Anglo-Norman Correspondence Corpus
The School of English has created a small corpus of Anglo-Norman personal correspondence, which currently consists of about 50 personal letters written by users of Anglo-Norman in the later 13th and early 14th centuries.
The Corpus is of interest to students of language history for a variety of reasons, not least because it exemplifies traits of contact between languages, especially in word choice, grammar and – as far as we can tell from spelling forms – pronunciation.
Correspondence offers students of language history additional advantages. It is normally dated, or datable from internal evidence, so the period of the language's history it represents can be securely established, as can the place where it originated. In addition, writers were usually seeking above all to communicate a message, rather than being concerned with the stylistic form of what they were writing.
You can access the Corpus via Webcorp LSE.
Corpus contents
The Corpus was compiled from the following sources:
- Historical papers and letters from the northern registers, ed. J. Raine, Rolls Series, London Longman, 1873.
- Literae Cantuarienses, the Letter Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. J. Sheppard, vols. 1-3, London, 1887-1889.
- Registrum epistolarum fratris J. Peckham ed. C. Martin, vols. 1-3, Rolls Series, 1885.
- Royal and other historical letters illustrative of the reign of Henry III, Vol III, 1236-1272, ed. W. Shirley, London, Longman's, 1866.
- The Register of John de Grandisson, ed. by F. Hingeston-Randolph, London, George Bell, 1894.
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