An overview of contact-induced morphosyntactic changes in Early English

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of changes in morphology and syntax during the medieval English period that are plausibly induced or catalysed by language contact. Our emphasis is on accurately characterising the contact situations involved, and evaluating the evidence, rather than exhaustively listing every possible contact-induced change, and so the discussion is structured around a few case studies involving each of the three languages that medieval English was in most intense contact with: British Celtic, Old Norse, and Old French. We compare and contrast the contact situations in terms of van Coetsem’s (1988) distinction between borrowing and imposition and Trudgill’s (2011) framework of sociolinguistic typology.