An introduction to Middle English.

An introduction to Middle English. By Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002. Pp. viii, 182.

Even though it has already been three years since the latest typically student-oriented contribution by Smith (1999), the dramatically low number of textbooks on English historical linguistics has not increased much. An up-to-date HEL handbook is still hard to come by, and this is precisely what makes a specialised work like the one by Horobin and Smith the light at the end of the didactic tunnel. The relatively narrow scope of the book, approximately four centuries, granted the authors the freedom to devote as much space as felt needed to the matters strictly concerning Middle English, without having to dwell upon the developments which preceded its emergence. It should be stressed, however, that wherever appropriate, both earlier and later states of the language are referred to.

The book, as indicated in the preface, has been "... designed as a linguistic introduction to Middle English for undergraduate students who have already encountered the language ..." (p. viii). It is a synchronic overview of the spoken as well as of the written mode of the vernacular used in England between e. 12th and c. 16th centuries, with particular emphasis on the Chaucerian usage, regularly put into diachronic and diatopic contexts, and a brief account of those external factors which indirectly affected the structure of mediaeval English.

An introduction to Middle English by Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith, which starts with a list of abbreviations and a note to readers, consists of seven chapters (each ending with "Exercises" and "Recommendations for reading") organised into three major parts of unequal length. Part One, of introductory nature, contains three chapters, namely: "Introduction" (pp. 1-6), "What did Middle English look like?" (pp. 7-25), and "Middle English in use" (pp. 26- 39). In Chapter One, the authors acquaint prospective readers with the purpose of the book, their understanding of the term Middle English, and the overall organisation of the work. Chapter Two illustrates the appearance of Middle English as recorded in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. The third chapter, in turn, focuses on the fortunes of English after the Norman Conquest and the standardisation of speech and writing.

Part Two of the volume comprises chapters 4-6. Chapter Four, "Spellings and sounds" (pp. 40-68), covers an outline history of writing in England, salient features of Chaucer's idiom, and the reconstruction of Middle English grapho-phonemic correspondences. The next chapter, "The lexicon" (pp. 69-88), is devoted in its entirety to the origins of the Middle English word-stock, the mechanisms of word-formation active during the period in question, the diatopic variation concerning mediaeval English vocabulary, and the range of styles used by contemporary writers, "Grammar" (pp. 89-125) is the last chapter of Part Two. Divided into two larger sections, namely "Syntax" and "Morphology", it describes the structure of Middle English nominal, verbal, adjectival, and adverbial phrases, as well as the Middle English sentence structure and the inflectional morphology of the language.

Part Three (pp. 126-141), and Chapter Seven at the same time, intended as "a bridge" to more sophisticated literature, raises some potentially controversial questions relating to language change and editing mediaeval manuscripts to show, as the authors put it, "how knowledge of Middle English can be harnessed to engage with broader issues of linguistic evolution, and how an understanding of the Middle English language can contribute to other areas ... in ME studies" (p. 126). The final chapter of the book is followed by an "Appendix" (pp. 142-169), which contains seven annotated excerpts from such Middle English texts as, e.g., The Peterborough Chronicle, The Owl and the Nightingale or Ancrene Wisse, to name but a few. A "Discussion of the exercises" (pp. 170-172), "References" (pp. 173-177), and a thematic "Index" (pp. 178-182) close the volume under review.

An introduction to Middle English, the result of cooperation between the two Glaswegian scholars, fully meets the expectations one may have upon reading the introductory note. Horobin and Smith promise a book for those interested in the field, yet with little knowledge of the subject, which would provide not only the basic facts concerning the Middle English usage but also linguistic background for further exploration of concepts currently investigated by the scholarly community. The content of the work, as well as the handling of the material fully reflect the authors' intentions.

Even though the nature of the project required a rather disciplined approach to the selection of data, none of the truly significant matters have been treated superficially or simply left out. Throughout the book, linguistic examples are generously supplied with textual (mostly Chaucerian) illustrations, regularly supplemented by translations or glosses of the less transparent fragments. An additional collection of annotated texts, in the form of an appendix, has been placed at the end of the book.

The authors deserve high praise for a number of student-friendly decisions made during the work on the volume. One of the more innovatory solutions seems the introduction of questions for review, commonly under the heading "Exercises", and "Recommendations for reading", at the end of each chapter. While the former is a very good way of highlighting the most important information and systematising the acquired knowledge, the latter typically offers a list of works (with comments) for further reading on a given topic. Another good move on the part of Horobin and Smith was the choice of one, well-represented model of mediaeval English as a convenient reference point for the discussed linguistic phenomena. For the sake of clarity, the language of Chaucer, for which the authors opted as the model usage, is repeatedly contrasted diachronically, and diatopically, with other varieties of the vernacular. Finally, before broaching subsequent issues for discussion, the authors invariably provide both the indispensable metalanguage and the extralinguistic context.

Nevertheless, carefully designed as it is, An introduction to Middle English is not free from drawbacks. A less tolerant reader may find the book somewhat monotonous, with certain concepts reappearing every now and then. The first sentence of Chapter Four (p. 40), for instance, describing the relations among various "levels" of language (already mentioned on pp. 2-3), is repeated almost word for word on page 89, while the "classification" of Norse, Latin and French loans, based on stylistic considerations, can be found on pp. 72-74, as well as on p. 82. Some of the section headings appear to be slightly misleading in that what they suggest is not necessarily to be found in the respective sub-chapters. Section 3.4. entitled "The dialects of Middle English", focuses on the notion of standard, the stages of standardisation of a usage, the shift from the national to local function that English underwent as a result of the Norman invasion, and the importance of LALME for Middle English dialectology. In other words, the section deals with everything but the expected account of Middle English diatopic variation.

Minor "spelling" mistakes, such as the word "from" instead of "form" in paragraph two on p. 34 or "anaysis" instead of "analysis" in paragraph one on p. 43, the use of the Middle English letter "yogh" instead of the OE grapheme for/j/in the word forzief on p. 8 or the velar allophone of /x/ for [c] in the transcription of Middle English knyght, the wrong year in the reference to Fisiak's A short grammar of Middle English (1964 instead of 1968), or the lack of diacritic indicating vowel length in the transcription of PDE sweet on p. 12, can be noticed in the body of the book, their presence, however, by no means blurs the clarity of the presentation.

Last but not least, on p. 49 there is a paragraph on the origins of Middle English diphthongs, in which, rather surprisingly, the authors pass over two sources of Middle English complex vowels, i.e. the so-called glide-development and the shift of the syllable boundary, of which the results are, e.g., [owx] < [ox] as in foughten or/ow/</o:/ + /w/ as in rowen (see Fisiak 1968: 49-55). Similarly, two factors preventing the operation of the so-called Homorganic Cluster Lengthening, namely: lack of/weak stress and the polysyllabic structure of a word (see, e.g., Mosse 1952 [1991]: 16; Fisiak 1968: 28; Welna 1978: 35), are missing from the discussion of the process on p. 58.

To conclude, An introduction to Middle English by Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith will definitely satisfy the needs of undergraduate students interested in mediaeval English historical linguistics. The book offers the essentials of Middle English phonology, morphology, and lexicon so as to provide the readers with a basis for further study of the issues briefly discussed in the body. Appended with a collection of annotated texts, notes, and glossaries, it constitutes a valuable addition to those few good HEL textbooks already on the market.

REFERENCES

Blake, Norman (ed.) 1992 The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. II: 1066-1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fisiak, Jacek 1968 A short grammar of Middle English. Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Horobin, Simon--Jeremy Smith 2002 An introduction to Middle English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Mosse, Fernand 1952 A handbook of Middle English. Baltimore, Maryland--London: The Johns Hopkins Press. [1991] [Reprinted].

Wetna, Jerzy 1978 A diachronic grammar of English. Part one: Phonology. Warszawa. Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Reviewed by Anna Hebda, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.