Changes in progress in late Northumbrian: the extension of -s as genitive and plural marker

Abstract

Some of the linguistic changes which are crucial in the history of English and have traditionally been ascribed to Middle English can already be observed in late Northumbrian. One of these changes is the extension of genitive singular -es from the a-stems to other noun classes. Another is the spread of nominative/accusative plural -as from the masculine a-stems to the neuters and to other declensions. The aim of this article is to establish the actual scale on which these two interparadigmatic analogical changes are found in the glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and to the Durham Collectar, both dating from the tenth century. The present study intends to shed more light on the process of morphological restructuring affecting the declensional system of late Northumbrian, and has three main aims: (a) to determine the pattern of dissemination of the innovative inflectional endings; (b) to establish which variables are significant in these analogical processes: declension, type and token frequency, grammatical context, Latin lemma, demarcation; and (c) to account for the different developmental tendencies of these two linguistic changes.

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“…A comparison of these results with those obtained in Lindisfarne (Rodríguez Ledesma 2022) reveals that extension of -es is more widespread in this gloss and is also found with the nouns hernise (4x out of 4x), hreownise (1x out of 2x), soðfaestnisse (4x out of 5x), byrgenn (3x out of 3x), nedl (3x out of 3x), stow (1x out of 1x) and ae (17x out of 17x). On the other hand, the three feminine nouns which show extension of innovative -es in Rushworth 1 do not present variation in Lindisfarne, but always take this inflection: hell (1x), uoruld (11x) and naeht (3x).…”

“…In the Mercian gloss it is limited to three feminine nouns (hell, weoruld and naeht) and the kinship r-stem faeder, 43 whereas in Lindisfarne there is widespread extension of -es to all classes regardless of gender and declension (cf. Rodríguez Ledesma 2022). These findings highlight the importance of Anglian dialects (Mercian and Northumbrian) in the history of English, since they already provide evidence of linguistic changes that have generally been ascribed to Middle English.…”

“…As in previous studies on the glosses to the Durham Collectar and to the Lindisfarne Gospels (Rodríguez Ledesma 2018 and2022), the feminine nouns analysed comprise ō-stems, i-stems and root stems.…”

“…Finally, conclusions are provided in (5). In all sections the results are compared with those obtained from the study of Lindisfarne (Rodríguez Ledesma 2016 and2022) in order to offer a more comprehensive account of the genitive construction in these glosses to the gospels.…”

“…In Lindisfarne, by contrast, forms in -es are attested with all these nouns and are dominant with some of them: brydguma (4x out of 4x), eorðe (11x out of 13x), geleafa (2x out of 5x), hearta (8x out of 9x), heafudponna (2x out of 5x), lamwrihta (1x out of 2x), lichoma (9x out of 12x), witga (6x out of 8x) (cf. Rodríguez Ledesma 2022).…”