LL-L "Idiomatica" 2009.07.20 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 19 July 2009 - Volume 04
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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.20 (01) [EN]

from Heather Rendall  heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

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.....

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.

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.

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 ?

Just a thought.

from Heather

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

•

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