Abstract:Drawing on the dynamics among manuscript texts and textual criticism, this essay addresses everyday medieval English (as opposed to literary English), both as a definable variety and as a theoretical construct in historical linguistics. It focuses in particular on the material effects that written texts and printed editions have on how we perceive Old and Middle English in general, as well as on the theoretical implications of trying to understand what living, spoken languages were on the basis of the written remains of languages now extinct. In many cases, the issue is not simply whether we can or cannot surmise that some linguistic feature was part of the general repertoire. It is whether we have any basis at all for discriminating the unrehearsed from the stylized and for generalizing from that discrimination to some understanding of medieval English in general. Rather than simply affirm what we already know, the extant record might sometimes remind us of things we do not and cannot know.

中文翻译：

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查找英语：书面文字和日常语言

摘要：利用手稿文本和文本批评之间的动态关系，本文论述了中世纪的日常英语（与文学英语相对），既可以作为定义语言，也可以作为历史语言学的理论建构。它特别着重于书面文本和印刷版本对我们总体上对中古英语的理解的物质影响，以及试图理解基于书面遗骸的鲜活口头语言的理论含义。的语言现已绝迹。在许多情况下，问题不仅仅在于我们是否可以推测某种语言特征是一般曲目的一部分。这是我们是否有任何基础来区分未排练的和程式化的，以及从这种歧视推广到对中世纪英语的一般理解。现有的记录不仅可以简单地确认我们已经知道的内容，而且有时还可以使我们想起我们不知道和不知道的事情。