"Mandeville’s Travels" and the study of Middle English word geography: a corpus-based analysis of selected verbs

Abstract

This paper presents an example of a study that deals with lexical choices in the Middle English period. It aims to first investigate whether the choice of the verbs in the two regionally distinct versions of the Late Middle English book "Mandeville’s Travels" is text-dependent or region-dependent, which would then show to what extent the results of the comparison may be observed in other Middle English texts. In addition, it checks whether the choice of the verbs is influenced by their etymology. This study in progress is hoped to partially contribute both to the field of Middle English word geography and to the examination of the aforementioned text in general.