Words derived from Old Norse in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: an etymological survey

古诺尔斯语对英语词汇的影响是英语历史学家的重要课题之一。再加上著名的海上入侵和掠夺，以及斯堪的纳维亚人对名称和物质文化的持久影响，它有助于“维京海盗遗产”的强有力的想法，仍然在英国身份和遗产的现代建设中产生强烈的共鸣。许多重要的英语词汇都被学者们认为是源自古诺尔斯语，包括“天空”、“鸡蛋”、“法律”、“腿”、“拿”、“窗户”、“刀”、“死”和“皮肤”等基本词汇，更不用说人称代词“他们”、“他们的”和“他们”了。但是，关于这些词的早期历史，包括它们在中世纪英语文学中的出现，有很多东西应该得到更好的理解;我们对其中一些词的斯堪的纳维亚起源的信心需要仔细，彻底的重新评估。特别是，斯堪的纳维亚对中世纪英语文学的影响，尤其是那些用北欧人定居地区的语言写成的文学作品，从未有过持续的探索。没有什么地方比《高文爵士与绿色骑士》一案更需要进行这样的调查了。尽管这首诗作为中世纪英语文学成就的顶峰之一而闻名，而且，尽管它的词汇经常被认为是斯堪的纳维亚影响的最引人注目的例子之一，但仍然没有对《高文爵士》中的挪威贷款进行完整的调查。我的项目将弥补这一不足，并将导致详细的，充分注释描述这首诗中的四百多个单词，这些单词以前曾直接或间接地在版本，历史词典和其他诗歌研究中提出过挪威语的起源。沿着这条路，我将深入分析学者们为了确定挪威语对英语词汇历史的影响而进行的论证和“测试”，并开发出一个更精确的词源分类系统。因此，我的目标是提出一个最安全的调查，迄今为止，在一个主要的中古英语文本中的挪威语派生词，和一个新的模式，收集和描述的挪威语贷款从任何英语来源。

The influence of Old Norse on English vocabulary is one of the great issues for historians of the English language. Together with famous accounts of sea-borne invasion and pillaging, and the enduring Scandinavian impact on names and material culture, it contributes to the potent idea of 'the Viking legacy' that still resonates so strongly in modern constructions of British identity and heritage. A large number of important English words have been ascribed an Old Norse origin by scholars, including such basic items of vocabulary as 'sky', 'egg', 'law', 'leg', 'take', 'window', 'knife', 'die' and 'skin', not to mention the personal pronouns 'they', 'their' and 'them'. But there is much about the early histories of these words, including their occurrences in medieval English literature, that should be far better understood; and the confidence with which we attribute to some of them a Scandinavian origin is in need of careful, thorough reassessment. In particular, the Scandinavian influence on the lexicon of the great medieval English literary monuments, especially those composed in the language of areas settled by Norse speakers, has never seen sustained exploration. Nowhere is the need for such an investigation more compelling than in the case of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. Despite this poem's celebrity as one of the pinnacles of Middle English literary achievement, and, what is more, though its vocabulary has frequently been held up as one of the most striking known instances of Scandinavian influence, there remains no complete survey of Norse loans in 'Sir Gawain'. My project will remedy this deficiency, and will result in a detailed, fully-annotated description of the more than four hundred words in this poem for which an origin in Norse has previously been suggested, directly or indirectly, in editions, historical dictionaries and other studies of the poem. Along the way, I shall analyse in-depth the arguments and 'tests' that scholars have applied in order to identify Norse influence upon the histories of English words, and develop a more refined system of etymological classification. My aim is therefore to present the most secure survey yet available of Norse-derived words in a major Middle English text, and a new model for the collection and description of Norse loans from any English source.