Book Description

"The influence exerted upon English vocabulary by words that derive from the Scandinavian languages is widespread and profound. These words entered English by Norse speakers in the Anglo-Saxon period, and they claim amongst their number some of the most frequent and important items of everyday modern usage. There nevertheless remains a great deal about this element that we do not properly understand. This book presents etymological and contextual studies of the lexical terms originally derived from Old Norse that are found in the principal early Middle English texts from the South-West Midlands. This is a region that contains some of the most celebrated literary works of the period when Norse-derived words first appear in significant numbers in written English (the late twelfth to the later thirteenth century); being outside the area of the Danelaw, it also presents crucial opportunities for us to understand the transmission of Norse-derived vocabulary to parts of England beyond those of the heaviest initial Scandinavian settlement. This book will be of interest to scholars of early English lexicology, semantics and dialectology, to those studying the background to and linguistic resources of early Middle English literature, and to all those fascinated by the Scandinavian contribution to the history of the English language." --