Beyond Anglo-Norman: the Lexical Influence of Old French Dialects on Middle English

This project examines lexical borrowings between the Old French (OF) of Champagne and Picardy and Middle English, identified through spelling variations, and what these borrowings reveal about cultural links between English and France. The methodology consisted of using the Middle English Dictionary (MED) and the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) to establish the frequency of variant spellings of open-class Old French words, thus indicating the strength of the potential borrowing of an Old French word or feature. An examination of the context of texts in which a high concentration of dialectal forms were found was used to determine the cultural background that facilitated such transmission. The different source materials for the MED and LAEME resulted in a marked culling of forms to those found in both datasets, but the variant spellings given for those that remained proved ample. The analysis of the texts containing these variant spellings produced fewer results than expected; The majority of the manuscripts featured few words of note, with the exception of Arundel 57, which provided a glimpse into OF usage that was decidedly more varied than solely Anglo-Norman or Central French. This lack of final data, in combination with the wide distribution of the lexical items across manuscripts about which not much is known, made it impossible to focus on a particular lexical source and examine the reasons behind lexical transmission. The possibility to undertake such research remains, with further extended examination required.