyand morphologically sufficient Medieval Latin or Anglo-Norman, and lexically andmorphologically sufficient Middle English. These words exist in both languages, andso do not have the status of lone L2 items in a string of L1 text. However, in context,these forms fit into a Romance-language syntax (for example, in 5/2 the context isthe prepositional phrase de di s sones spasours ‘from diverse trespassing persons’,which is syntactically French; in (10) the context is domib apud Sarmo anere and ‘for repairing the house at Sermon Lane’, where the position of the verbfollows the rules of Latin syntax). Thus Budzhak-Jones and Poplack’s model, whichis developed to determine to which language bare forms should be assigned on syn-tactic grounds, is not directly applicable here. My argument is not about whether toregard such examples as those given above as lone switches or not (because syntac-tically, lexically and morphologically they are Romance), but that the scribesexpressed them this way precisely because they are then meaningful in English too.My emphasis is not so much on switching, as on language overlap.

5. Conclusion

To sum up, I have tried to show how visual language overlap was an integralpart of written business life in the 500 years before the standardisation of English.

16 See Picone (1994b, p. 327–328; 1997, p. 154–159) for an application of Shana Poplack’s code-

switching model (in particular her Equivalence Constraint and Free Morpheme Constraint) to intercode

material in Louisiana French data, with an equally unsatisfactory outcome.


Concepts such as monolingualism, language purity, uniformity and correctnesswere absent and, in any case, pragmatically void. By contrast, concepts such asmultilingualism, exploitation of material common to more than one languageand accommodation (both lexical and grammatical) were essential for successfulbusiness practice. I have tried to show that code-intermediate states, and theabandonment of the mixed varieties for Standard English, are two separate issues.The code-intermediate phenomena discussed here as an essential component ofmixed-language business texts were vital to its success, not the route to itsabandonment. The ultimate predominance of Standard English was for socio-economic reasons rather than linguistic ones.17

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks to the Corporation of London Record Office, the GuildhallLibrary, the Public Record Office, and Anne Sutton, Mercers’ Company Archivist,for permission to cite material from manuscripts in their keeping. I also thankWilliam Rothwell for reading of drafts.

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Further reading

Kurath, H., McAllister Kuhn, S. (Eds.), 1952. Middle English Dictionary. University of Michigan Press,

Ann Arbor.


Latham, R.E. (Ed.), 1965. Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources. The British

Academy, London.

Latham, R.E., Howlett, D.R. (Eds.), 1975. Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. The

British Academy and Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Murray, J.A.H. et al., eds. 1884–1933. A New English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rothwell, W., Stone, L.W., Reid, T.B.W. (Eds.), 1992. Anglo-Norman Dictionary. Modern Humanities

Research Association, London.

Wright, L.C. 2001. Medieval Latin and Middle English Accounts: the Scandinavian semicommunication

model. In: Kastovsky, D., Mettinger, A. (Eds.), Language Contact in the History of English. Peter

Lang, Frankfurt.
