The textbook account of the history of English suggests that Middle English favoured lexical borrowing and native compounding declined. Still, some types of compounds carried on being productive and new types were developed in Middle English. The non-negligible presence of complex lexical units—encompassing both compounds and other multi-word expressions (see Schlücker 2019)—in late medieval English texts whose base language is Medieval Latin is worth tracing: What kinds of complex lexical units are present in those texts and why are they expressed in the vernacular instead of using Latin equivalents (if any)? This article gives a sketch of the background to the historical development of compounding, putting it alongside (rather than in isolation from) the languages and textual traditions with which English had contact, and provides examples of such compound formations from a case study, the Durham Account Rolls.

教科书中有关英语历史的记载表明，中古英语偏向于词汇借用，而母语复利则有所下降。尽管如此，某些类型的化合物仍保持生产性，并且在中古英语中开发了新类型的化合物。基本语言为中世纪拉丁语的中世纪晚期英语文本中不可忽略地存在复杂词法单元-包括化合物和其他多词表达形式（请参阅Schlücker2019）-值得追寻的是：那些词中存在哪些复杂词法单元文本以及为什么要用白话表达而不使用拉丁等效词（如果有）？本文概述了复合的历史发展背景，将其与英语所接触的语言和文本传统并列（而不是与之隔离），达勒姆帐户劳斯莱斯。