CIJNS, TIJNS, ACCIJNS

The relations between three tax terms in Middle Dutch

and

the formation of nasal vowels in Old French

Pieter van Reenen Meertens Institute / VU UniversityGroningen 29-06-2012

Distribution of TIJNS and CIJNS

TIJNS

CIJNS

Origin

Late 4th century, Vulgate Matthew 17, 25:

Reges terrae a quibus accipiunt tributum vel

censum?

North

Old Saxon: ± 825 Heliand vs 1195 tins

South

Middle Dutch: Liège Diatesseron and Lives of Jesus: tsens

Modern Dutch: Leiden translation of the Bible: cijns

Modern Standard Dutch: tijns/cijns

However: Naarden translation of the Bible: accijns

TYNS from ZINS is "Gelehrte Entlehnung" in German

TIJNS is a loan from Old Saxon, the ancester of Low German

CENS is "mot savant" in French

CIJNS is a loan from Old French

Charters Corpus-Van Reenen-Mulder CRM14

and

Charters Corpus-Gysseling CG13

Tokens examined CIJNS, TIJNS, ASSISE/ACCIJNS

Spellings of TIJNS in CRM 14

Initial Consonants Vowels + n

338 x t 303 x ijn 14 x th 45 x in 4 x other

488 x c 392 x ch 239 x ts 59 x s

34 x tz 10 x tc 8 x tg

11 x other

Spellings of CIJNS in CRM14 Initial consonants

Spellings of CIJNS in CRM14 Vowels +/- n absolute numbers

+n -n total

ijN 528 166 694eN 222 7 229eiN 169 10 179iN 59 20 79

eyN 16 250 266ijeN 4 69 73ieN 10 16 26eeN 8 10 18

Spellings of CIJNS in CRM14 Vowels +/-n percentages

+n -n ijN 76 % 24 % eN 97 % 3 % eiN 94 % 6 % iN 75 % 25 %

eyN 6 % 94 % ijeN 6 % 94 % ieN 38 % 62 % eeN 44 % 56 %

CIJNS comes from Old French CENS: cens/chens, cense/chense

ch c

tijns

CIJNS is also influenced by TIJNS tijns

cijns with ijcijns

with e

CIJNS is also influenced by ASSISE when losing its -n- in sise, cise, tsijs etc.

sise, cise, tsijs etc.▲

Digression ASSISE --> ACCIJNSNot enough tokens to Produce a map of ASSISE.

Instead map with area where sins, sise with initial s- occurs

S-

CIJNS is also influenced by a development in Old French: the formation of nasal vowels in words such as cense, penser, danse, which are no longer always spelled with -s-

Forms such as censse, pensser, dansse occur from 1246 on:-ss- in order to make clear a voiceless pronunciation

tokens % tokens %

-s- -ss-

before 1246 52 100 0 01246-1270 268 98 6 2 1271-1285 327.92 97 11.08 3 1286-1290 121.92 95 6.08 51291-1295 147.74 91 16.26 9 1296-1300 101.42 85 17.58 15

ceyse

ceyse

ceyse + sise

sise

A short history of CIJNS, TIJNS, ASSISE/ACCIJNS

in Middle Dutchon the basis of

token frequencies geographical maps

and the connection of CIJNS with nasal vowels in Old French