Abstrakt
More peripheral meanings of lexemes transferred from Old Norse to Old and Middle English can be identified through thorough examination of their contexts of occurrence and through observing their patterns of distribution regarding text types or genres of texts attesting them. Restrictions to certain text types or genres with borrowings in English might simply be a result of their lack of diffusion within the English speech community, but this study argues that if similar restrictions could be observed not only in English but also in the source language of the borrowings - Old Norse - these distribution overlaps might be suggestive of stylistic overtones.
In addition, such comparisons across language boundary may be further revealing about the nature of the lexical transfer itself, identifying senses in which the analysed borrowings might have been initially borrowed, as well as tracing their diffusion paths from Old to Middle English texts.