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Friday, November 1, 2013

Manuscript layout as evidence for word prototypicality in Old English, with particular reference to onomastic items / Leonie Mhari Dunlop.

Manuscript layout as evidence for word prototypicality in Old English, with particular reference to onomastic items / Leonie Mhari Dunlop.

This master thesis investigates the contribution of manuscript spacing to our understanding of Old English palaeography, the development of the language, and the categorization of lexical items. This study focusses on onomastic items and their treatment in a section of the Old English annals of the Parker Chronicle and Peterborough Chronicle. While many studies focus on the reader’s relationship to the text, this research focusses on the scribe’s relationship to the text. Influenced by Saenger’s Space between Words (1997), this thesis uses a new methodology to measure the spacing between lexical items and collect data. The results challenge the categorization of lexical items in Old English as they are currently defined and illustrate the potential of this approach in further research. They also reaffirm the importance of observing the manuscripts themselves.

http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3180/
http://books.google.de/books/about/Manuscript_Layout_as_Evidence_for_Word_P.html?id=WEySMwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y 

written and defended by Dunlop, Leonie Mhari



http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/postgrad/currentpostgraduatestudents/leoniemdunlop/

Leonie is the PhD student on the AHRC–funded Scottish Toponymy in Transition project (www.gla.ac.uk/stit/) which is running for three years at Glasgow University. She started her PhD in October 2011. From her doctoral studies she has developed interests in historical geography, medieval economics and the emergence of Scots language.

Leonie is investigating the place-names of Berwickshire. Within Berwickshire there are 32 historical parishes. Her research focuses on four parishes: Abbey St Bathans, Bunkle & Preston, Cockburnspath and Coldingham. A large number of medieval charters dating from 11th-13th century survive in Durham for Coldingham. Areas of investigation will include Anglo-Scottish relations, the treatment of place-names in medieval documents, and a diachronic survey of the place-names. This survey will include information collected from local residents about field-names and other unpublished names. Names in use today will be transcribed to show the local pronunciation. Using the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary the relationship between the lexicon and the onomasticon will be mapped. 

Along with Alice Crook (PhD student in the school of Critical Studies) Leonie runs the Onomastics Reading Group and ‘onomastics.co.uk’ (built and maintained by Scott McGready). Together they are organizing the pre-conference workshop for the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland in April 2013.

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