“Interpreting Different Types of Linguistic Variation: hit and it in Middle English”.

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From hit to it : h-dropping in Middle English

The shift from the personal pronoun hit to it in Middle English is a case of h-dropping. This study discusses the coexistence of the two forms in a single text by focusing on how they are distributed in different parts of it, and shows that there are some patterns in intra-text variation. The text analyzed mainly is Nicholas Love’s Speculum Vite Cristi (1494). This paper has been contributed to the Festschrift for Akiyuki Jimura, Hiroshima University.

Related publications

• Iyeiri, Yoko. 2013. “The Pronoun it and the Dating of Middle English Texts”, in Phases of the History of English: Selection of Papers Read at SHELL 2012, ed. Michio Hosaka, Michiko Ogura, Hironori Suzuki & Akinobu Tani, pp. 339-50. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. — This is another paper discussing the distribution of hit and it, but in different Middle English texts.