Anglo-Norman words

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary ( www.anglo-norman.net ), an AHRC funded project held at Aberystwyth University, would like to invite expressions of interest in a post-graduate bursary fund supporting research on Anglo-Norman. (Aberystwyth Univeristy, Old College) (image taken from http://sirgarblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/redevelopment-of-aberystwyths-old.html) Over the next four years, five bursaries, of up to £1000 each, will be available to support post-graduate students and their research on projects related to Anglo-Norman. Applicants will be able to make use of the considerable resources available at the Dictionary office, including editions of Anglo-Norman works as well as a vast library of works on Anglo-Norman, Romance linguistics, etymology and lexicography. As visiting scholars at Aberystwyth University, applicants will also be able to make use of the university library as well as that of the National Library of Wales. Applicants may be asked to give a short re...

Describing the meaning and semantic range of Anglo-Norman words has always been, and still is, the primary function of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. However, the online AND ( www.anglo-norman.net ) also provides material, tools and research possibilities for medievalists, linguists and many other disciplines. When Dr. Alan Chamberlain, Senior Fellow in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Nottingham, visited us last week, to talk about a new and exciting project he proposes between his Mixed Reality Lab (University of Nottingham) and the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, the cross-disciplinary potential of online AND resources was clearly central to his ideas. Dr. Chamberlain explains his views on scholarly innovation through incorporating Anglo-Norman and the AND in his Experimental Digital Humanities and Sound Art: Funnily enough I’d been reading a book on medicine in medieval society and had come across the Anglo-Norman word mire referring to a specific sort of medi...

The  revised semantic labeling system Already in the first published fascicle of AND 1 (back in the late 1970s), the English definitions sometimes were given a semantic category label. For example, sub  abatre 1 , the sense ‘to abate, put an end to’ was labelled ‘(law)’ and the sense ‘fir tree’ sub  abiet  had the label ‘(bot.)’. These bracketed items served to clarify the semantic context, identifying the first example as a legal term and the second as belonging to the semantic domain of botany .  However, even in the first phases of the AND 2 , no clear editorial policy, let alone statement, existed about what labels should be used, where or why. In practice these labels (eccl., orn., med., nav., culin., arithm. etc.)  were inserted  ad hoc , as and when an individual editor thought it would clarify a definition. As a result, such labels as were present were seriously inconsistent. (For further discussion of th...

In the new updated version of the AND site ( www.anglo-norman.net ), there are now various ways of adjusting the way an entry is displayed and, to a certain extent, to customize the dictionary’s interface. 1. Font size. You can enlarge or reduce the font size of displayed entries using the A+ and A- buttons on the button bar near the top of the screen . 2. Hide citations. You can hide or reveal the citations in a displayed entry using the ‘[SHOW/HIDE] Citations’ button, also on the button bar. Particularly in longer entries, this option may be useful to get a quick overview of the full semantic range of a word. It has to be noted that unlike the ‘sense boxes’ already available for a while in longer entries, this new feature includes a) all of the semantic tags and b) all locutions and their senses. 3. Display layout. Using the "gear wheel" setting icon at the top of the screen you can choose between three display layouts for the entry: "Co...

Last week, the lay-out and presentation of the online AND [ http://www.anglo-norman.net ] was updated (for the first time since it was opened to the public back in 2006!), making it compatible for use on computers, tablets or handheld devices and adding new features. In the next couple of blog-posts, we will talk you through some of the possibilities and changes. One immediately striking difference is that the main AND page now has two search boxes – two main ways of accessing entries in the dictionary. 1. Use ‘jump to’ for browsing the alphabetical list of headwords. At start-up, the left-hand area of the screen shows a segment of the headword list starting with the first entry. As before, forms in  white  link directly to a substantive entry. Forms in   yellow indicate a cross-reference headword, and lead automatically to the referenced substantive entry or entries. Click or tap on a headword to fetch the entry into the main area of the screen. ...

Last month, we discussed the presence of loanwords from Irish in Anglo-Norman, and this month, we would like to look further into the linguistic contact between Anglo-Norman and Celtic languages – this time focusing on Welsh. While there has been considerable research into the influence of (Anglo-)French on the Welsh language, particularly in the literary sphere, linguistic contact between the two languages in the administrative and judicial spheres remains relatively poorly studied [1] .  Among the materials and sources used for the compilation of the AND we find two editions that bring together documents written in Wales by Welshmen: the Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales , and the Calendar of Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales . The former contains mainly records of correspondence between the English royal court and nobles in Wales, while the latter provides evidence of petitions from individuals throughout Wales to the English king. There are limitations ...