The English glosses in eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

11世纪的英语被很好地记录下来，大约有2000个文本在各种各样的手稿和文件中幸存下来。事实上，从这一时期流传下来的书面英语比中世纪后期之前任何一个世纪的本土语言都要多。这些文本大部分都是用统一的语言写成的，这表明作者们都经过了标准化方言的精心训练。它们几乎都有现代版本，研究英语的历史学家根据它们所包含的证据普遍认为，在讲法语的人首次成为不列颠群岛语言共同体的重要组成部分的那个世纪里，标准的书面语言几乎没有或没有发展。但是从整个11世纪到12世纪初，手稿的读者在页边空白处和行间添加注释，这些注释从来没有被收集在一起，只有一小部分被出版。大多数新增的材料显示了原文中作者认为需要修改的单词或拼写。这可能是因为一个词无法被理解，或者因为它已经变得古老，或者在阅读手稿的地区被认为是难以理解的或方言；也可能是因为作者知道一些单词的拼写在这个世纪发生了变化。拼写的变化可能表明发音正在发生变化，或者可能是因为讲法语的抄写员引入的拼写系统的新发展。在所有这些情况下，一个注释和旁注的收集版本是非常可取的，这样可以检查变化的性质并调查其原因。本应用程序的目的是出版11世纪和12世纪早期手稿的英文注释和旁注的完整版本，最初是在一个基于网络的关系数据库中，用户可以看到他们手稿和文本上下文中的所有注释，并且还将列出单个单词和出现的任何语言模式的所有拼写变化。预计从这些数据中产生的专著将显示在这一时期迄今为止被隐藏的英语的重要发展，并有助于阐明英语历史上的一个关键阶段。首先，肯定会有一些目前被记录为11世纪以后才进入英语的单词。其次，所有由注释显示的拼写变化，可能反映发音的发展，将第一次以全面和详细的形式记录下来。第三，迄今尚未发表的早期英语的大量数据将被纳入公共领域。

The English language in the eleventh century is very well recorded, with around 2000 texts surviving in a wide variety of manuscripts and documents. In fact, more examples of written English survive from this period than are found in any vernacular language from any single century before the later Middle Ages. The texts are for the most part written in a uniform language suggesting that writers were carefully trained in a standardised dialect. Almost all of them have been published in modern editions, and historians of the English language have generally assumed from the evidence that they contain that the standard written language underwent little or no development during the century when French speakers first formed a significant part of the linguistic community of the British Isles. But throughout the eleventh century, and into the beginning of the twelfth, readers of manuscripts added notes in the margins and between the lines, and these annotations have never been collected together and only a small proportion of them have ever been published. Most of the added material shows words or spellings in the original which their writers believed needed to be amended. This might be because a word was not capable of being understood, either because it had become archaic or was deemed unintelligible or dialectal in the area in which the manuscript was being read; or it might be because the writer knew that some words were changing in spelling during the century. A change in spelling might indicate that the pronunciation was changing, or it might be because of new developments in the spelling system introduced by French-speaking scribes. In all these cases, a collected edition of annotation and marginalia is highly desirable so that the nature of the changes might be examined and their causes investigated.The purpose of the present application is to publish a complete edition of the English glosses and marginalia in eleventh- and early twelfth-century manuscripts, initially in a web-based relational database which will allow the user to see all the annotations in their manuscript and textual context, and will also list all variations in spelling in both individual words and in any linguistic patterns which emerge. It is anticipated that a monograph arising from the data will show important developments in English during the period that have hitherto been hidden, and help elucidate a crucial stage in the history of the English language. First, there will certainly be instances of words which are currently recorded as entering the language only later than the eleventh century. Second, all changes in spelling indicated by the glosses, which may reflect developments in pronunciation, will be recorded for the first time in a comprehensive and detailed form. Third, a significant body of data from an early period of English which has to date not been published will be brought into the public domain.