Chemical vocabulary in Middle English medical manuscripts

Authors

Keywords:

Middle English, medical manuscripts, chemica, simplex terms, noun combinations

Abstract

Hunt (1990: 19) has claimed that in medical recipes “mineral and chemical elements are unusual”. Even if the number of elements cannot be compared to the estimated 1,800 plant names attested in Middle English (Sauer 2011: 57), our research reveals that in Middle English medical manuscripts, there is a good number of chemical items including substances like metals and their compounds, extracts from plants, medical earth and man-made medical ingredients. A comprehensive linguistic analysis of the entire material containing these substances in medieval medical manuscripts has yet to be carried out. In order to study the lexis of chemical ingredients, a corpus of about 215,000 words has been specially compiled from different British libraries. The aim is to undertake a linguistic analysis of the lexicon of this field in Middle English based on the data retrieved from representative authentic sources, most of which has never been published. We examine the provenance of the nouns according to their etymology to check whether they are borrowings or native words in the case of simplex terms. We also analyse the structure and the constituents present in nominal combinations according to the usual taxonomies based on Bauer (1983 and 2017) and Marchand (1969), but specialised classifications on the topic are also used (Norri, 1991).

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Author Biographies

Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas, Universidad de Alcalá

Dr Isabel de la Cruz Cabanillas is Professor in English at University of Alcalá, where she teaches History of the English Language, as well as other courses on English Language and Linguistics at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research interests are chiefly in the field of lexicology and semantics. She has contributed to international journals, such as Cahiers de Lexicologie, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, English Studies, English for Specific Purposes, Nordic Journal of English Studies and Studia Neophilologica, among others. As an author, she has written monographs like La homofonía en inglés británico contemporáneo: estudio histórico (1999) and English and Spanish in Contrast (2009) and coedited others, such as Lingüística histórica inglesa (2001). Likewise, she has published chapters in volumes edited by Peter Lang, Rodopi, Brepols and Cambridge Scholars. She has also carried out research at the Universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, Berlin, Limerick and Oxford. Dr de la Cruz Cabanillas serves or has served on the Editorial Boards of several journals: SELIM (Journal of the Spanish Association for Medieval Studies), Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica, Revista de la Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada, Journal of English Studies, Atlantis, International Journal of English Studies, ELIA, Verbeia and Variants.

Irene Diego Rodríguez, IMF Business School

Irene Diego-Rodríguez is a lecturer at Nebrija University. Her research interests are chiefly in the field of historical linguistics, palaeography and manuscript studies. Dr Diego-Rodríguez has contributed to international conferences, journals, and volumes edited by international publishing houses. She has also carried out research at the University of Glasgow and several British libraries.

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Published

2021-06-23

How to Cite

de la Cruz Cabanillas, I., & Diego Rodríguez, I. (2021). Chemical vocabulary in Middle English medical manuscripts. Revista De Lenguas Para Fines Específicos, 27(1), 23–36. Retrieved from https://ojsspdc.ulpgc.es/ojs/index.php/LFE/article/view/1341

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 1 (2021): Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos

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Artículos/Articles

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