Where Forms Found In Trinity

By Author: Alex Lee
Total Articles: 365
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The second piece of evidence cited by Fletcher in support of his identification is the scribe's linguistic habits. Fletcher's linguistic analysis compares the spellings of 22 frequent words in Trinity 244 across the whole of Pynkhurst's known output. Of these 22 items Fletcher claims that there are just six whose spellings in Trinity 244 show no agreement with the forms recorded in other manuscripts attributed to Pynkhurst, namely AGAIN, AGAINST, WORK, WORLD, GIVEN, TOGETHER. In each case the spelling form or forms recorded in Trinity 244 are Thomas Sabo not found in any other manuscript attributed to Pynkhurst.

He should have included in this list the spellings GAVE and YIELD, the only spellings for these items in Trinity 244 recorded by Fletcher, neither of which is recorded in any other column in his table. In other cases agreements between Trinity 244 and other Pynkhurst manuscripts are the result of inaccuracies in the data presented by Fletcher. For instance, the sole spelling of IF in Trinity 244 is 3if. Pynkhurst's usual spelling of this item is if, the if spelling is ...
... recorded only in Fletcher's table as a minority variant in Trinity B.15.17, allowing him to claim that it is a genuine Pynkhurst form. But in fact this spelling never appears in Trinity B.15.17; the only spelling recorded for IF is Pynkhurst's usual form if, as noted in the table found in Horobin and Mooney, an earlier table assembled by M.L. Samuels and in the linguistic profile compiled for the electronic edition published by the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive.

A further problem with Fletcher's analysis is that it ignores variant spellings in Trinity 244 that are not recorded in any other Pynkhurst manuscript, even though in some cases these differences are striking. For instance Trinity 244 has pere as a variant form of THEIR. This form is not found in any other Pynkhurst manuscript and was rare in London English of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. There is one exception to this: there is found once in the northern dialect speech in the Reeve's Tale in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, thereby indicating its status as a dialectal variant. Fletcher argues that where forms found in Trinity 244 are not recorded in other Pynkhurst manuscripts they coincide with Type II London English, a metropolitan variety recorded in texts of the early to mid fourteenth century and subsequently replaced by Type HI, the variety associated with Pynkhurst's manuscripts. But the case of per contradicts this claim; per is Thomas Sabo Charms unknown in Type II London English and only became common in Type IV, a variety associated with texts copied in London from the 1430s onwards.