Language Contact and Vocabulary Enrichment

The Scandinavian presence all over Europe during the so-called Viking Age is well documented and England is not an exception. However, the influence of their language on the development of English has not always been well interpreted. This volume aims at deciphering the reality behind the legend of a raiding heathen nation. By resorting to the evidence provided by language, the book explores and tries to reconstruct the social networks formed by both the English and Scandinavians. Their relations, needs and lives are inextricably intermingled with the hybrid tongue they adapted for communication and which has largely come down to us in what we know as English.

Autorentext
Isabel Moskowich is a senior lecturer at the University of Coruña (Spain), where she directs the Muste Research Group. Her interests include diachronic linguistics, especially from a socio-historical perspective, as well as corpus linguistics. Language change in Middle English is also one of her fields of expertise.

Inhalt
Contents: Historical sociolinguistics Language change Lexical change Social networks Scandinavian influence on English.