Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton November 17, 2021

Joseph Wright’s sources in the English Dialect Dictionary: evidence of spoken English from EDD Online

  • Manfred Markus

Abstract

Linguists of historical English, of traditional dialects and present-day varieties of English, generally rely on written texts, now often available in the form of corpora. However, the historical development of English, including its regional dialects, was naturally rooted in the spoken vernacular, rather than the literary standard. This paper, based on EDD Online (3.0), therefore, argues that the wealth of sources as used by Wright in his comprehensive English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) should no longer be disregarded, given that no better information is available. After a critical assessment of the widespread scepticism towards the EDD sources and of the different motivation of scholars not primarily concerned with traditional dialects (such as OED lexicographers), the paper first provides a survey of the different types of sources used by the EDD and presented in different lists and tables in EDD Online, and then focuses on the unpublished sources. The subsequent section shows that part of the problem of spoken sources results from the unjustified insistence of many scholars on phonetics to be the level of linguistic interest. In answer to the OED’s scepticism towards Wright’s sources as expressed in a paper by Durkin (2010a), the final section provides an analysis of Northamptonshire dialect words as a test case, with various linguistic issues beyond the OED’s focus on the temporal frame of reference.

References

Beal, Joan. 2010. The contribution of the Rev. Joseph Hunter’s Hallamshire Glossary (1829) to Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary. In Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and beyond. Studies in Late Modern English dialectology, 39–48, eds. Manfred Markus, Clive Upton & Reinhard Heuberger. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar

Beal, Joan. 2012. Can’t see the wood for the trees? Corpora and the study of Late Modern English. In Middle and Modern English corpus linguistics. A multi-dimensional approach, 13–29, eds. Manfred Markus, Yoko Iyeiri, Reinhard Heuberger & Emil Chamson. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/scl.50.04beaSearch in Google Scholar

Boswell, James. 1907. The life of Samuel Johnson. 2 vols. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.Search in Google Scholar

Chambers, J.K. 1995. Sociolinguistic theory: Linguistic variation and its social significance. Oxford/Cambridge, MA.: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Dobson, E.J. 1968. English pronunciation 1500–1700. 2nd edn., 2 vols., vol. 2:Phonology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Search in Google Scholar

Durkin, Philip. 2010a. Assessing non-standard writing in lexicography. In Varieties of English in writing. The written word as linguistic evidence, 43–60, ed. Raymond Hickey. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/veaw.g41.03durSearch in Google Scholar

Durkin, Philip. 2010b. EDD and OED: A continuing relationship. In Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and beyond. Studies in Late Modern English dialectology, 201–218, eds. Manfred Markus, Clive Upton & Reinhard Heuberger. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar

EDD Online: eddonline-proj.uibk.ac.at, ed. Manfred Markus, version 3.0 (acc. 20 Jan 2021).Search in Google Scholar

Hickey, Raymond, ed. 2010. Varieties of English in writing. The written word as linguistic evidence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/veaw.g41Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1972. Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia/Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lehnert, Martin. 1956. Poetry and prose of the Anglo-Saxons. 2 vols., vol. 2:Dictionary. Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften.Search in Google Scholar

Long, W.H. 1886. A dictionary of the Isle of Wight dialect. London: Reeves & Turner.Search in Google Scholar

Markus, Manfred. 2009. Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and its sources. In Current issues in Late Modern English, 263–282, eds. Ingrid TiekenBoon van Ostade & Wim van der Wurff. Bern: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar

Markus, Manfred. 2017. Flora in the English Dialect Dictionary OnlineTransactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 23:1–6.Search in Google Scholar

Markus, Manfred. 2019. EDD Online: What is new in its latest version 3.0. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 27:103–121.10.1515/dialect-2019-0006Search in Google Scholar

Markus, Manfred. 2020. What did Joseph Wright mean by meaning: The complexity of lexical semantics in the EDDInternational Journal of English Studies 20:1–25.10.6018/ijes.403481Search in Google Scholar

Markus, Manfred. 2021a. English Dialect Dictionary Online: A new departure in English dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108886741Search in Google Scholar

Markus, Manfred. 2021b (forthcoming). OED and EDD: comparison of the books and online versions. Lexicographica 37:261–280.10.1515/lex-2021-0014Search in Google Scholar

Milfull, Inge, & Sarah Couper. 2010. Sourcing Wright: Problems and solutions in the use of EDD citations. In Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and beyond. Studies in Late Modern English dialectology, 219–237, eds. Manfred Markus, Clive Upton & Reinhard Heuberger. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar

Penhallurick, Robert. 2009. Dialect dictionaries. In The Oxford history of English lexicography 2:290–313, ed. A. P. Cowie. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Praxmarer, Christoph. 2010. Joseph Wright’s EDD and the geographical distribution of dialects: A visual approach. In Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and beyond. Studies in Late Modern English dialectology, 61–73, eds. Manfred Markus, Clive Upton & Reinhard Heuberger. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar

Ruano-García, Javier. 2012. Towards an understanding of Joseph Wright’s sources. In Middle and Modern English corpus linguistics. A multi-dimensional approach, 241–256, eds. Manfred Markus, Yoko Iyeiri, Reinhard Heuberger & Emil Chamson. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/scl.50.21ruaSearch in Google Scholar

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2000. Sociohistorical linguistics and the observer’s paradox. In The history of English in a social context. A contribution to historical sociolinguistics, 441–461, eds. Dieter Kastovsky & Arthur Mettinger. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Upton, Clive. 2016. Regional and dialect dictionaries. In The Oxford handbook of lexicography, 382–392, ed. Philip Durkin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199691630.013.25Search in Google Scholar

Webster’s encyclopedic unabridged dictionary of the English language. 1989. New York: Gramercy Books.Search in Google Scholar

Weekley, Ernest. 1924. A concise etymological dictionary of Modern English. London: John Murray.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Elizabeth Mary. 1914. Rustic speech and folklore. Oxford: Humphrey Milford.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Elizabeth Mary. 1932. The life of Joseph Wright. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Joseph. 1898–1905. English dialect dictionary. Oxford: Henry Frowde.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Joseph. 1905. English dialect grammar. Oxford: Henry Frowde.Search in Google Scholar

Wright, Joseph & Elizabeth Mary Wright. 1924. An elementary historical New English grammar. London: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2021-11-17
Published in Print: 2021-11-25

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 19.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/dialect-2021-0005/pdf
Scroll to top button