In this thesis, first, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was reviewed and established as a prime example of the Anglo-Saxon language. Second, the principles of the transitional nature of Old English to ...Show moreIn this thesis, first, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was reviewed and established as a prime example of the Anglo-Saxon language. Second, the principles of the transitional nature of Old English to (Early) Middle English were discussed and examples thereof in The Peterborough Chronicle were highlighted. Third, the origins of the dative declension were examined and various dative semantic contexts were illustrated. Finally, an analysis exploring dative inflection rates was formed based on the study of 247 expected dative phrases. Hereon, this thesis exemplified the hypothesis set out in the beginning of this paper: rather than declining ubiquitously, the practice of inflection remained largely intact in various dative semantic contexts whereas it had disappeared in others. Altogether, the semantic contexts display dissimilar rates of inflection regarding the distribution of the dative inflection in The Interpolations, The First Continuation and The Final Continuation.Show less
