Below you can see our publications, and PhD and MA theses since 2006.
Publications
A list of publications resulting from the work of the Middle English Scribal Texts group at the University of Stavanger, up to and including 2024.
Stenroos, Merja and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds) (2020), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents.Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stenroos, Merja, Martti Mäkinen, Kjetil V. Thengs and Oliver Traxel (eds) (2019), Current explorations in Middle English. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Stenroos, Merja, Martti Mäkinen and Inge Særheim (eds) (2012), Language contact and development around the North Sea. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2024
Stenroos, Merja (2024), Nu is þeo leore for-leten: Conventionality, complexity and substitution sets in historical English spelling. SELIM. Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, 29(1): 109–25.
Stenroos, Merja (2024), Strange spellings and prodigal scribes: xall and xe in late medieval English, in Klaus Johan Myrvoll and Oliver Traxel (eds), Spelling Identities: Individual orthographic usages in English, Nordic and constructed languages. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag. 33–51.
2021
Stenroos, Merja. 2021. What, if anything, are Middle English dialects? Some thoughts on a changing concept, in Letizia Vezzosi (ed.), Current Issues in Medieval England. Hamburg: Peter Lang. 217–244.
2020
Bergstrøm, Geir (2020), Cambridge: a University town, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 129–154.
Mäkinen, Martti (2020), Grouping and regrouping Middle English documents, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 23–35.
Smith, Jeremy J. (2020), The pragmatics of punctuation in Middle English documentary texts, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 205–218.
Solberg-Harestad, Kenneth (2020), Ventriloquism or individual voice: formulaic language in heresy abjurations, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 219–248.
Stenroos, Merja and Kjetil V. Thengs (2020), Local documents as source material for the study of medieval English, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 3–21.
Stenroos, Merja, Geir Bergstrøm and Kjetil V. Thengs (2020), The categorisation of Middle English documents: interactions of function, form and language, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 37–67.
Stenroos, Merja and Kjetil V. Thengs (2020), The geography of Middle English documentary texts, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 69–92.
Stenroos, Merja (2020), Regional variation and supralocalization in late medieval English: comparing administrative and literary texts, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 95–128.
Stenroos, Merja (2020), Land documents as a source of word geography, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 175–202.
Stenroos, Merja and Delia Schipor (2020), Multilingual practices in Middle English documents, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 249–277.
Stenroos, Merja (2020), The “vernacularisation” and “standardisation” of local administrative writing in late and post-medieval England in Laura Wright (ed.), The multilingual origins of Standard English. Berlin: Mouton. 39–85.
Thengs, Kjetil V. (2020), Knutsford and Nantwich: scribal variation in late medieval Cheshire, in Merja Stenroos and Kjetil V. Thengs (eds), Records of real people: linguistic variation in Middle English local documents. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 155–173.
2019
Stenroos, Merja (2019), The development of Old English eo/ēo and the systematicity of Middle English spelling. In Rhona Alcorn, Joanna Kopaczyk, Bettelou Los & Benjamin Molineaux (eds), Historical dialectology in the digital age. Edinburgh: University Press. 133–155.
Stenroos, Merja (2019), Langage o northrin lede: northern Middle English as a written medium. In Anita Auer, Denis Renevey, Camille Marshall & Tino Oudesluijs (eds.), Revisiting the medieval north of England: interdisciplinary approaches. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 39–57.
2018
Stenroos, Merja (2018), From scribal repertoire to text community: the challenge of variable writing systems, in J. Cromwell and E. Grossman (eds), Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 20–40.
2017
Stenroos, Merja (2017), Perspectives on geographical variation in L. Brinton (ed.), English Historical Linguistics: Approaches and Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 303–331.
Stenroos, Merja (2017), Like the coins when currencies are combined: contextualizing the written language of fifteenth-century English merchants in Esther-Miriam Wagner and Bettina Beinhoff (eds), Merchants of innovation: the languages of traders. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 19–39.
2016
Smith, Jeremy J. (2016) The evolution of Old and Middle English texts: linguistic form and practices of literacy, in Tim Machan (ed.), Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 34–53.
Stenroos, Merja (2016), Regional language and culture: the geography of Middle English linguistic variation, in Tim Machan (ed.), Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 100–125.
Stenroos, Merja and Jeremy J. Smith (2016), Changing functions: English spelling before 1600 in Vivian Cook and Des Ryan (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System. London: Routledge. 125–142.
2015
Smith, Jeremy J. (2015), The historical evolution of English pronunciation. In: Reed, M. and Levis, J. (eds.) The Handbook of English Pronunciation. Wiley Blackwell: Oxford. 1–18.
Thengs, Kjetil V. (2015), Compactness of Expression in Late Middle English legal documents. Filologia Germanica - Germanic Philology 7. 163–181.
2014
Stenroos, Merja (2014), Fugitive voices: personal involvement in Middle English letters of defence, in Kari E. Haugland, Kevin McCafferty and Kristian A. Rusten (eds), 'Ye whom the charms of grammar please': Studies in English historical linguistics in honour of Leiv Egil Breivik. Oxford: Peter Lang. 355–380.
2013
Smith, Jeremy J. (2013) Mapping the language of the Vernon manuscript, in Wendy Scase (ed.) The Making of the Vernon Manuscript. Turnhout: Brepols. 49–70.
Stenroos, Merja (2013), Identity and intelligibility in Late Middle English scribal transmission: local dialect as an active choice in fifteenth-century texts in E.-M. Wagner, B. Outhwaite and B. Beinhoff, Scribes as Agents of Language Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 159–182.
2012
Jensen, Vibeke (2012),'The consonantal element (th) in some Late Middle English Yorkshire texts'. in J. Tyrkkö, M. Kilpiö, T. Nevalainen and M. Rissanen (eds), Outposts of Historical Corpus Linguistics: From the Helsinki Corpus to a Proliferation of Resources. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, 10. Helsinki: Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG), University of Helsinki. The consonantal element (th) in some Late Middle English Yorkshire texts - Vibeke Jensen
Stenroos, Merja (2012), The gender of loanwords in Southwest Midland texts of the thirteenth century, in J. Esquibel and A. Wojtys, Anna (eds.), Explorations in the English Language: Middle Ages and Beyond. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main. 123–135.
Stenroos, Merja and Kjetil Thengs (2012), Two Staffordshires: real and linguistic space in the study of Late Middle English dialects, in J. Tyrkkö, M. Kilpiö, T. Nevalainen and M. Rissanen (eds), Outposts of Historical Corpus Linguistics: From the Helsinki Corpus to a Proliferation of Resources. Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, 10. Helsinki: Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English (VARIENG), University of Helsinki. https://varieng.helsinki.fi/series/volumes/10/stenroos_thengs/
2011
Stenroos, Merja and Martti Mäkinen (2011), A defiant gentleman or ‘thestrengest thiefe of Wales’: reinterpreting the politics in a medieval correspondence, in A. Jucker and P. Pahta (eds),Communicating Early English Manuscripts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 83–101.
2010
Stenroos, Merja (2010), The pronoun of address in Piers Plowman: authorial and scribal usage, Journal of Historical Pragmatics 11: 1–31.
2008
Stenroos, Merja (2008), Order out of chaos? The English gender change in the Southwest Midlands as a process of semantically-based reorganisation, English Language and Linguistics, 12.3: 445–473.
2007
Stenroos, Merja (2007), Sampling and annotation in the Middle English Grammar Project, in A. Meurman-Solin and A. Nurmi (eds), Annotating variation and change. Studies in variation, contacts and change in English 1. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/01/stenroos/
PhD and MA theses
A list of PhD and MA theses on Middle English topics produced at the University of Stavanger since 2006.
- Vibeke Jensen, Studies in the medieval dialect materials of the West Riding of Yorkshire (2010)
- Hildegunn Støle, Interjections in Late Middle English play texts: a multi-variable pragmatic approach (2012)
- Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, English medieval documents of the Northwest Midlands: A study in the language of a real-space text corpus (2013)
- Geir Bergstrøm, Yeuen at Cavmbrigg’: A study of the late medieval English documents of Cambridge (2017)
- Delia Schipor, A study of multilingualism in the late medieval material of the Hampshire Record Office (2018)
- Kenneth Solberg-Harestad, Studies of the development of London English based on late and post-medieval documentary evidence (2025)
- Janne Brakstad, A study of shall and will in Middle English romance texts (2006)
- Vibeke Bratland, The third-person plural pronouns in late medieval Norfolk: a study of scribal variation in fifteenth-century texts (2006)
- Hildegunn Støle, The marking of interpersonal relationships in the Middle English Abraham and Isaac plays (2006)
- Mari Landsnes, A treatise against dice: an edition of a Wycliffite tract (2008)
- Kjetil Vikhamar Thengs, An edition of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 78, medical recipes on ff. 7v-17v (2008)
- Nedelina Naydenova, A study in the dialect materials of medieval Durham (2008)
- Beata Wojtalik, The way of obtaining the Grand Elixir: an edition of the ‘Tamyrtone’ text in BL Harley 1747 (2010)
- Silje Nising Sandvold, Scribal variation in a legal document: A study of the bounding of Barmston, 1473 (2010)
- Anne Liv Vastveit Halvorsen, Variation in the Older Scots Vowels 4, 5, and 8 (2011)
- Geir Bergstrøm, Two Cambridge Guild ordinances based on the same template: an edition of the ordinances of the Guilds of St Clement and All Saints (2013)
- Delia Schipor, Multilingual practices in late medieval English official writing: an edition of documents from the Beverley Town Cartulary (2013)
- Marit Mikkelsen Talgø, An edition of the fifteenth-century Middle English cookery recipes in London, British Library’s MS Sloane 442 (2015)
- Kenneth Solberg-Harestad, Genre, text type and the nature of formulaicness in Late Medieval and Early Modern English abjuration texts (2018)
- Karoline Schiølde Johansen, To almyghtty god et cetera: an edition of medieval testamentary texts of women from St Albans (2018)
- Jet van den Haak, Take three spoonfuls of the juice of hkmklkk: an edition of fifteenth-century medical texts in Sloane 3160 (2020)
- Elida Oye Addo, The phrasing of commands and requests in late medieval letters from superiors: an edition and study of ten command letters (2020)
- Ursula Anderson, Patterns of polite discourse in Middle English letters: a study of petitions and requests (2021)
- Gulen Diren Ulukaya, Jn wittenes of quyche thynge to þis present lettreȝ We haue sett oure Seals vppon trewth: A Study of Thirteen Late Middle English Attestations (2022)
- Kristine Ann Tare Hetland, Thes ben Jniures & wronges done vnto your pour seruant: An edition and study of three early sixteenth-century letters of complaint (2022)
- Juni Kvammen Bårdsen, An edition and study of selected late Middle English memoranda from Town Registers (2025)
- Synne Tungland, Making a binding promise in Middle English: a study of chastity vows (2025)
- Chloe Urso, A study of semantic variation in the religious vocabulary of Middle English documentary texts (2025)