The Gersum Project: the Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary

中世纪早期，斯堪的纳维亚人对英国人的生活、语言和文化产生了深远的影响。早在北欧黑色和丹麦高级美食兴起之前，维京人就已经产生了重大而持久的影响，他们的遗产仍然在英国身份和遗产的现代建筑中产生强烈的共鸣。斯堪的纳维亚人的定居点真正开始于9世纪末，特别是在英格兰的北部和东部，其最重要的，当然也是最持久和普遍的影响是对英语的影响。许多重要的英语单词被认为起源于古斯堪的纳维亚语，包括天空、鸡蛋、法律、腿、呼叫、拿、窗、刀、死和皮肤等基本词汇，甚至还有他们、他们和他们的代词。这些是将我们与维京人直接联系在一起的文化艺术品，所有说英语的人仍然每天使用这些文化艺术品；在标准和地区性英语用法中，特别是在北方方言中，还有数百个其他类似的借词。在过去的几十年里，说古英语的人与维京时代的英格兰人之间的接触的性质和背景一直是重要的研究课题。但令人惊讶的是，关于外来词本身的密集研究仍然很少，而且关于这些词的早期历史还有大量尚未发现。甚至识别哪些英语单词确实是从on借来的或受on影响也是一项非常复杂的工作。而我们对这些词汇在进入英语后的最初几个世纪里是如何使用以及由谁使用的了解仍然相对较少，特别是在关键的中世纪英语时期，其最重要的文本--特别是那些主要由说话者构成的文本--从未从这个角度进行过持续的探索。Gersum项目(以ME单词gersum命名，借自on GerSemi“宝藏”)的主要目的就是弥补这一不足。它的研究将产生一个长达1600个单词的详细目录，这些单词的起源已经在英格兰北部主要的、已故的ME头韵诗歌语料库中被提出--这个目录将包括各种各样和有趣的单词，如Hernez‘Brains’，MUMed‘drizzed’，Stange‘Poll’和Wothe‘Danger’。该目录将作为一个公众可访问的在线数据库提供，完全可以按其所含词语的含义、分布(区域和时间顺序)、词源和其他方面进行搜索，并与所选诗歌的电子文本相链接。这些作品将包括著名的文学作品，如《加文爵士和绿色骑士》、《珍珠》和《头韵的变态阿苏尔》；该项目将极大地提高对这些作品的词汇的了解和欣赏，以及原始的on元素如何为它们的风格和意义做出贡献。简而言之，这将是对《英语词典》中源自On的词汇进行的最全面的调查，并为未来对这一主要英语语言史领域的所有研究提供一个持久的平台。除了这项调查及其相关的研究问题之外，该项目还将积极协调人们对英语语言遗产这一引人入胜的主题的兴趣，并将其传达给各受益者。公众参与将包括与讲该项目文本方言的现代版本的当地团体交谈，探索和庆祝英格兰北部的当地语言及其在一些伟大的中世纪文学纪念碑中的作用。该项目的网站将作为所有对该主题感兴趣的人的一般资源，向专家和非专家用户介绍关键问题和背景。通过随附的会议和书籍，Gersum还将以前所未有的方式，在维京遗产的语言分析和盎格鲁-斯堪的纳维亚文化互动的学术研究的其他方面之间建立一种跨学科的对话。

In the early Middle Ages, Scandinavian influence on British life, language and culture was profound. Long before the rise of 'Nordic noir' and Danish haute cuisine, the Vikings had a major and lasting impact, and their legacy still resonates strongly in modern constructions of British identity and heritage. Scandinavian settlement began in earnest in the late ninth century, especially in the North and East of England, and probably its most significant, and certainly its most enduring and pervasive effect, was on the English language. A large number of important English words have been ascribed an Old Norse (ON) origin, including such basic items as sky, egg, law, leg, call, take, window, knife, die and skin, and even the pronouns they, their and them. These are cultural artefacts which link us directly to the Vikings, and which all English speakers still use on a daily basis; and there are hundreds of other similar borrowings in standard and regional English usage, especially Northern dialects. The nature and contexts of the contact between speakers of Old English and ON in Viking-Age England have been the subject of important research in the last few decades. But there has still been surprisingly little intensive work on the borrowed vocabulary itself, and there is a huge amount about the early histories of these words yet to be discovered. Even identifying which English words really were borrowed from or influenced by ON is a very complex business. And we still know relatively little about how and by whom these words were used in the first few centuries after their adoption into English, especially in the crucial Middle English (ME) period, whose most important texts - particularly those composed in areas heavily settled by ON speakers - have never seen sustained exploration from this perspective. The main aim of the Gersum project (named after the ME word gersum, borrowed from ON gersemi 'treasure') is to remedy this deficiency. Its research will result in a detailed catalogue of up to 1600 words for which an origin in ON has been suggested in a corpus of major, late ME alliterative poems from the North of England - a catalogue which will include words as diverse and intriguing as hernez 'brains', muged 'drizzled', stange 'pole' and wothe 'danger'. The catalogue will be presented as a publically accessible online database, fully searchable by the meanings, distributions (regional and chronological), etymologies and other aspects of the words it contains, and linked to electronic texts of the poems chosen. These will include renowned works of literature like 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', 'Pearl', and the 'Alliterative Morte Arthure'; the project will greatly enhance knowledge and appreciation of their vocabularies, and how the originally ON element contributes to their style and meaning. In short, this will be the fullest survey ever undertaken of words derived from ON in ME, and a lasting platform for all future research into this major area of English language history. Above and beyond this survey and its related research questions, the project will actively coordinate interest in the fascinating subject of the ON linguistic heritage in English, and communicate it to various beneficiaries. Public engagement will include talks to local groups of people who speak the modern versions of the dialects of the project's texts, exploring and celebrating the local language of the North of England and its role in some of the great literary monuments of the Middle Ages. The project's website will act as a general resource for all those interested in the subject, introducing key issues and contexts to both specialist and non-specialist users. Through an accompanying conference and book, Gersum will also create a cross-disciplinary conversation between the linguistic analysis of the Viking legacy and other aspects of the scholarly study of Anglo-Scandinavian cultural interaction in a way never before achieved.