Lexical replacement, retention and borrowing in Middle English: A case study

The Technical language and semantic shift in Middle English project makes use of an extensive corpus of vocabulary arranged into a semantic hierarchy in order to analyse patterns in specificity of meaning, semantic shift, lexicalisation and obsolescence. The present paper represents a preliminary investigation into one of our key research questions: do native terms and loanwords have different long-term outcomes in terms of lexical replacement and retention? The influx of predominately French borrowings into Middle English is extensively documented. However, our pilot study raises questions about the extent to which these incoming French loanwords caused terms of Old English origin to drop out of use and suggests that the overall rate of lexical replacement was not as high as might have been expected given some traditional accounts of borrowing. Our investigation also casts doubt on the predominant metaphor of competition between native terms and loanwords as a frame for understanding the interaction between French and English in the later medieval period