Contact Scenario 2: Anglo-French in Contact with Middle English

This chapter is dedicated to contact scenario 2 (Middle English influence on Anglo-French), which is rarely discussed in the literature. It will define the texts that are to be considered as Anglo-French and present a periodisation of Anglo-French, adding to the information that was given in the introduction. It will discuss two case studies in which Anglo-French, not Middle English, serves as the basic code, and adopt a novel approach by setting Anglo-French in contrast to continental Old French in order to identify contact influence from ME. Anglo-French verbs under contact influence from Middle English will be shown to adopt argument structures which are not attested, or not even licensed in continental Old French. These results are in line with what is known about native speakers of a satellite-framed L1 (such as English) acquiring a verb-framed L2 (such as French) and thus support the hypothesis that Anglo-French was not a dialect, but rather a contact variety of Old French, and was spoken more frequently as an L2 than previously assumed. The chapter ends with a discussion of the advantages and further implications of the L2 hypothesis.