Warfare as a catalyst for lexico-semantic change from late old english to middle english: a study of norse and french influences on the semantic field of war

In conclusion, in order to answer our research questions, we can affirm that the sociolinguistic situations to which the participants in the warlike confrontations of medieval England were exposed (such as linguistic contact, multilingualism, or code switching), were essential in facilitating the incorporation of many loanwords in the semantic field of war, both from Scandinavian and French (and, although to a lesser extent, from Latin). We have been able to observe how while in Old English only 3% of the vocabulary in our corpus was of foreign origin, this percentage increased to 36% in Middle English. Similarly, we can say that a large part of these loans (25%) come from French. The increase in hybrids in Middle English is equally noteworthy, since it represents the level of flexibility of the English language when it comes to incorporating lexicon from other languages and combining it with its own morphological mechanisms. We have also been able to observe how semantic change is another direct consequence of contact between languages, since the coexistence of native words with foreign synonyms caused many of these terms to end up altering their meanings in order to survive in the language. Nonetheless, it is also true that the sociocultural evolution of war has led to many of these terms no longer representing the current reality, and if they are preserved in contemporary English, it is in many cases as poetic, historical or archaic words. Finally, another of the main objectives of this thesis was to see to what extent the use of alliterative verse could have influenced the incorporation of barbarisms in the English language. Since most of them were core borrowings, it was expected that this would be a determining factor for alliterative authors to incorporate these loans into their works as alliterative variants. However, comparative study of Middle English works has conclusively shown that there is no direct correlation between the use of alliterative verse and linguistic change. Thus, with this study, we hope to contribute to previous research in other semantic fields, showing how, indeed, war was an important catalyst for lexical-semantic change in the English language.