Verbal Negative Contraction in Four Most Complete Witnesses to the Old English Bede

Abstract

ABSTRACT The witnesses to the Old English Bede (OEB) should theoretically provide an excellent illustration of the generalization that while contracted negated verbs predominate in Old English prose, uncontracted are not infrequent in Anglian but almost exceptional in late West Saxon (Hogg and Fulk 2011; Levin 1958). This rule predicts that the uncontracted forms would be prevalent in the earlier copies T and O that preserve more Anglian features and rare in later and more thoroughly West-Saxonized B and Ca. However, this expectation is not sustained. Whereas B exhibits the highest proportion of the contracted forms among the OEB manuscripts, its rate of 41% is significantly lower than 96% of the Old English Gospels and 99% of Ælfric’s material (Levin 1958). To identify the factors apart from dialect that affect the distribution of the contracted and uncontracted forms in the OEB, the present article analyzes all instances of the negated verbs beon/wesan ‘be’, habban ‘have’, willan ‘will’, and witan ‘know’ in four most complete manuscripts. It demonstrates that negative contraction in the OEB is conditioned by morphology, syntax, scribal stylistic preferences, genre, translation technique, and possibly the growing impact of the West-Saxon and lingering prestige of the Mercian tradition.