Browsing by Author "Mokrowiecki, Tomasz"
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Item Reduplication of consonant graphemes in "The Ormulum" in the light of Late Old English scribal evidence(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2012) Mokrowiecki, TomaszAs opposed to previous studies, which usually attempt to refute the traditional interpretation put on the use of double consonants in The Ormulum, and attempt to advance an alternative explanation for the abnormally frequent use of digraphs, the current study primarily focuses on the standard view, which assumes that the scribe of MS Junius 1 applied double consonant graphemes to indicate vowel shortness. However, in this study the evidence comes not from The Ormulum but from two Late Old English MSS, as the use of double consonants to indicate vowel shortness is also occasionally attested in some earlier texts (Anderson – Britton 1997: 34, 51, 1999: 305, 317-323; Smith 2007: 107; and Laing 2008: 7-8). The major aim of this study is to show that the use of reduplicated consonant graphemes as indicators of vowel shortness is not confined exclusively to The Ormulum because this practice derives directly from Old English scribal tradition, where sequences were used not only to represent geminate (or long) consonants, but sporadically also for marking short vowels.Item Scribal practice and vowel quantity: Homorganic cluster lengthening in Late Old English manuscripts(2011-06-06T07:31:43Z) Mokrowiecki, Tomasz; Krygier, Marcin. PromotorThe first part is a thorough review of the publications on orthographic notations used for marking vowel length in English MSS and those on lengthening of short vowels before homorganic clusters. The study has three major aims. First, a thorough review of the literature on the topic presented in the first part of the thesis is intended to show that the traditional descriptions of HCL are to a large extent confusing, incomplete, and incompatible with one another, whereas the studies that have been carried out so far are often based on entirely wrong assumptions about the change and, what is worse, they take the reliability of the Modern English evidence employed for reconstructing the lengthening at face value. Second, it will be shown that, contrary to common belief, vowel quantity of Old English can be reconstructed on the basis of the evidence from some MSS through analysis of their orthographic systems, as it seems that at least some of them were capable of indicating vowel length. In contrast to most of the previous studies, this includes also an analysis of the orthographic systems of two Late Old English MSS in relation to vowel length. The analysis of the orthographic systems preserved in MS Gg. 3.28 (Homilies of Ælfric) and MS William H. Scheide (The Blickling homilies) presented in the second part of the thesis is an attempt to ascertain to what extent both linear and non-linear notations applied by the scribes can be regarded as formal indicators of vowel quantity and then, with this information on hand, to establish as precisely as possible the conditioning environment for vowel lengthening before consonant groups in the analysed texts, which is the third aim of the study. However, the study is not aimed at explaining the cause and mechanism of the lengthening as this would require a survey on a larger scale, which would include a wide range of texts. Such an analysis is of course impossible here mainly due to the limited availability of relevant primary sources.Item The pre-verbal i- in Early Middle English: An analysis of the formal parameters of the prefixed verbs(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2007) Mokrowiecki, TomaszIn contrast to the majority of works on the pre-verbal i-/y- in Middle English which usually attempt to explain the loss of the prefix, the present study focuses on the formal traits of the prefixed verbs. The intended aim of the study is to ascertain whether in the early Middle English period verbs had to meet any formal criteria for the use of the prefix. The linguistic data collected from seven prose texts composed at the beginning of the thirteenth century in West Midlands show that the morphological status of the EME i- extends beyond that of the preterite participle marker. The morphological dualism of the prefix – often blurred by its opaque semantics – becomes even more evident in a comparative analysis of the verbs taking the pre-verbal ge- in Modern Dutch and German with those preceded by i- in Early Middle English.