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Þæt is on Engliscre spræce: Latin in Old English texts: creating a sub-corpus

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

The aim of the paper was to create a sub-corpus of all Latin words present in the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (and potentially others) as a result of codeswitching or translations included in texts. The method lied in the use of [tag="FW"] which enables one to identify all foreign words within the corpus; this produces 13, 879 hits with the i.p.m of 8,461.

These results were pruned of all non-Latin words. The paper then provided a full list of these instances, give a report on the steps towards the creation of the sub-corpus and determine the origin of the Latin words/sentences, i.e., whether they are biblical, philosophical, or quotations from scientific works, which seem to be the most common sources.

It furthermore dedicated some space to the instances which are followed by immediate translations into Old English (especially when followed by the phrase: Þæt is on Engliscre spræce or similar).