Essays reappraising the relationship between the various languages of late medieval Britain. The languages of later medieval Britain are here seen as no longerseparate or separable, but as needing to be treated and studied together to discover the linguistic reality of medieval Britain and make a meaningful assessment ofthe relationship between the languages, and the role, status, function or subsequent history of any of them. This theme emerges from all the articles collected here from leading international experts in their fields, dealing withlaw, language, Welsh history, sociolinguistics and historical lexicography. The documents and texts studied include a Vatican register of miracles in fourteenth-century Hereford, medical treatises, municipal records from York, teaching manuals, gild registers, and an account of work done on the bridges of the river Thames. Contributors: PAUL BRAND, BEGON CRESPO GARCIA, TONY HUNT, LUIS IGLESIAS-RABADE, LISA JEFFERSON, ANDRES M. KRISTOL, FRANKWALTMOHREN, MICHAEL RICHTER, WILLIAM ROTHWELL, HERBERT SCHENDL, LLINOS BEVERLEY SMITH, D.A. TROTTER, EDMUIND WEINER, LAURA WRIGHT Professor D.A. TROTTER is Professor of French and Head of Department of European Languages at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

This book provides the reader with a description of the semantic change that took place over two periods of the history of English language: Middle English and Early Modern English. In view of the fact that semantic change is the type of change by which the relationship between language and society can be traced best, notes on the socio-historical background of the period have been included. They are followed by the analysis of language change in general in which some of the literature on the topic is reviewed and the author's interpretation of change as being caused by external factors is made clear. For this reason, terminology and concepts relating to the field of socio-historical linguistics have been incorporated in the analysis. The core of the work is semantic change and the linguistic study of vocabulary items which belong to the field of person-rank nouns. The results of the analysis indicate a tendency towards specialisation in the meaning of lexical categories which runs parallel to specialisation in society.