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Middle English case loss and the ‘creolization’hypothesis

Cynthia Allen

English Language and Linguistics / Volume 1 / Issue 01 / May 1997, pp 63 - 89DOI: 10.1017/S1360674300000368, Published online: 12 September 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1360674300000368

How to cite this article:Cynthia Allen (1997). Middle English case loss and the ‘creolization’ hypothesis. EnglishLanguage and Linguistics, 1, pp 63-89 doi:10.1017/S1360674300000368

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ENG. LANG. LING. 1(1): 63-89 (1997)

Middle English case loss and the 'creolization' hypothesis1

CYNTHIA ALLENAustralian National University

(Received 7 May 1996; revised 16 September 1996)

The apparent rapidity of the loss of case-marking distinctions in English has been usedas evidence that Middle English was a Creole. However, an examination of the availablefacts indicates that the reduction of case marking was more gradual and orderly thanhas often been assumed. The impression of 'confused' usage in many texts disappearsonce a proper distinction between form and category is made. The reduction of casemarking seems to have begun with syncretism of forms but retention of categories, withone form spreading into the territory of another. The facts do not support the idea thatcase marking was drastically reduced as part of the formation of a Creole. However, it islikely that language contact played a significant role in the quick acceptance ofinternally motivated changes.

1 Introduction

As is well known, Middle English (ME), which we can arbitrarily date from about1100 to about 1450, was a period of very substantial reduction in the inflectionalsystems of the language. Similar reductions in inflections have taken place in otherGermanic languages, notably the mainland Scandinavian languages and Dutch, aspointed out by Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 315-21), but the apparent rapidityof the changes in English has led observers to look at the invasions which Englandsuffered at the hands of the Scandinavians and the French as possible causes. Oneidea which has enjoyed a considerable degree of popularity is that ME is reminiscentin many ways of a Creole resulting from language contact. Many parallels have beendrawn between features of ME and features found in Creole languages by writerssuch as Domingue (1977), Bailey and Maroldt (1977), Poussa (1982), and Milroy(1984). However, there is little agreement about the nature of this Creole. Forexample, Bailey and Maroldt suggest that ME was essentially relexified French whilePoussa argues that it was the Scandinavian invasion which was decisive, with thecreation first of an East Midland Creole and then a koine which later formed ahybrid with London English.

In this paper, I will not attempt to argue comprehensively against specificcreolization scenarios which these authors have proposed,2 but will instead focus on

1 Some material from this paper was presented as a seminar at the Department of Language andLinguistic Science at the University of York and the Department of English Language at the Universityof Edinburgh. I am grateful to the audience of these seminars as well as to two anonymous ELLreviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Any errors or infelicities are ofcourse my own responsibility.

2 For a summary of articles before 1988, see Wallmannsberger (1988). For extensive arguments againtsthe Creole status of ME, see Thomason and Kaufman (1988: section 9.8) and also Gorlach (1990 [1986]).

64 CYNTHIA ALLEN

one particular change, namely the reduction of case-marking morphology andcategories in Old English (OE) and Early Middle English (EME). This reduction isone of the features of ME that is always mentioned as an argument that Englishunderwent creolization. One of the characteristics of languages which are universallyacknowledged as 'Creoles' is their analytic rather than inflectional nature. Thetypical Creole does not have case inflection for nouns, although a subject-objectdistinction is not unusual for pronouns. Mufwene (1993: 140) notes that casedistinctions are often lost even in a Creole where the input languages have similarcase-marking systems, as in Bantu-based Creoles. Mufwene observes that casemarking is different in this respect from person and number distinctions, which aremore resistant to being dispensed with, and suggests that Creoles tend to eliminateredundancy and purely formal grammatical categories. The formal category of casemarking is not essential for communication because word order and prepositionscan do the job.

Although Thomason and Kaufman (1988) present many cogent argumentsagainst the idea that the morphological changes of ME should be seen as evidence ofcreolization with either Danish or French (rather than simply extensive borrowing),they do not discuss the loss of case-marking morphology or categories in any detail.Furthermore, although one might expect that the decline of English case markingwould be well documented, this is not in fact the case. Discussion of ME casemarking falls into two broad categories: the broad overviews found in handbookslike Mustanoja (1960) or Mosse (1952) and detailed studies of the inflections ofindividual texts. What we lack is an overview of the changes which took place to thecase-marking systems with sufficient details to give an idea of how these changeswere implemented. By their nature, the general handbooks could not possiblyprovide much in the way of detail about regions and periods, but we might hope topiece together a more detailed overview from the individual studies, and such studiescertainly provide many important facts for such an overview. But many facts that alinguist needs to know are simply unavailable in the literature, to a large extentbecause of the difference in point of view and interests of the linguist and EnglishStudies scholars trained in traditional grammar. For example, these scholarsfrequently use the term 'dative' for both a form and a category, which is harmlesswhen the difference between the two is firmly kept in mind, but it is usually not. Theresult is that it is often not clear when an author refers to 'datives' in a text whetherthey are in fact claiming that a dative-accusative distinction is found in the text, orwhether they are talking about a form which is historically dative.

Therefore, a new examination of the loss of case-marking categories in English isneeded. In this paper, I will present evidence concerning the loss of case-markingdistinctions in EME which bears generally on the mechanisms involved in thisreduction and will argue that although language contact probably accelerated thereduction of case marking, the changes proceeded in too orderly a fashion to be theresult of any sort of creolization process which involved the rapid stripping away ofinflections, a characteristic of indisputable Creoles. The picture of 'confusion' that

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 65

has frequently been drawn results from inadequate attention to the distinctionbetween forms and categories. Furthermore, the appearance of very rapid change inEME is to a large extent illusory, as the conservative practices of OE scribes oftenmasked substantial changes which had already taken place before the Normaninvasion. In what follows I mention some facts which are not necessarily directlyrelevant to the question of creolization, but are nevertheless relevant to an under-standing of either the mechanisms involved in the loss of case marking or theworkings of particular systems in ME.

2 The OE situation

Before considering the impact of contact we must look briefly at the case-markingsystem of OE. It is important to note here that although OE had a healthy case-marking system, syncretism of forms was already considerably advanced. The loss ofcase-marking distinctions in English is part of a process which started long beforeEME. In fact, when we compare Proto-Germanic with Proto-Indo-European (PIE),we see that the case marking of Germanic was already considerably reduced; eightcases are reconstructable for PIE (see, for example, Lehmann, 1993: 145) but onlysix can be reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, with the vocative enjoying only atenuous existence, since with the exception of Gothic it had disappeared by the timeany of the languages are attested (Prokosch, 1939: 236). Further loss of casecategories took place between the Germanic stage and OE.

OE had three genders and four cases, with a fifth (instrumental) having only amarginal existence in the early stages and disappearing before the period when eitherScandinavian or French influence could have been involved. There were severalinflectional classes of nouns; for details of these classes and their inflections thereader should consult a standard grammar such as Campbell (1959). Broadly, it canbe said that each gender had a dominant 'strong' declension. For the masculine andneuter nouns, this was the a-stem declension while for feminine nouns the o-stemsrepresented the dominant declension. Some processes resulting in reduction ofinflectional classes are already evident in OE. Importantly, this is true even ofdialects which could not yet be seriously affected by contact with Scandinavian. Forexample, Dahl (1938: 178) comments that all the masculine w-stem nouns with longstems3 have passed over into the a-stem declension, either partly or entirely, even inthe early OE texts. Given this sort of regularizing trend already in early OE, it doesnot seem very surprising to find the w-stem class disappearing entirely in EME wheneven the short stems go over to the a-stem pattern, giving plural sunes (< sunas)'sons' instead ofsuna.

In these dominant declensions, the distinction between nominative and accusativenouns in OE was already greatly diminished because of widespread syncretism. For

3 The reason why the long stems of this conjugation were more likely to go over to the a-stem class is thatthe -u of the nominative and accusative was deleted by a regular phonological process, making theseforms similar to a-stems.

66 CYNTHIA ALLEN

example, the nominative-accusative distinction was scarcely evident in the plural.Most nouns had identical plural accusative and nominative forms, either throughphonological changes or through levelling. In the masculine a-stems the nominativeplural ending -6s was extended to the accusative at the West Germanic stage, givingOE -as (Campbell 1959: section 570).

In the feminine o-stems the nominative-accusative distinction was~still- markedformally in the plural to some extent in the early West Saxon dialect,4 where theaccusative plural suffix -e ( < Gmc -6ns) is found occasionally, although it is usuallyreplaced by -a, the reflex of the Gmc nominative plural form (-dz). It is interesting tonote that Campbell (1959: section 585) says that although the accusative form wasrare in the texts of this dialect, it was only found in its historically correct function.That is, the nominative form was extended to the accusative function but not viceversa. As discussed below, this is a pattern that we see repeatedly in the history ofEnglish: syncretism is not a matter of confusion of categories but rather of one formtaking over the functions of another. In the singular, the nominative-accusativedistinction was still evident in the feminine o-stems, since -u appeared as thenominative ending after a short stem and no marker occurred after a short stem,contrasting with the -e found as the syncretistic singular non-nominative marker.But the nominative-accusative distinction had disappeared for the masculine nouns,and it had never existed for the neuters.

Each gender also had a 'weak' declension in which most case categories were notdistinctively marked, the most common ending in the paradigm of all genders beingthe syncretistic -an. However, the weak masculine and feminine nouns did differ-entiate the nominative from the accusative in the singular, with the nominativeending in a vowel (-a for masculine, -e for feminine), contrasting with the non-nominative -an.

Thus the nominal inflections were highly syncretistic. However, the modifiers ofthe nouns often made the gender, case and number of the noun unambiguous. Thenominative-accusative distinction was marked in the singular in the masculine andfeminine definite determiner by the oppositions se~pone (masculine) and seo~pa(feminine). But the plural declension was the same for all genders and thenominative and accusative forms were not distinguished. Adjectives were declined'strong' or 'weak' according to such factors as whether they were preceded by adeterminer. In the weak declension the inflections did not give much informationabout gender or case, since the ending was most often -an, but the nominativesingular was more distinctive, ending in a vowel, as was the general genitive plural-ra (or -end) and the general dative plural -urn. Strongly declined adjectives weresimilar to the determiner in showing a nominative-accusative distinction for themasculines and feminines in the singular but (mostly) not in the plural.

The pronouns differed from Modern English in retaining an accusative-dative

4 'Early West Saxon' refers to the West Saxon of around the end of the ninth century (and before), while'late West Saxon' refers to the language of c. 1000.

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 67

distinction to some extent in the third person: accusative hine (masculine singular),hit (neuter singular), and hie (feminine singular and general plural) vs. dative him(masculine/neuter singular and general plural) and hire (feminine singular).However, already by the late OE stage the dative form had usurped the functions ofthe accusative in the first and second person, becoming a general object marker.

To summarize, syncretism of forms was already well advanced in OE beforecontact with the Scandinavians or the French could have been a significant factor.This sort of syncretism is of the utmost importance in the loss of category distinctionbecause when syncretism of form accumulates to the point where two categories aredistinguished only by a few forms, the category distinction is difficult to maintain.For example, the nominative-accusative distinction was already imperilled by thelate OE stage and likely to be lost even without foreign contact. Furthermore, thecase-marking inflections were so syncretistic that it would only take a little bit inthe way of phonological or analogical changes to alter the system drastically.

3 Early changes and contact with Scandinavian

Let us now look at the possible involvement of contact with Scandinavian in the lossof case-marking distinctions in English. There is little reason to doubt the intimacyof the contact between the Scandinavians and the English, as there was surelyintermarriage, although we cannot be certain of the number of Scandinavian settlers.The hybrid nature of many place-names in the Danelaw and the nature of theScandinavian loans both attest to a good deal of intermingling.

To assess the impact of the Scandinavian invasions on the English case-markingsystem, it would be most useful to compare pre-invasion texts from the northernarea with post-invasion ones. By 'pre-invasion' I mean texts that date before 900,since Scandinavian settlement began with the invasion of East Anglia in 865, rapidlyfollowed by the establishment of a Danish kingdom in York and the settlement byDanes (and some Norwegians) of the rest of the Danelaw. Unfortunately, the pre-invasion remains of early Northumbrian (eNbr) consist only of a few runicinscriptions and five slightly longer texts. Of these, the Leiden Riddle is the longest atfourteen lines. Given such limited data, the fact that these earliest texts do not showthe syncretism of forms found in later Northumbrian (INbr) texts of the tenthcentury means very little. But it is important to note that these eNbr texts, short asthey are, do show two developments generally agreed to have played an importantrole in the loss of case distinctions: the loss of final -n and the reduction of backvowels. Campbell (1959: section 369) notes that the neutralization of front vowels toe had already begun in eNbr and in section 396 states that the 'confusion' of backvowels began before 900 and was completed in Northumbrian and Kentish before itwas in West Saxon. The fact that this vowel reduction took place as early in Kentishas in Nbr shows that this process is not due to contact with Scandinavians; theKentish had to put up with invasions but not with settlements.

The loss of final -n is also a characteristic of Scandinavian, and without these early

68 CYNTHIA ALLEN

records it would be tempting to attribute this change in the north to Scandinaviansettlement. However, the fact that the change was clearly already in progress beforethe Scandinavian invasions could have affected the language shows that thisconclusion would be false. It is likely that the Scandinavian settlers in the northreinforced this variant in northern English and contributed to its spread, but theydid not introduce it into English.

Because of the brevity of the eNbr texts, we cannot draw any confidentconclusions about the existence of variants to the traditional case forms. But INbrrecords are much more extensive. Unfortunately, they are limited to interlinearglosses of Latin, which can only be used with cautious interpretation, as it is alwayspossible that a given form has been affected by the Latin. Nevertheless, it is clearthat by the mid or late tenth century the amount of syncretism of forms in theNorthumbrian area had increased markedly. The most extensive study of INbrforms is Ross' (1937) Studies in the accidence of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Ross (1936)looks in more detail at the gender forms in the Lindisfarne Gospels (LG), and theinteraction of case and gender in LG (and some other late OE and ME texts) isstudied by Jones (1967a, 1967b, 1988). The question of how the 'unhistoricaF genderforms of LG (and other texts) are to be explained is a complex and controversialone,5 but fortunately the status of the case categories is quite clear.

The picture that emerges from these studies is one of syncretism of forms, butretention of the OE case-marking categories. We can divide the changes to nominalinflection into two broad categories: reduction in the number of inflectional classesand case syncretism. Let us now consider the nature of these changes.

3.1 Reduction of inflectional classes

The tendency to treat all inflectional classes of nouns in the same way wasconsiderably more marked in LG than in eNbr or late West Saxon. Most strikingly,the genitive singular ending -es of the masculine and neuter -a stems was extended tonearly all classes of nouns, including the old weak nouns (Ross, 1936: 99). Rosscomments that the -es form must be considered the normal genitive singular endingfor most nouns, although there are exceptions and the older forms are alsofrequently found. It is not hard to find an explanation for this change: as has oftenbeen noted, -es was the only distinctively genitive ending and was furthermore theending found in two large classes of nouns, and so it is unsurprising that it shouldhave been extended to nouns of other classes. Indeed, this extension was alreadyunderway by the time of the earliest OE texts (in any dialect), with masculine andneuter strong nouns of all types tending to go over to the -a stem declension.

The generalization of the genitive to -es of course took place in all dialects of

5 In all of the works listed above, Jones attacks traditional explanations for these unhistorical forms andargues that the apparently aberrant forms were in fact highly systematic. The idea is that certain formsnow tended to be used to mark case alone, regardless of gender, whereas historically they marked bothcase and gender. For support of this basic idea, see Mitchell (1985: section 68) and Roberts (1970).

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 69

English at a later date, and it should be noted that up until at least the very end ofthe fourteenth century this genitive marker was a true inflection, rather than a cliticas it is in Modern English. It is not until the writings of Chaucer (d. 1400) that wefind examples like The grete god of Loves name (Ch. House of fame 1489), indicatingthat the genitive is no longer an inflection of the noun, but rather a clitic on the NP.6

This retention of the genitive inflection is not a characteristic that we expect of aCreole and will be discussed in greater detail in section 7.

Syncretism is also found, but to a lesser degree, in the extension of the -as pluralto noun classes which did not have it earlier. Ross (1937: 100) notes that thisextension happened in nearly all classes, but here the extension into the 'wrong'classes was sporadic, not regular.

What has happened here is that the case categories have been kept intact, but theforms which express these categories have been extended to nouns which historicallyused a different form for the same purpose. Such regularizations result in a blurringof distinctions among noun classes, which must result in even further regularization,eventually leading to the disappearance of inflectional classes altogether. In LG theold a-stems were clearly maintained as a separate inflectional class, because if theywere not we would not find that their plural always ends in -as (or a phonologicalvariant) rather than in an ending appropriate to another declension, which wouldindicate that speakers had lost sight of the inflectional classes.

But the old inflectional classes were clearly on their way out. One phonologicalchange which severely weakened the distinction between these classes was theneutralization of unstressed vowels. Ross (1937: 53) reached the conclusion that allthese unstressed vowels had neutralized to one, and more recently Hogg (1992:section 6.62) expresses the opinion that merger of unstressed front and back vowelsis demonstrated in LG.1 This change by itself created a good deal of syncretism butin LG this vowel reduction combines with another change, the loss of final -n, tohave devastating effect on the declension of nouns. Hogg (1992: section 7.98) notesthat this loss of -n was apparently restricted to certain morphosyntactic categories,but in the endings of the weak nouns it was completely regular. This meant that theold weak nouns were hard to distinguish from other nouns which had a vowel in thenominative/accusative singular, and Ross (1937: 100) points out that the scribe of

6 This change seems to have taken place in the following way. First, the genitive suffix graduallygeneralized to -{e)s for all word classes and to the plural as well as the singular. Until it became thenearly universal genitive suffix, it remained a suffix, but once it had ousted all its rivals it was reanalysedas a clitic.

7 However, Ross argues in chapter 3 that the scribe clearly had a strong sense of the etymological value ofthese vowels. To some extent, this knowledge of what the historically correct vowel was probably camefrom the continued existence of these forms in the speech of older speakers, but it seems to me that someof the conservative spellings could only be the result of training in an orthographical tradition whichsurvived the Scandinavian invasions. I know of no evidence to support Poussa's (1982: 78) commentthat 'literacy spread into the Danelaw from Wessex', although it certainly seems plausible enough thatpeople like the southern-trained Archbishops of York of this period brought with them their ownscribes (see Whitelock, 1981 [1965]: 215).

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LG apparently spoke a variety of English in which there was no longer in fact adistinction between the two types of nouns.

3.2 Case syncretism

So far, the changes which I have mentioned have primarily to do with thereplacement of case forms by other forms historically marking the same case, ratherthan with the replacement of a case form by a form formerly marking a differentcase. But the latter type of change is also in evidence in LG. First, the nominative-accusative distinction had nearly disappeared from the nominal system, in both thesingular and the plural, the continuation of a trend already evident by the earliestOE. This trend would have been strengthened by the loss of final -«, whichobliterated, for example, the difference between the nominative and accusative formof the masculine weak nouns, even without considering the effects of vowelneutralization. It is clear, however, that not all syncretism of this type was due tophonological processes; analogy clearly plays an important role, as it did earlier.Ross (1937: 120-1) notes that it is entirely natural that speakers should haveeliminated the nominative-accusative distinction in the few places where it remained.It is interesting to note that the accusative -ne ending of the strong masculineadjective is sometimes replaced by the endingless nominative form even though thisending was quite distinctive and not subject to phonological erosion; this phenom-enon seems only explicable by a general tendency to eliminate the nominative-accusative distinction.

It is also interesting to note that in LG (as well as in other northern texts and inlater East Midlands texts) this tendency was implemented in the feminine strongnouns by extending the unmarked nominative form to the accusative, which earlierhad a vowel (identical to the vowel of the dative/genitive singular), while furthersouth the tendency was to go in the other direction: the non-nominative vowel wasextended to the nominative, making the feminine nouns essentially indeclinable inthe singular. A difference with this geographical distribution is the sort of thing wemight hope to explain in terms of Scandinavian influence, and one might look forsuch an explanation in the fact that the equivalent feminines in Old Norse wereendingless in both the nominative and the accusative. But such an explanationwould not account for everything, such as the fact that syncretism of these categoriesis also found in the definite determiner, where no direct Scandinavian influencecould be the cause.

Ross (1937: 120) notes that while in general the distinction between nominativeand accusative is preserved in the definite determiner, there are some instances inwhich the form proper to the nominative is extended to the accusative. Beforediscussing the nature of this change, we must note that the nominative form of themasculine and feminine definite determiners had itself undergone analogical level-ling, namely the replacement of s- by an interdental fricative (written either (p) or(d)), resulting in masculine de and feminine diu (or dio). Both the older forms and

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 71

the newer ones are used in LG.S As Ross (1937: 115) notes, this sort of replacementis similar to that found in other West Germanic languages, sometimes at a very earlydate. It is interesting to note that this change cannot be attributed, at least notdirectly, to Scandinavian influence, since the Old Norse forms were the same as thenormal OE forms in having s-; the forms differed only in the vowel.

Ross (1937: 120) states that the distinction between the nominative and theaccusative definite article is generally well preserved, but 'there are a number ofexamples of the use of the nom. sg. for the ace. sg. and vice versa'. In fact, though, itseems9 that it is only with the feminines that there is a two-way interchange offorms; it appears that the masculine accusative form is not extended to nominativeuses,10 and that the nature of the change with the masculines is that the nominativeforms (both older and newer) are seen as an alternative for the accusative. In otherwords, it seems that de (and its alternate se) was a marker of either nominative oraccusative case, while done marked only accusative case. With the feminines, on theother hand, the old nominative and accusative forms seem to be pretty muchinterchangeable, perhaps because the accusative feminine form had always beenidentical to the nominative and accusative plural for all genders, making itsextension to the nominative singular easier. That is, deo and da both marked eithernominative or accusative case. Note that the extension of pa to the nominative infact contributes to the spread of pe as the general uninflected definite determiner,

8 Jones' (1988: 100) assertion that 'There are a mere half a dozen or so instances where we find (de)' inLG is at first difficult to understand, given that Cook (1894: 168) indicates that there are 205 examplesof (fie) for the singular masculine nominative form of the determiner in the Gospel according to StMatthew alone. However, taken in context, it appears that what Jones' remark was meant to refer towas the scarcity of (de) in contexts where (se) would not have occurred etymologically. Given thisinterpretation, Jones' remark is essentially correct. Cook lists only three instances of (se) and twenty-four instances of (de) in the masculine accusative function in LG.

9 My conclusion is based on Ross' examples and also on an examination of the entry for se in Cook(1894). Although Ross (1937: 120) notes the existence of twenty-seven examples of (fie) and threeexamples of (se) used as an accusative, he gives no examples of (done) in a nominative function. Cooknotes twenty-four examples of (de) and three of (se) as masculine accusative forms but does not list(done) as a nominative form, compared with hundreds of examples of (variants of) this form inaccusative functions (Ross gives the number as 451). These numbers are impossible to explain in termsof confusion.

10 Jones (1988: 85) argues that pone and other historically masculine forms ending in -ne were starting tobe used to signal an absolutive (i.e. nonagentive and nonpossessive) relationship, regardless of gender,but this is hardly satisfactory since the old accusative form seems never to be used systematically forintransitive subjects, either in LG or later in ME. However, it does appear that in some ME texts ponewas used as a general object marker (see below), and Jones' suggestion that this is because it was moredistinctive than other markers seems plausible. Jones also argues that the reason why pone wassometimes extended as a determiner to historically nonmasculine nouns in LG is that it distinctivelysignalled only one case, unlike the feminine form. This seems like a good explanation for some of theuses of the scribe, who had to contend with Latin word orders which were not usually (or ever) used inEnglish and so had a particular need for unambiguous case marking, but it is very difficult to assess theextent to which the scribe's usage reflects his internalized system, and not simply a practice tailored tothe needs of glossing Latin word for word. Unfortunately, as Jones himself is careful to point out, thenature of these glosses makes it impossible to be certain of what is happening with gender in the spokenlanguage.

72 CYNTHIA ALLEN

because when pe and pa were unstressed they would have been pronounced the samebecause of vowel merger.

The other case syncretism which we find in LG is between dative forms andnominative/accusative forms. Ross (1937) discusses this syncretism only briefly butBlakeley (1947) gives full details of the nominal forms found with five prepositionshistorically governing the dative case. Ross and Blakeley both conclude thatsyncretism was more advanced in the singular than in the plural, with Blakeley(1947: 30) noting that although the nominative/accusative form is found instead ofthe dative with nearly all classes of nouns in the singular, there is only one reallyconvincing example in the plural. For our purposes the most important fact is thatthe case categories were clearly still quite distinct, although individual forms hadbegun to be used as variants to mark cases which would earlier not have beenmarked by those forms.

3.3 Evaluation: contact-induced simplification?

Many other examples of case syncretism and levelling of inflectional classes in LGcould be given; for example Ross (1937: 105) notes the tendency to eliminate theweak forms of adjectives in favour of the (more distinctive) strong forms, and theentries for the possessives in Cook (1894) indicate that unmarked forms like din 'thy'are used in the dative (as well as the accusative) for all three genders, althoughhistorically the accusative and dative should have an ending for the masculine andfeminine. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the scribe was not 'confused' about thecase categories of his language; the 'errors' that he made in this respect involve newdeployment of forms but do not point to any uncertainty about the case categoriesof the language he was writing, unlike the errors of the scribe of the PeterboroughChronicle (see below).

It is unfortunate that we do not have more texts from this area for centuries, andso are unable to trace the further development of syncretism in this dialect.However, it seems clear enough that the loss of case-marking distinctions in thenorth did not begin as an abrupt shift towards the use of uninflected forms, which isthe sort of thing we expect of a Creole. Although the use of de in LG as an alternativeto done at first looks like the introduction of an uninflected determiner, in fact itturns out to be a manifestation of the tendency to use nominative forms foraccusative uses.

Of course, we cannot ignore the possibility that these glosses are a poorreflection of the status of case categories in the spoken language. But speculationabout what was happening in speech is of little value when the hypotheticalprocesses leave no trace in the written record. There are two basic possibilitieshere: (a) the scribe's own internalized case-marking system was significantlydifferent from that reflected in his work, i.e. he had learned as part of his training alinguistic system which was not that of his first language; or (b) the scribe's workessentially reflects the spoken language as far as case categories go. If (a) is correct,

CASE LOSS AND THE ' C R E O L I Z A T I O N ' HYPOTHESIS 73

then the scribe learned the literary system very well, because he made no mistakeswhich suggest that he did not perfectly command the four-way case system of lateOE. But if he learned the classical system so well as a second language, it issurprising that he did not adhere more closely to the classical forms. On the otherhand, the use of the case markers in LG is easy to reconcile with assumption (b)because this use is so systematic. This is not to suggest that the scribe used the caseforms in precisely the same way in speech and in writing; it is likely that the moreinnovative forms which occur only rarely in these glosses occurred more frequentlyin informal speech and that he used some innovative forms in speech which are notfound in his writing. But this is a difference of frequency of choice of variants, nota difference of case-marking categories, and at any rate there is certainly no needto assume a big difference between the forms used in the written language andthose used in formal and careful speech.

Let us assume, then, that in terms of case marking LG is a reasonable representa-tion of the system of a register of the spoken language. If so, then it seems clear thata century of contact with Danish in this region had not caused the extremesimplification of case categories typical of a Creole.

On the other hand, it is probably no coincidence that case-marking reductionproceeded fastest in the area with the most contact with a closely related language.Haugen (1976: 285) notes that the Scandinavian dialects which show the greatestsimplification of inflectional categories in the Middle Scandinavian period aregenerally those with the most contact with other languages (especially LowGerman). It seems that mere regular contact (not necessarily intimate in nature) issufficient to lead to quite significant simplification. We can explain this phenomenonin the following way. There is always variation in language between more innovativeand more conservative forms, and every generation of language learners attempts tomake language more regular (e.g. English children attempt to make past tenses of allverbs regular). Under stable social conditions, the innovations usually do not gainground rapidly because they are not accepted by older members of the community.But innovations spread faster in times of social upheaval generally. In particular,when a new group speaking a different language enters the community and begins tolearn the local language, they introduce new variants into the mix. It does not seemunlikely that the mere existence of a large number of variants in the speechcommunity would lead (under the right social conditions) to a greater expectationthat language would be variable and a quicker acceptance of innovative forms. Forexample, once nominative-accusative syncretism became widespread (i.e. by the OEstage) children learning the language presumably would have had a tendency toreplace the accusative form with the nominative form. But the fact that thecommunity as a whole had only one norm for the accusative forms would haveresulted in considerable pressure upon language learners to conform to the norms.But in a tenth-century community which included Danish speakers who had learnedEnglish as a second language there would not have been one set of norms that allspeakers shared, and speakers would know that not everyone used the same forms.

74 CYNTHIA ALLEN

It seems plausible that one outcome of such a situation would be the more rapidacceptance of innovative forms.

So although the case-marking facts lend no support for the idea that inflectionalendings were simply stripped off when Danish met English or that the combinationled to confusion, it does appear that contact with Scandinavian probably acceleratedthe propagation of internally motivated innovations. I have dwelt on the situation inLG at some length because it has important implications for our interpretation ofcontact as a cause of case-marking simplification in all English dialects. Nbr showsrather advanced simplification at an early date, and since the simplification seems tohave proceeded from north to south, the question of whether the earliest simplifica-tion was the result of contact or not is important. If the evidence showed that theearly simplification found in LG and other Nbr texts was best explained as the resultof creolization, it could be argued that the later simplification in the southern dialectswas originally due to this creolization, with the southern dialects affected by contactwith Anglo-Danish Creole speakers. But given that the role of contact seems to havebeen merely to speed up the rate of change, there is no reason to assume that anyAnglo-Danish Creole played any role in the development of English case marking.

Before moving on to later developments in regions further south, it is worthemphasizing that a striking similarity between Danish and English is not in itselfevidence of contact-induced change. Let us consider a feature outside the case-marking system which might seem like evidence of Scandinavian influence if we didnot have evidence to the contrary, namely the use of'stranded' prepositions, e.g. Thehouses that we looked at were all expensive. If we did not have early records ofEnglish which showed this to be a regular feature of the oldest recorded English, wemight assume Scandinavian influence here. But in fact preposition stranding is therule in certain constructions in every OE text, most of which are in the West Saxondialect, which was the dialect least likely to be affected by Scandinavian influence(for a discussion, see Allen, 1980 [1977], especially pp. 232-4). Such phenomena donot argue against creolization, but they show that caution is necessary whenassessing the role of contact in the history of English.

4 The situation in the late eleventh century

In contrast to the north, there are a reasonable number of texts from further southnear the end of the eleventh century which tell us a good deal about what washappening to the case-marking system in some areas. These texts have to beinterpreted cautiously because the political ascendancy of Wessex meant that WestSaxon orthographic traditions held sway in non-West Saxon areas; furthermore,errors in the texts make it clear that certain spellings represented old pronunciationsrather than current ones. As Moore (1928: 229) comments, it is unlikely that any ofthese texts reflect the speech of the scribes very accurately. Nevertheless, theoccasional innovating forms of these texts give some important clues about whatwas happening in the spoken language.

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 75

One change which is apparent is the shift /m/ > /n/ in unstressed final syllables,11

discussed in detail by Moore, who concludes that this change was completed by theend of the eleventh century, although conservative scribal practices obscure thesituation. This change on its own caused considerable syncretism, especially whencombined with vowel reduction, but this syncretism became massive when it wasquickly followed by the loss of -n in unstressed final syllables.12 As we have alreadyseen, the loss of -n had already taken place by the tenth century in certainmorphological contexts in INbr. One of the many effects of this change was that itgreatly reduced the evidence for any class of noun which had a different form in thenominative and accusative singular. In earlier OE, the distinction had beenmaintained in the weak masculine and feminine nouns by the final -n of theaccusative versus the endingless nominative. After the loss of -n, this distinction wasfound only in the feminine strong nouns with long stems.13 This remnant of thenominative-accusative nominal distinction was lost when the -e of the non-nomina-tive singular forms of these feminine nouns was extended to the nominative by theend of the eleventh century. Moore's suggestion that this analogical levellingsucceeded because it was difficult to maintain the nominative-accusative distinctiononce such a small group of nouns signalled it seems reasonable.

It should be noted that the loss of final -n proceeded in a different way in differentparts of the country and does not seem to have been a purely phonological change.For example, a striking difference between the Ormulum and INbr is that in theformer the final -n of verbal forms was very resistant to loss. However, it appearsthat weak nouns and adjectives were subject to this change in all dialects, perhapsbecause the final -n in these paradigms already played such a limited role in OE inmarking case. Whether the loss of final -n in a given dialect was a mainlyphonological or mainly analogical change, the important fact is that once the changetook place one of the few remaining markers of the nominative-accusative distinc-tion had disappeared, and so the loss of final -n would have aided in the loss of thedistinction elsewhere.

The levelling found in the nominal system did not immediately result in the loss ofthe nominative-accusative opposition as a category distinction, since the determinerscontinued to be inflected for this distinction. However, an important change hadtaken place which was to combine with the phonological changes to result in an

11 In fact, -n was already spreading into the dative plural in early West Saxon texts (see Campbell, 1959:section 378, and Hogg, 1992: section 7.102, and the references cited in these works). Hogg suggests thatthe earlier change was an analogical spread of the weak inflection -an rather than the start of aphonological change.

12 These two changes also had important syncretistic effects on adjectival inflection. Space does notpermit the discussion of this reduction of inflection, which proceeded in rather different ways indifferent parts of the country. It is sufficient to note that after vowel reduction and loss of -n had takenplace, only -ne remained an unambiguous marker of both case and gender, with the ending spelled -restill being somewhat distinctive, signalling either feminine genitive/dative or plural genitive. Presum-ably, this drastic reduction in contrasts resulted in a situation in which language learners tended totreat adjectives as unmarked for case.

13 The distinction was no longer maintained in the short-stemmed feminines after vowel reduction.

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uninflected determiner which was an option (if not the only possibility) in all dialectsby the beginning of the thirteenth century, viz. the levelling of s- to p-, whichBrunner (1963: section 56) says was accomplished 'by the end of the OE period' (i.e.by 1100). The conservatism of the standard orthography makes it difficult to becertain of just how advanced syncretism was in the determiner system in the eleventhcentury, but one thing which should be noted is that when unstressed, the reflexes ofboth the old pa (feminine accusative singular or general nominative/accusativeplural) and pam (dative masculine/neuter singular and general dative plural) wouldhave been indistinguishable in pronunciation from the reflex of the old se, due tovowel reduction and the loss of final -n (< m). A language learner who heard pe asthe form used for so many case and gender combinations might well treat it as anuninflected form which could be used as an alternative to the unambiguouslyinflected forms which were still used.14 Thus a new variant (the uninflecteddeterminer) would be introduced into the language, a variant which quickly gainedground in the next century. The rapidity of the loss of the inflected determiner isunsurprising when we consider that once a language is left with so few forms thatunambiguously signal case and gender, these categories are likely to be abandoned.A case-marking system is little more than an encumbrance in a language when theforms no longer clearly signal any information which aids in understanding themessage. Speakers started to rely more on word order to signal relationships likesubject and object, and case inflection became optional.

At this point it is useful to compare English with Modern (standard) German,which has lost nominal case inflection almost to the same extent as English, but hasnevertheless maintained a system of four cases and three genders, which are mainlymarked on the modifiers of the noun rather than on the noun itself. It would seemthat the major difference in the development of the two languages has been that inEnglish, the two processes discussed above which were at least partially phonologi-cally motivated resulted in so much syncretism in the modifiers that it was no longerworthwhile to maintain the few remaining distinctive forms, such as pone. InGerman, however, enough distinctive markers remained to make it reasonably easyto maintain a sensible set of oppositions. This is not to suggest that phonologicalfactors alone were responsible for this syncretism, but it seems clear enough that thephonological tendencies of English supported the analogical tendencies and speededup the loss of some category distinctions.

14 The idea that uninflected determiners might have been introduced into the language by French speakerslearning English incompletely and substituting the nominative masculine form for the others does notseem a priori implausible. A language learner would then learn pe as a variant which could be used inall situations (from French speakers) and the case-marking categories and inflected forms from Englishspeakers. But although incomplete language learning on the part of foreigners could well havereinforced natural tendencies in the language, it would not explain either the pre-Norman-invasionextension of the nominative form to the accusative in Nbr (since the Scandinavian forms were toosimilar to allow incomplete language learning in this instance) or the similar development in themainland Scandinavian languages, where there presumably was not much close contact betweenlanguage learners and foreigners.

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 77

To summarize, the case-marking system of English was highly syncretistic by theyear 1100, and although the old category distinctions still remained, syncretism hadreached such a level that it was probably inevitable that these distinctions wouldsoon disappear. This syncretism was probably accelerated by the contact withDanish and French (and by the general social upheaval), but it cannot be directlyattributed to this contact. Rather, the syncretism took place in a step-by-stepfashion and was caused by phonological processes and familiar sorts of levelling.15

5 The twelfth century

5.7 The Peterborough Chronicle

It is unfortunate that we have so few trustworthy English texts from the twelfthcentury, the time when so many changes to the case-marking system of Englishbecome obvious. There is in fact no dearth of manuscripts written in English in thiscentury, but most of them contain copies of OE texts, which cannot be consideredaccurate reflections of the language of any one period and which can be used onlywith extreme caution. It is also unfortunate that the one extensive original text thatwe have from this period, the Peterborough Chronicle (PC), comes from an area inwhich case category distinctions were lost early and from which we have no earliertexts which would give us some idea of how rapidly this loss took place and how itwas implemented. However, the PC does give us some hints.

This text has three basic divisions: copied material up to the year 1121, the 'FirstContinuation', covering the years 1122-31 and written by one scribe, probably atintervals (Clark, 1970: xxv, and Ker, 1957: article 346), and the 'Final Continuation'of 1132-54, written in block by a second scribe, presumably at about 1155. Thehandwriting of the copied annals shows that they were copied by the scribe of theFirst Continuation; in addition, this scribe seems to have written the Interpolationswhich are interspersed in the copied material (Clark, 1970: xvii). The First Continua-tion scribe seems to have been a very faithful copyist, because comparisons of thelanguage of the copied annals with the language found in another copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which is based on the same 'Northern Recension' of the chronicle16

indicated that for the most part the morphological 'errors' found in the early part ofthe PC were not introduced by the PC scribe but must have been in the commonarchetype, since they are also found in D. Furthermore, there is a striking andconsistent difference between the language of the copied annals and that of the First

15 The standard view is that phonetic weakening preceded analogical reshaping, but Kitson (1990), onthe basis of an examination of spellings in various OE and EME texts, concludes (p. 82) that 'generallymorphology led phonology' and also warns that we should not assume that the order of events was thesame in all dialects. For our purposes, it does not really matter whether phonological weakeningpreceded levelling.

16 MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, known as MS D and edited by Classen and Harmer (1926). The PC is basedon the archetype of D until 1031, at which point the ancestor of the PC went south and ceases to be anorthern version (Whitelock, 1961: xvi).

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Continuations and the Interpolations which is best explained by assuming that thescribe stuck to his exemplar closely (Clark, 1970: xlii). This means that we can beconfident in assuming that the morphological innovations of the copied annals ofthe late eleventh century in general represent forms that were in the exemplar whichwas used by the scribe, and were not introduced by him. Unfortunately, as Clark(1970: xlii) notes, it is impossible to be certain of the dialect of the copied annals,other than that it was 'southern'. But we can see in these annals evidence of certainchanges that were taking place in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries in thelanguage of the scribes that compiled the exemplar. This evidence is important,because some of it is lacking in other late eleventh-century texts, which are mostlycopies of earlier texts and are therefore more conservative.

In particular, these copied annals make it quite clear that even in some southerlyareas the changes to the determiner system went beyond the levelling to p-, since wefind, for example, into pe mynstre in the entry for 1070 (Clark, 1970: 2.26) where wewould expect pam. Since the inflected forms of the determiners appear (for the mostpart)17 only in their historically correct uses, and since this usage contrasts markedlywith the use of the determiner forms in the annals composed by the scribe, we mustassume that these uninflected determiners reflect the use of the exemplar, rather thana change by the scribe. That is, the uninflected determiner existed as a variant in thesecond half of the eleventh century even in some areas fairly far south.

Turning to the First Continuation, we find great changes to the case-marking (andgender) system, showing how much further advanced the Peterborough area was inthese developments than areas further south. For example, in the copied annals thedative—accusative distinction is still preserved in the pronouns, since we still findregular use of hi (feminine accusative singular and accusative plural) and hine(masculine accusative singular). But in the First Continuation, hire (the old dative/genitive form) has completely ousted hi as an object form, while heom (an old dativeform) is now the only form found for any plural object. Remnants of the dative-accusative distinction are found only in the masculine singular; although the scribefrequently uses him in old accusative functions (i.e. as direct object or the object ofcertain prepositions) we find sixteen examples of hine in the First Continuation, andin all but two of these examples, it is found in the historically correct accusativefunction. Clearly, the scribe did not simply regard hine and him as variant forms forthe same category. But the fact that the scribe made two errors18 here (in contrast tothe lack of similar errors in the early thirteenth-century manuscripts of the southeast;see below) makes it clear that while he had a basic idea of the difference between himand hine, he probably learned the distinction as a conscious rule, rather than part of

17 A regular exception is the use of seo (historically feminine) instead of the masculine se in many places.It seems that the scribe considered the two simply variants of each other.

18 These two examples are unetymological or 'mistakes' because hine refers to the indirect object of aditransitive verb, e.g. & iafhine fane eorldom 'and gave him the earldom' (1127 entry). In contrast, thenumber of ditransitive examples like this in which him is (correctly) used in this Continuation is overseventy.

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 79

his internalized grammar. That is, the scribe was probably in the same position asmany Modern English speakers are where the who-whom distinction is concerned.So it seems likely that in the everyday language of the scribe the pronouns showedonly a three-way distinction (subject-genitive-object).

When we look at the determiners, we at first get the impression that case andgender inflection was still very much alive. But a closer look soon makes it apparentthat whatever system the scribe was using, it was not the system of the annals he hadcopied. Lumsden (1987) argues that the determiner forms of the First Continuationrepresent oppositions which existed at the time, with a different alignment of formsand grammatical features from OE. I do not find Lumsden's arguments convincing;one major problem is that his proposed system does not account for a rather largenumber of counterexamples. Jones (1988: 143-56) also argues that the situation ismore systematic than has usually been supposed, and it is certainly clear enough thatthe forms are not simply used randomly. It seems to me that the best explanation forthe data is to assume that in the scribe's ordinary language the uninflected pe was apossible variant for all cases and of the inflected forms only pone and pes still had aplace in the scribe's own speech. Pes retained its old value (genitive) but pone, themost distinctive of the object markers, had become a general object marker,although some deviations from this rule suggest that it was a rather archaic formwhich the scribe did not completely command. I think (along with Clark, 1970: lxi),that the deviations from this usage found in the First Continuation are mostplausibly explained as the result of hypercorrection on the part of the scribe, whohad copied the older annals and would almost certainly have considered the olderlanguage to be superior to his own (or else he would not have copied it so carefully).Hypercorrection can be invoked only with caution, and only when some reasonablesort of mechanism can be suggested, but in this case I believe that we can make anexplanation work. Space does not allow me to go into the details of howhypercorrection could explain the distribution of forms here, but see Allen (1995:172-7) for a fuller discussion. Essentially, we must assume that some older speakersin the community still used se(o) and the scribe was aware that older speakersfrequently used this form where he would use only pe. Therefore he would some-times use se(o) where pe would have in fact been a 'correct' form (e.g. for the reflexof pam). He would also extend pone occasionally to nonobjects because the scribe, inhis awareness that the older language often had pone where pe would be mostnatural for him, would sometimes forget that this was an object marker and wouldextend it to other situations in which he would have used pe.

Note that with the introduction of the uninflected determiner as an option,grammatical gender was doomed because this was the class of words which mostclearly marked this category by the end of the OE period.

A final change of interest concerns nouns. The not infrequent use of the suffix -egives the impression that a dative-accusative distinction still exists for nouns,although marking this distinction was optional. But closer examination shows thatthis has become a marker of nouns which are the objects of prepositions (any

80 CYNTHIA ALLEN

preposition). Thus the possibility of having this marker is now predictable purely bystructure, rather than something which was governed by particular verbs andprepositions.

This marker of the new prepositional case is still found in the Final Continuation,but less frequently. The uninflected determiner has completely replaced all inflec-tions, and the dative-accusative distinction has entirely disappeared, leaving thisdialect with a case-marking system very similar to that of Modern English with itsthree-way system in the pronouns, the major remaining difference being that in thelanguage of the Final Continuation nouns could still be inflected for genitive case,while in Modern English the possessive marker is no longer an inflection of the nounbut a clitic which attaches to the end of the NP.

To summarize, by 1122 the dative-accusative distinction had only a very tenuoushold in the language of Peterborough, and the fact that the uninflected determinerwas always available as an alternative to the older inflected forms meant that theold case-marking system was doomed. By 1155, these changes were very nearlycomplete. Although the differences between the First and Final Continuationsmight give the impression of very rapid change in this period, to a great extent thechanges have more to do with scribal practice than with the linguistic systems, andthe systemic changes which took place are not in fact more than we would expectwould be able to be accomplished by one generation of language learners. The factthat the breakdown of the old system was so advanced by 1121 gives the impressionof rapid change, but unfortunately we cannot tell how quickly these changes tookplace because we do not know how advanced the syncretism of case marking was in(say) 1000. But it is reasonable to assume that it was intermediate between theadvanced syncretism of Northumbria and the conservatism of the south; forexample, Hogg (1992: section 7.98) notes that the (north) Mercian Rushworthglosses show final -n loss but not to the same extent as in Nbr. If we assume thatthis -n loss which was responsible for so much syncretism was also found inPeterborough at a fairly early stage, then the rate of change does not seem so rapid.It is not unlikely that the contact with Danish played a significant role here increating a social situation in which variants would be adopted and spread quickly,but it is important to realize that origins for all these changes can be found inpurely language-internal factors. It should also be realized that Danish itself hasundergone similar changes, starting at a later date but being accomplished ratherquickly. Gordon (1957: 265) states that until c. 1000 dialect differences withinScandinavian were slight. And although various (mainly phonological) differenceswere evident by that date, it does not seem that any loss of case distinctions wasinvolved, yet Haugen (1976: 208-9) notes that by 1350 (among other significantchanges) the genitive singular -s had generalized to all nouns in some dialects ofDanish. Thus the same change as took place in English took place independentlyand apparently rather quickly. Contact may have played a role here too, but it wasnot the intimate contact of the Danelaw.

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 81

5.2 Southerly manuscripts

Most of the manuscripts of the twelfth century written in non-Danelaw areas areeither known or suspected copies of earlier work and are therefore of limitedusefulness. Nevertheless we can clearly see some forms encroaching on the territoryof others. For example, in all these manuscripts the dative -e is essentially optional.Adjectival inflection is also greatly reduced. Syncretism in the pronouns varies withdialect. For example, in MS Lambeth 487, dated 1185-1225 and written in acombination of the West Midlands dialect known as 'AB' and some other dialect,19

we find that historically dative forms are frequently used for the objects of highlytransitive verbs, where we would expect an accusative. The accusative forms are alsostill used, always in the historically correct functions. It is interesting to comparethese copied homilies with an original work composed perhaps c. 1175, the PoemaMorale, contained in the same manuscript. This work contains similar usage of thedative and accusative pronominal forms, but in contrast to the copied homilies thedeterminers rarely show any inflection, indicating that syncretism was far advancedin the language of the scribe in the determiner system but not in the pronominalsystem. What is of most importance is that in the manuscripts20 which containsyncretism in the pronouns, the substitution only goes one way: for example, him issubstituted for hine but not vice versa.21 In other words, these scribes (unlike the PCscribe) seem to have had the accusative-dative distinction as a category distinctionin their own language or else they would have made some mistakes in the directionof hypercorrection. The difference with OE is that while the category dative mascu-line singular is represented only by him (as in the earlier language) the masculineaccusative singular is represented by both hine and him.

In MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv we find little evidence of syncretism in thepronominal system, even in the plural or the accusative feminine, which show themost replacement by dative forms in the other texts. The determiners were also stillfully inflected. In this manuscript there are a couple of short pieces which are not OEcopies (Warner's (1917) texts 43 and 45-6) and were probably composed c. 1125. Inthese pieces we find the same use of pronominal and determiner inflection as in thecopied ones, showing that the author of the pieces had internalized the old system.This is hardly surprising since the manuscript is thought to have originated in Kent,where case-marking distinctions lasted longest.

In short, in the southern areas the use of case marking is not confused, butsystematic, even where it differed significantly from OE use. The fact that substantialsyncretism without loss of category distinctions was taking place in literary texts ofthe south, where creolization with Scandinavian could not have played a role, isevidence that such creolization is not necessary to explain the situation in the north.

19 This is the opinion of Thompson (1958: xi, liii).20 For a discussion of the works I have examined for this period, see Allen (1995: section 5.3.1 and

478-9) .21 For a possible (but not certain) exception see Allen (1995: 169, n. 8).

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It seems most probable that the same sort of processes which are evident from thesouthern texts are responsible for the more advanced syncretism of the northerntexts, although in the north the changes started earlier and proceeded more rapidly.

6 The early thirteenth century

6.1 General

By the beginning of the thirteenth century, original texts become reasonablyabundant, and they show a good deal about dialect differences. In the northeast, itis no surprise to find that the few remnants of the old case-marking system whichare still found in the PC are nearly completely gone in the Ormulum of c. 1200 orc. 1180, written (according to Parkes, 1983: 127) in or near Bourne (16 miles fromPeterborough). Clark (1970: xl) notes that the language of the Ormulum can beseen as a regularization of the tendencies evident in the PC, i.e. some old variantshave disappeared in favour of invariant forms. It is interesting to note that thedecay of case marking is well advanced in some West Midland dialects which couldnot have been directly affected by substantial contact with Scandinavian. Forexample, in the texts of the Katherine Group and the Ancrene Wisse, all written inthe dialect usually referred to as 'AB',22 we find that there are only remnants of thedative-accusative distinction. The formal distinction had completely disappearedfrom the plural, neuter, and feminine pronouns but was still somewhat in evidencein the masculine singular in MS A (the Corpus Christi manuscript, which containsthe Ancrene Wisse) but not MS B (Bodley 34), where only him is used. D'Ardenne's(1961) extensive grammatical introduction to her edition of the life of St Julianaremains a basic reference for any discussion of the language of not only this textbut also the other AB texts. The Ancrene Wisse contained in MS A is definitely acopy of a somewhat earlier text, and d'Ardenne (1961: 222) plausibly suggests thatthe scribe who copied the text did not have hine in his own speech, but wascopying the work of someone who did. It is not possible to look at the case-marking system of this dialect in any detail here; for more discussion of the case-marking system of AB, see d'Ardenne and also Allen (1995: 181-5). However, it isof considerable interest to note that d'Ardenne points out (1961: 204) that 'Theaccidence of AB is marked by conservatism in the verbal system contrasted withadvanced simplification of the declension of nouns, and still more of adjectives.' Ifwe assume that the reduced case marking in this dialect was due to creolization, itis hard to explain why verbal morphology escaped similar effects.

22 Dobson (1976: 117) notes that it is generally accepted that this dialect belongs either to northernHerefordshire or to southern Shropshire and argues (pp. 130ff.) that the Ancrene Wisse originated atWigmore Abbey in northwestern Herefordshire. D'Ardenne and Dobson (1981: xxxviiiff.) indicatethat the two manuscripts under discussion here (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 402 and Bodley34) can be dated around 1230.

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 83

6.2 The Vices and Virtues

It is in the southeast of the country that the old case-marking system is bestpreserved, and this section will concentrate on the system found in one text, theVices and Virtues (henceforth VV) of MS Stowe 34, edited by Holthausen (1888,glossary published 1920). According to Utley (1972: 702) the manuscript dates fromc. 1200-25 and the text was possibly composed c. 1175-1225. The dialect isuncertain, but it is likely to be that of Essex.

In this text, there is a good deal of syncretism of forms, but the old categories areclearly maintained (including gender categories). The process of reduction ofinflectional classes is evident; for example, we find pinges used as the nominativeplural form of the neuter noun 'thing' as well as the etymological ping. Syncretism ofdative forms with nominative/accusative forms was advanced in the nouns, particu-larly in the plural. For example, for the masculine and neuter a-stems, thedistinctively dative form continues to be -e in the singular, and is either -e or -en inthe plural,23 but the old nominative/accusative form is found replacing the dativeform in both the singular and the plural; e.g. we find both kyng and kynge Icing' inthe dative singular and both dai^en and da^as for the dative plural of'day'.

This syncretism of forms has led to a good deal of confused terminology, which isone reason why it is often impossible to get an accurate picture of the case-markingsystem of a particular text from studies not informed by linguistic theory. Forexample, in his glossary to this text Holthausen treats forms like kyng and da^asinconsistently when they occur in a function which historically demanded a dativecase. He lists kyng as dative in one example, but gast as 'nom.ac' for the example ofde hali gast 'of the holy ghost' (61.9). The inconsistency arises from uncertaintywhether 'dative' should refer to form or to category, and a failure to keep the twoconcepts apart. In fact, Holthausen does appear to have followed a system wherebyhe treats such forms as dative only if they are modified by an unambiguously dativeform, but this method is no help in revealing the system behind the forms. In whatfollows, I will use the label 'dative' to refer to a grammatical category, rather than tothe forms. Thus kyng is dative when it occurs in functions which would demand adative form, i.e. where the corresponding pronoun would be him, never hine, butaccusative when hine would be possible.

It is clear that the dative-accusative category distinction was very much a livingdistinction for this author. Particular monotransitive verbs still governed the dativecase, while others governed the accusative, and still others allowed either case. It isinteresting to note that the suffix -e still represents a real dative case, rather than theprepositional case of the PC continuations and AB, since this form is found on therecipients of ditransitive verbs even when they are not the object of a preposition.The formal dative-accusative distinction is still well maintained in the pronouns inthis text. There is no hint of syncretism in the feminine pronouns, but him is used as

23 Both plural endings are reflexes of the old -urn; the variation comes from the dropping of -n or not. Thereflex of the nom./acc. form was much more common than the reflexes of the dative form in the plural.

84 CYNTHIA ALLEN

a variant of the masculine accusative singular and sometimes hem is used for theaccusative plural in addition to its usual use for the dative. This is rather interestingbecause in most dialects it was the masculines which resisted syncretism the longest.One change to the case-marking system which should be noted is that all preposi-tions now seem to take dative objects.24

In the determiner system, we find that the uninflected determiner was always analternative to inflected forms, with one interesting exception: it seems that genitivedeterminers were always inflected, never pe.25 We find a bewildering assortment ofdeterminer forms in this text and most of the forms represent more than onecombination of case, gender, and number, but when we find that certain forms arenever found with nouns of certain combinations of grammatical categories, itbecomes evident that the variety of forms is not evidence of confusion on the part ofthe writer concerning the system of categories, but rather of variation in the formsused for particular categories.

One question of interest because it bears on morphological theory is whetheruninflected forms could be combined with inflected forms. For example, we mightassume that a noun phrase which was marked for a particular case in any of its partsmust be marked for the same case in all of its declinable parts. Then we would getthe combinations (a) inflected determiner + inflected noun and (b) pe + uninflectednoun but not (c) inflected determiner + uninflected noun or (d) pe + inflected noun(where by 'inflected' I mean 'inflected for case'). But in fact all four combinations arefound. We get (a) in into dan echefiere 'into the eternal fire' (25.30), (b) in ofde haligast 'of the holy ghost' (61.9), (c) in for dan ilche hlauerd 'for the same lord' (47.8)and (d) in a^eanes pe kinge 'against the king' (47.8). Our analysis of such exampleswill depend on the morphological and syntactic theory adopted, but the facts lendthemselves well to an analysis whereby forms like gast are entered into the lexicon as+ SG, — GEN and pe is entered as — GEN, while pene is + MASC, + SG, + ACC. Such ananalysis accounts well for the behaviour of verbs which governed the dative case,such as helpen 'to help'. Such verbs could appear with objects with no overt casemarking or with overtly dative objects, but not with overtly accusative objects. If wetreat a form such as gast, which is not positively specified for a case, as beingcompatible with any case feature for which it is not negatively specified, the attestedpatterns are accounted for.26 But whatever analysis we give, it is clear that we are

2 4 I a m n o t certain whether any preposi t ion still al lowed accusative objects. There is a t least one example

of a preposi t ional object with the determiner dene, normally an accusative form, bu t it is possible that

this form was somet imes extended to the dative case. The shorter form den is certainly used as a dative.2 5 I a m aware of one possible counterexample: a t 31.19 we find all pa werldes wele 'all the weal of the

wor ld ' (where pa m a y either be regarded as agreeing with wele or as uninflected, representing the same

pronunc ia t ion as pe). Pe rhaps werldes wele is better regarded as a compound similar to Mode rn

English women's wear, lady's maid, etc. In tha t case, the determiner would no t agree with the genitive.

Wha teve r the correct analysis of such examples, it is impor tant to note that non-agreement of a

determiner with a genitive modifier is already found in O E , as noted by Mitchell (1985: section 1318),

a n d should n o t be regarded as a n M E innovat ion which resulted from confusion.2 6 N o t e a l so tha t under usual assumpt ions dative case is treated as a 'lexical' case, i.e. assigned by a verb 's

lexical entry, while accusative case is a ' s t ructural ' case assigned to objects by general syntactic rules if

CASE LOSS AND THE 'CREOLIZATION' HYPOTHESIS 85

dealing with a highly regular system despite the variation of forms. The appearanceof confusion is superficial and the systematic nature of the variants gives no evidencefor creolization.

To sum up, VV supplies valuable evidence concerning the mechanisms involved inthe loss of grammatical categories by offering a good look at the case-markingsystem in a dialect in which syncretism was well advanced but the old system ofcategories was nevertheless well maintained. It is clear that forms did not deterioratebecause the categories were not learned by language learners; rather the categorieswere lost only when the forms had become too syncretistic to support them.

If the syncretism of this dialect was due to contact, it would have been contacteither with French (due to incomplete language learning) or with northern speakerswho had only uninflected forms, although contact seems unnecessary as an explana-tion. But what is of most importance here is that the changes took place in a step-by-step and systematic fashion. They were not the result of abrupt simplification due tospeakers of different languages or dialects attempting to communicate with eachother. It should also be noted that none of the case-marking forms of this dialect istaken over directly from French,27 and that the retention of genitive case inparticular goes strongly against the suggestion of Bailey & Maroldt (1977: 38) thatME was essentially relexified French.

7 Conclusion

Only when we look at the history of English morphology in very broad outline doesit seem attractive to compare the development of ME to the creation of a Creole.The impression of abrupt, drastic change is to a large extent due to changes inscribal practice in ME and to the fact that the earliest ME documents which are notcopies of earlier compositions come from an area in which it is likely thatsyncretism was already well advanced in late OE, while our late OE documentscome from more morphologically conservative areas. It is unfortunately notpossible to trace the developments from late OE to late ME in any area through anunbroken succession of texts. But when we look at such details as are available forthe systems of different periods, the picture we get is one of gradual and systematic(although sometimes rapid) change. There is no point at which we can say 'nowthere has been a radical break from the language of the preceding generation'. The

no lexical case has been assigned. This means that we cannot say that helpen only optionally called fora dative object; if it did, then when the object was not dative we would expect it to get assignedaccusative case by the syntactic rules and so to allow overtly accusative objects as well as dative.

27 Nevertheless, Bailey & Maroldt (1977: 49) claim that 'it is not unfair to say that the French formsprevailed' in the nominal declensions. This claim must be based mainly on the fact that the spread of-(e)s in the plural and of schwa make the ME declensions look more like the Old French declensionsthan the OE ones had. But as we have seen, these changes were the result of purely language-internalfactors which had their roots in OE. They are also paralleled by changes in some Scandinavianlanguages, which did not have heavy French influence. Not a single nominal inflection is taken overdirectly from French.

86 CYNTHIA ALLEN

reduction of case-marking forms in English was not just a matter of substituting anuninflected form for the inflected ones. The evidence from the southerly texts of theearly thirteenth century in particular shows that this reduction started out withsyncretism of forms but retention of category distinctions. Particular forms beganto be used as variants for categories which they did not historically represent. Whenthe frequency of use of the new variant became high enough that the old variantdisappeared, the category distinction disappeared also. What is of particularimportance is that until the category distinction disappeared, the substitution offorms only went in one direction. We only get 'confusion' (i.e. forms being used asessentially interchangeable variants) when the category distinction has disappearedand writers hypercorrectly attempt to use a form which has disappeared fromspeech. Although creolization with Danish seems much more plausible thancreolization with French, as far as the reduction of case categories > is concernedthere is no evidence to suggest that the processes involved differed fundamentally inthe north from those which are evident from the southern texts. The southern textsvery clearly show that in this area category distinctions could be maintained despitesubstantial syncretism of forms, and that the loss of categories took place only afterone form advanced into the area of another. The situation is less clear in the north,where texts are much more restricted. However, when due attention is paid to thedistinction between form and category, the evidence suggests that the dialect of LGwas just like the southern dialects in preserving systematic category distinctionsrepresented by highly syncretized forms, although the details of syncretism differedconsiderably. There is therefore no need to appeal to creolization to explain thechanges found in LG. All the changes can be seen as the result of natural language-internal processes.

We cannot call ME a Creole on the basis of its case-marking syncretism unless weare willing to call the mainland Scandinavian languages Creoles also. It must not beforgotten that ME contained a number of features which are not typical of a genuineCreole. One of these is an inflectional singular-plural distinction. Another particu-larly striking noncreole feature of ME was the retention of a genuine genitive casefor nouns. Mufwene (1993) notes that pronominal possessive forms seem to be acommon casualty of pidginization and creolization, although it is possible for aCreole to have possessive pronouns which are distinct in form from any otherpronoun. While genitive pronouns are found in some Creoles, I am not aware thatany creole has a possessive case for nouns. Instead, depending on the Creole, thepossessor noun is normally either the object of a preposition, juxtaposed to thepossessed noun without any inflection, or linked to the possessed noun by means ofeither an uninflected linker or a possessive pronoun, e.g. Pedro su amigu 'Pedro'sfriend' (example from Mufwene, 1993: 138). It could of course be suggested that thegenitive inflection was lost from the spoken language during a period of 'creoliza-tion' and later reintroduced from the written language or as part of the hybridizationof the East Midland creole and more southerly dialects which is proposed by Poussa(1982: 83), but there is not a shred of evidence that the genitive inflection was ever

CASE LOSS AND THE ' C R E O L I Z A T I O N ' HYPOTHESIS 87

endangered in any dialect. The retention of the genitive seems particularly incompa-tible with the idea of creolization with French,28 since in a French-based creole thegenitive case would surely not have survived in the face of the prepositional genitiveof French.29 It is notable that in the retention of a genitive case ME was less like acreole than is Modern Dutch, in which the use of the genitive inflection is extremelylimited and a prepositional possessive is favoured.

But to deny that ME was a creole is not to deny that contact played an importantrole in the reduction of case-marking categories. The findings of this study suggestthat the role of this contact seems to have been mainly to hasten the acceptance andspread of naturally arising variants rather than to introduce new variants throughfaulty language learning. However, it is possible that incomplete language learningalso introduced new variants.

We cannot truly understand how languages can change their case-markingsystems until we have good data about the stages involved. Such data can only beobtained by looking at a good deal of detail. But looking at details is not enough tocompose an adequate picture of the system. Data-gathering must be informed bylinguistic theory if we are to avoid the errors of the past, such as losing sight of thedifference between form and category and thinking of variation as indicative ofconfusion. I hope in this paper to have provided some useful evidence bearing on themechanics of how case-marking categories were lost in English, and so to have madea small contribution to our understanding of language change.

Author's address:Department of LinguisticsAustralian National UniversityArts FacultyCanberra ACT0200Australiacindy.allen@anu.edu.au

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29 Al though Bailey & M a r o l d t (1977: 4 5 - 6 ) claim that the Modern English o/-'genitive' is 'certainlymodelled in pa r t on the French a dat ive ' , Mitchell (1985: section 1203) shows tha t o / a n d the genitivecase already overlapped in some functions in O E , and that a l though there are no really clear caseswhere o / m u s t be construed as denot ing a relationship of pure possession in OE, nevertheless there a reexamples where of could have been interpreted in this way. Such examples form a na tura l model for thedevelopment of a true preposit ional genitive (as has happened in other Germanic languages) a n d so theprepositional genitive in M E is no evidence for creolization, a l though French models may have assistedin its development in English.

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