IFA Friday Lectures, 20 May, 13.30, room 601

In recent decades the study of mediaeval texts has shifted its emphasis towards manuscript variation, which is no longer viewed as indicative merely of scribal incompetence. While this development is more than welcome, scholars tend to focus their attentions on select few authors and manuscripts, preferring those of high literary value. In this presentation a plea will be made to include in these studies another well known Middle English text with a rich manuscript history, namely the so-called Wycliffe Bible, the first complete English translation of  the Latin Vulgate. In doing so it will be demonstrated that apart from studying scribal preferences of the litteral level, much can be learnt from variation on the level of lexicon and syntax, thus reviving in a sense the research programme of an earlier and more romantic structuralist era.

The presentation will be devoted to a discussion of the early Frisian nominal system, focusing on the interparadigmatic developments which induced the later large-scale restructuring of the inherited inflection. The process of morphological restructuring, attested to a lesser or greater extent in all Older Germanic languages, will be discussed in the context of a long-standing controversy over the periodisation of Frisian. The traditional approach in Frisian philology has been to assign the common term Old Frisian to all Frisian manuscripts and charters created in the mediaeval tradition (i.e. before 1550). Given the evidence provided by contemporaneous language forms from surrounding areas (Middle Dutch, Middle Low Saxon, Middle High German or Middle English), the validity of the label Old Frisian may be questioned. The two most recent attempts at reevaluating the status of early Frisian, de Haan (2001) and Versloot (2004), have led to quite contradictory conclusions, the former invalidating the use of the term “Old” to refer to mediaeval Frisian, the latter arguing in favour of the traditional terminology. Such a remarkable discrepancy can be attributed to the choice of criteria applied in the two approaches, one of them (used by both linguists) being the developments in the nominal system. The findings of a detailed investigation into the early Frisian nominal inflection, despite its relatively limited scope, will hopefully make a modest contribution to the debate, allowing to ascertain the extent to which the nominal morphology reflects the archaic/non-archaic nature of mediaeval Frisian.