Semantic change in Old English ‘music’ nouns: a corpus study
Semantic change in Old English ‘music’ nouns: a corpus study

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the main Old English ‘music’ nouns used before the Norman Conquest. By ‘‘main” music nouns is meant those which bear the core sense of music as an acoustic activity produced by and for people, including basic theoretical facets pertaining to music. As a result, many terms bearing peripheral, partitive, qualitative, or otherwise specific reading(s) like ‘harmony’, ’sound’, ‘psalm singing’, etc., are excluded from the present study (cf. Simpson – Weiner 1991: 126–127). Culturally, the paper tackles both secular and ecclesiastic types of music with regard to their artistic and/or entertaining values. The short introduction dealing with the cultural aspect of the problem will facilitate a linguistic examination of the terms in question.

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