Microsoft Word - 2019article_2_Condorelli Marco Condorelli, Selim24 (2019): 29–52. ISSN 1132-631X / DOI https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.24.2019.29-52 Irregularity of the spellings in West Saxon English: Remarks on variation in third-person pronouns Marco Condorelli University of Central Lancashire Orthographic consistency was rarely maintained in most Old English varieties, because the language system was relatively new and spelling norms took time to develop. While full standardisation is never expected in Old English, the understanding of factors underlying patterns of regularity and irregularity are paramount for a full grasp of issues pertaining to authorship, textuality and other linguistic and non-linguistic levels of analysis. These notes explore spelling irregularity in material from West Saxon dialects, bringing comparative examples of variation in spelling between early West Saxon (eWS) and late West Saxon (lWS) . West Saxon generally stands up for its emphasis on some degree of orthographic standardisation and yet appears to display interesting patterns of variation. The focus of my notes will be on particular instances of spelling inconsistencies, with special attention to a specific category of words where appears to vary more frequently, namely third-person pronouns. For my exploratory analysis, various witnesses of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (i.e. examples of eWS and lWS texts) were compared. The data was collected from different sections of an orthography-friendly edition of four different manuscripts, MSA (Bately 1986), MSB (Taylor 1983), MSC (O’Brien O’Keefe 2001) and MSD (Cubbin 1996), and compared with digital copies of the original manuscripts. The latter part of these notes points to some of the factors which could explain the features detected, with an exhortation for future researchers to build on some of the ideas proposed and explore new territory. Keywords: Old English; spelling; pronouns; variation; early West Saxon; late West Saxon 30 Marco Condorelli 1. Preliminaries: Phonological insights The late West Saxon dialect began to be used in writing from the second half of the tenth century and became the first ‘standardised’ written English (Gneuss 1986: 46). The use of a regularised form of Old English entailed the adoption of different conventions, which evolved over time and affected different linguistic levels, not least spelling. These notes concern irregularity in West Saxon orthography and provide a preliminary investigation into variation in spelling between the typical eWS and lWS . The eWS and lWS dialects are most likely not lineally descendents and the relationship between the two dialects is doubtlessly complex (cf. Hoad 2014), which means that the term ‘standardisation’ should be used with caution and more preferably replaced with words like ‘regularisation’ and ‘conventionalisation’ with particular reference to lWS. Regardless of these caveats, eWS and lWS are expected to have some relationship with each other, albeit looser than previously assumed. In light of these remarks, my notes explore a diachronic relationship between eWS and lWS drawing on different versions of the same texts available in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Dumville & Keynes 1983–2001), which allow for a preliminary, more systematic comparison of -spelling patterns across different hands and across several years in the two varieties. The general agreement regarding the regularisation of in West Saxon is that eWS generally corresponds to lWS , but it turns into before palatals in lWS (Campbell 1959: §§302, Hogg 1992: §5.167). In eWS (and, sometimes, ) is more frequent, and in lWS (and, occasionally, ) is usually used. However, the matter is not so straightforward: each graph has particular phonetic realisations in eWS and lWS, which are sometimes overlapping and inconsistent. The supposed phonetic signification of each graph as interpreted in traditional grammars is illustrated in Figures 1–5, with hope that the graphic framework will help the reader to make more sense of the complexities of the phonological relationships in question. Irregularity of spellings in lWS 31 It is doubtful whether eWS (from whatever source, either diphthongal (cf. Lass 1994: 68–69, Kim 1984: 2829) or monophthongal (Hogg 1992: §5.164)) merged with the sound normally represented by , namely /i(:)/, or whether it represented a different phoneme. Some spellings seem to appear for /i(:)/, such as in gietsian, hiene and hiera (Campbell 1959: §§300, 703; Hogg 1992: §§5.167, 5.172). This is the normal phonetic realisation of in eWS, for example in hiran (Hogg 1992: §5.171). eWS: Figure 1. eWS /i(:)/ /ï(:)/ Figure 2. eWS /i(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ Hogg (1992: §5.171) also suggests this phonetic realisation, with no specifications regarding when it occurs. Perhaps a laxed (i.e. centralised and lowered) form of /i/ which occurs sporadically in eWS (Hogg 1992: §5.175, though Hogg expresses uncertainty about this potential phonological value). 32 Marco Condorelli This indicates rounding and it is less frequent in eWS. The spelling usually occurs, in eWS, between a labial sound and /r/, for instance wiernan > wyrnan (Campbell 1959: §315, Hogg 1992: §5.166). According to Hogg (1992: §§170–175), can also indicate laxness, not just rounding. However, laxness is sporadic in eWS. It is not clear in which circumstances /Y(:)/ and /ɪ(:)/ alternate. In general, however, a distinction between /y(:)/ and /Y(:)/ seems less likely than the other values. This usually occurs only with a preceding /w/ or /r/ (e.g. wille and riht) and in weakly-stressed forms, such as syððan (Hogg 1992: §5.170). For Campbell (1959: §318), lWS indicates rounding of /i(:)/, often in the neighbourhood of labials and before /r/ (e.g. clypian). In lWS, there is a greater tendency to laxness, especially in low stress environments, but, occasionally, even under primary stress (Gradon 1962: 75, Hogg 1992: §§170–173). According to Hogg (1992: §5.170), this occurs only occasionally. Figure 3. eWS /y(:)/ /Y(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ /i(:)/ lWS: According to Hogg (1992: §5.163), the phonological significations of in lWS probably merged with those of : Figure 4. lWS = /y(:)/ /Y(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ /i:/ Irregularity of spellings in lWS 33 This generally occurs before palatal consonants such as /x/ (hence, mieht > miht, where = /x/) (Campbell 1959: §316, Hogg 1992: §5.163). Figure 5. lWS /i(:)/ /ɪ(:)/ The information provided in Old English grammars is by no means the last word on the topic, as there appears to be a longstanding, parallel debate on the spellings in research-oriented publications, almost exclusively focussed on phonological explanations. Lewenz (1908) started off the dialogue suggesting that eWS and lWS usually occur in the vicinity of labials (e.g. hielpeð), sonorous dentals (e.g. byrð) and in weakly-stressed words (e.g. hiene). The phonetic indication of graphs like in West Saxon has then continued to be a subject of debate in work published closer to our present day with focus on Old and Middle English (see e.g. Pilch 1970; Kim 1984; Colman 1985, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1997; Voss 1995; Horobin & Smith 2002: 48, 63; Lass & Laing 2005; Fulk 2012: §§10, 20), but the matter seems to have been more formally settled in some recent discussion of scattered throughout the Corpus of Narrative Etymologies (CoNE), produced at Edinburgh by a team including Roger Lass and Margaret Laing. The position expressed in CoNE is that the only reasonable value for is [iy] and that the sound later split into [i(:)] and (probably) [y(:)], if their respective graphic indications —the western early Middle English spellings with and — do in fact indicate a front rounded vowel. At any rate the [iy] type (common for instance in large parts of the southern US) seems to give the most sensible history (cf. especially the change labelled IES (ie-split) in the CoNE subcorpus of phonological changes), though this conclusion did not come about without a great deal of rethinking and revisiting of the authors’ own ideas over time. Regardless of the complexity of the scenario at hand, however, the current There is no specification about when = /ɪ(:)/ occurs, although there is a general tendency for /ɪ/ to occur more frequently in lWS (Hogg 1992: §5.171). 34 Marco Condorelli understanding of the spellings in question as belonging to lineally disjoint varieties of West Saxon and possibly representing different phonological values appears to be an essential, yet sufficient basis for an informed exploratory and comparative investigation of spelling consistency and irregularity in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle is the backbone of Old English literature and history surviving to our present day (Jorgensen 2010a: 1) and represents an extremely useful resource for insights into spelling variation from cross-textual points of view. It is hoped that some of the insights into the patterns and issues referenced to in these notes will encourage others to frame new perspectives and questions that are not necessarily tied solely to phonology. The aim will be that of encouraging a comparative discussion on the underrated category of pronouns as evidence for spelling change in the Chronicle, at a moment in time where spelling appears to have lost some momentum in the early English scholarly scenario. 2. Remarks on samples from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle In order to investigate patterns of variation in , sections from editions of various witnesses of the Chronicle were analysed, which are conventionally identified as MSA (Bately 1986), MSB (Taylor 1983), MSC (O’Brien O’Keefe 2001) and MSD (Cubbin 1996). The editions used are semi-diplomatic and do not present any variation in spelling from the originals (as clearly stated by the editors in the introductions to each edition above). Where sufficient legibility was possible, readings were also checked against facsimile copies of the original manuscripts in order to compare the faithfulness of transcription. The facsimiles are digital copies of the following manuscripts: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173 (MSA), London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A. vi (MSB), London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv (MSC), London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i (MSD).1 The following table provides some additional details about the texts in question. 1 Facsimile copies of these manuscripts are available in the British Library Online catalogue (https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/) and the Parker Library on the Web (https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/actions/page.do?forward=home). Irregularity of spellings in lWS 35 Table 1. Details of the sources Manuscript Date Place of production (?) MSA: CCCC173 c. 900 (eWS) Winchester (Wessex) MSB: Cott. Tib A. vi 977 x 979 (early lWS) Perhaps Abingdon (Wessex) MSC: Cott. Tib B. i c. 1050 (mid lWS) Perhaps Abingdon (Wessex) MSD: Cott. Tib B. iv c. 1050 (mid lWS) Perhaps Worchester (Mercia). Although the location of MSD is not in Wessex, the language of this text still follows ‘standard’ lWS2 The selection of the samples above represents the safest option for a preliminary overview to minimise the influence of different hands, as the annals were selected at regular intervals among the sections that are most likely to have been written from a single scribe for each of the texts (Ker 1957: nos. 39, 188, 191, 192). This approach minimises the risk that any spelling inconsistency within the same source would be largely owed to the interference of different scribes. The specific annals chosen are [755], [871] and [885]; in MSB and MSC, [872] stands for [871] and [886] stands for [885] (MSA ff. 10r–15v, MSB ff. 11v–21v, MSC ff. 125r–133v, MSD ff. 22v– 37v). Although the date of entry is largely difficult to identify for all manuscripts in question, the sections selected are among those which can be identified with most confidence (cf. Taylor 1983, Bately 1986, Cubbin 1996, Dumville & Keynes 1983–2001, O’Brien O’Keefe 2001). The data available from these texts was analysed following two different steps. As a first step, the words with spellings in the above-mentioned sections from MSA were compared with the same words from the same sections in all of the other manuscripts by ordering them in a table (Appendix 1). The direct spelling comparison has shown a general variation pattern of ie > y from eWS to lWS, with the proportion of eWS spellings decreasing and that of lWS spellings increasing, in accordance with expected patterns for eWS and lWS respectively. The patterns drawn in Figure 6 suggest that the increase of spellings is not directly proportional to the decrease of spellings and that a considerable number of spellings follow additional 2 By ‘standard’ lWS, I refer to the ‘Winchester standard’, namely a prestigious written form with reasonably fixed spelling conventions originated in Winchester. 36 Marco Condorelli 0 20 40 60 MSA (c. 900) MSB (977 x 979) MSC (c. 1050) MSD (c. 1050) Number of spelling examples number of ie>y spellings 0 10 20 30 MSB MSC MSD alternations that are different from just in lWS, which again fits with more or less known patterns for eWS and lWS. Figure 6. Number of spellings and ie > y spellings Alternative spellings that were identified in lWS, i.e. , and , are overall greater in number than , as further illustrated in Figure 7 below. Figure 7. Number of different spellings found in sections from MSB, MSC and MSD Despite the obvious differences in the proportions above, a general observation may be offered regarding the spellings at hand: the alternation between and appears to be generally more consistent for multisyllabic, stressed words, for example words like gehierdun (MSA (f. 10r)) > gehyrdon (MSB (f. 12r), MSC (f. 125v) and MSD (f. 23r)). Instead, variation appears much more Irregularity of spellings in lWS 37 frequent in pronoun forms (86% of the relevant word material across the samples), and especially third-person pronouns as a category that represents examples of all variants detected, namely , , and . As a second step of analysis, therefore, third-person pronouns were distributed in a table according to their case (Appendix 2). This enabled a comparison of spellings in identical morphological forms within and across the samples from all four copies. In MSA, hie indicates the third-person nominative and accusative plural pronoun; hiera indicates the third-person genitive plural, and hiene indicates the masculine accusative singular. The other texts compare as follows (for all of the texts, variation in all of the forms above occurs regardless of their orthographical environment):  In MSB, the third-person nominative and accusative plural is consistently hie. A different form from MSA is used here for the third-person genitive plural, namely heora, and the masculine accusative singular, hine. Pronouns in the selected sections from MSB appear to be coherent in spelling, with some conventions appearing as different from those in MSA.  In MSC, the forms hie and hi are used in free variation for the third-person nominative plural. The third-person genitive plural has four different forms: hira, hiera, hyra and heora. The masculine accusative singular is hine. As is evident, the chosen passages from MSC present varying pronoun spellings and there appears to be considerable change in conventions between the passages in MSC and those from the previous texts.  In MSD, there is variation in the forms of the third-person nominative and accusative plural, hy, heo, hie, hi. Heora and hine, instead, are used consistently for the third-person genitive plural and third-person masculine accusative singular, respectively. Sections from MSD, therefore, also appear to show some variation in pronoun spelling and conventions are different from those of the previous texts. Patterns in personal pronouns are particularly interesting for addressing issues pertaining to the Chronicle. First of all, the frequency of variation in pronouns may not be entirely dependent on stress, as pronouns are not always weakly- stressed forms, especially in longer sentence contexts (cf. Howe 1996: 87, cf. also Colman 1994 for insights into the relationship between stress and morphology). Rather, the fact that third-person pronouns appear more 38 Marco Condorelli susceptible to spelling variation in the Chronicle could partially be a physiological symptom of their high frequency in the narrative context of the annals. These characteristics can be used to our advantage, as higher frequencies afford a cross-textual analysis with comparative insights into diachronic variation. Some of the spelling innovations detected in my samples are particularly useful examples to support previous statements on the relationship across the surviving texts, with possible concurring influences from earlier manuscript sources. Matters like the precise relationship of MSC to MSB and the place of MSA in the lines of transmission of the Chronicle have long been the subject of discussion and some disagreements (Bately 1991: 1). A general agreement among these resources, however, is that MSA, MSB and MSC are known to have the same core, i.e. up to 890 or 891 and a series of continuations to 914. The points of agreements and differences between MSB and MSC have led a number of scholars beginning from the father of modern studies on the Chronicle, Charles Plummer, to hypothesise that MSB and MSC especially were in fact derived from a now lost copy of the Chronicle (cf. Plummer 1979). The first part of this lost copy was in turn supposedly derived from an ancestor copy, which may also have been an ancestor copy of MSA and a possible common source of MSD. For the most part, however, the hand for the period up to 890 in MSD seems to have been influenced by a separate matrix text from the other three manuscripts, possibly a text from a northern scriptorium. From the tenth century onwards, instead, MSD appears to be a conflation of MSB and MSC with distinctive elements of its own (Bately 1991, Jorgensen 2010a: 5). In the samples surveyed across the four manuscript copies, the form heora is the dominant form of the third-person possessive in MSB and is also one of the forms existing in MSC and MSD. In light of the fact that heora is also the most dominant form in manuscripts of Ælfric and Wulfstan (cf. for example di Paolo Healey & Venezky 1980), heora could indeed reflect the spellings already existing in the lost copy of the Chronicle which allegedly influenced MSA, MSB and MSC together with cross-textual interferences across the three copies (Bately 1991: 16). The spelling examples retrieved from MSD also appear to support a level of comparability of MSD with the other manuscripts, especially MSC. In the samples from MSC, lWS hi appears as the most dominant form for the third- person nominative plural, yet the form hie, which is typical of MSA and MSB, also survives in nominative and accusative case and, in the nominative case, it appears almost as frequently as hi. The form hi is in turn the dominant spelling in the samples from MSD, while hie also appears as a less frequent Irregularity of spellings in lWS 39 variant both in the nominative and the accusative cases. The genitive form heora in the samples from MSC appears to be dominant much like the form in the samples from MSB, suggesting a possible connection between the two copies. More generally, the variants that are available in the manuscript before c. 890 suggest that this part of MSD also somewhat reflects the original exemplar from which all versions of the Chronicle are descended (cf. Cubbin 1996). The elements above feed into the patterns identified in work that has focussed primarily on the sources, chronology and text-history of the Chronicle, especially owed to Bately (1978, 1979a, 1979b, 1985, 1991, 2003) and Dumville (1983, 1985, 1986); cf. also Lutz (1981, 1982) and Meaney (1986). These scholars have often used spelling variation as evidence for cross- textual influences in the process of copying and transcribing the Chronicle but have never elaborated on the significance of such a promising category of words like pronouns, and research in cross-textual influences has in fact lost centrality over the last two decades. While work on spellings and textual relationships in the Chronicle has recently slowed down considerably, the last few years have seen an outbreak of research work in Old English pronouns (cf. e.g. Megginson 1994; Howe 1996; van Bergen 2000; Ohkado 2001; Seppӓnen 2004; Koopman 2005; Alcorn 2009, 2014; Rusten 2013; Cole 2017; and van Kemenade 2017, to name only a few). The considerable increase in research output with focus on Old English pronouns demonstrates a growing awareness of the potential of pronouns as first-order witnesses of historical change in early English, yet no work has so far focussed on spelling variation in pronouns and issues of elaboration and power. In general, changes affecting pronouns are more likely to reflect conscious attempts to change forms, rather than occasional scribal errors owed to uncertainty or inexperience, or solely passive influences from earlier ancestor or contemporary manuscripts. Pronouns are highly frequent forms and, as such, they are expected to be more resilient to spelling change than other word classes and they generally retain forms longer than the rest of the vocabulary (Lehmann 1992: 108f, Howe 1996: 55). Given the general tendency of pronouns to resist spelling variation, the preponderance of spelling variation in pronoun forms could be explained at least partially as a sign of a conscious willingness from individual scribes to engage with individual attempts to elaborate regularisation in core areas of the language, as a response to the pressures for standardisation (cf. Horobin 2013: 66 on ‘elaboration’). The process of spelling regularisation was most likely the product of a conscious willingness to create a prestigious variety that would reflect the grandeur and 40 Marco Condorelli power of the court as well as Winchester and the surrounding scriptoria (cf. Hofstetter 1988: 161). This hypothesis still remains relevant in the face of the possibility that the ‘common stock’ of the annals up to c. 890891 may have been the product of scribal activity undergoing at the court of King Alfred the Great under commission by the king himself, and only subsequently distributed among and stored in the various scriptoria identified in Table 1 (cf. Scharer 1996, Abels 1998, Brooks 2011). If this possibility was true, copies of the annals were probably used as tokens for the king and the court entourage to gift to monasteries and as a means of ‘propaganda’, usually to establish or reaffirm power and favour (Pratt 2014). Regardless of where the copies originated, personal pronouns appear to have an important functional role in the context of the samples in question and of the common stock more generally, as they often refer to royal figures or a range of individuals closely related to the king’s court, whether by family lineage or simply historically and geographically (cf. Sheppard 2004 on collective identity in the Chronicle). The centrality of third-person pronouns linguistically and ideologically, both in the eyes of the writer and in those of the reader, may have also constituted the most suitable ground for scribes (who were mostly learned men of the church) to express their favour towards or dissent against the political entourage of the time and any rivalry with other monasteries and scriptoria. In other words, any conscious attempts to systematically control morphological forms and their spellings could also be related to issues of intellectual identity within an individual scriptorium or between two or more different scriptoria, where the scribes may have been not only participating to the requirement of spelling regularisation, but also competing with each other for the same goal. In the samples collected from MSA (Winchester) and from MSB (Abingdon), the spread of each dominant case form appears to also involve a levelling of spelling contrast (e.g. hiene and hiera in MSA and hine and heora in MSB), which could indicate different, yet relatively consistent attempts to control forms while them potentially representing phonological diversification. In light of these remarks, a comparison of pronoun practices between MSB and MSC is also interesting, as both MSB and MSC are traditionally thought to derive from or be destined to Abingdon Abbey, which means that the scribe from the samples in MSC may have been more likely to have had access to MSB, while still producing a great deal more variation than the samples from MSB. The most traditional scenario to account for the discrepancies between MSB and MSC is the possibility that MSC may have actually not been compared to MSB at all, but solely derived from a lost Irregularity of spellings in lWS 41 ancestor copy. The dominant forms hira, hiera and hyra in MSC recall the forms hiera in MSA but not heora in MSB, which probably represents a phonological change (see below). According to Bately (1991: 20–21), heora may have existed in an ancestor copy one or two removes from MSB, which means that the sampled section from MSC may have been copied from an even earlier manuscript. However, the presence of forms like heora, hie and hine in MSC also testify some degree of familiarity with the spellings in use in the samples from MSB, as well as a more or less homogenous attempt to spelling, which can hardly be ignored. In view of these considerations, the MSC scribe may have attempted to set his own version of the standard lWS spelling of pronouns as non-identical to MSB (perhaps taking into account other levels of the language, like form and style, as contextual deciders for pronoun variants) at a moment in time where lWS was already well underway and individual scribes may not necessarily have agreed with the spellings used more than seventy years earlier. Interestingly, MSC is thought to have been hostile to the house of Godwine, which is against the supposed cordial relations of Abingdon with the same house of Godwine (cf. Baxter 2007: 1194). Even though the anti-Godwinist stance becomes more relevant towards the end of MSC, this attitude may be read as a more implicit indication of the whole manuscript’s contextual affiliation, if we consider the possibility that issues related to intellectual identity were expressed not haphazardly in fragmented manuscript sections but rather in more or less meaningful continuity contexts tied to the history of each individual manuscript. The revised spellings therefore may be read as a willingness to take a stance against the previous MSB copy and the views of the scribe who compiled the same sections. Along these same lines of interpretation, differences in the spellings between MSD and the other copies may also be linked to matters of intellectual identity: if we assume that MSD probably originated in Mercia (which is a matter of controversy as mentioned above, but still a strong possibility), then we should also consider that the Mercian dialect of the Midlands appears to have exerted a rival pressure on lWS, reinforced by the prestige of the Lichfield monastery (cf. Horobin 2013: 67). Although the samples do not necessarily provide evidence of any strong Mercian dialectal influence, the rivalry may have resulted in semi-autonomous attempts to establish a regularised lWS spelling, while also inevitably reflecting the influence of ancestor or more contemporary West Saxon copies. Some of these factors certainly deserve further discussion and exploration as they have the potential to reaffirm the linguistic role of scribes and scriptoria as more active 42 Marco Condorelli centres of intellectual and political engagement. They also enable us to bridge our linguistic field with work conducted on the Chronicle from wholly extra- linguistic points of view, focussed on recent interpretations of the annals as panegyrical and functional to the political and religious environment in which they were written (cf. Bredehoft 2001, Sheppard 2004, Jorgensen 2010b, Clarke 2012, Smith 2012, Sparks 2012). Regardless of the complexity of all possible factors concurring as triggers of spelling variation, all levels of interpretations for the variations in pronouns can be combined with questions related to the traditional phonological understanding of the spelling irregularity. In particular, the forms, which have been found in words such as heora, appear to be the result of back- umlaut, a process which spread relatively quickly in West Saxon (diphtongisation of /i/ before back vowel in the following syllable: *hire > hiora; by a later development, io > eo in WS, see Hogg 1992: §§5.146, 5.155; Colman 1997, note also word-final e > a). The fact that back-umlaut has spread rather unevenly across the pronouns seems an intriguing scenario that warrants further investigation and may indeed be connected with the interplay of other extra-linguistic factors hypothesised in these notes, or questions related to functional analogy and morphological levelling. While the patterns drawn from the selected samples already provide interesting insights into the manuscript copies, a more extensive, comparative analysis of pronoun spellings across all surviving copies of the Chronicle promises to give some tantalising additional perspectives into the linguistic significance of the common stock. A more extensive cross-textual analysis of variation in pronouns would allow for the investigation of largely unexplored questions from a linguistic point of view and would compensate for the dominant extra-linguistic focus on issues related to identity, historiography and history (see e.g. Stafford 2007). In addition, a multilayered interpretation of spelling evidence would contribute to bringing the discussion of spellings in the Chronicle more in line with recent trends in historical sociolinguistics (cf. Condorelli & Rutkowska forthcoming), and it is hoped that my notes will inspire future scholars to follow these trends. Irregularity of spellings in lWS 43 References Primary sources Bately, J. M. ed. 1986: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Vol. 3. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer (MSA). Cubbin, G. P. ed. 1996: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Vol. 6. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer (MSD). Dumville, D. & S. Keynes gen. eds. 1983–2001: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Vols. 3–6. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer. O’Brien O’Keefe, K. ed. 2001: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Vol. 5. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer (MSC). Taylor, S. ed. 1983: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Vol. 4. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer (MSB). The texts above are printed editions of the following manuscripts: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173 (MSA). London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A. vi (MSB). London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv (MSC). London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i (MSD). 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The Haskins Society Journal 19: 28–50. Voss, M. 1995: Traditional Notes on Old English Palatal Diphthongisation. Vienna English Working Papers 4.1: 57–71. 48 Marco Condorelli Appendix 1 The asterisk (*) indicates a new form introduced by the later scribes instead of the original corresponding word used in MSA. The possible reasons for the change of form may include difficulties in choosing a variant form, with potential ties to form and style. MSA MSB MSC MSD Line Word Line Word Line Word Line Word [755] [755] [755] [755] Line 4 hiene Line 4 hine Line 4 hine Line 4 hine Line 5 hiene Line 5 hine Line 5 hine Line 5 hine Line 16 hie Line 16 hie Line 14 hi Line 15 hy Line 17 hie Line 17 hie Line 15 hi Line 16 heo Line 21 hiera Line 19 heora Line 17 Þa* Line 19 heora Line 21 hiera Line 20 heora Line 18 hira Line 20 heora Line 22 hie Line 21 hie Line 18 hi Line 20 hie Line 23 hie Line 22 hie Line 19 hi Line 21 heo Line 24 gehierdun Line 23 gehyrdon Line 20 gehyrdon Line 22 gehyrdon Line 26 hie Line 25 hie Line 22 hi Line 24 hi Line 30 hiera Line 29 heora Line 26 hyra Line 28 heora Line 31 hie Line 30 hie Line 26 hi Line 29 hi Line 32 hiera Line 30 heora Line 27 hira Line 29 heora Irregularity of spellings in lWS 49 Line 33 hie Line 32 hie Line 28 hi Line 30 hie Line 34 hiera Line 32 heora Line 29 hira Line 31 heora Line 34 hie Line 33 hie Line 29 hi Line 31 hi Line 35 hie Line 34 hie Line 30 hi Line 32 hi Line 35 hiera Line 34 heora Line 30 hyra Line 32 heora Line 35 hie Line 34 hie Line 30 hi Line 33 hi Line 36 hie Line 35 hie Line 30 hie Line 33 hi Line 36 hiera Line 35 heora Line 31 hiera Line 34 heora Line 38 hie Line 37 hie Line 32 hi Line 35 heo Line 38 hie Line 37 hie Line 32 hie Line 35 hi Line 38 hie Line 37 hie Line 32 Þæs* Line 35 hit* Line 40 hie Line 38 hie Line 34 hie Line 37 hy Line 41 hie Line 39 hie Line 34 hie Line 37 hi Line 46 hiera Line 44 heora Line 39 heora Line 42 heora Line 48 Miercna Line 46 Myrcna Line 40 Myrcna Line 43 Mearcna [871] [872] for [871] [871] Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 5 fierd Line 6 fyrd Line 6 fyrd Line 6 fyrd 50 Marco Condorelli Line 11 hie Line 12 hie Line 10 hi Line 11 hi Line 18 gefliemde Line 19 geflymdon Line 17 geflymde Line 18 geflymde Line 24 hie Line 24 hie Line 22 hie Line 23 hi Line 24 hie Line 25 hie Line 22 hie Line 24 hi Line 24 gefliemdon Line 25 geflymdan Line 22 geflymdon Line 24 geflymdon Line 34 gefliemde Line 35 geflymde Line 31 geflymde Line 33 geflymde [885] [886] for [885] [885] Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 2 hi Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 3 hie Line 3 hi Line 5 fierde Line 4 fyrde Line 4 fyrde Line 4 fyrde Line 5 hiera Line 5 heora Line 5 hyra Line 4 heora Line 6 hie Line 5 hie Line 5 hi Line 5 hi Line 8 hie Line 8 hie Line 8 hi Line 7 hi Line 9 hie Line 9 hie Line 8 hie Line 8 hy Line 11 hie Line 10 hie Line 10 hie Line 10 hi Line 12 hie Line 11 hie Line 11 hie Line 11 hi Line 15 hiene Line 14 hine Line 13 hine Line 13 hine Line 17 hie Line 16 Þa* Line 15 Þa* Line 15 Þa* Irregularity of spellings in lWS 51 Line 18 aþiestrode Line 17- 18 aþeostrode Line 16 aþystrode Line 16 aþystrode Line 24 behienan Line 23 beheonan Line 21 beheonan Line 22 beheonan Line 28 hie Line 27 hie Line 25 hi Line 25 hy Appendix 2 Overall number of pronouns spellings in selected sections from MSA, MSB, MSC and MSD. This appendix contains the same pronouns as in Appendix 1, with the exception of newly introduced forms. MSA 3rd Person Nominative Plural 3rd Person Accusative Plural 3rd Person Genitive Plural 3rd Person Masculine Accusative Singular Hie x 27 Hie x 2 Hiera x 9 Hiene x 3 MSB 3rd Person Nominative Plural 3rd Person Accusative Plural 3rd Person Genitive Plural 3rd Person Masculine Accusative Singular Hie x 26 Hie x 2 Heora x 9 Hine x 3 MSC 3rd Person Nominative Plural 3rd Person Accusative Plural 3rd Person Genitive Plural 3rd Person Masculine Accusative Singular Hi x 15 Hie x 2 Hira x 3 Hine x 3 Hie x 10 Hyra x 3 Heora x 1 Hiera x 1 52 Marco Condorelli MSD 3rd Person Nominative Plural 3rd Person Accusative Plural 3rd Person Genitive Plural 3rd Person Masculine Accusative Singular Hy x 4 Hie x 1 Heora x 9 Hine x 3 Heo x 3 Hie x 2 Hi x 17 Author’s address School of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Central Lancashire Preston PR1 2HE UK received: 2 June 2018 e-mail: MCondorelli@uclan.ac.uk accepted: 28 November 2018