Initial Position in the Middle English Verse Line
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8863508 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacob Thaisen (0000-0001-6539-3827, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 95 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 500-513 |
| Publication date | 2014-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | English Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-838X • E-ISSN: 1744-4217 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0013838x.2014.924275 |
| OpenAlex | W1966884682 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 5 |
This paper establishes that spelling forms collected from initial position in the Middle English verse line have unique characteristics, and it discusses why this is so. The paper first addresses scribal copying practices, before describing the utility of letter-based n-gram models in objectively comparing scribal copies in terms of their spelling. Testing of models trained on a corpus totalling ten manuscripts demonstrates that initial position regularly prompted scribes to suppress their tendency to introduce their own spelling forms in favour of replicating those encountered in their exemplars. The discussion attributes this behaviour to the operation of two mechanisms. One mechanism is psycholinguistic in origin, while the other is rooted in manuscripts' production and so implies a codicological dimension to spelling variation
Art · Copying · Dimension (graph theory · Line (geometry · Linguistics · Literature · Middle English · Natural language processing · Physics · Political science · Position (finance · Spelling · Variation (astronomy · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution · Mathematics · Medieval Literature and History · History · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.22 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2024 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |