<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 19 July 2009 - Volume 04<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);"><a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a></span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.20 (01) [EN]<br><br></span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
from Heather Rendall <a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk" target="_blank">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I am not sure whether what I am about to say belongs to Ron's
argument / query or whether it is a parallel development without any
influence on the concept of other languages spoken at the time but.....</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">In our palaeography lessons we have been reading / deciphering a
great many 14th & 15th C documents; most of these are in Latin as
they tend to be official leases etc. Our knowledge of medieval Latin
was, as you can imagine, bordering on the non-existant when we started.
But thanks to our teacher we are making great strides because as one
member put it " I wish Latin had been like this when I was at school" -
because most of the Latin lexis is abbreviated i.e. the endings are
missing (usually represented by a flourish with the pen back over the
last two letters.) So if you know some basic Latin vocabulary or are
good at making connections with classic English, once the handwriting
has been deciphered, the text can be surprisingly easily read because
it does not rely on unpeeling the endings. The main part of the word
gives the meaning immediately and although order of words was still not
the sole/main method of rendering meaning , more and more sentences
were moving towards this.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I was wondering whether this style of abbreviating Latin in official
documents is mirrored in the contemporary medieval English? Or at least
whether the Latin abbreviations trained the bi-lingual Latin / English
clerics to 'think' and 'see' words more as an item of lexis and less as
an item of morphology and lexis together.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">If the brain became used to seeing the meaning from the root of the
noun/verb etc immediately and order of words meant there was no need
for any grammatical markers i.e. the endings, might that not carry over
into other languages spoken ?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Just a thought.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">from Heather </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">who is still upset with herself for spoiling her apricot jam in the
last few seconds by allowing it to 'catch'. It's luckily edible and
still tasty but not as good as it was when the final test was done,
when it was glorious! Our first apricot harvest too! Still there's some
more on the tree so maybe I'll get a second batch done! Mmmmmmm</p><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
•
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