Dialnet-TheAdjectivalGroupInTheEnglishChanceryDocuments-258593

C. I. F., XXVI (2000) 137-161

THE ADJECTIVAL GROUP IN THE ENGLISH

CHANCERY DOCUMENTS

María Jesús Pérez Quintero

Universidad de La Laguna

ABSTRACT. Historical Linguistics has been mainly concerned with the study of the

word, both from the point of view of its phonological and morphological structure and

from the perspective of its etymology, all this to the detriment of the study of syntax. Even

though some works about mediaeval syntax have dealt with the different parts of speech

as linguistic categories, little attention has been paid to the syntagmatic structure of the

different clause constituents. The syntactic study of the English Chancery documents has

been similarly overlooked, despite their importance for the development of standard

Modern English. This article is devoted to the study of the Adjectival Group in the

Chancery documentary texts, in order to, on the one hand, arrive at a better knowledge of

the syntactic structure of this linguistic category and, on the other, to see to what extent

these texts have contributed to the development of standard Modern English.

RESUMEN. La lingüística histórica se ha centrado principalmente en el estudio de la

palabra, tanto desde el punto de vista morfo-fonológico como desde la perspectiva

etimológica, todo ello en detrimento de los estudios de sintaxis. Aunque algunos trabajos

sobre sintaxis medieval abordan el estudio de las partes de la oración como categorías

lingüísticas, se ha prestado poca atención a la estructura sintagmática de los distintos

constituyentes de la cláusula. La estructura sintáctica de los documentos de la cancillería

inglesa ha recibido igualmente escasa atención, a pesar de la importancia de los mismos

para el desarrollo del inglés moderno estándar. Este artículo aborda el estudio del

sintagma adjetival en los textos documentales de la cancillería, con el fin de, por una

parte, llegar a un mejor entendimiento de la estructura sintagmática de esta categoría

lingüística y, por otra parte, comprobar hasta que punto estos textos han contribuido al

desarrollo del inglés moderno estándar.

1. Introduction

The early English Chancery documentary texts in the vernacular, despite theirimportance for the development of Modern Standard English, have not so far beensubject to much grammatical scrutiny. In general, the attention paid to thosedocuments has concentrated, more or less systematically, on their phonological andmorphological make-up in an attempt to determine their role in relation to the

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emergence of the modern standard language. Thus, Morsbach (1888) and Lekebusch(1906) included a collection of parliamentary and official records in their analysis ofthe origins and development of the modern English Schriftsprache. More recently,Samuels (1963) and Fisher (1977) have in the same vein commented on some formalcharacteristics of Chancery English. With varying emphasis, these and othercontributions have shown the importance of the royal chancery in the normalisation(and thus in the standardisation) of the vernacular language. But, given the nowgeneral acceptance of Chancery English as the forerunner of Modern StandardEnglish,1it is surprising that the grammar of that noteworthy linguistic variety has notattracted the research it deserves. Only lately has this gap begun to be filled (PérezQuintero 1994, Expósito González 1996). This article seeks to contribute to a betterunderstanding of the structure of the adjectival group in Late Middle English and, atthe same time, to a better knowledge of the syntactic structures of Chancery English.In particular, I will first examine the inflectional properties of adjectives (section 2)and, later, I will provide a description of the syntactic structures of adjectival groups(section 3).

The corpus edition that has been used in this study is the one offered by Fisher,Richardson and Fisher (1984).2These authors follow Samuels:

in calling the official written English of the first half of the 15thcentury

“Chancery English” although it emanated from at least four offices, Signet,

Privy Seal, Parliament, and the emerging Court of Chancery itself (1984: xii).

Due to this variety, the texts that constitute this anthology are arranged in fourdifferent groups: (i) Signet (S), including 105 texts belonging to the Signet of Henry V(1417-1422) and four belonging to the Later Signet Letters(1434-1455); (ii) PrivySeal Papers(P), 51 texts written between 1408 and 1455; (iii) Proceedings ofParliament and Chancery(C), containing 72 petitions presented to the Parliament andactions upon these petitions (1388-1455); (iv) Indentures(N), constituted just by ninetexts written between 1384 and 1462.

The period under analysis is the one that extends from 1400 to 1450 because itis considered to be the most representative one3as far as the establishment of thestandard Chancery English conventions is concerned.4

1. In this respect we follow the position held by Samuels (1972; 1981), Hughes (1980) or Richardson1980; 1984), although not free of controversy (cf. Fisher 1977; 1979).

2. The texts have been transcribed form the originals that are found in the Public Record Officeandin the British Library. This is a reliable edition since the purpose has been “to represent as exactly asfeasible in computer composition the texture of written English in official documents” (Fisher, Richardsonand Fisher 1984: 79).

3. Cf. Expósito González (1996: 57-9) for a discussion of the representative size of a corpus of data.

4. In the examples provided in this article, 0stands for the period 1400-1409 (1 text), 1stands for1410-1419 (78 texts), 2for 1420-1429 (60 texts), 3for 1430-1439 (58 texts) and 4for 1440-1450 (25texts).

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2. Adjective Inflection

Previous analyses of adjective morphology in Chancery documents have beencursory and impressionistic. Morsbach (1888) paid attention to the distinction betweenthe strong and weak inflections of adjectives, and to their plural variants. More directlyrelevant for our purpose in this paper are the paragraphs included by Fisher, Richardsonand Fisher (1984) in the introduction to the edition used as the basis for this research.Here they mention that adjectives are not usually inflected in the Chancery documents,except in formulae adapted from French. Brief reference is also made to the pluralinflection of some adjectives and to the alternative positions they adopt when inflected.Nevertheless, there is neither an indication of the frequency of the different positionsnor of the number of adjectives inflected for number in relation to those that follow theModern English pattern. Furthermore, no consistent distinction is made between theopen and closed classes of adjectives. It is also important to notice that in the glossaryof forms at the end of the book some categorisation problems can be found as, forinstance, in the case of right, which is classified as an adjective, or in the case of trusty,behouefulor necessary, which are considered adverbs. Incomplete as it is, theinformation provided by Fisher, Richardson and Fisher is, however, quite valuable.

This section seeks to be a contribution to the study of the adjective as a lexicalcategory of the open class (Quirk et al.1991: 67). This discussion of adjectivalinflection will centre around two main aspects: a description of the declension system(2.1) and an analysis of the synthetic gradation of adjectives (2.2).5As far as thedeclension system is concerned, two main points will be taken into consideration: theexistence of relics from the old weak/strong declension (2.1.1) and of examples ofinflection for number (2.1.2).

2.1. Declension system

2.1.1. Final -e inflection

One of the most characteristic features of the Germanic languages was thedevelopment of a double declension of the adjective. In Old English, adjectives wereinflected for case, gender and number. Two types of declension were distinguished, thestrong and the weak declensions. In the course of the Middle English period,adjectives ceased to be inflected, except for monosyllabic adjectives ending in aconsonant, which took a final -ein the singular forms of the weak declension as wellas in the plural forms of both declensions, the weak and the strong one. Many authors,Mustanoja (1960: 276) among them, point out that, even though the -e/ -ø oppositionis observed by some fourteenth century writers, in early Middle English texts there is

5. The analytic gradation of the adjective is studied in section 3, as part of the adjectival modificationand complementation.

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an important degree of indeterminacy in the use of the weak and strong declensions.If this distinction is still productive in the period under analysis here, monosyllabicadjectives of consonantal root should exhibit for the singular a variation between -øand -edepending on their occurrence in a non-defining (strong: -ø) or defining (weak:-e) context.

In the English Chancery documents, some adjectives take a final -efor thesingular as well as for the plural. It seems to be interesting to pay attention to themonosyllabic ones ending in a consonant in order to see if they conform to thedistinction -ø / -efound in several fourteenth century writers. Table 1 offers thestatistical distribution of the different monosyllabic adjectives ending in a consonantaccording to the context in which they take final -eor -ø. The first two columns offerthe forms with or without final -eadopted by adjectives occurring in a syntacticcontext that in Old English would have required the weak declension. The two middlecolumns present ±evariants of adjectives in the position typical of the strongdeclension. Finally, the two last columns display the plural forms ending in -eor -ø,without attention being paid to the type of context, since the weak / strong distinctionis not relevant for the plural.6

6. The selection of the adjectives was carried out making use of the glossary offered by Fisher,Richardson and Fisher (1984), where all forms of each word in the corpus are listed.

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Table 1:Distribution of monosyllabic adjectives ending in a consonant

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