RELATIVE MARKERS IN THE PETERBOROUGH CHRONICLE: 1070 - 1154 OR LINGUISTIC CHANGE EXEMPLIFIED

XAVIER DEKEYSER

doi:10.1515/flih.1986.7.1.93

$Folia Lingmstica Historica VII/1 pp. 93 -105 © Sodetas Linguistica Europaea, 1986 RELATIVE MÄRKERS IN THE PETERBOROUGH CHRONICLE: 1070 - 1154 OR LINGÜISTIC CHANGE EXEMPLUTED* XAVIER DEKEYSER Two strategies in a given language tend to complement each other; äs one advances, the other recedes. (Maxwell 1982 : 150) 0. Introduction: the phüological background 0.1 Linguistically speaking, the so-called Anglo-Saxon Chronicles or Old English Annals undonbtedly constitute one of the richest collections of OE prose. Their origin is to be found in a set of late 9th Century annals, presumably composed at the instigation of King Alired, who is also supposed to have had them copied and distributed among bishops and abbots, \vith instnictions to carry them on. While the archetype has not been preserved,there are seven versions of it, which all of them go back to the 9th Century original; and, äs the annals were continued by successive «hroniclers at various places, each of the seven extant manuscripts has a different terminus ad quem in the lOth and llth centuries. The E text, or the Land Manuscript, was kept up to date down to 1154, i.e. the beginning cf the ME period.1 Internat evidence clearly indicates that it$

RELATIVE MARKERS IN THE PETERBOROUGH CHRONICLE: 1070 - 1154 OR LINGUISTIC CHANGE EXEMPLIFIED

DEKEYSER, XAVIER

Follow Folia Linguistica Historica , Volume 7 (1) de Gruyter – Jan 1, 1986