Tracking lexical and
semantic change in OE and ME
(with thanks to student ‘A.D.’ and her fine project on pig and pork that anticipated the OED’s draft revisions in 2006!)
Find
a problem and some data:
One
set of questions that covers many of the final papers you might write:
What
are the PDE near-synonyms for a particular concept? (ghost & spirit;
pig & pork)
(How)
is the structure of the PDE semantic field clarified by a historical
explanation?
(How)
does the structure of the semantic field in and after the ME period illuminate
the relationship between speakers of English and of French?
-you can’t answer all of these questions in your
paper, but they’ll give you an idea of what you might find or look for
“[T]he
animal in the field or on the hoof retained its Anglo-Saxon name, but when
slaughtered for the overlord’s table it was transmogrified into Norman”
(Hughes)
-examples include pig and pork
1.
Does surviving/codified written evidence help us understand how this process
happened, and how long it took?
2.
And is this statement really accurate?
You might start by checking semantic fields
- familiarizing yourself with the data
- seeing what’s changed between OE and PDE
Semantic field of “pork”
·
OE
thesaurus: swín, swínflaesc, swínnes (and cuts)
o nb: the TOE is not
wildly reliable (if you look up pig in the OED you’ll see why),
but it’s a good first source
·
PDE
thesaurus: pork, pig, suck(l)ing pig (and cuts)
o so, pork is post-OE
o Q: how current/widespread is pig “something you eat”?
Semantic field of “pig”
·
OE
thesaurus: includes swín, pecg, hogg .. (etc etc).
o “young pig” will be
important: picga, fearh
§
Q:
so did pig originally mean “piglet”?
§
a
bit disingenuous: I had already learned that because I’d looked up pig
in the OED before I did all this...
·
PDE
thesaurus: includes swine, pig, hog, porker, hyo-, -choerus ...
o “young pig”: piglet, pigling
.
§
Q:
when was piglet coined to mean “young pig”? around the time when pig
stopped meaning “young pig”?
You can also look at historical definitions and quotations that will help you understand when the words were used to denote key concepts
·
OED,
MED, Anglo-Norman dictionary
·
NB: the OED has been updated since AD wrote her essay – the
draft revisions of 2006 confirm her argument. It’s now a lot easier (but not as
much fun).
Make a list of (relevant) facts that are new or interesting to you, e.g.
-looking
up pork will give you its Latin etymon, porcus ‘pig, swine’
-so, porcus meant ‘pig’ at one
point: did pork?
-pig
has meant ‘young pig’ for a very long time
-piglet is really recent!
-pork
and pig were interchangeable for a while
-flesh of swine used as food: pork, pig
(boar)
-esp
when pig was small and whole
-the animal itself: pork and pig (and swine)
PIG 3. The animal or its flesh as
an article of food.
OED 2: Usually referring to a young
or sucking pig; otherwise only humorous, the regular name for the meat
being pork, dial. also pig-meat; cf. also bacon, ham,
griskin, etc.
2006 revision of OED: Pig was
formerly used to refer to a young or sucking pig but is now chiefly restricted
to an animal cooked whole. The more usual words for the meat are pork
and (for particular types) bacon and ham. See also
1381 Diuersa Servicia
in C. B. Hieatt & S. Butler Curye on Inglysch
(1985) 71 Nym pyggus and hennys & 
erin
PORK
OED2:1. a.
A swine, a hog, a pig. Sometimes distinguished from a pig or young swine. Obs.
or Hist.
OED draft revision 2006: 2. a. A pig. Also fig. Now rare. In later
use hist. and regional (chiefly Irish English (north.)).
Recorded earliest in
In quots. 1528 and 1598 distinguished from other types of pig.
?a1425 tr. G. de Chauliac Grande
Chirurgie (N.Y. Acad. Med.) f. 144, Leue ai
ates
Using
the definitions and dates in the OED, you might make a rough chart of
-the
different/relevant concepts that these words could cover
-pigs generally, edible pigs, small edible pigs
cooked whole...
-the
subdivisions of the time period
|
|
pig
generally |
young
pig |
swine
reared for slaughter |
flesh
of swine used as food (subdivide:
size? whole?) |
|
early
OE |
swín,
(fór) |
*OE
picga? |
|
|
|
later
OE |
swín,
(fór) |
*OE
picga? |
|
|
|
early
ME |
swín |
pig |
|
pork |
|
later
ME |
swín pork |
pig |
hog |
pork pork flesh pig |
|
EmodE |
swín pig pork |
pig |
hog |
pork pork flesh US
hog and hominy pig pigmeat |
|
ModE |
pig swine
[‘lit., dial., zool.’] |
piglet |
hog |
pork |
Then
start filling in the gaps in the data: Old English
Go
back to the TOE and make a really good list of any other possible OE
words in that field
-what
you’re really looking for are words that denoted ‘pork’, ‘pig you eat’ in OE
-and
Latin words that were glossed by OE words
-you can use the DOE’s Latin-Old
English word wheel!
Go
to a dictionary of Old English and look up the OE word(s)
-at
this stage you’ll realize that a lot of the TOE’s words are dubious!!
-short:
Clark-Hall (online; Robarts short-term loan)
fearh (æ, e) m. gs. féares little
pig, hog ... [‘farrow’]
-longer:
Bosworth-Toller 1898 (online; ref sections)
-[beginning
of the alphabet: Toronto Dictionary of Old English
-supposedly via U of T library
homepage
-on microfiche]
Why?
see if you can get more information than the OED and TOE give you
Bosworth-Toller
has quotations that are translated
fearh, ... A little pig, a FARROW,
litter; porcellus: -- Fearh porcellus Wrt. Voc. 78, 40. Fearas suilli
vel porcelli vel nefrendes, Ælfc. Gl. 20; Som. 59, 35; Wrt. Voc.
22, 76.
You can try to decode the ‘short titles’ from the Explanation
of References at the beginning: to me, they look mostly like OE ‘glosses’
of Latin rather than extended prose.
è if a word mostly occurs in glosses, does that mean that
o
-it wasn’t used
much in everyday OE?
o
it wasn’t
written about much in the kinds of OE texts that were written/survived?
Nothing
detailed under picga or pigga
Tons
of citations for swín –Latin porcus or sus – any
subdefinitions about their flesh? (no)
Then
there’s the Middle English Dictionary – pretty recently completed!
Where?
-in
the reference sections of reputable university libraries (Robarts PE ...)
-online:
from the library homepage, select 'e-resources' and type in 'Middle English
Compendium'
How?
-infer
the ME headword and look it up: pigge, pork(e, swín(e
Any
more info? Nothing earthshattering...
Pig could mean ‘young pig’
(a1250-) and ‘pig regardless of age or sex’ (1322-) and ‘a pig as food’ (1355-)
Pork could mean ‘flesh’ (c1300),
‘a swine, hog’ (a1425), ‘a hog carcass’ (a1425)
Swine could mean ‘domestic pig’
but also ‘a domestic or wild pig or part of a pig used as food’ (a1225)
But
the MED gives more quotations to confirm OED:
Pig and pork were
overlapping with each other in late ME and early ModE.
Less
surprising: pig ‘animal or its flesh as an article of food’. In this
sense it usually seems to refer to a ‘young or sucking pig’ (i.e. its formal
integrity is preserved during the cooking process).
More
interesting: pork did not lose the meaning of ‘animal on the hoof’ for
quite some time.
Next
question: what did it mean when it came into English?
OED etymology: “a. F. porc
= Pr. porc, It porco, Sp. puerco:-L. porc-us swine,
hog.]
Things
to think about
-historical
dictionaries of French (Robarts reference section)
(I
haven’t done this here)
-Anglo-Norman
dictionary (in various libraries: at Robarts, it’s in the stacks)
porc,
por, por(c)k; porke (pl. poirs Dial Greg 88rb) s.
pig, swine: ... vaches, berbis, et porkes
Anon Chr. 138.15;
boar: En la forest un grant
sengler troverent. Lesserunt i les chiens, sur le p. les huerent Rom Chev
ANTS 4421
Decoding
it
-there’s
a list of short titles at the beginning (with bibliographic info)
-Anonimalle
Chronicle 1333-81
-Le
Roman de toute chevalerie
But
general conclusion
porc meant ‘pig, swine’ in
Anglo-Norman!
And
there were lots of other porc words: porcel ‘pig, swine’; porcelet
‘piglet’, the verb porceler ‘to farrow’....
Next
stages
Interrogate
the dictionary quotations:
When
pig means ‘a pig as food’, does it refer to a whole pig or to something
unrecognizable in slices?
What
sorts of texts does the word occur in?
(1425)
Arun. Cook. Recipes Take vell or pyggus or capons
or hennus ... and sethe hom wel togedur a longe tyme in watur and wyn.
(a1486/c1429)
Menu Banquet Hen. VI Pigge endored.
Does
your ‘English’ word gloss a Latin word that has a definite meaning?
Does
the quotation show signs of translators or editors not being sure about what
the right word is?
?a1425
Chauliac(1) Leue þai recent fruytez ... crude porc [Ch(2)
swynes; L porcinas] flesh, & fish.
Does
the quotation show that the writer thinks the word is ‘old’?
1887 ROGERS Agric. & Prices V. 343 Hogs and
porks, the word appearing to be used indifferently, are occasionally found.]
Does
your word occur in a suspicious literary context: rhyme or alliteration? (of
course, pig begins with /p/ too...)
(?a1400)
Morte Art.(1): Poveralle and pastorelles passede one aftyre With porkes
to pasture at the price 3ates.
c1400
Destr. Troy Polidarus was pluccid as a porke fat.
Do
your quotations show contemporary writers making a distinction between words in
your field?
1528
Paynel Salerne’s Regim. Porkes of a yere or .ij. olde are
better than yonge pygges.
1598.
Stow Surv. There were brought to the slaughter-house ... 34 porks,
3s. 8d. the piece; 91 pigs, 6d. the piece.
Look
at useful primary sources – cookbooks
C15th
tak
Freysshe broþe of Beff, & draw mylke of Almaundys, & þe Piggys þer-in
cowche
thi pigge in disshes ... and serve it forth
And
finally...
Select and organize some of this data that you’ve collected into an argument that helps to clarify or solve a problem!