further investigation. The abundant material supplied by Professor Wright's Dictionary of English Dialects should be carefully explored.[1] Some use might be made also of local records. Many boroughs have a considerable number of documents in Anglo-Norman and Middle-English which would repay examination.[2]
Finally, every student of Anglo-Norman has felt the need of a trustworthy 'Dictionary'.[3] Kelham's work is notoriously incomplete and unreliable. Godefroy records Anglo-Norman forms and meanings to a very limited extent. Tobler's Dictionary, now in course of publication, is equally incomplete in this respect.[4] Brüll's list[5] is necessarily of limited value. The New English Dictionary, especially in the later volumes, contains a mass of valuable material but, like Brüll's list, confines its attention to words which actually occur in English texts. I would humbly suggest that an Oxford Dictionary of Anglo-Norman would constitute a worthy sequel to the English Dictionary.
The programme which I have outlined is so vast that it calls for the friendly rivalry and collaboration of scholars in every country. Nothing is further from my mind than the suggestion that Oxford should monopolize these studies.
- ↑ J. Derocquigny, A contribution to the study of the French Element in English (Lille, 1904), lays stress on the valuable information that could be derived from that source.
- ↑ I have devoted considerable attention to the records of Southampton (cf. my edition of The Oak Book of Southampton, 3 vols., 1910-11, The Port Books of Southampton, 1913), and I hope at some future date to complete my investigation.
- ↑ The want of such a dictionary was particularly emphasized by the late Prof. Maitland.
- ↑ See my review of the first part of Tobler's Dictionary in Mod. Lang. Rev., xii (1917), p. 100.
- ↑ H. Brüll, Untergegangene und veraltete Worte des Französischen im heutigen Englischen, Halle, 1913.
and -ment in English (Lund, 1910); Booker, The French inchoative Suffix -ss and the French -ir conjugation in ME. (Heidelberg, 1912).
