4 Vocabulary and borrowing[55]
4.1 Etymology
In what follows, when etymologies are
mentioned, it will usually be stated that a Scots word simply is derived from either an earlier native form
or from a cognate word in some other language. The dictionary entries are not so categorical. They give cognates where these are
known, leaving it to the reader to infer the route by which a word has been
borrowed. It is very important,
therefore, for the dictionary user who is interested in the origins of words to
bring with him or her some knowledge of the sources of the vocabulary and the
historical circumstances of borrowing.
Often, too, parallels are cited that are
not to be understood as sources, particularly in ME and EModE. Information about ME is valuable because
it helps to fill in the gap in the record of Scots between ONhb and the
literary corpus beginning in the late 14th century. For loanwords, it is useful
to know the period at which the word first enters the dictionary record of
English. This might be influential
in weighing possible etymologies - putative loans from ON, for instance, would
probably be recorded already in ME.
So would those from AN, whereas loans from French as a literary language
continue over a much longer period.
4.2 Sources of
the vocabulary
4.2.1 Native
vocabulary
Much of the native
vocabulary is, of course, shared with StE, also descended from an Anglian
dialect,[56]
but with forms and senses independently developed.
There are a few differences in word-form between Scots
and StE arising from OE dialect differences: see e.g. acher n., greve n.1, hundreth, moch and ticher (s.v. tere n.). For
the vowel of eche n.,
cf. ONhb eadesa (CSD
s.v. eetch).[57]
Most of the OE documents that survive are
WS, and the forms that are cited in dictionary etymologies are the better
attested WS forms unless specifically labelled otherwise. Reliance on the
well-documented WS forms can sometimes obscure the phonological
development. The word barne 'child', for instance, develops regularly
from Anglian *barn. The WS form cited by most dictionaries,
including DOST, has ea
as the result of WS 'fracture' (diphthongisation). This can lead to the word being mistakenly treated as a loan
from ON. OSc dar v. and StE dare, Scots swallie (s.v. swelly v.) and StE swallow are all from similar, unfractured Anglian
forms.
However, dictionaries do usually give the
Anglian ald forms that
are the precursors of both OSc ald, cald, etc., and the StE equivalents old, cold, etc., where WS again has ea.
Where WS has ǣ from West Germanic ā, Anglian has raised ǣ from this source further to ē, giving vowel 2 (ModSc /i/), regardless of
the development of other OE ǣ. Examples include nep(e, swer(e 'reluctant', erand, drede v., brere, blese n.
Curiously, some of the main features of ONhb are not
represented in Scots, notably the confusion of ea and eo that is found especially in the 10th century
texts. Craigie (1925) suggested that the explanation might be variation within
ONhb. (Anglo-Danish is also based
on ONhb.) One feature whose reflex
is found in ModSc is the rounding of e after w, thus ONhb uoe, Modern Scots (southern East Central, South-West and
Southern) oo 'we'.
There are a few loans from PreStE into Scots,
identifiable by their word-form, that are well established, independently of
anglicisation as a general process.
These include bote
n.2, alongside bate n.1 from the late 15th century, and door(e from the late 16th century,
completely replacing dure
after the first half of the 17th century. Aucht
'eight' (perhaps because of potential homonymic clashes) is replaced by eicht in many ModSc dialects. The o in lord, however, may be a native development. This form already existed in Scots in
the 14th century, and is paralleled by or from ON ár (or conj.1), i.e. the change of vowel may have been conditioned
by the following /r/ (see also §9.3.1).
A substantial part of the native vocabulary has
dropped out of the language since the OE period, often replaced by ON or OF
loans (see below). Some OE
survivals in Scotland and the north of England may have been reinforced by
their ON cognates. Examples include barne (above), hals n., dryt(e and thole.
Björkman (1900) considers that the frequentative suffix -le (OSc -ill), as in runkil(l, became more common in ME under Scandinavian
influence. The ending is also
found in MDu, e.g. rummill
n. and v.
It is possible that there are lost native sources of
some words usually attributed to ON.
The two languages being very close, there generally would be an ON
cognate of any such unrecorded native word. Wall (1898) suggests that lowe 'a flame' (see low n.1) may be native, since it
occurs in Frisian (the nearest relative of Scots and English) as well as in ON
and Middle Dutch. It is also
suggested that nieve (OSc
neve), lug, muck (OSc muk), ding and others may really be native words because of
their wide (though sometimes scattered) distribution in the modern English
dialects (Wall, 1898; Wakelin, 1972).
Given that geographical distributions ebb and flow, the distribution in
earlier periods of the language is what is of most interest here. In support of the ON derivation, The
Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology notes that muck occurs earliest in eastern parts of England. Lug is earliest in Scots, and if indeed ON, is
one of the few Scandinavian loans in Scots not traceable to Anglo-Danish (see
§2.3.3).
4.2.2 Loanwords
Loanwords in Scots
and in StE come largely from the same range of contacts, chiefly in the
medieval period: Latin, with loans entering the language at every stage from
the Germanic ancestor of OE to modern scientific terminology; the Celtic
languages; ON - in some dialects more than others, but a considerable influence
even in StE; French, especially the AN dialect, but later Standard French (the
Central dialect), especially for learned loanwords; and the language group
consisting of Flemish, Low German and Middle Dutch.
For a significant proportion of the vocabulary, no
etymology has been ascertained. Almost certainly, some of these words have
precursors, either in OE or in the languages from which Scots borrowed, but
these have gone unrecorded. It is
likely that Gaelic, in particular, has been under-represented, for a number of
reasons (see Dareau, 2001; Macafee, 2002). Others are ad hoc coinages - we can be fairly certain of this when some
identifiable principle of word-formation is at work (see below). Another clue is the stylistic
restriction of coinages in the early part of their history, when they are often
treated as slang (appearing only in 'low life' texts, such as the MSc
flytings), e.g. gully, bony and glowr.
4.2.2.1 Cumbric and Pictish
The numbers of Anglo-Saxons arriving in Britain,
whether absolutely or as a proportion of the native Celtic population, can only
be guessed. It has been said that "English developed as the Germanic of
few invaders in the mouths of many Celts" (Vennemann, 2000: 404). This is even more true of Scotland,
where blood group figures suggest that the Angles contributed less than 10% of
the present gene pool (Potts, 1976).
Cumbric place-names are still common in Scotland as in
England, but only small numbers of words were taken into OE (although this has
been underestimated in the past - see Viereck (2000) for an overview). This is what we would expect in a
case of substratum influence:
where the speakers of an indigenous language shift to an incoming
language, the influences they carry over tend to be mainly phonological and
syntactic (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988: 121), together with subtle semantic
influences that are difficult to detect.
A number of features of late OE grammar have been suggested as p-Celtic
influences (cf. §7.8.2), and even some features such as periphrastic do that developed later in the language, but
are most prominent in dialects still in contact with p-Celtic, have been
referred to this source (see German, 2000: 370-1 for a brief account).
Likely Cumbric loans include bodkin (see OED), cobill, lum n.1, brok n.1 and brat. The last two are generally treated as
Cumbric (e.g. Baugh, 1959: 85-6; Pyles and Algeo, 1982: 298) because they occur
in England (where they are less likely to be Gaelic), but OIr etymons also
exist. Gaelic cam-, as
in camschoch, also
occurs in western English dialects as cam 'crooked', where it is of p-Celtic origin (OED, EDD
s.v. cam adj.). The
close relationship between the two Celtic branches means that Gaelic would tend
to mask any loans that might be peculiar to Scots.
There is no sign in OSc of the Anglo-Cymric score, the
corrupted p-Celtic numbers formerly used for counting knitting stitches and
sheep in scores, and as a children's jingle. These appear late in Scotland (19th century, see
SND s.v. baombe), are
attested only as jingles, and never go beyond ten, so they may have spread
northwards in modern times from the north-west of England. The fact that they
are not documented at all before the 18th century makes it difficult
to argue that they are a survival from Cumbric (Barry, 1967; Klemola, 2000).
A possible Pictish loan is pete n.1. It appears first in a Scottish Latin context as peta.
Another is month n.2,
although this comes via Gaelic (Watson, 1926: 391-407). The word's easterly
place-name distribution (for a map, see Barrow, 1998: 66), and the fact that
most of the citations for its more general sense are from north of the Tay,
suggest that the source was Pictish.
4.2.2.2 Gaelic
The earliest phase
of borrowing of q-Celtic loans into OE reflects Irish missionary activity in
Northumbria (Breeze, 1993; cf. §5.1).
Particularly interesting for us is deorc 'bloody', only in The Dream of the Rood (Breeze, 1994-5).
However, most q-Celtic loans in Scots are,
of course, from Scottish Gaelic;
but the proportion of these recorded in OSc is very small (see below).
As Aitken (1954) notes, there are very few Gaelic loans in the ESc texts,
despite the conditions for borrowing being “most favourable and the population
most linguistically intermingled” in the 11th and 12th
centuries. This is another reason
to suspect that the rural Anglian population of the South-East was less important
to the eventual form of Scots than the Anglo-Danes.
The low status of Gaelic latterly (cf. the citations
s.vv. Heland, Heland-man, Lawland), and its rural social basis, would not have
encouraged much borrowing (by Scots speakers) apart from substratum influence
(carried over by originally Gaelic speakers). Nevertheless, the numerical superiority of the Gaels over
the Germanic-speaking groups might have overwhelmed these factors (as in
Ireland). It may be that the
prolonged period of contact allowed Gaelic-speakers to acquire perfect
Scots. This is consistent with
Barrow's view that there was "a very gradual loss of Gaelic from much of
eastern Scotland" (1989: 126).
Possible substratum influences on phonology and syntax
are discussed by Macafee and Ó Baoill (1997). Gaelic loans and the existence of
these sounds in frequently-used place and personal names of Gaelic origin may
have reinforced the retention in Scots of l-mouillé and n-mouillé. The sporadic
occurrence of <t> for <th> in MSc (see §5.2.8), representing /t/
for /θ/ as in Highland English, seems too widely
distributed to be an influence of Gaelic, unless it is much earlier than the
evidence suggests. The occurrence
of <sch> for <ch> (see
§5.2.8), i.e. /ʃ/ for
/ʧ/, again a tendency shared with Gaelic,
presents the same problems.
It has been suggested that there is Gaelic influence
in the free use in ModSc of the construction be + -ing with verbs that do not allow it in English (verbs of
psychological state), e.g. think and want in certain senses.[58] The antiquity of this in Scots remains
to be investigated. More clearly
of Gaelic origin is the use of and as a subordinating conjunction with ellipsis of the
verb, in a concessive sense (see and conj. 1 c, including Additions and Corrections to
vol. I). It is also very likely
that Gaelic fhèin lies
behind certain emphatic or polite (as opposed to reflexive) uses of pronouns + self in Scots (see himself pron. 2, ȝowrself pron. 1).
There is a body of Gaelic loans relating to legal and
administrative structures that survived from the pre-feudal period, e.g. slanis and tocher (see Dareau, 2001). Some loans of this kind, e.g. conveth, are also found in Northumberland in the
early medieval period, together with Gaelic place-name elements (Barrow, 1992:
117ff.), reflecting Scottish influences on this area, over which the Scottish
crown long had territorial ambitions. The character of continuing Gaelic loans
is mainly popular, e.g. ker, mant v.,
ingill n.1, ganȝe,
partan and o n.1.
A number of elements of putative Gaelic origin have
become productive in Scots. These
are mainly attested in the Modern period, but see camschoch, curfuffle (cf. SND s.v. cur-) and ȝelloch (cf. SND s.v. -och).
The late persistence of Gaelic in many areas probably meant a correspondingly late influx of Gaelic loans as the language was given up: more detailed study of the ModSc dialects, following up McClure (1986), is needed to confirm the geographical distribution of loans. If Gaelic loans were entering Scots in the late MSc period mainly in the more peripheral dialect areas, then the written corpus is probably a particularly poor guide to this body of loanwords. As Dareau writes, the extant material is:
skewed against the sorts of vocabulary one would expect to find borrowed
from Gaelic, dominated as they are by an urban culture, commerce, the Court and
Government and a literature heavily influenced by French, Latin and English
models. There are relatively few sources of every day vocabulary of ‘landward
folk’ and others who might be expected to have retained or come into contact
with Gaelic to a far greater degree than their urban compatriots. Furthermore, the dictionary
database itself is not exhaustive. (2001: 238)
Pődör's (1995/6) work on Gaelic loanwords suggests that some loans must
have been in Scots for several centuries before their appearance in the
dictionary record. For instance,
the culrath form of colrach, although not attested in Scots until the
15th century, contains the phoneme /θ/, which is believed to have been lost in
Gaelic by the end of the 13th century.[59] In bledoch,
the same sound appears as /d/, although this word is not recorded in
Scots until the late 16th century. Many of the apparently early loans have to do with Celtic
law and society, and it is possible that some were transmitted via Scottish
Medieval Latin (see ketharan).
There may also be considerable, subtle, influence on the semantic development of Scots lexis (cf. Macafee 2002). By its nature, this would be difficult to detect, and research in this area must await the completion and publication of the Historical Dictionary of Scottish Gaelic.
4.2.2.3 Old Norse
The ON component is surprisingly large, as
we have seen. The body of loanwords
from this source in StE is also very large, but less than in the dialects of
the North of England or Scots. The
areas of vocabulary affected are also surprisingly basic, e.g. Ty(i)sday(e, ger, ain adj. 'own' (see awin, nan(e adj.2), and ordinal numerals (see §7.6.1).
The verb tak replaces
OE niman; while anger n. and v. (< angr 'grief', angra 'to grieve') replaces a range of native
near-synonyms, while retaining (mainly in ESc) its ON senses; and leg n.1 joins native schank. ON forms underlie the adverbs hyn(e, quhyn(e and thin(e, as well as the more regular syn(e (McIntosh, 1987; Aitken, 2002:
§14.1(5)). For basic grammatical
words borrowed from ON, see §7.1.
Aitken (1954) gives as his impression of the
Scandinavian loanwords in Scots the observation that “they reflect the
interests and activities of a farming people living an outdoor life without
much in the way of aristocratic or civilised luxuries or much interest in
intellectual pursuits”. The Scandinavians
did however contribute to Scots and English terminology in the area of law (in
its pre-feudal, customary phase), including the word law itself; and in poetic diction, e.g. boun
ppl.adj., brathly, raik v.1, thraly.
A number of basic vocabulary items have
been influenced or replaced by their ON cognates (even in StE, e.g. sister and egg). Ken
takes its branch II sense from ON, and stot 'a bullock' from ON rather than OE stott 'a poor horse', though closer in form to
the latter.
In many cases, Scandinavian word-forms have been
borrowed as doublets or have even in time replaced OE ones, e.g. drukkin, strae (s.v. stra n.), ain (s.v. awin adj.), gowk n., cowp v.2, nowt (= OE nēat as in the place-name Nitshill), gleg, trig, lig v., [60]
and cf. etter (SND
s.v.). ON /g/ = OE /j/
in e.g. garth
[61] and geve, but there are also native /j/ forms, e.g. ȝif.
The /g/ in English gate may be from the native OE plural gatu (but cf. ON gat), while the singular 
eat
ON appears to have actually reversed, in
many words in nME and Scots, a group of native sound-changes.[62] The OE sound-changes are referred to as
'palatalisation', because they involved moving the place of articulation of
certain consonants from the velum to the palate, when followed by certain other
sounds. However, subsequent
developments mean that the native reflexes are in fact no longer palatal. ON preserved the original Germanic /k,
sk/ and word-final /g/ sounds where native changes give /ʧ, ʃ, ʤ/ (and word-initial /j/, see above), e.g. cheis, chese, lech(e;
s(c)het(e n.1
and n.2, schip, fisch; hege.[63]
Examples with the unpalatalised consonants include:
• /k/ rather than /ʧ/ in e.g. carl (= English churl), kist, birk (see OED
s.v. birch - the vowel
is apparently from the native form), mikil(l (= much). /k/ is
likewise Scandinavian in such loans as sark, rek(e 'smoke' (< ON reykr, with the vowel of OE rēc).
However, the /k/ of sic, earlier swik,
swilk is thought to be
from the OE dative swilcum;
• /g/ rather than /ʤ/ in e.g. brig n.
These forms are less numerous.
The other common word showing this is rig;[64]
• /sk/ rather than /ʃ/ in e.g. skirt (< ON skyrta = OE scyrte > skirt, the garment originally hanging from the shoulders to
the knees), mask n.1, skemmel 'bench' and skemmels 'slaughter house' (s.v. scamel n.).
In scharn,
however, Scots has the native form, while scarn (< ON skarn) is found in the north of England (EDD; LAS vol. I,
Map 60).
When /sk/ is final
in a word, it is sometimes reduced to /s/, as in Pace n.2 (q.v. for further examples)
and mens(e.
In some cases, there is no Scandinavian
etymon to explain the unpalatalised forms. A hypothetical ONhb cæf is suggested for caf(f 'chaff' (q.v.): SND also cites MDu kaf and similarly MDu strecken s.v. streek. Others remain unaccounted for, e.g. mersk (as the DOST article points out, this is
also found in southern English dialects).
There is some doubt about whether the sound-changes were complete in OE.
Sociolinguistic research on modern languages supports the view that
sound-changes spread gradually through the vocabulary, so that residues
(appearing as exceptions to 'sound laws') are to be expected. In particular, scholars have been
reluctant to believe that the hundreds of sk- and especially skr- words in Scots and English could all be the result of
ON influence (OED s.v. scr-),
and not all have ON cognates, e.g. screw 'shrew'.
It is possible that to some extent ON influence worked upon a basis of
native residues.
The process of analogy may also be
involved. That is, we suppose that
an awareness of the correspondence between the native and Scandinavian forms
led to speakers altering other words to fit the pattern. This type of argument is difficult to
sustain, being essentially speculative.
However, Trudgill (1986) has shown that in situations of abrupt dialect
mixture, a few unetymological forms typically do occur.
Where an ON etymon is not known, a word may
nevertheless be identified as Scandinavian by the discovery of parallels in the
modern Scandinavian languages and dialects, e.g. heave-eel, titling and flan. A
trickle of Scandinavian words continued to enter the vocabulary through trade,
and general sea-faring contacts with the Scandinavian countries and, of course,
the Northern Isles.[65]
Kries (1999) notes that while ON loans in a number of semantic fields are
already in evidence in the 14th century - administration, law,
agriculture, ships and shipbuilding - words in the semantic field 'trade'
appear somewhat later (15th or 16th century), reflecting
later trading links with the Scandinavian countries, particularly Norway. Words for fauna also tend to appear in
the 15th century, but this may be a vagary of the documentary
record.
Scandinavian material that is peculiar to
the Norn-influenced dialects (Shetland, Orkney and, to a lesser extent,
Caithness) we can take to be from Norn. McArthur (ed.), (1992, 1996: s.v. Norn) gives some examples of Norn loans,
including the DOST items grind n.1, heavie (Additions and Corrections to vol. III), row v.2, spick, vo(e, ver(e n.1.
Melchers (1980) also makes the reasonable assumption that any Shetland
word that can be traced to Norn should be, even though the word may occur also
in General Scots, e.g. grys(e (and cf. SND s.v. deave and McArthur (ed.)'s example, galt).
The Scots word would then be seen as merely reinforcing the local word.
4.2.2.4 Middle Dutch
The Low German
language group is differentiated into Flemish, Dutch and the Low German dialects
of German itself. However, these
form a continuum, and are identical at many points, so that the precise source
of a loan may be unclear, although the assumption is that the earliest loans
are from the Flemish spoken by immigrants to the Lowlands, and the later loans
mainly from Dutch. Both of these
are sometimes termed Middle Dutch. The early date of many loans is shown by the
fact that they participate in the fronting of Vowel 7 (see §6.10), e.g. boucht, cute, smuir (s.v. smor(e v.), ȝuik, crune.
Loans from this source, especially from the earliest period, range over
the vocabulary of everyday life, e.g. crag n.2, spane, golf n.2, red v.1 and v.2. See also Duch(e, Fleming, Flemis.
The Dutch or Flemish element in the Scots
lexicon is the subject of a comprehensive article by Murison (1971). The Low
Countries were important trading partners, and the only Scottish staple port
abroad was maintained in different places in the Low Countries from the 13th
to the 18th century.
Scottish merchants were also involved further afield with the
Low-German-speaking Hanseatic towns of the Baltic. General trade terminology
includes grof(f , coft
and coper. The verb cope did not become established in its own
right, although it appears briefly; cf. cowp v.2 from the ON cognate. Calland 'customer', hence 'fellow', is either from Flemish caland, or directly from the Northern French word
that is in turn its source.
As Murison points out, cloth is a prominent category,
as for English generally, as this was the chief commodity of the Netherlands in
the Middle Ages, e.g. dornick, camri(c)k, hunscot(t, ley, birge, birges, fleming n.2. The Scots surname Bremner or Brebner is MDu Brabander 'native of Brabant', also in OSc as brabanar 'weaver' (q.v.). Sea-faring is another important area of borrowing, e.g. dworce,
red(e n.3 3. Weights and measures include muchkin, and there are also a number of names of
coins (medieval Scotland being chronically short of specie, many foreign coins
circulated), e.g. gulden, plak, steke, and the proverbially small doit n.1.
Fishing fleets from the Low Countries were also very
active in Scottish waters. Barrow (1981: 100) tells us that by the 12th
century, the fishing industry was carried on as much by boats from the Low
Countries as from Scotland, and the burghs along the southern shore of Fife
from Crail to Inverkeithing seem to have been primarily markets for the fishing
industry.
The nature of the contact with Flemish and Dutch means
that the loans are of a colloquial kind, extending to pejorative words, e.g. swingo(u)r, loun. The close genetic relationship between Scots and
Dutch would facilitate loan-translations of compounds such as kirk-master,
landward and perhaps wapynschaw.
Flemish speakers in the early Scottish burghs would
have added their weight to the restoration of non-palatalised forms of words
like kirk. These languages are themselves sources
of non-palatalised /k/, /g/ and /sk/, e.g. dyke (there are also modern Scandinavian parallels, see
OED), kink v.,[66]
kinke n., kinkin,
seg, skaillie (s.v. scailȝe n.), skink; and also the suffix -skap, -skep '-ship'
in e.g. hussyskep and
arscap.
In some cases, a loan might be from either
Scandinavian or Dutch, e.g. galya, grow v.2 and kip n.
Middle Dutch is the source of the diminutive suffix -kin, as in kinkin, muchkin and lillikin(e. The
diminutive suffix -ie
may have been reinforced by Dutch -je, which became common about the same time, the 17th
century, in Protestant Holland (Murison, 1971). It has even been suggested that this diminutive ending,
which appears in Scots earlier than in English, is of Dutch origin (Partridge,
1958).
4.2.2.5 Latin
In the OSc period, Latin influence on the vocabulary
is generally mediated by French. Sometimes a loan could equally well be from
either language, but often the pronunciation (as indicated by spelling and
rhyme) and the inflectional endings are French. Romance loanwords were borrowed in large numbers in OSc
prose. Also, in poetry, an
aureate, Romance-based poetic diction appeared in MSc, alongside the native
poetic diction (see §9.3.4).
Dunbar's 'Ane ballat of Our Lady' relies on Romance
loanwords and ad hoc
forms of Latin words for the rhymes in six of the seven stanzas. An examination of the first stanza will
help to illustrate the poet's relationship with the Latin language:
Hale, sterne superne, hale, in eterne
In
Godis sicht to schyne,
Lucerne in derne for to discerne,
Be
glory and grace devyne.
Hodiern, modern, sempitern,
Angelicall
regyne,
Our tern inferne for to dispern,
Helpe,
rialest rosyne.
Aue,
Maria, gracia plena.
Haile,
fresche floure femynyne,
Zȝerne, ws guberne, wirgin matern,
Of
reuth baith rute and ryne.
(from Bawcutt ed., 1998)[67]
Here we find numerous examples of Latin
loans. The following are all simultaneously from OF and Latin: eterne (first in Chaucer), discerne, modern (occurring in Scots earlier than in English), sempitern
(first in Gower), angelicall
and femynyne. The following we can take as Latin, since
French does not show forms without -al: superne (first in Henryson), inferne (only here) and matern (first here). Hodiern and regyne are
likewise recorded only here. Lucerne
was used earlier by Henryson.
Dispern (= disperse) is first used here. Guberne (first in Henryson) is equivalent to govern(e from the OF cognate. Rosyne 'rose' is an ad hoc alteration (for the rhyme) of Latin rosa.
From this we can see that Dunbar's relationship with
Latin is at some points direct, at others mediated by the shared literary
tradition of Scotland and England.
This is generally the case, and the result is that different variants
were not infrequently borrowed on different occasions.
Kuipers (1964: 92), writing about French and Latin
loans in MSc, notes that “there was considerable freedom” in the choice of
infinitive or participial forms, and writes of “a vague preference for
non-English forms”, though this may simply be the accidental consequence of an
independent interaction with the Romance models. A similar case to dispern (above) is dispone (= dispose) - both are from Latin infinitives rather than past
participles. Conversely, appense = append is from the past participle (or from OF appenser).
Most Latin loans into OSc are also attested in some
form in ME or EModE, whether before or after their appearance in Scots. DOST has numerous pre-datings in
comparison with the dictionary record for England, e.g. commiseratioun,
emendatioun, immediat, intricat, locatio(u)n, metonymical, occur and pagan(e (Aitken, 1981a). Allocate, narrative and ticket
(see tikkat) are so well established in Scots before their first
appearance in texts from England, that they should probably be regarded as
loans from Scots into English.
4.2.2.6 Old French
Borrowing from OF
occurred in two overlapping phases.
In the first, loans of a popular kind were taken into Scots speech,
largely from AN, e.g. cummer n.2,
corby, turkas.[68]
AN loans also include much of the terminology of feudalism and its
attendant social relations, including few n. itself, aire, brefe, dewité, enfeff, eschete,
extret(e, ferme, multur(e
and serv(e (on the
last, see Dareau, 1998: 2, 3). The appearance in Scotland of vernacular
official documents in Scots in the second half of the 14th century
is associated with the abandonment of French (see §2.3.2). George Dunbar, 'Le Count de la Marche
d'Escoce', for instance, prefers to write in Scots ('englis') to his distant cousin, Henry IV of
England, c1400 (see Latin(e B 2). In the second phase, literary loans were borrowed from
Standard (i.e. Central) French.
In the past, the Auld Alliance has sometimes been
emphasised at the expense of the Norman presence nearer home. Franco-Scottish alliances go back to
the 12th century, and the two countries were continuously allied
from 1295 (when John Baliol, during his brief reign, and in the face of
England's interference in Scottish affairs, made a treaty with England's enemy,
France) up to the Reformation of 1560.
French troops were present at various times, and a large force
garrisoned Scotland during the minority and reign of Mary, from 1542 up to
1560. Also, Scottish troops fought in France in the Hundred Years War with
England (1339-1453), and Scotsmen often studied at the universities of Paris or
Orleans. Murison is prepared to
credit the Auld Alliance with “the bulk of French words which are not found at
all in English, Standard or dialect” (1979: 7), but there seems no inherent
reason why the Scots should not have borrowed a distinctive body of words
earlier from AN. We are on safer
ground if we regard the Auld Alliance as prolonging the phase of popular
borrowing. Popular loans first appearing in the dictionary record as late as
the 16th or 17th centuries include: fasch, gein(e, tass(e, viveris, gardyloo (see SND) and bajan.
Their non-literary character is confirmed when the source is dialectal
French, e.g. Hagmané, suggeroun.
Most of the popular loans in Scots must nevertheless
have been taken over from AN when it was a spoken language amongst the feudal
ruling caste. The French influence is already considerable when Scots emerges
as a literary language in the late 14th century. Scots evidence is lacking for the
crucial period when AN was actually spoken in Scotland, so we must look at the
form of the loanwords themselves for some indication as to whether they were
borrowed from AN or from Continental French. It can be shown that there are indeed distinctively
(Anglo-)Norman forms amongst the French loans in Scots.
Unfortunately, there are few features that are unique
to AN for us to use as criteria. The
Normans were originally Norsemen, who had seized what is now Normandy in the 10th
century. Upper, or North, Normandy
is part of the Northern French dialect area, while Lower, or South, Normandy is
part of the (North-)Western dialect area.
References to Old Northern French in etymologies can be taken as
referring to either or both parts of Normandy. As we have seen, we can regard
AN in Scotland as basically a northerly extension of AN in England. As well as
Normans, William the Conqueror also brought with him adventurers from Picardy
(Northern dialect) and others from Norman-controlled Brittany. The influence of the Western dialect
was strengthened in England in the late 12th century, when the
Norman royal house was joined to that of Anjou, and Henry II (1154-89)
inherited both territories, while his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine extended
the Angevin Empire to the Pyrenees.
Although the other Continental territories were lost, Gascony remained
Norman until 1453.
Central French would have been encountered
by Scottish students abroad, but Scottish trade links were mainly with Northern
France. Leaving Northern French
aside, therefore, it is the AN peculiarities and the Western elements in Scots
that most unequivocally attest AN influence.[69]
Western and AN give, for instance:
• lel(e and rial(l (corresponding to loyall and royal from Northern and Central French), and receipt, resait rather than a form answering to recoite; but Scots has moyen (Northern or Central) as well as mene;
• ui (Vowel 10) (ModSc /ʌɪ/), e.g. point n.1, n.2, builȝe, join,
poiso(u)n;
• flour n., hour, in contrast to Standard French fleur and heure;
• final /θ/ in certain words, thus puirtith, cuntreth, danteth, moneth n.2 (and, apparently by analogy, idilteth).
AN criteria include:
• aun and aum for ãn, ãm, e.g. lance, chawmer (see §6.12).[70]
Other peculiarities of AN (Pope, 1934) lie
mainly in its conservatism in relation to Continental French:
• /kw/ remained where Continental French
gave /k/ in e.g. quite,
squar(e. The late borrowing quart d'écu, a coin first struck in 1580, by contrast,
gives cardicue. Spellings suggesting variants in /k/
for the earlier loans are however found in OSc as in ME, e.g. cartane =
quartane, corum = quorum;[71]
• /ʤ/ remains e.g. in gentil(l, justice, whereas it is altered to /ʒ/ in 13th century French;
• Likewise /ʧ/ rather than /ʃ/ in chanoun, etc.;
• -ary, -ory, -ery are the borrowed endings from disyllabic
AN forms corresponding to French -aire, -oire, -ère.
ESc has, for instance, contrary n., though also contrar(e, and
historie, though
also with histor(e.
On the whole, the mixture of Northern and Western characteristics is comparable to that in ME, and consistent with AN influence.
Extensive bilingualism is suggested by the fact that
French vowels and consonants were introduced into Scots. The diphthongs ọi
and ui (Vowels 9
and 10) were borrowed, and also the consonants [ɲ] and [ʎ] (reinforced by Gaelic), e.g. fenȝe,
ingȝoun(e, assoilȝie (see §§6.11, 6.31). There was also considerable influence on idiom,
shading into the borrowing of new grammatical constructions. For instance a group of expressions
partly borrowed from, partly calqued on, French have no article before a noun
acting as direct object, e.g. mak mentioune, cry mercy, do offence, do reverence (s.v. reverence n.1 (3)) , tak leve, etc. (see Mustanoja, 1960: 271).
Variation amongst French dialects and
between Latin and French gives rise to further variation in Scots. The French development of Latin /mn/ to
/mpn/ is occasionally reflected in OSc spellings such as <impnis> 'hymns' and <autumpnal>
'autumnal'. On the other hand,
latinate spellings were favoured in French itself. A late 13th century treatise (written in England)
recommends: “quelibet diccio gallica concordans latino in quantum poterit debet
sequi scriptura latini” (quoted by Pope, 1934: §1218). Thus spellings such as <doubt>
(cf. L dubitāre) (s.v. dout v.), and <rece(i)pt> (AN receite, medieval L recepta) alongside ressait.
Paroche occurs
alongside parisch(e. French silent h tends to be restored from Latin, and this
is another source of variation, e.g. abill and habil(l.
Scots has some systematic differences from PreStE in the form of loans:
• the ending -is(s) retains /s/ where English changes it to /ʃ/, e.g. murdris, plenis
and adjectives denoting country of origin such as Inglis and Scottis;
• the ending -ioun is disyllabic.
4.2.3 Word formation
Once borrowed, loanwords are available to
participate in processes of word formation, such as compounding and the
addition of prefixes and suffixes,[72]
though not all groups of loanwords are as productive as others (see
below). After about 1500, and
despite learned borrowings, word-formation becomes the main source of
neologisms. In a sample of DOST
(Macafee and Anderson, 1997), the productive suffixes were mostly of native
origin, with nouns formed with -ing, adverbs formed with -ly, and adjectives formed from participles
being very numerous. Also
productive were: -er (agent noun, see below), -ful, and -nes; followed by -y (adjectives), -hude, -is (adverbs), -isch, -ly (adjectives), -sum, -en (substance adjectives) and -schip.
The Romance suffixes -able and -ery were also productive; followed by ant, -age, -al and -y (nouns). On -ie, see §4.2.2.4. A range of others, of native and
Romance origin, each produced small numbers of new derivatives. (See also §9.3.6.) The study of prefixes
in the sample was restricted by the fact that it was based on only part of DOST
(as then available), but there were several productive Romance prefixes,
particularly re- and in- (negation and motion).
This productivity of Romance affixes is
contrary to Kuiper's findings in relation to Quintin Kennedy's Eucharistic
Tracts, but the difference
is one of chronology: the most
productive period for the Romance affixes is the late 16th century.
Romance affixes on native roots, such as renew are rare, as Kuipers (1964: 91-2) also found.
It is not uncommon for words to exhibit a
change of affix. The
etymologically related forms of the ending of the agent noun are frequently
confused: -er from OE
and AN, -ar from Latin, -our from French, e.g. barbare (q.v.) and barber forms of barbour.
Pairs of similar sounding unstressed affixes are also confused, for
example -it and -ate and the prefixes im- and em-.
Metathesis (or possibly misinterpretation of abbreviations) gives such
forms as perfound for profound.
With the loss of inflections, change of
word class became an important method of word creation, for instance allowing
verbs to be used as nouns and vice versa, and nouns increasingly to function as pre-modifiers
of other nouns (Görlach, 1991).
Participles likewise pass readily into adjectival use.
Other types of word formation include:
•
aphetic
forms, e.g. fect n.
< effect;
•
reductions,
e.g. monzie 'a
disparaging term for a Frenchman' is a clipped form of monsieur, with -ie added;
•
back
formation, e.g. grede < gredy;
•
metanalysis,
e.g. nother adj.2
from the wrong division of ane other;
•
false
etymology, e.g. forfaltour
is based on forfat
'forfeit' with influence from forfalt 'to commit a fault'.
Onomatopoeia gives for instance thud, first recorded in Douglas. For others in Douglas, see Bawcutt
(1976: 158).
Reduplications[73]
and lengthy phonesthetic formations enter the record in large numbers in the 18th
century. A few are already recorded in OSc, e.g. brittill brattel,
hiddy-giddy, hirdy-girdy,
jouk(e)rie-pawkry, linsie-winsie, quhillylilly, quhilly-quha, topsolturvie.
SND s.v. hochmagandy cites a source a1700
(and cf. hochurhudy
Additions and Corrections to vol. III).
The completion of DOST will no doubt facilitate detailed studies of word formation in OSc.
4.3 The relative proportions of vocabulary from
various sources[74]
The native element is a surprisingly small part of the
vocabulary of Scots, as of English.
As we have seen, both languages were profoundly altered by linguistic
contact first with ON and then with AN.
Both later embraced a model of elaboration based on French and Latin.
Table 1 gives a summary of the etymological
sources in a sample of DOST. The
figures are based on a random sampling of one word in forty from the volumes of
DOST published up to the time of the study, giving 868 items and 983
etymologies.[75] The data are divided into three
categories:
• originals (occurring in OE or in source
languages);
• derived forms (created in OSc by
affixation, change of word-class, or other processes of word-formation);
• compounds (created in OSc).[76]
Figures are also given separately for 'more frequent' and 'less frequent' items, based on the DOST editors' use of large or small type for the headwords.
Table 1: Sources
of the vocabulary of OSc
more
less
all
frequent frequent
originals
derivatives* compounds*
n % n % n % n % n % n %
OE 340 34.6 171 39.0 169 31.1 103 23.8 102 29.7 135 65.5
total
French 271 27.6 119 27.2 152 27.9 137 31.6 116 33.8 18 8.7
total
F/L 105 10.7 47 10.7 58 10.7 53 12.2 46 13.4 6 2.9
F/Italian 1 0.1 1 0.2 0 0.0 1 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0
total
Latin 82 8.4 25 5.7 57 10.5 48 11.1 30 8.7 4 1.9
total Romance 459 46.7 192 43.8 267 49.1 239 55.2 192 56.0 28 13.6
total Scand 82 8.4 46 10.5 36 6.6 29 6.7 29 8.5 24 11.7
Flem/Du/LG 22 2.2 6 1.4 16 2.9 13 3.0 6 1.7 3 1.5
Gael 6 0.6 5 1.1 1 0.2 6 1.4 0 0.0 0 0.0
Celtic 2 0.2 1 0.2 1 0.2 0 0.0 1 0.3 1 0.5
total Celtic 8 0.8 6 1.4 2 0.4 6 1.4 1 0.3 1 0.5
Greek 1 0.1 0 0.0 1 0.2 1 0.2 0 0.0 0 0.0
Anglicised 3 0.3 0 0.0 3 0.6 2 0.5 0 0.0 1 0.5
total multiple 9 0.9 5 1.1 4 0.7 5 1.2 1 0.3 3 1.5
Onomatopoeic 7 0.7 2 0.5 5 0.9 3 0.7 3 0.9 1 0.5
Proper names 8 0.8 3 0.7 5 0.9 4 0.9 1 0.3 3 1.5
Unknown 43 4.4 7 1.6 36 6.6 28 6.5 8 2.3 7 3.4
grand
total 982 100.0 438 100.0 544 100.0 433 100.0 343 100.0 206 100.0
* includes words subject to derivation or compounding in OE or before borrowing into Scots.
Percentages are rounded to the first decimal place.
The category of 'multiple etymologies' is
necessary for the small body of loans whose possible sources cross the
boundaries of the named etymological groupings. Words of unknown origin are also quite a substantial component. Other, very minor, sources that did not
appear in the sample include German (e.g. cent(i)ner) and Italian (e.g. squadrate).
It can be seen that the proportion of
Romance loanwords is remarkably high (nearly half of the total), while the
proportion of OE words is just over a third; and that this relationship
persists even when we look only at the 'more frequent' category. This high proportion of words of
Romance origin is found also in English, with over 50% of the vocabulary in The
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary being of Romance origin (Finkenstaedt, Wolff et al., 1973: 119). But in English, the proportion of Latin is almost identical
to that of French, whereas in the DOST sample, loans from Latin are
considerably less numerous. This
is probably only partly due to the assignment of some loans to our additional
category of indeterminate French/Latin.
In the DOST sample, ON and
Flemish/Dutch/Low German are also quite numerous, but the contribution from
Gaelic is very small. Dareau
(2001), examining the computerised DOST files from Po- to the end of W, but lacking V, found an even lower proportion of Gaelic
loans, possibly in part because the letters S and T are both particularly large in Scots (as in English), while W is lacking in Gaelic.[77] The overall figure for Gaelic loans in
DOST will therefore, no doubt, be less than our 0.6%.
Comparing the 'more frequent' and 'less frequent' categories, we find that OE, ON, Gaelic and the 'multiples' are similar in having a higher proportion of 'more frequent' than 'less frequent' words in the sample. Surprisingly the Flemish/Dutch/Low German language group does not share in this pattern, although it is, like ON and Gaelic, a contributor to the everyday vocabulary.
The Romance words maintain their position
in the derivatives category.
However the proportion of compounds formed on Romance roots is
considerably smaller. OE and ON
again behave similarly in having higher proportions of the compounds than of
the originals. That is, they
contribute disproportionately to the elements that remain productive in the
language.[78]
A high proportion (40.9%) of hapax
legomena are of unknown
origin, but 43.2% are of Romance origin, 25% being Latin, indicating a high
degree of ad hoc
borrowing from Latin by individual writers.
Table 2 compares the sources of loan words
in the DOST sample with Barber's (1976) figures for EModE (1500-1700) based on
a 2% sample from OED.[79]
Table 2: Comparison of neologisms, 1500-1700, in DOST and OED*
OED DOST
% of
% of
n
originals n originals
originals
L 393 55.4 33 17.8
F/L 20 2.8 19 10.3
F 121 17.0 62 33.5
Gr 35 4.9 1 0.5
It 16 2.3 F/It 1 0.5
Sp/Port 16 2.3 0 0.0
G/LG/Du 9 1.3 Flem/LG/Du 9 4.9
ì ON/Scand 11
í Gael/Celtic 2
other
langs 15 2.1 î total 13 7.0
onomatopoeic 9 1.3 3 1.6
proper
names 1 0.1 3 1.6
unknown 63 8.9 19 10.3
other 12 1.7 22 11.9
total 710 100.0 185 100.0
* OED figures based on Barber (1976: 167, 194-5)
The 'other' category includes various ad
hoc alterations of words
of OE origin, which form a higher proportion of the DOST sample, perhaps just
indicating a higher proportion of oddities and erroneous forms in DOST's more
intensive coverage. Both
Scandinavia and the Low Countries appear to be more important to the Scots
vocabulary in the MSc period, while the Spanish/Portuguese element is important
for OED, reflecting contacts in the New World.
The most striking contrast, however, is the reversal of the positions of Latin and French in the two samples, even allowing for the indeterminate French/Latin category being larger in the DOST sample. This tends to confirm the impression of Craigie (1935), who thought that he detected a preference for French rather than Latin forms in OSc. This difference may suggest that the Scots were less preoccupied than their English contemporaries with 'inkhorn' terms and the self-conscious elaboration of the vocabulary (see §2.5.2). It is probably not simply an effect of DOST's less full coverage for the period 1600-1700, as the falling away of the Latin contribution is apparent before 1600 in the DOST sample.
We can also look at changes in sources of
the vocabulary over time. Many of
the dates are approximations, so the figures must be treated with caution.[80] The first appearance of an item in the
dictionary record is only a terminus post quem, a point after which the word is known to be in the
language. Many, especially those
that were part of the popular (as opposed to learned) vocabulary, could have
been in the language long before they were first recorded. Any word correctly identified as OE or
ON would have been in the language before the record of Scots as such begins
(apart from rare later intrusions from England, as W. F. H. Nicolaisen has
pointed out to me); and the period of borrowing from AN also pre-dates all but
the earliest documentary witnesses (occasional place-names) of Scots. The large peak in the last quarter of
the 14th century is to a large extent an artefact of the documentary
record, marking the beginning of the corpus of literature in Scots with
Barbour's Bruce and Legends
of the Saints. The age of the makars and the
beginnings of literary prose in Scots show up as another surge of new
vocabulary from the late 15th century to the late 16th
century.
As we would expect, the 'more frequent' items tend to enter the dictionary record earlier. After 1475 they are overtaken by the 'less frequent' items and rapidly fall away to zero. Figure 4 shows the dates of first citation for originals, derivatives and compounds. Derivatives show a second, larger, peak in the period 1550 to 1574. Compounds show no marked peak, but a fairly constant low level.
OE, ON and Romance all show the initial
late 14th century peak, high levels in the late 15th to
the late 16th centuries and a falling away thereafter, in line with
the overall pattern (Figure 5).
However, if we separate the French, French/Latin and Latin contributions
in the sample (Figure 6) we see that Latin does not show the first peak, and
falls away early (from 1575 on).
These patterns for French and Latin contrast with Barber's findings for
English:
ME loans are predominantly from French,
with a minority from Latin; in the fifteenth century the number of Latin loans
increases; and in the eModE period the loans are mainly from Latin, with a
minority from French. (1976: 86)
Barber found that the highest rate of borrowing from Latin in Early Modern English was between 1591 and 1660 (p.161). His median date for Latin loans is estimated to be approximately 1636, whereas that for the DOST sample is more than 80 years earlier, at 1550. Since the medians for French loans in the two languages are much closer (1555 and 1565 respectively), it seems unlikely that the difference in the figures for Latin is merely an artefact of DOST's less full treatment of the period 1600-1700.
Finkenstaedt, Wolff et al (1973: 88) point out that the reshaping of
the English vocabulary in the Early Modern period (particularly 1520-1620) was
fundamental to the character of Modern English, adding about 15% of the core
vocabulary of the modern language.
This Early Modern English expansion in the vocabulary was accompanied
after a delay of 20-50 years by an increase in the rate of vocabulary loss. The fact that Scots lost its
independence precisely during this period of enormous lexical change reflecting
scientific and global discoveries was critical for the future development of
the language.