2024/11/11 by Llinos Evans
#Early Middle English #English #Koinéisation #Old Norse #Peterborough Chronicle #Yorkshire dialect #historical linguistics #koiné language #linguistics #sociolinguistics
paper · doi:10.5526/esj.373
This essay reviews the oft-understudied Early Middle English Koiné Hypothesis and reviews the historical context and criteria to judge whether it could qualify as a koiné language. Koiné Greek, Taiwanese Hokkien, Middle Mandarin, and Modern Hebrew are used as historical examples. Linguistic evidence from the Yorkshire dialect, similarities in alliterative verse in Beowulf and Hervararkviða, and commentary from the First Grammatical Treatise and Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, are referenced, leading to the assessment that Early Middle English could very well be a stabilised regional koiné language under Siegel’s (1985) criteria.