Electronic Corpus of Diplomatic Parallel Manuscript Texts as a Tool for Historical Studies of English-an Ancrene Wisse Corpus

对于历史语言学家来说，由于缺乏书面证据，古英语和中古英语之间的过渡时期仍然知之甚少。在这种情况下，被称为Ancrene Wisse的长篇散文文本非常重要，不仅仅是因为幸存的手稿数量，对于早期中世纪英语作品来说非常例外。这些手稿在年代、出处和抄写习惯上的微小差异，使我们能够以无与伦比的细节追踪这一时期英语中发生的变化和变异。将这些文本以电子形式并行提供，将为英语的历史研究提供一个有价值的工具。我们迄今为止的出版物有：Ancrene Wisse的电子并行外交宣言文本，序言和第1-3部分：印刷试用版（东京中世纪手稿阅读小组，2000年）和Ancrene Wisse的电子平行外交手稿，第4部分：一个打印的试用版（东京中世纪Mannippt阅读组，2001年）。

For historical linguists, the transition period between Old and Middle English remains poorly understood, because of the shortage of written evidence. In this situation, the long prose text known as Ancrene Wisse is of great importance, not least because of the number of surviving manuscripts, quite exceptional for an Early Middle English work. Small differences in dating, provenance and scribal habits between the manuscripts allow us to track with unequalled detail the changes and variations that were occurring in the English of this period. To have the texts available in parallel electronic form will provide a valuable tool for the historical study of English.Our publications to date are : Electronic Parallel Diplomatic Manuscript Texts of Ancrene Wisse, Preface and Parts 1-3 : A Printed Trial Version (Tokyo Medieval Manuscript Reading Group, 2000) and Electronic Parallel Diplomatic Manuscript Texts of Ancrene Wisse, Part 4 : A Printed Trial Version (Tokyo Medieval Manuscript Reading Group, 2001).