Contact Scenario 1: Middle English in Contact with Old French

In this chapter we will discuss the copying of verb argument structure from OF to ME in descriptive, general terms, by providing results from a number of case studies we have conducted. These studies are the empirical basis for evaluating ME and AF as contact varieties in Chapter  3 , and for the model of copying we propose in Chapter  4 . This chapter covers a range of grammatical phenomena related to verbs and of particular interest for the contact situation under investigation. The data we present here will also be of interest for linguists working on the history of French or English in general terms. The studies are based on annotated, historical corpora of medieval English, French, and Anglo-French. The studies are both qualitative (discussion of specific examples, authors, text genres, translations) and quantitative in nature (showing e.g. diachronic trends by using descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing). The creation of new corpora (for OF and AF) and the verb lemmatisation of existing corpora (like the Penn corpora of Middle English) allow us to present new and original findings for a number of phenomena.