A History of English Language

A history of the english language 184
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The changes in Middle English are discussed in the various Middle English grammars listed in the
footnote to § 174. On the loss of grammatical gender, see L.Morsbach, Grammatisches
undpsychologisches Geschlecht im Englischen (2nd ed., Berlin, 1926); Samuel Moore,
“Grammatical and Natural Gender in Middle English,” PMLA, 36 (1921), 79–103; and Charles
Jones, Grammatical Gender in English: 950 to 1250 (London, 1988). Donka Minkova has
published a series of studies on the loss of final -e, culminating in The History of Final Vowels
in English: The Sound of Muting (Berlin, 1991). On the retention of final -e in fourteenthcentury
poetry, see Thomas Cable, The English Alliterative Tradition (Philadelphia, 1991). The
later history of strong verbs is treated by Mary M.Long, The English Strong Verb from Chaucer
to Caxton (Menasha, WI, 1944). A pioneer in the study of the French element in English and its
dependence on the Anglo-Norman dialect was Joseph Payne, whose paper on “The Norman
Element in the Spoken and Written English of the 12th, 13th, and 14th Centuries, and in Our
Provincial Dialects” was published in the Trans. of the Philological Soc., 1868–1869, pp. 352–
449. His views largely underlie the treatment of Skeat in his Principles of English Etymology,
Second Series (Oxford, 1891). Dietrich Behrens dealt in detail with the French borrowings
before 1250 in his Beiträge zur Geschichte der französischen Sprache in England: I, Zur
Lautlehre der französischen Lehnwörter im Mittelenglischen (Heilbronn, Germany, 1886).
Other treatments of the subject in various aspects are Robert Mettig, Die französischen
Elemente im Alt-und Mittelenglischen (800–1258) (Marburg, Germany, 1910); O. Funke, “Zur
Wortgeschichte der französischen Elemente im Englischen,” Englische Studien, 55 (1921), 1–
25; S.H. Bush, “Old Northern French Loan-words in Middle English,” Philol Qu., 1 (1922),
161–72; Robert Feist, Studien zur Rezeption des französischen Wortschatzes im
Mittelenglischen (Leipzig, 1934); Emrik Slettengren, Contributions to the Study of French
Loanwords in Middle English ( Örebro, Sweden, 1932); and Bernhard Diensberg,
Untersuchungen zur phonologischen Rezeption romanischen Lehnguts im Mittelund
Frülhneuenglischen (Tübingen, Germany, 1985), the last two studies dealing with phonological
developments in Anglo-French and Middle English. The extent of the French penetration in
certain sections of the vocabulary can be seen in such studies as Bruno Voltmer, Die
mittelenglische Terminologie der ritterlichen Verwandtschaftsund Standesverhältnisse nach der
höfischen Epen und Romanzen des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Pinneberg, Germany, 1911), and
Helene Döll, Mittelenglische Kleidernamen im Spiegel literarischer Denkmäler des 14.
Jahrhunderts (Giessen, Germany, 1932). Comprehensive, and treating borrowings down to the
nineteenth century, is Fraser Mackenzie, Les Relations de l’Angleterre et de la France d’après
le vocabulaire, vol. 2 (Paris, 1939). There are also special treatments of the Romance element in
individual writers, such as Hans Remus, Die kirchlichen und speziellwissenschaftlichen
romanischen Lehnworte Chaucers (Halle, Germany, 1906); Joseph Mersand, Chaucer’s
Romance Vocabulary (2nd ed., New York, 1939); Georg Reismüller, Romanische Lehnwörter
(erstbelege) bei Lydgate (Leipzig, 1911); and Hans Faltenbacher, Die romanischen, speziell
französischen und lateinischen (bezw. latinisierten) Lehnwörter bei Caxton (Munich, 1907).
Much additional material has become available with the publication of the Middle English
Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M.Kuhn, John Reidy, and Robert E.Lewis (Ann Arbor,
MI, 1952–2001).
For the study of Anglo-Norman the appendix to A.Stimming’s Der Anglonormannische Boeve de
Haumtone (Halle, Germany, 1899) is invaluable. For the earlier period J.Vising’s Étude sur le
dialecte anglo-normand du XII e siècle (Uppsala, Sweden, 1882) is important, and Emil Busch,
Laut-und Formenlehre der Anglonormannischen Sprache des XIV. Jahrhunderts, is helpful for
the later. L.E.Menger’s The Anglo-Norman Dialect (New York, 1904) attempts to survey the