Language contact and prestige

Angelika Lutz

Language Contact and Prestige

Abstract: This paper discusses the role of prestige in the contact of English withits most important donor languages, Celtic, Old Norse, French, and Latin, inthis order. It shows that the prestige of a donor language can only partly becorrelated with its stratal relation to the recipient language. Moreover, it de-monstrates that by focussing on the stratal relation of a donor language withits recipient language under specific historical and social conditions, the likelymotivations for borrowing can be ascertained with greater explanatory preci-sion. The arguments presented are based on various kinds of comparative as-sessments of the evidence for language contact, namely (1) evidence from dif-ferent donor languages of English, (2) evidence from one and the same donorlanguage in different periods, and (3) evidence from English and other recipientlanguages in response to the same donor language.

Angelika Lutz, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-NürnbergE-Mail: [email protected]

1 Introduction

The role of prestige as a sociolinguistic factor is complex. To some degree, itscomplexity in a language community derives from the complexity of the respec-tive social system. With regard to language contact and change, it is of particu-lar interest whether the prestige of a contact language influences the directionof a change in the recipient language and in which way. Unlike in studies ofcontemporary spoken English, where also covert prestige can be shown to influ-ence the linguistic behaviour of certain groups of speakers under particular so-cial conditions, studies of earlier stages of a language concentrate on the as-sessment of the effects of overt prestige of a contact language on the recipientlanguage (cf. Campbell and Mixco 2007 s.n. prestige). We know that prestige asa factor in language change is not restricted to changes of lexis but plays a rolealso with regard to structural changes, e.g. of styles of pronunciation or of syn-tactic and pragmatic choices. But since much of the relevant literature on therole of prestige in language contact and change deals primarily with lexical in-fluences, many of my examples discussed in this paper have been taken fromthe sphere of lexis. Yet even with this concentration on predominantly lexical

DOI 10.1515/anglia-2013-0065 Anglia 2013, 131 (4): 562–590

influences, the role of prestige as a factor in language change is difficult to as-sess. These difficulties cannot be resolved by way of definition, however de-tailed. Rather, what I will attempt is assess its role in language contact by com-paring different types of influence of important donor languages on English andalso on closely related German. That way, I hope to sharpen and to stabilize theconcept and to contribute to a more precise understanding of its role in thehistory of English.

In “Lexical Borrowing and the History of English: A Typology of Typolo-gies”, Andreas Fischer distinguishes between morphological, semantic and so-ciolinguistic typologies (Fischer 2003). With regard to sociolinguistic typologies,he rightly warns against the dangers of circular reasoning between socio-historical and linguistic evidence. He comes to the conclusion that “the third,although the most attractive because of its sociolinguistic orientation, is possi-bly the least useful for a study of lexical borrowing: lexis is an unreliable indica-tor of the precise nature of a contact situation, and the socio-historical evidencenecessary to reconstruct the latter is often not available” (Fischer 2003: 110). Henever refers explicitly to prestige but speaks of “status or power relations” (107),“greater cultural pressure” (108), and “sociopolitical dominance” (108) that maydetermine the lexical choice e.g. of a loanword over that of an inherited term.Fischer also discusses the treatment of language contact in the history of Eng-lish in established handbooks of general linguistics, in particular Bloomfield(1933) and Thomason and Kaufman (1988), mostly with regard to their use ornon-use of the contact-linguistic terms ‘superstrate’, ‘adstrate’ and ‘substrate’that refer to the status or power relations between languages in contact.

In the most recent literature on general contact linguistics, the notion ofprestige is repeatedly adduced in the discussion of lexical influence but onlypartly linked to the stratal terminology. Thus, Raymond Hickey, in the introduc-tion to his monumental Handbook of Language Contact (2010: 7–8), states:“Two established terms are used to label the language with less status and thatwith more, namely ‘substrate’ and ‘superstrate’ respectively. The superstrate isregarded as having, or having had, more prestige in the society in which it isspoken. […] Asymmetrical levels of power in a contact situation play a definiterole in the results of contact” (7). Then, under the heading “Relative status anddirection of influence” (8), he continues: “the language with more status influ-ences that with less. […] Vocabulary, as an open class with a high degree ofawareness by speakers, is the primary source of borrowing from the super-strate.” With regard to the history of English, Hickey mentions French and Latinas “standard examples” (ibid.) for such influence.

In the same volume, Donald Winford’s paper “Contact and Borrowing”, insubsection 5 “Constraints on Borrowing of Overt Elements”, deals with prestige

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and need as two important motivations for borrowing (Winford 2010: 177–178).Winford points out that they ultimately go back to a discussion by UrielWeinreich, who mentions the two among several other “Reasons for LexicalBorrowing” (Weinreich 1953: 56–61). With regard to “[t]he need to designatenew things, persons, places and concepts” (ibid. 56), Winford (2010: 177) quiterightly emphasizes that “[b]oth socially dominant and subordinate languagesborrow from one another for this reason” and adduces loans such as skunk fromAmerican Indian and kangaroo from aboriginal Australian languages as exam-ples for borrowing from subordinate languages out of a need to designate newthings. But he adds: “Borrowing is especially common where there is need tokeep abreast of developments in science, technology, and higher learning gen-erally. This is what prompted much of the borrowing from French, Latin, andGreek into English in the Early Modern English period” (ibid.). With reference toborrowing motivated by prestige, Winford emphasizes that this “explains whysocially subordinate languages tend to borrow more from dominant languagesthan vice versa” (ibid.)1 and refers to French influence again, here with the ex-ample of the so-called culinary pairs, which will be dealt with in section 4.

Two features of Winford’s line of argument deserve special mention: (1) Hedoes not link the notion of prestige with the term “superstrate”, unlike Hickey,though he speaks of socially dominant and subordinate languages. (2) He men-tions French twice, with reference to both need and prestige. In the first case hedoes this with reference to the influences of French, Latin and Greek on EarlyModern English, in the second with reference to French influence on MiddleEnglish. But Winford also warns that the notions need and prestige “are onlyone part of the explanation for lexical borrowing” (ibid.) and mentions furtherlikely factors. To some degree, his caution expressed in these remarks seems toreflect Fischer’s general scepticism concerning the usefulness of sociolinguistictypologies for the assessment of lexical influences and Thomason and Kauf-man’s scepticism with regard to the linguistic usefulness of the notion ‘pres-tige’.2

My paper will focus attention on an earlier, less cautious attempt to differ-entiate between need and prestige as major motivations for lexical borrowingand to relate the latter to the stratal terminology. This attempt was originallymade by Hans Henrich Hock (1986: ch. 14.5 “Motivations for Borrowing”) and

1 See also Bloomfield (1933: 464): “In all cases, however, it is the lower language which borrowspredominantly from the upper language” (italics by Bloomfield).2 See Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 43–46). But see also below, note 4, for their assumptionabout some characteristics of substrate loans as reflections of the low prestige of the donorlanguage (ibid. 117–118).

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later slightly modified in Hock and Joseph (1996, 2009: ch. 8.5 “Why Borrow?Motivations for Borrowing Strategies”). My discussion of this attempt and ofsimilar views expressed in various other handbook accounts is intended as anappeal for more caution and precision in our application of these terms todiscussions of language contact in the history of English. I begin with Hock’sexamples for borrowing motivated by need, namely “umlaut (from German),karma (from Sanskrit), gnu (from Bushman), potato (from Taino)” (Hock 1986:408).3 Obviously, these are words for concepts that have been found necessaryor useful by speakers of the recipient language, English. Here, Hock is in agree-ment with Weinreich and Winford, and such examples could also be adducedas typical instances of cultural borrowing in Bloomfield’s terms (Bloomfield1933: ch. 25).

2 Prestige and Substrate

With regard to borrowing motivated by prestige, Hock’s attempt can be shownto exhibit problems of several kinds. The most obvious of them results from hisdecision to associate the borrowing of words from American Indian languagessuch as woodchuck, mocassin and numerous place names with the low degreeof prestige of these languages and their speakers, “from the perspective of theconquering Europeans”, and to characterize them as typical for borrowing froma substrate (Hock 1986: 410–411). Later, in Hock and Joseph (1996: 272–273,2009: 259–261), it is, in addition, loans from Insular Celtic such as brock ‘badg-er’, crag ‘steep rock’ and place names whose borrowing is characterized as typi-cal of the substratal relation of these contact languages with English. The stratalposition of the American Indian languages and the Celtic languages in relationto English in the respective contact situations was indeed substratal. Yet theborrowing of such words from both groups of contact languages by speakers ofEnglish is likely to have been motivated by need, namely the need to designatenew things, at least for those who first became acquainted with these noveltiesor had a say in naming them. And the fact that particularly few words of Celticorigin were borrowed into English is not due to “the low prestige of the Celts”(as argued in Hock and Joseph 1996: 272, 2009: 260) but due to the particularlysmall number of novelties worth naming for the Anglo-Saxons when they

3 Hock and Joseph (1996: 255, 2009: 243) adduce umlaut, rouge, macho, and realpolitik as ex-amples.


crossed the Channel and conquered and settled Britannia, with its basically fa-miliar European habitat.4

3 Old Norse: Adstrate or Superstrate –and its Prestige?

Seemingly less obviously problematic is Hock’s assessment of the influence ofOld Norse on English as adstratal, where he finds himself in agreement withnumerous other scholars.5 Hock remarks that the Danes “settled in the so-calledDanelaw, intermarrying and otherwise acting as equals with the indigenousEnglish population”.6 For this assumption of an adstratal influence of Old Norseon English, all versions of the book adduce numerous lexical loans such as egg,get, give, take as examples that appear to reflect relations between speakers ofOld Norse and Old English on roughly equal terms. Quite similarly, Barber(1993: 146) assumes that “the Vikings had mixed in with the English on more orless equal terms” (again in Barber et al. 2009: 156). Denison and Hogg (2006:11), on the basis of loanwords similar to those listed by Hock, moreover believethat life in the Danelaw was characterized by “relatively little mutual hostility”.Townend (2006: 65) speaks of “Scandinavian settlers” but of “Norman conquer-ors”. In my view, the assumption of an adstratal relation between Old Norseand Old English is founded on a misinterpretation or insufficient knowledge ofthe evidence. The Old English material in fact reflects extended Norse rule andprovides clear lexical evidence for Norse superstratal influence, mostly in theDanelaw but under King Cnut and his sons (1016–1042) also in the country as awhole. The most obvious examples for superstratal influence are terms referring

4 Cf. Lutz (2002a: section 3 “The Linguistic Effects of a Conquest”, esp. note 14). On the sub-stratal relation of the Celtic languages with English see Filppula and Klemola (2009) and Kle-mola (2013). Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 117–118) do not distinguish between need andprestige as important reasons for borrowing but argue: “If the language of a shifting populationdid not contribute lexicon to the target language, other than a few words for local natural andcultural items, then we can conclude that the shifting population did not enjoy much social orpolitical prestige. (‘Prestige’ is a trait recognized by the fact that people behave as if theythought it was either useful or necessary to have some of it, i.e., by imitation)” (use of bold-face by T & K). They do not refer to Weinreich (1953) in this context.5 See now also Fischer (2013: 24, Table 2.1), but this assessment is explicitly based on a num-ber of handbook accounts, not on independent evidence.6 Hock (1986: 410). The same passage in Hock and Joseph (1996: 273, 2009: 260) employs capi-tals for “EQUALS”.

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to the legal system and to a Scandinavian-dominated political hierarchy.7 Theinsufficient awareness of this lexical evidence must be attributed to the fact thatmost of the terms reflecting Norse rule are preserved in Old English texts only.Very few words of this type have survived until today, e.g. law, wrong, and thesemantic loan earl. Most other loans from the legal and administrative sphereattested in Old English were replaced soon afterwards by superstratal terms ofFrench provenance, as a result of the Norman Conquest, e.g. unlagu by injustice,unseht by discord, and þræl by serf (cf. Lutz 2012a: 21–24). It is presumably forthis reason that the few surviving legal terms have tended to be misinterpretedas loans of a very basic character, as it happened with law (Bloomfield 1933:468, Knowles 1997: 41), or mistakenly adduced as inherited terms, as in thecases of law (Hock 1986: 385) and the semantic loan earl (Barber 1993: 146, Bar-ber et al. 2009: 156, Hughes 2005: 113).

The early loans from Old Norse are mostly attested in texts referring to theDanelaw, particularly in legal texts by Archbishop Wulfstan of York (Peters1981, Lutz 2012a: 19–24) and thus provide information about the situation in anotherwise presumably largely preliterate and heathen part of late Anglo-SaxonEngland, compared to contemporary Wessex. Wulfstan was an important politi-cal figure under Cnut and his predecessor Ethelred. His legal texts and homiliessuggest that the political leaders of his time were interested in establishing andpreserving politically and socially stable conditions (cf. Denison and Hogg2006: 11, cited above). Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that central termsof Wulfstan’s texts are Old Norse loanwords that reflect the existence and ex-pansion of Norse rule. Thus, it has been shown that during Cnut’s reign, super-stratal terms such as OE lagu and eorl, whose use had been restricted to theDanelaw earlier on, extended their spheres of usage to the remaining country atthe cost of OE æw and ealdorman.8

7 Peters (1981), Lutz (2012a: 19–24). Miller (2012: ch. 5) doubts that Old Norse was superstratalin relation to Old and Middle English, despite his detailed characterisation of the historicaldevelopment in Anglo-Saxon England, particularly in the Danelaw. He believes that “Norse-derived words in Old English are mostly technical terms associated with elements of Scandina-vian culture […]; those first attested in Middle English are largely everyday words” (Miller 2012:106). But since most of his arguments against superstratal influence are related to the parallelsbetween Old Norse and Anglo-Norman as superstrates of English, they will be discussed insection 4 below.8 Godden (1980), Fischer (1989), Keynes (1994), Pons-Sanz (2007). Miller suggests that Wulf-stan’s role is very similar to that of Abbot Ælfric (2012: 51–52, section 3.10 “Wulfstan and OtherStandards”). But as archbishop of York and counsellor of two kings, Wulfstan is likely to havehad different, much more political aims. For a detailed discussion of his leading role as spiri-tual and political leader see Keynes (2007).


But what about lexical evidence reflecting the prestige of Old Norse relativeto Old English? There is such evidence, e.g. (1) onomastic material suggestingthe use of Scandinavian personal names by Anglo-Saxons (Clark 1992: esp.465–468, Fellows-Jensen 1995); (2) discussions about Northern gods by Arch-bishop Wulfstan, Abbot Ælfric, and Ealdorman Ethelweard of Wessex (Townend2002: ch. 4); (3) Scandinavian expressions in the Old English heroic poem Battleof Maldon, which is associated with the Southern Danelaw and possibly withCnut’s reign (Robinson 1976, Scragg 1981: 26–27, Bibire 2001: 103–104); and (4)Old Norse poems in praise of Cnut as king of England (Hofmann 1955: 59–110,Frank 1994, Townend 2001, Treharne 2012: 43–47).9 Such pieces of evidencepoint to the existence of an Anglo-Danish ruling class, not to a mere immigra-tion of Vikings as free peasants, as frequently assumed. However, since the tra-ditional cultural values of the Scandinavians were similar to those of the Anglo-Saxons, the largely preliterate Viking culture in late Anglo-Saxon England leftrelatively few obvious lexical traces, in particular outside the former Danelaw.10

Therefore, and also on account of the similarities between the two languages, itis not surprising that the Norse influence on Old English did not become asobvious as the Norman French influence on Middle and Modern English, whichmade a much stronger and more lasting imprint on English lexis.

The loans from Old Norse which usually receive most prominence in hand-book accounts of language contact in the history of English, i.e. words withtypically very basic meanings and forms, most of which are first attested in Mid-dle English texts of the former Danelaw and have survived until today,11 havenot been discussed here so far. They need to be dealt with in the context of theinfluence of Old French. Against this background, it will become apparent thatthe frequent borrowing of very basic words is characteristic of superstratal influ-ence from both contact languages.

9 For the use of French in post-Conquest courtly literature in England see below, section 4.10 But see Dance (2003) for the early Middle English evidence from south-western texts, i.e.from outside the former Danelaw, which strongly suggests a regional survival of Norse-derivedvalues based on the political and cultural relations between York and Worcester. The archbish-opric of York was repeatedly held in plurality with the see of Worcester.11 Important special studies include Rynell (1948), Hug (1987), Dance (2003), Skaffari (2009),and Bator (2010).

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4 Old French: Superstrate – and its Prestige?

Hock (1986: 410) emphasizes that “to the extent that special connotations areattached to the loans, they almost invariably reflect the higher prestige enjoyedby the speakers of French”.12 And he specifies that “the borrowings from Frenchtend to cluster in the prestigious areas of the king’s court, warfare, administra-tion, etc.” (ibid.). Then, with reference to the stratal terminology, he argues that“where prestige is unequal, as between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons […] theterms superstratum and substratum are used, the former referring to the lan-guage with higher prestige, the latter to the one with lower prestige” (Hock1986: 411; Hock and Joseph 1996: 274, 2009: 262). The decision to attribute thelexical loans from Old French to superstratal influence is certainly much moreto the point than the classification of Old Norse loans as adstratal. No one, in-cluding those scholars who do not employ the stratal terminology, would denythat after 1066 Norman French was the language of the new rulers of England.Most scholars would also agree that only when the French-speaking rulingclasses eventually shifted to English, did it become fully apparent that this longforeign rule had exerted a strong and lasting influence on English lexis.13 Thecharacter of this influence reflects extended contact on unequal terms. Nonethe-less, Hock’s unspecific equation of the term ‘superstrate’ with the notion pres-tige is problematic, in several ways.

Most obviously problematic, yet widely accepted, is the concentration onFrench loans from lexical fields that may reflect a higher prestige of Old Frenchin relation to English. Hock does not seem to be aware of the massive borrowingof very basic words from Old French, at the cost of the inherited vocabulary,and Hock and Joseph (1996: 273, 2009: 261) state explicitly that “in contrast tothe Danish contact, the most basic vocabulary remained unaffected”. Similarly,Barber (1993: 146; Barber et al. 2009: 156) emphasizes that “the French wordswere on the whole not such homely ones as the Scandinavian words […]. Frenchwords tended to penetrate downwards in society, whereas the Scandinavianwords came in on the ground floor.” Such statements are squarely contradictedby the quantitative evidence for Modern Standard English as presented in Sche-ler (1977: 72). Scheler’s percentages are based on the Shorter Oxford English Dic-tionary (= SOED; ca. 80,000 words), the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (= ALD,later OALD; ca. 30,000 words), and the General Service List of English Words

12 Hock and Joseph (1996: 273, 2009: 261) employ capitals for “HIGHER PRESTIGE”.13 Burnley (1992: 423) aptly characterizes the lexical influence of Old French as “prolonged,varied and ultimately enormous.” For an informed and well-balanced discussion and assess-ment, see also Berndt (1992).


with Semantic Frequencies (= GSL; ca. 4,000 words). Scheler’s figures demon-strate that both French and the Scandinavian languages have contributed asignificantly larger proportion of their lexical influence to the very basic vocab-ulary of Standard English than to the lexicon as a whole, in the case of French38% vs. 28%, in the case of the Scandinavian languages 3.11% vs. 2.16%.14

Quite early on, Leonard Bloomfield (1933), in ch. 26 (“Intimate Borrowing”), hadrightly characterized the influences of both donor languages as examples of di-rect borrowing typically resulting from a conquest, and he had expressly statedthat borrowing in such direct contact situations “very often extends to speech-forms that are not connected with cultural novelties” (Bloomfield 1933: 461).15

But further down, in his section on Old French influence, he focused attentionon words reflecting foreign rule and lifestyle, also from the viewpoint of ser-vants (464–465). By contrast, in his section on Old Norse influence, where herightly mentioned Danish rule, he came to the conclusion that “the Scandina-vian elements […] do not conform to the type which an upper language leavesbehind. They are restricted to the intimate part of the vocabulary” (468). Thispartly erroneous conclusion resulted from the fact that Bloomfield did not knowof the Norse loans attested in Old English texts only. Most of these early loansare not listed in the OED but only in dictionaries of Old English and received adetailed treatment by Hofmann (1955) and Peters (1981), long after the publica-tion of Bloomfield’s book. It is only on the basis of this early evidence for OldNorse influence and of Scheler’s percentages that the influences of Old Norseand Old French on English can be shown to be similar in kind, namely insofaras they are characterized by two specific types of lexical borrowing: words re-flecting foreign rule and words of a very basic character. Both types are due tosuperstratal influence.16 This linguistic evidence is in agreement with the histor-

14 This is not to say that French has contributed more to the basic vocabulary than to theentire lexicon in absolute numbers: 38% of 4,000 words is obviously much less than 28% of80,000 words. In Lutz (2012a: 25), I have tried to illustrate the influences of the two super-strates on the basic vocabulary with a small selection of parallel examples for loans with basicmeanings and simple morphological structures taken from Baugh and Cable (2012). Yet selec-tions of examples may always be biased, in one way or another. Scheler’s percentages seemmore apt to demonstrate that long-established scholarly assessments of lexical borrowing intoEnglish may be in need of re-consideration. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 124) believe that“the lexical influence was rather light in the basic vocabulary, amounting only to about 7 per-cent”, but they provide no evidence.15 See also Vennemann (1984), for several parallel cases of superstratal influence. They allinclude a section on Alltagswortschatz (borrowings from all spheres of every-day life).16 Lutz (2012a: 19–29, 2012b: 510–514). Miller (2012: 97–98 with note 5) characterizes this as-sessment as “problematic for several reasons”, namely because (i) “there is no agreement onthe vocabulary estimates […]”; (ii) “it is well established that the density of Norse borrowings

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ical evidence for two extended periods of foreign rule, first that of the Vikingsand later that of the Normans.17

It remains to be asked whether the particularly frequent borrowing of verybasic words from these two donor languages should be attributed primarily tothe directness of this contact, as is in fact suggested by Bloomfield’s own char-acterisation of the Norse loans as being “restricted to the intimate part of thevocabulary”.18 Or should this massive borrowing of basic words be attributed tothe fact that it occurs on unequal terms and that superstratal loans of this basictype carry more prestige in the recipient language than their inherited equiva-lents for this particular reason? Weinreich’s discussion seems to point to thelatter interpretation. Weinreich (1953: 59–60) states that if “one language is en-dowed with prestige, the bilingual is likely to use what are identifiable loan-words from it as a means of displaying the social status which its knowledgesymbolizes”. Among such “identifiable” loans, he counts “intimate, ‘unneces-sary’ borrowing of everyday designations for things which have excellent namesin the language which is being spoken” (60). This would mean that the fre-quent use of such “unnecessary” loans from the Norse and Norman superstratesgained prestige in the recipient language in periods of bilingualism on unequalterms mainly because the speakers of the upper language used them in theirexchanges with bilingual speakers who thus became used to employing them inboth languages. At any rate, the particularly frequent borrowing of “unneces-sary” loans from both contact languages into English calls for a parallel assess-

was greater in some areas than others”; (iii) “(Anglo-)French words are essentially borrowed assuch, not as the hybrid formations that occur in scandinavianized English”; (iv) “[…] many[Norse-derived words] did not diffuse beyond the main areas of norsification”; (v) “the type ofimpact of French and Nordic is different simply because Scandinavian was never written inEngland, in contrast to the ‘prolonged history in which French influenced English as a techni-cal written language’ (Burnley 1992: 426).” These five “reasons” given by Miller are invalid froma contact-linguistic viewpoint. Miller also holds that (vi) “Lutz considers only the vocabulary,none of the syntactic evidence for the mutual convergence of English and Danish” (this is in-correct; see Lutz 2012a: sections 4 and 5); and (vii) “Finally, she argues that only Norse andFrench contributed ‘culturally unnecessary’ loans, which misses the point of numerous vacu-ous loans from Latin that replaced perfectly good English words” (this is equally incorrect; seeLutz 2002b: 423–432, 2008: 138–144, and below, section 5).17 Despite its title, “Borrowing as language conflict”, Görlach’s recent study fails to addressthe superstratal character of the Old Norse and Old French influences (see esp. Görlach 2009:725–727).18 Bloomfield (1933: 468); see the recent definition of Bloomfield’s term “intimate borrowing”in Brinton and Arnovick (2011: 572): “The borrowing of a word between languages spoken inthe same geographical area at the same time.” Unlike Bloomfield’s own characterisation, thisdefinition does not refer to a conquest as the most typical reason for intimate borrowing.


ment. Such borrowing should no longer be attributed to contact on equal terms,as has been customary with reference to the influence of Old Norse, or be lar-gely neglected, as is done in treatments of the influence of Old French.

Less obviously problematic than the disregard of very basic French loans isthe attempt to attribute the borrowing of French words to their prestige on ac-count of the fact that they reflect foreign rule. Trask (1996: 20) rightly refers toNorman French as “the language of the ruling élite. Royalty and the aristocracyspoke French; the law spoke French; the upper echelons of the administrationand the military spoke French.” And he adduces loans such as prince, duke,baron, judge, attorney, court, chancellor, bailiff, official and some military termsthat refer to this foreign élite and its authority. Hughes (2005: 110) states: “Mostsignificantly, the Normans established their rule in their own tongue, which be-came the new language of power and prestige, very much as English subse-quently became the language of status in the British empire”.19 Before 1066, thiskind of prestige resulting from the execution of institutionalized power hadbeen associated with the authoritative use of appropriate terms of the mothertongue, and in late Anglo-Saxon England, some central Old English terms hadbeen replaced by Old Norse terms, as shown above. In post-Conquest England,the change of rule did not only result in the replacement of many well-estab-lished terms for specific ranks and functions but also in the replacement of theentire word family referring to potential leaders in the society of pre-ConquestEngland: The word family noble from Old French has replaced that of OE æðele,which goes back to Germanic prehistory (cf. Vennemann 2012: 950–967).20

With regard to loans referring to foreign rule and the prestige that may de-rive from its execution, it is not always clear whether they were borrowed onlyon account of the change of rule or whether their introduction was also due to aneed to designate new things or concepts. This is why I have repeatedly ad-duced the legal terminology of Middle English and Modern English as a par-ticularly clear example of the superstratal influence of Old French. The richevidence of Old English legal texts makes it obvious that the large-scale replace-ment of the Old English terms by Old French terms resulted primarily from thechange of rule after the Norman Conquest, not from a need to designate newlegal concepts (Lutz 2002a: 148–150; see also Lutz 2002b: 415–419, in particular

19 These statements are not entirely correct because they leave out of account the role of Latinfor legal documents particularly in early Norman England, for administrative purposes muchlonger; see especially Clanchy (1993), Brand (2010: 95–97), and Wright (2012).20 It is worth noting but goes far beyond the scope of the present study that the Germanicword family, which is preserved in German, can be traced back to Semitic and that way reflectsthe establishment of foreign rule in Germanic prehistory (see Vennemann 2012: 967–980).

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for its comparison to the situation in Germany, where the Germanic terms havebeen largely preserved).

Loans from Old French having to do with warfare, though likewise mostlyresulting from the change of rule in post-Conquest England, are a somewhatmore complicated matter: the replacement of numerous very general terms, e.g.here with army, gefeoht with battle, feond with enemy, is clearly due to super-stratal influence, just like the introduction of a large number of verbs such asarm, besiege, defend, for which Old English had perfectly good equivalents. Butwhat are we to make of specific technical terms such as the very early post-Con-quest loan castel from Old French referring to an innovative, very effective Nor-man type of stronghold, unlike the earlier loan castel from Latin, which denoteda fortified town?21 What was the primary motivation for borrowing it – or, notmuch earlier on, for borrowing the additional meaning ‘light warship’ from OldNorse for OE æsc ‘ash-tree’?22 Quite clearly, the borrowing of such words andnew meanings occurred in the context of warfare between the Anglo-Saxonsand their opponents. But in addition, the borrowing of such words or meaningsis likely to have been motivated by a need to designate new, particularly effec-tive military means. And it was presumably only due to such a need that lateron, numerous other words relating to warfare were borrowed into English, e.g.kalashnikov, a Russian-made machine gun named after its inventor, in the twen-tieth century (see OED s.v.). On the other hand, numerous loans denoting speci-fic types of weapons, armour, and other military equipment such as OF lance,harneis, and banier, which were borrowed into English during the long periodof French rule (E. lance, harness, banner), were also borrowed into German, butin the latter case not due to a change of rule but on account of the culturalsuperiority of French knighthood and its values in the High Middle Agesthroughout Europe (G. Lanze, Harnisch, Banner, all first attested for the twelfthcentury; see Wells 1985: 120, Besch and Wolf 2009: 96, and Kluge 2011 s.vv.).Remarkably, the detailed display of such military terms in courtly romances,e.g. in descriptions of tournaments, and the prestige associated with it by acourtly audience, is attested much later in English than in German and in thesource language, French. This significant delay of their attestation in English isthe result of the superstratal role of Old French in medieval England: courtlyliterature in England was for a long time mostly literature written in French (seeCalin 1994: 7–9, Howlett 1996: 162–165, and Lutz 2002a: 155–156, 164–165).

21 See DOE s.v., MED s.v. castel 1a. Burnley (1992: 488) argues that “alongside the technologi-cal advance, which may have brought about this change, social developments also played apart”.22 See DOE s.v. æsc.


Thus, Townend’s (2006: 68) interpretation of the role of Old French in late med-ieval England “as a language of literature and culture” does not really do justiceto its stratal position, and his assumption that “by the mid- to late-fourteenthcentury, the ‘triumph of English’ was assured” (ibid.) is highly problematic.23

The characterisation of the role of French in late medieval England by RichardIngham, in the introduction to a recent collection of articles on Anglo-Norman(Ingham 2010: 1), seems much closer to the linguistic facts: “French in England[…] had few or no native speakers, yet was quite commonly spoken and enjoyedthe status of a prestige language.” In the contributions to Ingham’s volume, thisis demonstrated for various professions.24

Hock’s “prestigious areas of the king’s court, warfare, administration, etc.”are detailed e.g. in Baugh’s lists of loans from the areas “Governmental andAdministrative Words […] Ecclesiastical Words […] Law […] Army and Navy […]Fashion, Meals, and Social Life […] Art, Learning, Medicine” (Baugh and Cable2012: §§124–129). Many handbook accounts distinguish between two phases ofborrowing French words in Middle English. Trask (1996: 20) characterizes themas an initial phase “long before French had acquired the worldwide prestigewhich it later achieved” and a later phase, when “thanks to the vastly greaterprestige of French, English-speakers eagerly borrowed almost any French wordsthey could get their hands on, regardless of the fact that English in many caseshad perfectly good equivalents.” For the initial phase he adduces examples re-ferring to the political, legal, and military hierarchy, for the later phase he lists“country, music, jewel, picture, beef, fruit, boil, courage, honour, virtue, pity, sen-tence, question, language, literature, fool, horrible, mirror, gentle, male, female,even face”. To some degree, this separation of the lexical areas obviously re-lated to the execution of power from various other lexical areas appears plausi-ble, yet it is problematic, not least because the long period of functional trilin-gualism in medieval England makes it particularly difficult to decide when andwhy exactly which loans became an established part of the English wordhoard.25

23 Incidentally, Townend’s statements on the role of French in medieval England (see esp. 66–73) are not based on scholarly references.24 See, e.g., the studies by Brand (2010) on the use of French in the legal profession, by Curryet al. (2010) for military and diplomatic purposes, particularly in the fifteenth century, byRothwell (2010) for manorial administration, and by Trotter (2010) for the local organisation ofbridgebuilding. See also numerous recent studies of bilingual and trilingual texts from latemedieval England by Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright, e.g. Schendl (2013) and Wright (2013).25 Thus, for legal purposes, Anglo-Norman is known to have remained in use until the fif-teenth century (Brand 2010); see also Wełna (2011) on the temporal and dialectal distributionof the variants leal/loyal, real/loyal and viage/voyage.

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Again, a comparison of the situation in England with that in other Europeancountries may be of some help. Two groups of examples, both taken from thesphere of courtly meals, may serve to illustrate some of the problems associatedwith the borrowing of terms related to the dinner table: (1) French loans such asE. pheasant, raisin, saffron (OED s.vv.), all first attested in English in the four-teenth century, very likely reflect aspects of courtly feasting in French-domi-nated medieval England. But the very same French words were also borrowedinto Middle High German, in the thirteenth century (cf. Kluge 2011 s.vv. Fasan,Rosine, Safran), presumably due to the intense cultural interest in all aspects ofFrench courtly life. Such parallels of borrowing from Old French into both reci-pient languages demonstrates that the prestige related to affording, consuming,and describing such new items was not necessarily linked to an unequal stratalrelation, as assumed by Hock for English. Moreover, the very same terms mayhave been borrowed into both languages by members of the courtly society andtheir servants on account of a need to designate new things. (2) The Frenchloans pork, beef, veal, mutton, which according to Winford (2010: 177), “supple-mented native words like pig, cow, etc. (as labels for the processed forms of themeat in question)”, have frequently been ascribed to the higher prestige of OldFrench compared to Middle English, e.g. by Hock (1986: 385, Hock and Joseph1996: 271, 2009: 258). Winford (2010: 177) likewise refers to these word pairsas examples for borrowing “motivated by considerations of prestige”. Hughes(2005: 117) deals with these pairs in his section “The Sociology of Food” andstates: “Food provides perhaps the most striking sociolinguistic division be-tween Saxon and Norman, since the master/servant relationship was demar-cated by differing word-stocks: the animal in the field or on the hoof retainedits Anglo-Saxon name, but when slaughtered for the overlord’s table it wastransmogrified into Norman.”26 Denison and Hogg (2006: 16) warn against theassumption of such a simplistic lexical reflection of a master/servant relation:“[…] the introduction of French loans for food, such as beef, pork, and mutton,is sometimes held to demonstrate a considerable degree of bilingualism. […]The initial reaction is to believe that; it is only when we recall terms such asEnglish lamb (alongside mutton) or Anglo-Norman cattle alongside English cowthat its plausibility diminishes.” Kornexl and Lenker (2011: 181) quote this pas-sage in section 1 “Contextualising the ‘Culinary Pairs’: Sociolinguistic Settingand Linguistic Effects” of their paper and demonstrate in the remaining sectionsthat the establishment of these word pairs in English, with the restriction of theFrench loans to the ‘meat-meaning’, was a long and uneven development and

26 Ultimately, these discussions of the culinary word pairs go back to John Wallis’ Grammaticalinguae Anglicanae; see Jespersen (1938: § 88, Knowles 1997: 56).


certainly “a process that was not directed by the noble speakers of the donorlanguage in the one-sided way the ‘master/servant talk hypothesis’ claims”(Kornexl and Lenker 2011: 204). Quite clearly, the Old French superstrate didnot make such a lexical and semantic distinction and thus could not haveserved as a model for a restructuring process in the English substrate. Yet,nevertheless, this structural process presupposes the development of a stronglymixed lexis in post-Conquest English, as the result of intense and extended con-tact on unequal terms.27

It remains to be asked whether the borrowing of the French contributions tothe culinary pairs should be attributed to prestige at all. Barber (1993: 147, Bar-ber et al. 2009: 157) adduces them as “upper-class objects”, together with manorand palace (vs. home and house). Yet the meat of pigs, cows, or sheep in medie-val England cannot be considered a luxury good, unlike that of pheasants. Theupper ranks of society in medieval Germany, who adopted many features ofFrench courtly life, e.g. the use of plural forms for addressing single persons ofhigher rank,28 obviously saw no need to borrow French terms for the meats ofthese animals, and their use was not new to the English either but about ascommon as that of eggs, for which the inhabitants of the former Danelaw never-theless borrowed a word from Old Norse.29 Bloomfield (1933: 465) aptly men-tions the culinary pairs at the end of a list of “terms relating to the household,such as servants might learn from master and mistress”. His list contains loanssuch as chair, which largely replaced basic, well-established stool (cf. G. Stuhl)but also terms such as jelly (G. Gelee < F. gelée; see Kluge 2011 s.vv.). This sug-gests that in medieval England the replacement of inherited words with Frenchloans was often due to the fact that, for an extended period of time, servantsneeded to know them in the language of their masters (see Ingham 2009 for thelinguistic situation in manorial households in the fourteenth century). Thus,eventually, the inherited terms went out of use or were restricted to a fraction ofthe original meaning range whereas the loans, though apparently unnecessary,

27 In Lutz (2008: 146), where I contrast the etymologically split terminology for animals andtheir meats in English with the uniformly Germanic terminology of these terms in German andattribute the former to superstratal influence, I do this in response to Baugh and Cable’s (2002:§128) assumption that the borrowing of French terms for meats, poultry and fish reflects therefinement of post-Conquest cuisine. Hughes (2005: 118), who assumes “that the Saxon cuisinemust have been a sorry affair”, argues along the same line as Baugh. For a discussion of theculinary vocabulary in fourteenth-century recipes see Bator (2011).28 See the contributions by David Burnley, Tony Hunt, Thomas Honegger, and Horst Simon inTaavitsainen and Jucker (2003), and Besch and Wolf (2009: 118–122).29 The cognate of ME ey. Its borrowing is commonly but in my view erroneously attributed toinfluence “on equal terms”.

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could become part of the very basic vocabulary. This type of borrowing, whichalso includes the French halves of the culinary pairs, is difficult to ascribe toprestige, let alone to need.

Thus, taken together, the borrowing from French into various European lan-guages in the High and Late Middle Ages makes it clear that the main cause forborrowing from French into English on a much larger scale is the stratal relationbetween these two languages.30 This is what made the borrowing from Frenchinto post-Conquest English so different from that into other Germanic lan-guages. It cannot be explained sufficiently with reference “to the vastly greaterprestige of French” (Trask 1996: 20) but needs to take into account the stratalposition of Old French in relation to medieval English, as the prime cause forthis particular type of prestige. Why else would the ruling classes in post-Con-quest England have chosen to refer to their homeland, their tongue, and thecentral values of their élites with terms borrowed from Old French? Country,language, courage, honour, virtue, and pity belong to the list of terms which,according to Trask (ibid.) “already had perfectly good equivalents”. In otherGermanic languages, these equivalents continue to be used.

In Renaissance England, borrowing from French did not end but its charac-ter gradually changed and eventually became similar to that in other Europeancountries. Latin became the most important donor language also for English.This is why this later influence of French is dealt with in the following section,in comparison with that of Latin.

5 The Role of Latin in Early Modern Europe

In section 1 above, I cite two recent assessments of the strong lexical influencesof Latin and French on English: Hickey (2010: 8), under the heading “RelativeStatus and Direction of Influence”, characterizes the lexical influences of bothlanguages summarily as “standard examples” for extensive borrowing from lan-guages with high prestige. Winford (2010: 177) distinguishes between lexical in-fluence motivated by prestige, with examples borrowed from Old French, andlexical influence motivated by need, with emphasis on borrowing from Latin,Greek, and French in Early Modern English. Hock (1986), in his section 14.5(“Motivations for Borrowing”), concentrates on Old French, Old Norse and the

30 Vennemann (1984) describes parallel cases of contact on unequal terms such as the influ-ence of Turkish on several substrate languages in South-Eastern Europe; see also Vennemann(2011: 239–244).


American Indian languages and does not deal with Latin at all but does so inhis section 14.4 (“Borrowing from Linguistic Ancestor”), which focuses on Latin,Greek, Sanskrit, and Classical Arabic as mainly written prestige languages fortheir less prestigious vernaculars.31 In the case of Latin, it deals only with bor-rowing relations with the Romance languages and “the continued stream of bor-rowings from the prestigious ancestral language to its vernacular descendants”(406), not those of Latin with English and other non-Romance European lan-guages. All three scholars have good reasons for dealing with the lexical influ-ence of Latin in general studies of language contact in their particular ways.However, a treatment of the role of prestige in the history of English needs to gointo somewhat more detail with regard to a contact language which has contrib-uted so much to English lexis, from a historical perspective more than any otherdonor language.32

In my discussion of the role of prestige in language contact and of the stra-tal relation between donor and recipient language, the influence of Latin isdealt with last, in spite of the fact that the contact of English with Latin datesback far longer than that with any other major contact language, because therole of Latin needs to be re-considered in the light of the very special role of OldFrench for the development of post-Conquest English. As shown in the preced-ing section, Hock sees a close link between the superstratal role of French andthe high prestige of much of its lexis relative to that of English. Therefore, mysection on Latin influence begins with the question whether the stratal relationof Latin with English could likewise be characterized as superstratal. Somescholars, e.g. Munske (1982), have argued for Latin as a cultural superstrate forthe western European languages, namely as the universal language of church,scholarship, and education.33 The character of the lexical loans from Latin intoEnglish speaks against such a classification because it differs from that of atypical superstrate with regard to two characteristics: (1) unlike Old French andOld Norse, Latin has not exerted a particularly strong influence on the basicvocabulary, on the contrary: although Scheler’s percentages for the entire lexi-con of Modern Standard English are identical for Latin and French (28% each),his percentages of Latin for the basic vocabulary are much lower than those ofFrench (9% vs. 38%). It is these strongly differing percentages for different types

31 This chapter has no correspondence in Hock and Joseph (1996, 2009).32 Culpeper and Clapham’s (1996: 207) figures, which are based on the electronic version ofthe OED, are higher for Latin (38,971) than for French (29,485).33 For its stratal role in the history of English see now also Mufwene (2013: 210 with note 4,337–338), who classifies it as superstratal but admits that it might also be characterized asadstratal.

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of dictionaries that allow for such a differentiated comparison of French andLatin influences. (2) As regards specific areas of influence, Latin loans do notreflect foreign rule, in contrast to those of Old French and Old Norse. Even veryearly Latin loans into pre-Old English such as weall ‘dike, earthwork, rampart,dam’, which do refer to aspects of the military, do so not only in parts of Germa-nia under Roman rule but also e.g. in the continental homes of the later Anglo-Saxons. Therefore, these early loans cannot be due to foreign rule but must re-sult from cultural borrowing (in Bloomfield’s terms) or from a need to designatenew things.34 Consequently, if a stratal relation between Latin and English ispostulated it is that of an adstrate with exceptional cultural appeal (Schmitt2000, Lutz 2002b: 419–420) or a prestrate (Vennemann 2011: 219).35

For large parts of Europe, this cultural appeal of Latin became most appar-ent in the early modern period. Thus, according to Culpeper and Clapham(1996: 208–212), Latin loans into English peaked in the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, whereas French had influenced English particularly stronglyin the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries and remained the second-most importantdonor language.36 In German, the lexical influence of Latin ranged between70% and 80% of all foreign loans during much of the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies, and Latin remained the most important donor language also through-out the seventeenth century. The contribution of French, which had been re-markable in the High Middle Ages, became significant again only in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries (von Polenz 2000: 209–219).

Many loans from Latin were borrowed because of a need to designate newthings and concepts, often by way of translation and thus as a consequence ofnaming in the vernacular what had been expressed only in Latin before.37 Na-tive speakers and writers of English tended to opt for direct borrowing from La-tin to a much higher degree than speakers and writers of German on the samestylistic level of their texts, as becomes most obvious from a comparison ofearly modern Bible translations into English and German. In their attempts to

34 See Lutz (2008: 131–134) for the assumption that this early influence of Latin on the Germa-nic languages was particularly strong among the men who served in the Roman army.35 Vennemann defines it as follows: “The term prestrate refers to a language that influencesanother language on account of its cultural prestige or ‘appeal’, possibly only in certain cultur-al domains. Prestrate speakers may live in the same territory as the speakers of the affectedlanguage, or in an adjacent territory, or in a distant territory. Speakers of prestrate languagesmay in fact never have physical contact with speakers of the affected language. They may evenhave lived at different times.” (use of boldface by V.)36 For the role of Latin in medieval England see note 19 above.37 For the important role of translations from Latin for the development of English and Ger-man see Jones (1953: chs. IV, V) and Henkel (1988).


reach their readers and hearers, John Tyndale and Martin Luther employedloanwords to very different degrees. These differences were due to the fact thatby the late Middle Ages much of the basic inherited vocabulary of English hadbeen replaced by terms from Old French. Thus, for Tyndale, the most adequateEnglish equivalents for Latin expressions were often lexically and morphologi-cally identical terms (e.g. spirit, creation for L. spiritus, creatio) or at least verysimilar terms (servant, honour for L. servus, honor),38 whereas Luther’s Germanequivalents (Geist, Scheppfung; Knecht, Ehre) were Germanic in origin; see Lutz(2002b: 410–415) for the lexical comparison of parallel translations of an entiretext. For a non-academic vernacular text, the two reformers had very differentlexical choices, which were not guided by prestige but by the need to get theirmessage across most adequately. Adequate English had become strongly mixedwith French loans, usually first attested in the thirteenth and fourteenth centu-ries and well-established by Tyndale’s time. Adequate German of this type waslargely Germanic, yet we know that Luther’s own spoken academic German wasmixed with many Latin words and expressions (see Stolt 1964, Besch 1999). Buttranslations into German on various stylistic levels could also build on highlyflexible indirect means of borrowing from Latin by way of loan-formation withetymologically Germanic elements, and their use was greatly expanded in thisperiod. Word formation by way of loan-formation had gradually developed fromOld High German onwards, under the initial guidance of Anglo-Saxon mis-sionaries, and it remained an alternative to direct borrowing much beyond theMiddle Ages, unlike in post-Conquest England (Nevalainen 1999: 349–353, Lutz2002b: 421–432, 2008, Kastovsky 2006: 250–253, 256–258). Thus, an assessmentof borrowing from Latin into the two vernaculars in the early modern periodneeds to take into account the stratal differences between the preceding influ-ences of Old French on English and German in the High and Late Middle Ages(Lutz 2008: 144–151, and section 4 above).

On this basis, it is possible to focus on the similarities between the influ-ences of Latin on English and German in the early modern period, when edu-cated speakers of both languages were confronted with the opportunities andchallenges of developing their vernaculars into all-purpose written languages.One of these similarities is based on the massive borrowing of words from Latin(and Greek) and employing them for the formation of various types of interna-tional neo-classical compounds. Such formations appear to be of Latin originbut may originate in any early modern vernacular and be borrowed by speakersof any other vernacular. Language-specific orthographic and phonological con-

38 For the difficulties of distinguishing between French and Latin loans see Culpeper andClapham (1996: 200–202).

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ventions help to hide the origin of such formations.39 This type of word-forma-tion had its basis in the massive borrowing from the classical languages duringthe early modern period and has resulted in an exchange of such formations asloans between the vernaculars until today. Such borrowing of neo-classical for-mations from one language into another betrays a persisting need in the inter-national scientific community for such formations, but it also reflects the con-tinued prestige of Latin for the creation of such formations and their exchangeacross languages.40 Today, the prestige of Latin beyond the scientific commu-nity becomes obvious from the frequent coining of brand names based on Latinelements by the medical industry, e.g. with -cor(d)- ‘heart’.

Despite such similarities between early modern European languages, Eng-lish continues to differ from the other languages of Germanic origin. Thus, forthe strongly growing number of direct loans in Early Modern English, there is atendency for the development of a stylistically hierarchical structure, with in-herited terms and structurally similar loans from Old Norse and Old French forthe basic vocabulary, French loans for a stylistically higher level and Latinloans for the highest level, typically with a theoretical meaning.41 By contrast,Early Modern German responded to the strongly increasing Latin influence to ahigher degree with loan-formation. Direct borrowing was used in a more re-stricted manner; this method remained largely reserved for various types oftechnical languages such as that of the medical profession (von Polenz 2000:193–218, Lutz 2008: 138–144).

The growing prestige in Early Modern English of Renaissance Latin com-pared to French is also reflected in the development of new spelling conven-tions, namely the remodelling of long-established French loans after those ofclassical Latin. This process, which affected both stems and affixes, was in noway systematic or regular but nevertheless clearly directed towards a moreLatinate character of English spelling among writers with an academic back-ground. Well-known examples such as captive, describe, perfect (for earlier cai-tif, descriven, parfit) exhibit successful adaptation of both spelling and pronun-ciation, others, such as debt and doubt (for earlier dette and doute, on themodel of L. debitum, dubitare), only a partial adaptation of spelling, without

39 See the contributions by Habermann, Munske, Scheler, Rettig, and Volmert in Munske andKirkness (1996).40 For such borrowing from French into twentieth-century English see Schultz (2012 passim).41 Nevalainen (1999: 342–370), Hughes (2005: ch. 4). See also above, section 4, for the impor-tance of French loans for the basic vocabulary of English. More detailed studies of the develop-ment will be able to build on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED2009).


effect on the pronunciation. Some attempts were short-lived, e.g. EModE sanct(for saint), despite parallels with related words such as sanctity (see Scragg1974: 54–58, Görlach 1994: 46–47).

Whereas the change of spelling of loans from Old French after the model ofRenaissance Latin never resulted in anything like a truly reformed spelling sys-tem, the word-accent placement of the great many loans from these two donorlanguages (including the loan-formations after their models) has become regu-larized to a considerable degree. However, the rules for the placing of word ac-cent for the borrowed part of English lexis can only partly be attributed to theprestige of the two donor languages, as becomes apparent against the back-ground of the development in German.42

(1) The rules for the inherited vocabulary of English and German agree untiltoday in that the accent of words of Germanic descent is left-bound, withaccent on the first accentable syllable (E. hándling, mishándle; G. Hándlung,misshándeln). These rules also apply to loan-formations on the semanticmodel of Latin and French. Latin loans into (pre-)Old English and (pre-)OldHigh German were adapted to this Germanic Stress Rule (GSR; Lass 1999:128–129).

(2) The accent patterns of French and Latin contrast with the patterns of theinherited vocabulary of English and German. They are right-bound, withstress on the last accentable syllable.

(3) German, in response to the strong influences of Old French on Middle HighGerman and of Renaissance Latin on Early Modern German, developedstable right-bound patterns for loans, which agree with those of French andLatin, as the Middle High German loans Rosíne, Fasán and their Old Frenchmodels demonstrate. This is of particular importance with regard to thelarge number of loans and formations with French and Latin suffixes, e.g.G. -ábel < L. -ábilis, -íbilis, F. -áble, -íble for adjectives, as in profitábel, pro-fessorábel, or G. -úr < L. -úra, F. ‑úre for denominal and deverbal abstractnouns denoting institutions or the result of an action: Politúr, Registratúr.Accent patterns of French and Latin loans and formations built on such pat-terns are summarily described as Fremdwortakzent (Munske 1988: 48–55,Eisenberg 2004: 144–145).43

42 For a detailed comparative discussion see Lutz (2009). For the fluctuation of word stress inEarly Modern English see Svensson (2004).43 This Fremdwortakzent in German has, however, become so strong in the standard languagethat even native words such as Forélle ‘trout’ have become subject to it (cf. Vennemann 2010:103).

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(4) The situation in English is more complicated. Speakers of Middle Englishgradually adapted the word accent of Old French loans to their inheritedleft-bound patterns, by moving it further left, as in E. ráisin, phéasant. Ac-centual variation in Chaucer’s poetry e.g. between ME citée and cíte, man-éere and máner, depending on rhythmical requirements, demonstrates thatthis development was well under way in Late Middle English. Loans fromOld French with two or three syllables suggest a wholesale adaptation tothe left-bound Germanic Stress Rule. Yet accent patterns for loans withsuffixes (e.g. E. ´-ity < OF -itée, as in vánity, fratérnity, curiósity) demonstratethat such loans have remained right-bound, even though they carry stressfurther left than their equivalents in the donor language. In Early ModernEnglish, these adapted patterns were then also applied to all Latin loanswith the same suffixes.

(5) By contrast, Latin loans with suffix patterns that were not borrowed to-gether with Old French loans into Middle English, such as adjectives likehumanístic, characterístic, with the suffix -ístic < L. -ísticus, agree in theiraccent placement with Latin. Similarly, Modern French loans with new suf-fix patterns, e.g. -ésque as in grotésque, picturésque, agree in their accentplacement with French.

(6) Thus, English exhibits two types of right-bound patterns for French and La-tin loans. Both types are right-bound, but only the second type, which be-came established in Early Modern English, agrees with the types of patternsof the two donor languages and can thus be said to follow the RomanceStress Rule (RSR; Lutz 2009: 301–303).

(7) The earlier type of patterns resulted from the assimilation of Old Frenchloans to the inherited type of patterns in late Middle English. This responseto Old French loans, which differs from that in Middle High German, cannotbe attributed to the prestige of Old French. Berndt (1960: 78) plausibly ar-gues that such adaptations to the Germanic left-bound accent were madeby the less-educated speakers and from there eventually also affected thehigher strata. Many of those speakers who used French in their daily ex-changes with their masters can be assumed to have spoken with a “Germa-nic accent”.44

44 This substratal influence on the placement of word stress of French loans may have beenpart of what Chaucer referred to as the French of Stratford atte Bowe. Thomason and Kaufman(1988: 43–45) rightly emphasize that a change need not move into the direction of the moreprestigious donor language.


(8) During the Renaissance period, when native speakers of English adoptedgreat masses of Latin loans, they adapted them to these meanwhile widelyestablished accent patterns. And all the prestige of Latin learning in Renais-sance England could not help to change these peculiarly English patternsback to those of the two most important donor languages, Latin and French.

(9) Yet in the same period, Latin and French loans with new borrowed patterns(examples under (5)) were adopted without changes, due to the prestige ofboth donor languages. This treatment of the new foreign patterns in Renais-sance English agrees with the German response to massive borrowing fromboth Old French and Renaissance Latin.

6 Concluding Suggestions

The intricate intermingling of different types of word accent patterns in Englishsketched in the preceding section, namely left-bound Germanic patterns, right-bound Romance patterns, and assimilations of the Romance to the Germanicpatterns, is particularly apt to illustrate the complex relation of Latin and Frenchwith the recipient language over the centuries. It demonstrates why it makessense to some degree to characterize Latin and French summarily as “standardexamples” for borrowing from languages with high prestige (Hickey 2010: 8),and yet, at the same time, why it is important to distinguish between the influ-ences of Old French on Middle English and those of Renaissance Latin, Greek,and French on Early Modern English (Winford 2010: 177). The influences of thetwo most important lexical donor languages of English and the motivations forborrowing from them are difficult to keep apart. This is one reason why Hock’sattempt to link the notion of prestige with the stratal terminology runs into var-ious kinds of difficulties. In particular, the discussion of differing influences ofFrench over long periods have made it clear that superstratal influences reflect-ing a change of power cannot simply be equated with influences resulting fromhigher prestige of the donor language. The effects of superstratal influence andhigh prestige may but need not go together.

The potential prestige of the two superstrates of medieval English, OldFrench and Old Norse, is particularly difficult to assess, due to the long periodsof mostly oral bilingualism. Andreas Fischer’s warning that “lexis is an unreli-able indicator of the precise nature of a contact situation, and the socio-histor-ical evidence necessary to reconstruct the latter is often not available” (Fischer2003: 110) certainly needs to be taken more seriously than is usually done inhandbook accounts. In particular, more serious attempts have to be made to

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keep prestigious and non-prestigious effects of superstratal influence distinctfrom one another and from other possible reasons for the prestige of a donorlanguage. Yet if we begin our re-assessment of the evidence for lexical borrow-ing with that part of the loan vocabulary which clearly reflects contact on un-equal terms cross-linguistically, we can then, on this relatively small but firmbasis, try to assess the motivations for borrowing other types of lexis from thesame donor languages with a higher degree of plausibility. Additional plausibil-ity for our assumptions about the likely motivation for borrowing in the historyof English may then be gained by adducing comparative evidence for borrowingthe same types of lexis into closely related languages under historically andsociologically similar conditions. That way, we may be able to reach linguisti-cally safer ground eventually.

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